cjmelendez_
Upon playing Akiba’s Trip for review, I noticed that there was a recurring joke on the game’s fake social network, Pitter. In several instances, the characters on the social network would call another person in the chatroom a “trap” after she repeatedly emphasized that she was a girl.
If you happen to not know this, “trap” is an offensive term in the transgender community as it implies that someone that’s transgender is a liar, deceiver, and trying to trick people, when in actuality they’re just being who they are. Members of the community have been criticizing publisher XSEED Games for the use of the word in the game.
XSEED has recently tweeted a response to this criticism, saying that they will be evaluating future localizations and “views expressed by characters in the game do not constitute our own views, and that we take this very seriously.” XSEED has no plans to remove the word at this time.
For those following the Akiba’s Trip discussion, we do sincerely apologize to anyone who was offended. We will be evaluating our decision—
— XSEED Games (@XSEEDGames) August 17, 2014
–for future localizations, but will not be making any changes in the interim. We also will not be responding to any further tweets on this.
— XSEED Games (@XSEEDGames) August 17, 2014
Please understand that the views expressed by characters in the game do not constitute our own views, and that we take this very seriously.
— XSEED Games (@XSEEDGames) August 17, 2014
In a response to someone saying the word was not appropriate, XSEED said the following, “Consider the game. Pitter is partially a parody of 2ch, which 4chan was based on. Therefore, being a “4chanism” makes it apropos.” The publisher also says that they will be careful if the word ever comes up again during their translation process but will not alter things past their original intent.
