For the past two months, Japan's player community has been resisting the release of Ubisoft's open-world triple-A game, Assassin's Creed: Shadows. The reason is also simple, because the development team set a black samurai Yasuke as the main character, which caused dissatisfaction among local players in Japan.
In response to the incident, tens of thousands of Japan players launched an online petition to boycott the game, arguing that it was a cultural invasion by Ubisoft. The intensity of the situation even aroused the attention of Satoshi Hamada, a member of the House of Councillors of Japan. Satoshi Hamada said he might raise the matter with Japan's legislature and Diet.
At this point, Japan netizens believe that history and discrimination have been involved
Ubisoft has explained why the black samurai Yasuke was chosen as the protagonist of Assassin's Creed: Shadows. They thought that the perspective of unfolding the story from the perspective of Yasuke, a black samurai, would be more unique. However, in the past few days, Japan netizens have dug up a shocking melon, pushing Ubisoft into an extremely embarrassing situation.
- The claim that Yasuke was a samurai seems to be made up.
Because of his affiliation with Oda Nobunaga, a famous person during the Warring States period of Japan, Yasuke left a record in history. However, records of him are scarce, and Yasuke disappeared after the Honnoji Incident. Although the History of the Church in Japan records Yasuke's words, the description of "samurai Yasuke" never appears. So how did this statement spread?
Through further digging by Japan netizens, everyone found that the samurai setting about Yasuke actually comes from the book "Legendary Black Samurai Yasuke" written by Thomas Lockley, a United Kingdom foreign teacher. This foreigner, who teaches history in Japan, artificially implanted the "Mandela effect" for Japan netizens through the Internet.
Back in 2015, Thomas Lockley created the entry "Samurai Yasuke" on Encyclopedia Britannica with the ID "Tottori トム". And in the books he wrote, he quoted his own apocryphal entries. Relying on this hand to fight left and right, Yasuke's samurai image was unconsciously established in the hearts of players, and appeared in games such as Nioh 2.
It is worth mentioning that because of this book, the Japan media invited Thomas Lockley to do a talk show "Black Knight: African Samurai Yasuke Who Serves Nobunaga", but the relevant resources of this program have been removed from the shelves. The organizers also seem to realize that they have lit a thunder.
As the situation unfolded, more and more people learned about it. And Thomas Lockley himself did not make any excuse and response, but deleted all his content on social platforms. Things got to this point, and Yasuke's situation became more and more difficult.
However, don't think this thing is magical, in fact, there is a precedent for "fabricating history" in the game industry. In 2022, a Chinese player with the ID "Folding Mao" created the "Kashin Silver Mine" on Wikipedia in order to give the Duchy of Tver (in Russia) he played in the game more advantageous.
During this period, in order to strengthen the authenticity, "Folding Mao" created the history of ancient Russia that did not originally exist with millions of words, and some scholars and professors of university history departments who did not know the authenticity even quoted the encyclopedia content compiled by her in the materials. The degree of outrageousness is even worse than that of "Samurai Yasuke".
This time, with Yasuke's samurai status being stripped away, Ubisoft's "Assassin's Creed: Shadows" developed with Yasuke as the protagonist became more and more untenable. Compared with the white samurai Miura who has the endorsement of the official history in "Nioh", Yasuke has congenital deficiencies as the protagonist of the game.
With only four months left until the official release of Assassin's Creed: Shadows, it's hard to imagine how things will end. So what do you have to say about this incident?