> Just wow on the removal of Nazi insignias and related material from a game about killing Nazis. Take a baseball bat to the head of that decision.
This is certainly not the first time that it's happened. For the last 30 years, there have been games which have "European/German Releases" and "International Releases" where Nazi imagery is excised from the European release for legal reasons. If you can imagine the Call of Duty series during its World War II phase having all of the swastikas replaced with Iron Crosses, you can put together what that's like.
Europeans have a much more cavalier emotional response to censorship than Americans do. Culturally they just seem to be okay with a lot more authoritarianism, which about 15 minutes of studying European history will turn up. As such, the response to that kind of legal requirement on the Continent has never been particularly strong (though it has never been completely absent, either). The same kind of arguments have been put forth in the US in recent years in opposition to the symbology of the Southern Confederacy from the Civil War – and from my perspective, with the same logical and philosophical weaknesses.
If a group is so horrific that you can, quite cheerfully, fictionally murder them by the tens of dozens in as horrible a way as you like (and there is no organization or group which fulfills that requirement like Nazis, and justly so), it is hypocritical in the extreme that you can't mark them as such.
I have always maintained that any idea which you can't mock, you can't reference, you can't talk about, is not an idea that you own but an idea that owns you. Politicians with an authoritarian bent understand that which is why they go out of their way to always find more things that you can't make fun of, refer to, or talk about.
Anytime you see discussion about what is suitable for public discussion, one way or another, recognize that it comes down to someone deciding what ideas you aren't good enough to deal with. And then be insulted by the implication.
> I like this format of sharing the original unedited article here while linking to the published version - this might also be interesting for anyone thinking about getting into freelancing just as a small window into what kind of changes are made in the editing process. I like the sharper edges on this version. Sounds like a crap game, why pull punches then? Cheers
Honestly, for the most part over the last year the editorial changes to my articles have been so minor that it wouldn't be worth posting a link to the published version and the original alongside it. Minor formatting changes, slight changes in art choice, moving sections around – that's about all that really happens to most of my stuff. In part because I tend to be an extremely tight writer that does my own review before I send it up to my editor. I like to think he appreciates the fact that I try to make as little work for him as possible. For a lot of writers, showing the pre-and post-edit versions of their articles isn't even legally acceptable because their contract specifies that the publication owns not just the article as published but the article as submitted. That can be some touchy legal grounds.
Editors exist for good reason for the most part – because a consistent editorial voice, a consistent set of formats, a consistent means of expression, are all that separates one publication from another. More than just a logo or something in terms of color choice, the editorial voice of a publication defines its brand. That is ultimately what editors are supposed to be working for – to create a coherent image for the publication, to make sure that the content being published represents what the editorial board want the publication to represent, to make sure that content is of sufficient quality to represent the publication, and to do the least pleasant job in publishing: getting reporters/journalists to get their articles in on time. It is not a job I would willingly take up again; not for anything less than "a butt-load of money." As such, I'm glad Joe does it for SG and it's not me.
If someone is thinking about going into freelancing, particularly in journalism, they really do need a grounding in understanding that editors are not there to be their enemy. They will oppose what you're doing once in a while as a journalist. They will give you assignments that you are not particularly fond of because the publication needs that work to be done. They will sometimes reject work that you put a lot of time into because it's not up to snuff. That is their job. Your job, as a freelancer, is to deliver the product, made of quality, on time, every time.
Most of the people who want to go into freelancing don't actually recognize that they have a job, that there is a reason that a publication would want to give them money on an occasional basis in exchange for their work rather than hire them on as a staff writer. In a real sense, a freelancer has to work a lot harder than a staff writer because they are trivially replaceable. That is the whole job. A freelancer delivers on time of good quality as dependable as clockwork or they go away.
Personally, I love that about it. Sure, some months I may get three articles from SG and some months they just don't have the money to even pop me one. That is the life of a freelancer. I get my gratification all those months when they have only one freelancer amount of extra money in my editor comes to me and says, "I need this article in three days and I know you can get it to me." That's what I'm in it for.
Being able to put in an article with all the sharp edges out and trust that your editor will knock them off if he needs to in order to match the editorial voice of the publication is great. There have been a few publications where I didn't trust my editor to do his job, and that was miserable. You never know what you're going to get out on the back end and you will always be blamed for it. If some edges needed to get sand down on this one? That's fine. I still have the original, I know what I wrote, and I have the whole Internet onto which I can put my meta-commentary about my own work as published. That's an absolutely new thing. And I love it.