STATUS

I'm musing about changing one of my game's title's into a different one that's in Spanish. Ya gotta ask nowadays: is that cultural appropriation bad no no etc? And on the other hand, am I being overly self-conscious or is it just pretentious af?

Posts

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Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
I mean, just using the language could technically be considered appropriation in the broadest sense, but I can't imagine most people really caring. You'd have to give more detail for an accurate answer, tho.
La Curandera.

It's a game about the Inqusition.

Your avatar...it's hypnotic
Mirak
Stand back. Artist at work. I paint with enthusiasm if not with talent.
9300
At the end of the day the short answer is: You're an indie. Nobody really cares (in a neutral non-vindictive sense).

If you're actually worried, then ask yourself if the fact that it's in Spanish is somehow relevant to the plot of the game, if Spanish is used somewhere else in a way that matters outside the title, if it has a justifiable reason to be. If not, then yeah, you open yourself to be interpreted as pretentious and/or guilty of appropiation by the audience.
Nobody's called me out for Brave Hero Yuusha and I doubt anyone's gonna call you out, either.
Hexatona
JESEUS MIMLLION SPOLERS
3702

EDIT: TL;DR: are you using spanish to make spanish people sound/look stupid? no? then it's fine.

Cultures take from other cultures all the time, all throughout history. Are you mad that the Japanese use English all the time to make things sound cool and foreign? I'm not. It's funny when they get it like HECKA WRONG, but I'm never offended, why would I be? I think it's a made-up concern, basically.

If ideas and concepts were locked in the place they came from, and unable to change, the world would be dead and boring. For that matter, Nothing is original, just remixed versions of something from before. In Short, it's all good.

The only time you would need to be concerned is if you are using something culturally and boiling it down into a negative caricature of some sort. But honestly, you wouldn't do that, or you wouldn't be asking this question.
author=Sgt M
Nobody's called me out for Brave Hero Yuusha and I doubt anyone's gonna call you out, either.

oh right, this was on my todo list. thanks for the reminder.
Sooz
They told me I was mad when I said I was going to create a spidertable. Who’s laughing now!!!
5354
author=Hexatona
The only time you would need to be concerned is if you are using something culturally and boiling it down into a negative caricature of some sort.


The issue of appropriation is a bit more complex than that, but I don't really get the impression that this particular instance is anywhere in problem territory.
In hindsight, I felt kinda stupid even worrying about this. That's a big honking precedent, even if that series was first booted before the world got quite so sensitive as it is now about these matters.

I mean, as much as it can be for a game set in a dark fantasy world mostly modeled after the Balkans during the middle ages, Under A Killing Moon/La Curandera is "about" the Spanish Inquisition, and considering how that hooks into related topics like the treatment of women and indigenous peoples in the Northern Americas during the era of the Salem Witch Trials, I mean, arguably it's sort of wedged into a place where it contacts the tension between Spanish (as in Spaniards) culture and language and indigenous cultures (Curandera for instance is a specifically Mexican word; the European Spanish equivalent, Bruja, has slightly different connotations as well as a different ring) and that stuff gets into some sticky wickets, but hopefully it's clear that my motive here is not to caricature, mock, or attack Spanish speaking people.

author=Hexatona
EDIT: TL;DR: are you using spanish to make spanish people sound/look stupid? no? then it's fine.

Cultures take from other cultures all the time, all throughout history. Are you mad that the Japanese use English all the time to make things sound cool and foreign? I'm not. It's funny when they get it like HECKA WRONG, but I'm never offended, why would I be? I think it's a made-up concern, basically.

If ideas and concepts were locked in the place they came from, and unable to change, the world would be dead and boring. For that matter, Nothing is original, just remixed versions of something from before. In Short, it's all good.

The only time you would need to be concerned is if you are using something culturally and boiling it down into a negative caricature of some sort. But honestly, you wouldn't do that, or you wouldn't be asking this question.

TBC, I'm on the same page as you.

However, I've seen stories of Japanese-Americans and other Asian-Americans getting very angry over stuff that seemed perfectly innocent and harmless to me, like people wearing Kimonos or costuming as Geisha on Halloween or whatever. I don't love the fact that we live in a time where if you're a reasonably kind of sort of culturally sensitive person you feel the need to ask this stuff...but we do live in just such a time. And nothing can ruin your day faster than a pack of outraged culture warriors.
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