Matt Stone on South Park: The Stick of Truth's Censorship

South Park co-creator Matt Stone has spoken out about the high-profile censorship of his recently released game South Park: The Stick of Truth.

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Speaking to The Guardian, Stone says that the omission of certain scenes - most of which involve anal probing - were overall "not that big a deal."

"It doesn't change things that much, but we weren't going to change the game downwards somewhere and just not tell anybody," he explains. "You'll see how ridiculous that is... We weren't willing to change the content, but also it doesn't ruin the game – it's like 40 seconds' worth of the whole game. As long as we could make a joke out of the fact that they made us cut this, that was fine."

In the end, instead of simply removing the offending scenes, Stone and his co-creator Trey Parker instead opted to display text describing the scene. The EU version displays a cartoon version of Paris' famous facepalming statue, while the Australian version got a crying koala.

"There is an interactiveness that makes it different," Stone says about video game censorship. "In movies and television you can do stuff that's morally grey very easily, because you get to show consequences, you get to show reward, but in a video game there's a reason why everything is a Nazi, zombie, or alien - these are pretty clear moral choices."

Stone also revealed his thoughts on the franchise's early attempts at video games.

"They stank," he says simply. "That's why we haven't done one since... Doing a big show there are a lot of licensed products that you have to live with that aren't your favourites, like T-shirts and stuff; that's the deal with the devil."

Those early failures made Stone and Parker determined to "do it right," and to deliver a quality product to gamers.

"People are spending $60 [for a game]... for most people it's a big purchase that you might forgo something else to afford. And even apart from money, it's also a time investment."

It seems they succeeded in creating a quality game with The Stick of Truth, which we awarded an Editor's Choice.

Katie Williams is a freelance writer and games journalist. You can follow her on IGN. She also tweets at @desensitisation and hopes that one day, a bird will tweet back.

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