GamerBraves Newsletter Vol. 101 - Perspective: Who’s Right About Skullgirls?
For the past week, the game-o-sphere has been awash with the latest hot goss to land on everyone’s laps. Skullgirls, a relatively niche fighting game had announced, 10 years after the title’s launch, a radical shift in artistic direction.
If you’re not caught up on the happenings of a niche entry in a niche genre, I’ll keep it brief: the original Skullgirls was an incredibly raunchy game, featuring a lot of classic anime-isms like upskirts, sexual aggression, and over-the-top imagery like one of its main characters basically being a Nazi princess or one of its only Black characters being violently assaulted by cops.
Considering how much the political and cultural climate had shifted over the years (as well as the leadership of the teams involved), the game’s Director Charley Price had a bombshell announcement- they’d be cleaning up their act, so to speak, altering art from the game to remove things like upskirts for underage characters, as well as toning down a lot of other scenes by making them look less like they need to be identified by six digits.
The result? A seemingly torrential backlash. Many have been voicing their outrage at the content shift, enough to dwarf the actual number of Skullgirls players in recent years. As of now, the game sits at an Overwhelmingly Negative rating on Steam- with many comments voicing their displeasure.
If you’ve no stake in either side of this story you’re the person I want to talk to. Because I think there is a rational argument to be made for either side of this, and that’s what we’re going to look at today:
Perspective 1: The Developer Side
While Price never outright confirms the rationale behind the changes, there are two perspectives I’d like to imagine driving the changes, both of which can be attributed to the political climate. Just remember: In almost 80 years since the end of the Third Reich, the horrible atrocities of the Nazis are suddenly being cleaned up to seem more like a parking lot struggle. On the other hand, there’s also the state of political consciousness itself- we’re having much more open conversations about the relationships between social groups and how dynamics are enforced. That’s not to say these things only just started happening, but both these ideas are a lot more prevalent now than 10 years ago when Skullgirls launched.
With that in mind, let’s look at the first angle- one of pragmatism. Skullgirls was never a mega-blockbuster title, often consigned to this narrative of being the little indie that could. That’s how it got away with so much- it was raunchy and wild, with its roster of everything from sexy ninja nurses to a hair-based fighter who literally has one letter off from Guilty Gear to, again, a Nazi princess.
Admittedly while these kinds of bold decisions are great for building street cred, they’re not so good for a brand that wants to grow. Its mobile counterpart is actually on a pretty good growth curve, so it’s easy to see that Hidden Variable has plans to grow the brand.
Unfortunately, it’s just as easy to see why you, as a hypothetical incarnate of the Monopoly Man, wouldn’t want to be seen endorsing Skullgirls when the first things you’re going to see about it are either Nazis, porn, or its unfortunate scandals. On one hand, it’s great to see a studio stick to its own IP like that- but that does mean changes need to come for the brand’s survival. Skullgirls 2nd Encore is infamous for being hard to get into despite all the positive buzz, so having a spinoff like Mobile Growing is a sign there’s life in this brand yet.
You see this in other games, too- Honkai Impact 3rd was an incredibly raunchy game at launch compared to now, with an infamous lobby where you could grope any of the playable characters, and their reactions going from hostile to affectionate as long as you keep groping. Today HoYoverse’s flagship titles are all laughably sexless- be it the shallow bond system of Genshin to the lip-service-at-best Star Rail.
The second developer angle is the people themselves. I feel like this angle is the least represented in these discussions. People view creative projects as these inscrutable artifacts from on high but no matter what, they will always be as such: a puppet show, held up by a team of puppeteers that have feelings and opinions. Hidden Variable has a diverse team that sports diverse life experiences. I don’t doubt at least one of these teams might not have been proud of being known as the person “from the game with the panty shots”.
Considering the removal of Big Band’s death-by-cop story, I’d definitely believe there was a bit of truth behind this reasoning. Remember- it’s not about not having Black characters killed by cops, it’s about just how hard they went for it. You see that same decision made in Spider-Verse, where a scene was changed so that Miles’ dad, a cop, wasn’t (unknowingly) pointing a gun at his Black-Hispanic son.
For as much as fans long for the Skullgirls as it used to be, I could understand either of these reasons driving the changes to the game. When it comes to developers vs content Developers should always come first, and if the game’s raunchier status was either a threat to the future of the studio or making its staff unhappy then the changes are more than welcome.
Perspective 2: The Fans
I’m not gonna lie, it’s very hard to have a moderate discussion about the fan perspective. They’re constantly painted as either being pro-child pornography or the vigilant force against the Woke Left, come to steal our fighting games. Putting all of that aside, let’s look at the reason real, honest Skullgirls fans would have to be upset about the changes.
Skullgirls was an absolute anomaly for its time. The Skullgirls name was infamous for disruption, sporting good netcode, and asymmetrical team gameplay (you could choose whether to play as 1-3 characters, independent of your opponent). On top of that, there was, of course, the sexual aspect. It all just gels together into this cohesive image of a game that isn’t bound by standards, sort of like a cool punk.
Look, I was there for the early Skullgirls days. I was just as enamored, too. And now, more than 10 years later, you see how time has worn away at Skullgirls. Assuming you had no social awareness of the state of things around you, all you’d see is Skullgirls slowly sanding down all of its rough edges.
It’s not just the principle of it, either. One of the big changes is the removal of content from the game’s digital art book. Considering art books are meant to talk about the ideation process of getting to where the game is, removing content from it just feels like unnecessary revisionism of the game’s real-life story. At that point, even if you were in pursuit of cleaning up for investors, it almost feels dishonest to say this era of Skullgirls never existed.
There have been some calls for a sort of uncensored patch, and I don’t see that as an unreasonable option. Have it buried on a third-party site like Ecchi games do- that way, the official Skullgirls 2nd Encore product doesn’t have to be associated with any of the bad stuff, but fans that long for the more extreme days can have it.
The Final Say
The discussion around Skullgirls is important exactly because of its unique position in gaming. It’s close enough to the communities that they feel ownership over it, the same way Toby Fox wouldn’t be able to remove Sans from Undertale without a significant backlash. But at the same time, it’s also a business product- and if business decisions need to be made to protect the people making it, then that’s for the better.
I should point out that any and all perspectives here on Hidden Variable’s sides are speculation. They’re a guess, made by someone who’s seen other games shed their nastier elements in the name of legitimacy.
Still, I think the question of “who is right” here is far less important than the rationales at work, especially academically. I don’t think this backlash will be the end of Skullgirls- the game has lived through so much calamity that I simply don’t think a ripped-up dress and some tentacles are going to kill it.
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