Overshadowed By Controversy Cleanup

Cooking Mama: Cookstar got a lot of negative press due to... a trainwreck of circumstances, really.

I feel like it probably is doomed to stay overshadowed, especially since it got pulled so quickly that barely anybody is likely to ever actually play it, but it was released, like... two weeks ago?

There's gonna be people ignoring the waiting period, is what I'm saying.

Not sure if it overshadows the rest of the franchise, but if it does, add it. But for now, remove it until about 6 months pass.

I'd guess that it's unlikely to overshadow the whole franchise, only that one entry.

As Cookstar does not have its own work page, an OBC entry could be listed on the franchise page as long as it is clear that it refers only to that one entry, not to the entire franchise. It would be no different than any other trope that appears in one entry in the franchise but not the others.

That said, we will still need to wait the mandatory six months. Given the public nature of the falling out between the developer and rights holder, it seems likely that it will still qualify, but you never know. Spider-Man's back in the MCU, anything can happen.

Edited by HighCrate on Apr 19th 2020 at 4:13:40 AM

Found this in YMMV.Mario Party:

• Outside of the fact it was the last console game in the series by Hudson Soft, you will rarely see discussion on 8 outside of the fact it was recalled in the UK for using an ableist term unintentionally.

I think this should be zapped because nowadays it seems overshadowed by a Broken Base over the game's quality than this incident.

It's not even overshadowed to begin with. People remember it best as "the one on the Wii" or "the last one with classic mechanics." The recall is almost completely forgotten about except for in a couple small corners of Youtube and Tumblr.

Remove. The game isn't being overshadowed by either of those things.

The other Mario Party example also feels a bit weird:

• One of the main reasons the series is best known for many non-fans is for the incidents regarding the first game, in which many people contracted blisters from playing minigames that required rotating the analogue stick.

That sounds more like obscure trivia , but it might be keepable if it was changed to mention that only the first game, rather than the whole series, is overshadowed.

The first game is a valid example. It was bad enough that Nintendo provided gloves in response to the backlash, and notably hasn’t re-released the game since. Definitely not for the rest of the series however.

I also deleted the 8 example as was suggested.

Edited by DDRMASTERM on Apr 27th 2020 at 4:15:03 AM

Maybe the entry should be rewritten like this?

• The first Mario Party game is fondly remembered by those that have played it, but it's more often associated with the rampant control-stick spinning minigames that led to several players contracting blisters while playing it. Nintendo was eventually forced to offer free protective gloves to any player who had injured themselves while playing the game. Later installments would remove these types of minigames, and the whole controversy is considered the main reason the game has yet to see a re-release on the Virtual Console.

I don't think any Mario Party since has required stick rotation as part of their games. Or at least not to any great extent.

Yeah, that seems good. I modified it to say such.

Edited by DDRMASTERM on Apr 27th 2020 at 5:15:19 AM

This is on YMMV.Aladdin:

• Overshadowed by Controversy:
  • For a while, the legendary feud between Robin Williams and the Walt Disney Company for exploiting the former's voice for merchandising hung over this movie, until they reconciled in the 2000s.
  • In the 2000s, there was also the claims that Disney had ripped off The Thief and the Cobbler to produce this.

Edited by fragglelover on Apr 28th 2020 at 10:20:59 AM

Yeah, I'd say both of those are easy cuts. Aladdin has stood on its own merits throughout the years. Disney screwing over Robin Williams is sometimes brought up, but it doesn't really overshadow his performance as the Genie. And I think only a few die-hard animation buffs know about the similarities with The Thief and the Cobbler.

This was added to Trolls World Tour yesterday:

• Overshadowed by Controversy: As successful as the film is, it also seems to be headed in this direction because of Universal's decision to release it straight to VOD without informing movie theater chains before foregoing a theatrical release afterwards, to which AMC Theaters announced that they will not exhibit the studio's films once they reopen.

Speculative language. If it only "seems to be heading" toward being an example, then by definition it's not an example yet.

Give it six months, then if it's still OBC, we can give it a write-up without the Weasel Words.

Edited by HighCrate on Apr 30th 2020 at 2:49:18 AM

I've also seen some media outlets praising Trolls 2 for shattering the theater industry's grip and allowing straight-to-streaming films get Oscar noms. So while there's talk, it's not all against Trolls 2.

• At one point, it was very difficult to talk about Bully without addressing the controversy of it being a boarding school game being developed by Rockstar Games, the same company behind the Grand Theft Auto series. Many youth groups protested the game, believing it was intended to promote bullying, and regular anti-Rockstar lawyer Jack Thompson labelled the game as a "Columbine simulator". The controversy died down more or less when it was revealed that the game is actually about stopping the bullying in the school, and that the game has no deaths or blood.

Is this really an example? I don’t think anyone following the game took those groups seriously, and nowadays I don’t hear anyone bring this up when talking about the game, ever.

It also says that the controversy died down when the game released, making it violate Examples Are Not Arguable. Cut.

Is a batshit crazy like Jack Thompson really the best evidence they can site for this. I'd cut it since it seems like a fringe issue from extreme Moral Guardians

It's true that the premise of a game about bullying from the GTA people was a hot topic shortly before and during the release window of the game, and not just among cranks like Jack Thompson, but it didn't actually overshadow the work in a lasting way. Nowadays it's mostly remembered as a beloved Rockstar classic that every couple of years looks like it might get a sequel but never does.

My personal rule of thumb is that if even people (like myself) who have only a vague knowledge of the work have heard of the controversy more than the actual game itself, it likely qualifies.

I've never once heard of this controversy.

I feel this is going to be more and more of an issue as time goes on, as while yes in 2020 probably nobody talks about Bully nor the controversy that surrounded it anymore.

But from 2006 to about 2011, Bully was brought up over and over about how video games are poison. It was all I ever knew about the game.

Which feels like a big problem with this trope is that time errodes all things and eventually all conversation goes silent, so should we start scrubbing off big controversies from a decade ago even if they did cause a big stink for quite a long time?

I believe that if an OVC reputation persists for years, it deserves to be on the page even if said controversy has faded.

@Highcrate I apologize if I charged too fast with the Mario Party 1 example and re-adding it. But I would like further discussion before deleting it again. If we have enough consensus to cut it entirely, then I can respect that.

Edit: This post was originally targeted at someoneman, but I later discovered it was someone else who deleted it. Sorry for the mistake.

Edited by DDRMASTERM on May 1st 2020 at 2:06:20 AM