Nintendo Denies it's Attacking Zoe Quinn

Look, I'm as SJW as one can get, and I never try to miss an opportunity to champion equality and the virtues of political correctness. But even I have a limit, and today, I find myself empathizing with people who oppose political correctness and the SJW movement, because damn sometimes people can be freaking stupid .

So, here's the situation: during Nintendo's E3 conference (when they weren't talking about Zelda), they had a demo where people could play some of the upcoming Paper Mario game, Paper Mario Color Splash. During that sequence, you could meet five toads who called themselves the "Five Fun Guys." They do a little shuffle game, and eventually they reveal that they had been trying to trick Mario. Here's a video, it starts at around 20:50:



Seems innocent enough, right? Here's the thing: when their little scam is exposed, the toad calls it "Shufflegate". The word "gate", combined with the fact there are five guys (from the Five Guys restaurant?), made some people draw the connection between this, and "Gamergate", where games developer Zoe Quinn got attacked by people for... stupid freaking reasons.

Even Zoe Quinn noticed the connection, and tweeted on it at length.

In response to the outcry, Nintendo has issued a statement, assuring fans that this was not a reference to that stupid freaking event, but a reference to, you know, Watergate. The thing that started the whole "noun+gate" naming convention in the first place?

“As many have observed, when viewed in its entirety the Nintendo Treehouse: Live segment for Paper Mario: Color Splash from E3 includes two jokes separated by commentary and gameplay that have no relation to each other. One joke has to do with Watergate, while the other is a nod to the Fungi Fun Guys from Mario Party 8. It was brought to our attention today that these two jokes have been spliced together and misconstrued as a crude reference to an online hate campaign.”

Now, look. What happened to Zoe Quinn is unforgivable, and no one should have to deal with that kind of thing. And given all that she's gone through, I can forgive her for being... paranoid. But for everyone else... I mean, for one, did so many people really forget about Watergate that they would assume that "Gamergate" was the grandpappy of this whole thing? And secondly, perhaps more importantly, when has Nintendo EVER shown that much 'awareness' of the SJW world? The last time they even mentioned it was with Fire Emblem Fates, otherwise they just kind of... do their own thing and not care in the process. It would be way out of character to mention anything regarding Gamergate, good or bad.

So yeah. The fact that this is a 'controversy' baffles me. And yet, here we are. It's unfortunate that Nintendo picked five toads for this (but for alliteration and a more challenging shuffle puzzle, it makes sense) but I think this is more an example of drawing connections where none exist rather than an intended attack.

So let it never be said I'm blindly devoted to anything. Sometimes, SJW can overreact. I'll admit that first. Now let's stop attacking Paper Mario: Color Splash for poor word choice, and start attacking it for sucking.

Seriously, Nintendo, remember Thousand Year Door? Everyone else does. Let's go back to those days, please?