In today's bit of "culture confusion" news,
Gamasutra is reporting that Polish developer People Can Fly were shocked at the amount of swearing in their own game,
Bulletstorm. The root cause was the curious little fact that when you swear in a foreign language it's edgy and hilarious rather than crass, and that makes it totally OK to swear in situations you normally wouldn't. At least that was People Can Fly's excuse, but I have to say that my own experience with foreign languages (I studied German for 3 years in college) bears that out. But it's not just foreign languages is it? I'll bet there's not a science fiction fan on Earth that hasn't used Battlestar Galactica's swear stand-in "frack" in a situation where using a traditional English swear word would be inappropriate.
What I'm getting at here is that it's totally understandable for People Can Fly to not realize just how absurdly overdone the swearing was in
Bulletstorm until they played the Polish translation. It should give anyone who criticized the game for its extreme and creative swearing something to think about.
