Deep Silver Apologizes for Mutilated Dead Island Torso

[Daft Ghosty]

The issue isn't purely for gory reasons.

I know that, and that has already been covered in one other post in this thread. Please feel free to look them up, as I wont be reiterating something I already covered.

The fact that they decided to put the torso in a bikini sexualizes the gratuitous violence it represents.

The game takes place on a high dollar resort island. If you remember the start of your game you will remember that this all went down the night before, and even at night most of the woman were in their bikinis. The torso isn't out of place in respect to the zombies you face in the game. If you haven't played the game then your commentary on the torsos garb is a bit out of place, and misguided from lack of knowledge of them game.

Also, since The Walking Dead's collector's edition was of a HEAD, that is to say something that can be humanized and sympathized with, a bikini-clad corpse does not show humanity.

I think at this point you are reaching a bit far, and trying to spin the situation into something more than it is. The walking dead box set was an example of another gore based items being sold with a horror based media. That may be how you feel about the head, but I myself see it for what it is. A piece of plastic meant to be a interesting item for the horror media fan. Same goes for the torso. The game is a hell of allot more gory than that statue.

And don't try to claim there wasn't an attempt to sexualize it. I could understand the reasoning if there was a head attached, but they chose solely to draw attention to boobs and violence.

I think you really are a bit to hung up on all of this. Makes me think you never played the game at all. See I have no idea if it is an attempt to sexualize the statue. I can tell you that it isn't out of place from the content in the game. See I don't know the mind of the people behind the game. And I'm not going to try to make claims based on opinion, and state them as facts, like you have done. I can tell you though from my prospective that if they are attempting to sexualize the torso some how, it has failed. I like my woman with all their limbs, and head attached. =)

If it had clothes, but no head and gore, it'd be fine. That would represent pure gore.
If it had a head, but was still bikini clad and mutilated, it'd be fine. We could say it was just a representation of one of the zombies from the game.
If it was just a bikini-clad torso, but no gore or head, it'd be fine. Then it'd just be adding a sexual twist to Venus de Milo.

It's a serious clusterfuck of all three of those aspects that make it so utterly wrong.

And if it had a blue ribbon around its neck, and whistled children songs, then it could be Little Bo Peep. I get it. You don't like the statue. No one is forcing you to buy the torso of gory goodness.

You may not think it is art as it stands because of the gore, but to that I say this. You only have to look back in history at the artists from hundreds of years ago, and see far worse. And those artists are celebrated today for their works. Even the gory paintings, and in some cases especially the gory ones. And the really messed up part about those paintings In many cases they depict real events. Not fake ones from a video game.

Is this torso some great art piece for our day? No not likely. Is it to be damned because it is a female form, in a bikini and is mutilated? Not by me, again it is a game. What would disgust me isn't a chopped up torso of a man or woman from a game. It's fake. It is meant for the gore lover, who love movies like the Evil Dead, Videodrome, Scanners, and games like Dead Island, Dead Space, and Postal.

In the end it isn't real. So if you don't like the torso ignore the collectors edition. No one is being forced to buy this, and no one is being killed to make the statue. All the butt hurt over the statue really is the lowest thing on my list to be concerned about in this world. Maybe because I'm an adult with a two year old child, and I have bills to pay, with real life worries, and a statue for a game doesn't make my list of things to be concerned about.

 

[Do4600]

And what seems to be the issue?
The dismembered zombie corpse, that it is female, or that it is British?

It is an M rated game, is it not? In a closed box. If you are 7 years old, or a 92 year old granny, you have no business buying this, or Hustler, or downloading porn off the internet.

It's not necessarily a zombie corpse, it's just a corpse with "perfect tits". The point is that it was supposed to be based off of Greek statuary and they didn't reference a particular statue so that point was totally lost because of the stupidly abbreviated sculpt. It's a statue of tits with everything else violently torn off or mutilated as if it didn't matter that it existed in the first place, that's the problem, it's a statue of tits as if only tits mattered.

All they had to do to make this "alright" was to base the mold off of the Venus de Milo and give it a zombie head.

I'm more annoyed at how bad the sculpt looks honestly, get a professional damn it.

 

[idodo35]

who the fuck thought that was a good idea?!

 

[rbstewart7263]

Ok, I have a question for you folks:

Would you buy this? And if so, would you still buy it if it were a male torso?

I'm not judging anyone, I'm genuinely curious.

Personally, I don't find the issue of gender an issue here. In fact, I'd probably be more inclined to buy it if it was a male zombie torso - I somehow imagine it'd take less explaining to anyone who stumbles across it, and people would probably judge me slightly less gravely, as indicated by the outrage the female model has caused.

That said, as someone who put an unhealthy amount of time into this game, and enjoyed it hugely, the model being female and dismembered probably provides a more accurate representation of the game itself. The whole being mauled by bikini-clad and arguably sexualised female zombies was a dominant feature of the gameplay, and the accuracy of dismemberment was one of the key features of the game that they emphasized on their website during the build-up to the game's release.

What matters to me is what was going through the developer's head when they created this.

The cynical part of me thinks this is some sort of advertising ploy, as anyone intelligent enough to be trusted with the creation and release of this Collector's Edition would have some understanding of the outcry it would create. The hopeful, perhaps naive, part of me thinks this could just be a deliberate and self-aware joke about the game and its core content. I simply do not think they would be silly enough to follow the reasoning 'Hur hur, zombie tits will totally sell to our target audience'.

Overall however, I think that this model was just a lighthearted representation of their game with slight ulterior motives of drawing attention to their game that got out-of-hand.

When it comes down to it, Dead Island was a ridiculous game that shouldn't be taken seriously at all, it takes all the B-Movie zombie flick cliches and builds an enjoyable game out of them depending on your tastes - the model should be looked at it in the same light.

...Evidently, this won't happen.

Not really but thats because im cheap. If I had the money to blow? nope. But I stand by there decision I got a friend or two who would love that damn thing.

Tismo "I can't believe people are actually bitching about this. It's a statue from a fucking zombie game. What do you expect?

I for one like it and think it fits the theme very well.

P.S. Fuck all the people that think it shouldn't exist just because they don't like it."

The green ranger said it and as such is INCONTESTABLE!!!!

 

[astrav1]

Ok, I have a question for you folks:

Would you buy this? And if so, would you still buy it if it were a male torso?

I'm not judging anyone, I'm genuinely curious.

What does gender have to do with it? It's a stupid statue.

 

[Beautiful End]

Well, it's not like they can back out now! I'm sure there's people out there who already pre-oredered that edition and are probably looking forward to it, for whatever reason. I don't seem them pulling the pre-order out, especially because they would have to have some sort of replacement ready right now.

I just think its dumb. It looks like a bad mannequin; why not do a full body version of it? It would be interesting. Or maybe even just a dismembered arm. But that just screams "HEY! You like boobs?! Then you'll like this game!"

 

[Shia-Neko-Chan]

This isn't offensive. People are just oversensitive to sexism.

If it's a guy's corpse cut up like this, COOL!

If it's a woman's corse cut up like this, ALSO COOL!

What? She happened to be on the beach at the time? SEXIST!!!! UNREALISTIC! WOMEN DON'T GO TO THE BEACH! IT'S A SEX OBJECT FOR MEEEEEEN!!!!!!

Yeah right. Necrophiliacs, maybe.

Sometimes gamers try a little too hard. I don't understand the appeal of a cut up corpse in the slightest but it's extremely ridiculous that people didn't like it because the corpse belonged to a woman who was on a beach.

 

[JenSeven]

I know for certain that this will never get recalled, changed or scrapped.
They had the torso designed, a prototype made, production ordered and everything. They were already making those things en masse and I doubt they would want to be stuck with all those torso's somewhere in a skip and go through that whole costly design phase again.
So no, they will keep this product, they will ship it and they will try to get us to buy it.

The only smart thing that they could do is ship this particular special edition to somewhere else, like Brazil and Mexico

 

[GamingAwesome1]

Well, it's kind of something to know that huge mass-scale internet bitching apparently catches the ear's of the people up top.

Crass, distasteful etc. blahblahblah it's all been said before. Still, they're probably not going to pull this as much as I'd like them to.

It's moments like this where people just put their foot down and cause a huge ruckus over something this pointlessly offensive for no reason that makes me think that sometimes, the gaming community is pretty cool.

Keep it real, guys. I see this as progress.

 

[AstaresPanda]

so the outrage is simply coz its a torso and is female and is in swim wear??? This is really what legions of ppl are going to rage about ? Take a closer dam look at the world we live in there are far FAR worse things in this world and deserve your collective outrage then a f**king torso in a zombie themed game. Kids starving in the world, war for the sake of profit, dictatorships, and our world leaders none stop lies/mis-information to the public. If they took all that money they waste of the endless random bullshit and the endless bullshit wars they claim are fully justified there would not be a single human on this earth that would go hungry or uneducated. Oh no no thats just trivial silly stuff. Carry on bitching about a female zombie torso in a zombie themed game. IF YOU DONT LIKE IT DONT BUY IT. OTHERS LIKE IT SO THEY SHOULD BE ABLE TO BUY IT. GTFO YOUR SOAP BOXES

 

[scorptatious]

I really don't see what the problem is. It's a bust of a mutilated corpse. From a game about killing zombies.

*shrugs*

 

[antipunt]

Anyone else getting the 'MASSIVE PUBLICITY OPPORTUNITY' vibe from this?

They couldn't have possibly been this naive. THEY COULDNT HAVE

 

[viranimus]

You know what is gruesomely offensive? That this world is so batshit crazy, self important and twisted around with Politically correct hypocrisy that a company cant even make a useless trinket without people going out of their way to be offended. In fact I am so offended that when I saw this I could care less, but now I would gladly pay good money for this CE. Im offended by this offense, so wheres my cave in response?

If this is what has you worked up in the world we live in you might want to take a step back, breathe and re-evaluate your priorities.

 

[SteewpidZombie]

Number 1: I want one SOOOOOO BAD. Mainly because I'm a zombie fan and enjoyed the original game, and because it's pretty neat to be able to have a lil'gruesome statue to put somewhere in your house. (Next to my Zombie games/DvDs)

Number 2: Most of the people who complained are probably people who NEVER played the game, or ever intend to. More then likely alot of NON-Zombie/horror fans.

 

[RedDeadFred]

"For the limited run of the Zombie Bait Edition for Europe and Australia, a decision was made to include a gruesome statue of a zombie torso, which was cut up like many of our fans had done to the undead enemies in the original Dead Island."

Except you can't actually do that in Dead Island, you sleazy hack. Don't try and spin this like it was some kind of playful homage to the gameplay.

Umm... It actually is possible to do that in Dead Island or I found it does happen when using the Ripper mod or a Machete. Though you usually don't end up with the top half of a torso afterwards or wanting to spend time chopping dead zombie bodies into teeny tiny bits as it takes ages to get anywhere on foot as it is and the thought of doing so turns the stomach. And then the god awful glitches... They are worse than the zombies!

OT: I hope they at least change the model for something else as it still hits me as being a bit sick. Though I wonder if they actually already had a bunch of the models made already. If they did then walking into the offices of Deep Silver won't be a pretty sight.

It's not the point of the game, any more than filling a room with cheese is the point of Skyrim

HEY! My cheese room is a homage to the always exciting Mad God.

But ya, I get what you're saying. Most people don't spend their time hacking apart defeated corpses. I don't understand how anyone could have thought this statue was a good idea...

 

[Klagermeister]

snip

1. I have in fact played and enjoyed the game, and felt it did deserve a Game of the Year award from at least one publisher, as it did. Honestly, it was kinda buggy but I still enjoyed it. Custscenes were a little sketchy. That point is moot. The zombies are bikini clad because that's how they are in the game? No, really? I never would have guessed. Next you'll be telling me the sky is blue and my username is German.
2. I also understand that this is clearly not an obbject meant to be enjoyed by everyone, but they did a freakin' survey on the Collector's Edition, man. A survey I took part in. They had all the data they needed to make an edition that they felt their players would have enjoyed buying. Don't you think that if they're trying to appeal to a large audience they'd make something people would have likely enjoyed? Not this clearly esoteric form of glorified violence with mild attempt to reference Renaissance art (I'm going to assume Venus de Milo).
3. This was never meant to be art. I'm not going to buy an edition of the game purely because there's some possibility it will be artistically appreciated in the future. The point is we're supposed to enjoy it here and now. We're supposed to proudly display it on our mantle and say "I love this game and feel that this object from it represents it well". It's obscure, it's ugly, it hardly represents anything from the game, other than "bikini plus zombie".
4. Yes, the game is far gorier than the statue. I understand that. But are gore and boobs really the only things they felt they could derive from? They could have used a main character. Or one of the iconic weapons. Or heck, Sam B's necklace would have been kickass. Postcards from the island, possibly spattered with blood. Tourist T-shirts. A zombie car-dash hula girl bobblehead. Sam B's do-rag. Purna's pistol. Xian-Mei's tie. A Halo Reach-esque diorama of the characters. A fully-intact zombie.

My point is this: They had many options of memorabilia to derive from the game. So many possibilities of what they could have given us to really interest us in buying it, and THIS is what we got?

It's not purely that I find it offensive. It's that out of all their choices of what to put in the Collector's edition they decided on possibly the SINGLE WORST ONE that would offend everybody.

It's a smack in the face for players of the game like me. We wanted something iconic, not something people would question my character for owning.

EDIT: See this? I found this on Deep Silver's twitter. I'm glad to know this is still an option.

Spoiler: See, THIS is something more like I expected. It's what I hoped for.

 

[Supernova2000]

Any chance of apologising for the X series while you're at it Deep Silver?

 

[Therumancer]

Oh please, this sounds like an awesome thing for a horror-fan and the kind of thing fans of zombie movies and games would think is cool. At the very worst it's no more extreme that similar props used for haunted houses during Halloween, or even for seasonal Holiday decorations (I've seen similar items for sale around Halloween especially in seasonal shops, or outlets like Spencer's Gifts).

To be honest I'm MORE apalled by Deep Silver backing down and apologizing so quickly than I could ever be by a horror movie/game or prop. To be honest this is exactly the king of thing game/movie/TV producers need to stick by and defend. Backing down here just encourages censors to be even more aggressive.

That said, let's hope for a US edition, if not maybe I'll have to see about ordering overseas if I can.

As far as flags as bikinis, that's an Ollld idea, and pretty much every flag from a civilized nation has been turned into a Bikini, especially the US Flag, Japanese Flag, and Union Jack.

 

[Detroit]

When the Dark Souls "controversy" erupted over the difficulty everybody was saying how people playing the game on easy mode wouldn't ruin the experience of others. Same thing here. Don't like the collectible, don't buy it.

 

[Triaed]

And what seems to be the issue?
The dismembered zombie corpse, that it is female, or that it is British?

It is an M rated game, is it not? In a closed box. If you are 7 years old, or a 92 year old granny, you have no business buying this, or Hustler, or downloading porn off the internet.

It's not necessarily a zombie corpse, it's just a corpse with "perfect tits". The point is that it was supposed to be based off of Greek statuary and they didn't reference a particular statue so that point was totally lost because of the stupidly abbreviated sculpt. It's a statue of tits with everything else violently torn off or mutilated as if it didn't matter that it existed in the first place, that's the problem, it's a statue of tits as if only tits mattered.

All they had to do to make this "alright" was to base the mold off of the Venus de Milo and give it a zombie head.

I'm more annoyed at how bad the sculpt looks honestly, get a professional damn it.

Hehe, I agree that they should have hired a better artist, the sculpture looks lop-sided

I do not see it as a "sculpture of tits", I see a dismembered torso that happens to be of a woman. Tomato to-mah-to