NPCs & Enemies Recommendation: Change the name of "Spazmatism"

[WraithPingu]

Hey,
Just started playing Terraria like 5 days ago and I love it. Can't believe I haven't played it until now, it's genuinely incredible and everyone should play it.

So, I'm usually the last person to call anyone out on language use because I don't actually believe in swear words. The whole concept that words can be intrinsically bad, in and of themselves, is kind of silly to me. I've actually got in trouble before for trying to defend the use of the British word for "cigarette" (in certain contexts) which in a lot of online spaces is considered a hate word on account of its American usage and meaning - in Britain, despite not being perfect, it has a completely different and unrelated meaning to what it does in the US.

In the US and the UK, the word "Spaz" essentially has the same meaning - that being a putdown for people with disability. In the UK though, the word "Spaz" carries a lot more offensive carrying power. In the UK, the word "Spaz" is kind of like the "N-word" for the disabled community (and it's probably worse than how the US or UK views the "R-word").

I guess the UK and US difference is that, whilst being disabled carries no shame whatsoever, in the UK we don't see it (or in the very least, use our language to reflect that) physical or mental disability is something to be made light of (like it can be flippantly disregarded), and certainly not to be used as a putdown for someone.

I'm not going to impose on this because I recognise the language differences between American and British English and I know when Americans use the term they are not trying to be disrespectful to the disabled community - so this isn't an imposition whatsoever, it's not for me to dictate how anyone uses their language. Language is this wibbly wobbly thing that is unique to everyone, there is no "one" correct way of communicating. How someone says or writes something may carry a different intended meaning on part of the communicator to how it is understood by the one receiving the message.

This is however a recommendation to what I think would enable the game to be more accessible. I happen to be on the side of believing that language should be treated more openly but I also recognise that Terraria isn't trying to cause awkward, confused, and perhaps even pained sentiment within those suffering from Cerebral Palsy, Multiple Sclerosis, or Muscular Spasticity.

This isn't a hill I'll die on, but I am putting it out there that it might be a good idea to change the name of the mini-boss "Spazmatism" for the sake of avoiding potential misunderstandings.
That's about it.

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Sorry for sounding all Kareny - My nephew was diagnosed with Muscular Spasticity about a year ago and it has caused a whole lot of hurt for our family. If my sister knew that a hugely popular game, with a large youth audience, had a creature in it whose naming reflected (what could be considered) an open disregard, putdown and slander for her child's condition, she would be both upset and horrified.

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EDIT: I learned today there is also an NPC called "Spazzy".

 

[Glasia🌳]

In the UK, the word "Spaz" is kind of like the "N-word" for the disabled community (and it's probably worse than how the US or UK views the "R-word").

Maybe change the Z in spazmatism to S in English language.

About "sp*z" as the N word for disabled persons: In German language there is a similarly sounding S word which is seen as bad as saying the English C or B word to someone, but as Spazmatism is written in German with Z it has no connections to the German S word.

 

[WraithPingu]

View attachment 418255

Maybe change the Z in spazmatism to S in English language.

About "sp*z" as the N word for disabled persons: In German language there is a similarly sounding S word which is seen as bad as saying the English C or B word to someone, but as Spazmatism is written in German with Z it has no connections to the German S word.

Hey, thanks for the insight. I didn't think it came from anywhere hostile (and I had a suspicion it had something do do with spasm) but thats good to know.

 

[Fladnag Bilbon]

Changing the Z to an S like Glasia said might avoid any confusion about the name’s meaning. Changing the name too much would likely make a lot of people upset though

 

[WraithPingu]

Small update: I made another post that got Administrators attention in the Feedback Thread. The Admins comment was that this post was moved here because feedback was in relation to the forum and not the game itself. That post was locked. I thought it separate because it was a separate occurrence of the word "Spaz" but I'm okay with keeping things here and am happy if the developers would hear this concern.
In that post, I highlighted a new entity that I only just learned of today called "Spazzy".

To the developers if you see this: You've done an amazing job. The game is incredible. Sorry for kicking up a fuss :I. I promise this will save you potential headaches down the road.

 

[Tunnel King]

I'm the one who locked the more recent thread; it's simply a housekeeping measure that we didn't need two threads about essentially the same issue. I will admit that I didn't read it carefully to notice that there was a second occurrence of the word in the game, one that I was not aware of, to be honest.
I did NOT move this thread here; a different staff member did that, also as a housekeeping measure. It made sense since this is about changing something in the game. We would prefer to keep additional discussion about it here.

I did bring this up to the two people who would make a decision about whether a name adjustment would be made, and that's all I'll say about it officially. I'm bound by NDA to not speak publicly on their behalf about internal issues. I am not an employee of Re-Logic, just a long-time volunteer on the forum staff. So, the rest of this is my opinions and thoughts only, and do not necessarily reflect those of Re-Logic.

First of all, it is undeniably unfortunate that you, your family, and anyone with a disability are traumatized by the words of others, whether those words are uttered with intention to hurt or not. I can understand that when your are closer to that situation than most of us are, and such words can sting more for you than it does the rest of us.

As an American, I do not think that word by itself is acceptable, anymore than the r-word is when used pejoratively. I associate it with childish use among other children, and those who do not eventually outgrow using it that way aren't viewed in a good light. I feel that equating the term to using the N-word is hyperbole - not that ranking slurs by offensiveness is particularly useful, in my opinion.

I believe with all my heart that the name(s) were never intended by the developers to refer to or offend people like your nephew. That's just not who they are. Re-Logic has employed people of multiple nationalities and at least one person I know of with a physical disability (I will not identify them, don't ask), the forum staff is also multi-national including 2 current members in the UK, and two of the biggest streaming partners Re-Logic has are also British (ChippyGaming and Pedguin). I don't believe I have ever heard it mentioned anywhere by anyone that the name of one of Twins might be offensive in any way in the now 12 years that it has been in the game, and I concur with the Wiki entry quoted above as the source of the name. I don't mean that to reject or dismiss your concerns; it's just a new viewpoint that no one has brought to our attention before, and it will take some careful thought and consideration as to whether and how to address it. And again, I'm in no position to effect a change myself.

The Town Slime name I was honestly not aware of personally, or it just slipped by my notice. In my opinion, I could get behind having that changed/removed. I know that the Town Slime mechanics were heavily tested and QA'ed by the beta testers (of which I am one), and it never seemed to occur to any of us to question it as inappropriate. All Town Slime names start with 'S', and that was one in the pool, I suppose. I'm at least relieved that it didn't end up assigned to the Clumsy Slime.

This is more than I intended to say, but I got on a roll. I do think the issue merits discussion and potentially action, but change is up to the developers to decide.

But just one more thing....

Sorry for sounding all Kareny

I don't highlight this in order to diminish your original points in any way, but isn't it curious that one outburst by one person, caught on video and spewed out through media has served to demonize a group of people who innocently share a perfectly good name and suddenly become the butt of jokes? Language can be wonderful, but it can also become frightening and terrible. Virtually none of us always say things with complete assurance that we never offend anyone anywhere.

 

[WraithPingu]

I'm the one who locked the more recent thread; it's simply a housekeeping measure that we didn't need two threads about essentially the same issue. I will admit that I didn't read it carefully to notice that there was a second occurrence of the word in the game, one that I was not aware of, to be honest.
I did NOT move this thread here; a different staff member did that, also as a housekeeping measure. It made sense since this is about changing something in the game. We would prefer to keep additional discussion about it here.

I did bring this up to the two people who would make a decision about whether a name adjustment would be made, and that's all I'll say about it officially. I'm bound by NDA to not speak publicly on their behalf about internal issues. I am not an employee of Re-Logic, just a long-time volunteer on the forum staff. So, the rest of this is my opinions and thoughts only, and do not necessarily reflect those of Re-Logic.

First of all, it is undeniably unfortunate that you, your family, and anyone with a disability are traumatized by the words of others, whether those words are uttered with intention to hurt or not. I can understand that when your are closer to that situation than most of us are, and such words can sting more for you than it does the rest of us.

As an American, I do not think that word by itself is acceptable, anymore than the r-word is when used pejoratively. I associate it with childish use among other children, and those who do not eventually outgrow using it that way aren't viewed in a good light. I feel that equating the term to using the N-word is hyperbole - not that ranking slurs by offensiveness is particularly useful, in my opinion.

I believe with all my heart that the name(s) were never intended by the developers to refer to or offend people like your nephew. That's just not who they are. Re-Logic has employed people of multiple nationalities and at least one person I know of with a physical disability (I will not identify them, don't ask), the forum staff is also multi-national including 2 current members in the UK, and two of the biggest streaming partners Re-Logic has are also British (ChippyGaming and Pedguin). I don't believe I have ever heard it mentioned anywhere by anyone that the name of one of Twins might be offensive in any way in the now 12 years that it has been in the game, and I concur with the Wiki entry quoted above as the source of the name. I don't mean that to reject or dismiss your concerns; it's just a new viewpoint that no one has brought to our attention before, and it will take some careful thought and consideration as to whether and how to address it. And again, I'm in no position to effect a change myself.

The Town Slime name I was honestly not aware of personally, or it just slipped by my notice. In my opinion, I could get behind having that changed/removed. I know that the Town Slime mechanics were heavily tested and QA'ed by the beta testers (of which I am one), and it never seemed to occur to any of us to question it as inappropriate. All Town Slime names start with 'S', and that was one in the pool, I suppose. I'm at least relieved that it didn't end up assigned to the Clumsy Slime.

This is more than I intended to say, but I got on a roll. I do think the issue merits discussion and potentially action, but change is up to the developers to decide.

But just one more thing....


I don't highlight this in order to diminish your original points in any way, but isn't it curious that one outburst by one person, caught on video and spewed out through media has served to demonize a group of people who innocently share a perfectly good name and suddenly become the butt of jokes? Language can be wonderful, but it can also become frightening and terrible. Virtually none of us always say things with complete assurance that we never offend anyone anywhere.

Everything you've said in your analysis is spot on and the kind of thing you hope for as a response from those involved such processes. I never for a moment thought Re-logic would have any inclination or reason to want to cause any upset to anybody - even if there are a few tongue in cheek jokes dotted about that I've noticed (Golden Shower), by and large the game comes off as rather wholesome. There are little clues in the game that show the real care and thought that goes into the game to make it a genuinely enjoyable experience - things like multiple treasure bags when more than one person defeats the same mini-boss (so friends don't fight over treasure!) - that kind of thinking is prioritising the enjoyment that players get out of the game and the experience. Dedicated development where the players experience is prioritised - It's like making a game you'd actually want to play yourself without lazy development or microtransactions. It's a rare thing these days unfortunately but its very refreshing and I'm glad to have found it. Clearly the developers would never have gone into this with any kind of ill intent.

Language is this amazing thing that is unique to everyone and there is no one way to communicate anything at all - in a funny sort of way it's its own sandbox without any limitation on how it can be constructed. As a reasonably cosmopolitan British person, I'm well aware of the differences in the American language and know full well that the huge majority won't even be thinking of how the word relates to disability when they use it any more than British people will think of how the British colloquial word for cigarette (forgive me) "" has a relation to discrimination against those within the LGBTQ community. There are so many other examples of how words can take on evolved or different meanings that truthfully it's not fair to assume someone is acting inappropriate in many situations - as what we assume they are saying may mean something entirely different to how the person means it. Words like "Spaz" fall into a category of words that in the Anglophone world can have more than one meaning in this way, other words can include things like "dumb" (archaically meaning "mute") or "gay" (traditionally meaning "happy", evolving to become more associated with homosexuality, and for a while meaning "something annoying" until that evolution became a social taboo because of how the word gay had evolved previously to mean "homosexual"). It can also include names like "", "Fanny" or (probably worst of all) "Karen" - one can only feel for the poor innocent people who have had their names evolve to have meanings with negative connotations, especially if got to the point where those names were used unwittingly by those forgetting the original name and only thinking of the newer unsavoury connotation.

It feels weird to be honest with you. I'm usually very hardline on the side of linguistic freedom because language is so unique and subjective - and the very nature of meaning itself is both contextual and, to a certain extent, actually kind of abstract. The idea of "swear words" as a concept seems to be of no real use and serves only the construct of making emphatic expression a social taboo. It's not that I necessarily think use of the word "Spaz" is necessarily "bad" in and of itself - I won't use the word as a putdown for the same reason I won't use other words considered pejoratives in a lot other contexts: I don't believe that words can be morally bad in and of themselves (they're just words) but I have no intention of using my language to cause hurt in other people, so it's more that I try as best I can to be mindful of how my use of language can affect other people (although I'm sure our dear beloved Karen would have a thing or two to say about my semantic choices).

You're right about the comparison of pejoratives as not being particularly helpful - I was trying to convey in easy communicative terms how I reacted upon hearing the word "Spaz" - to be fair, it's not necessarily how all British people feel. I guess it's a matter of perspective really. I like to think I disregard the opinions of racists as ridiculous, carrying no weight whatsoever, and racists themselves as being victims of the cognitive (or perhaps even empathetic) inability to reason and have compassion for another person irrespective of ethnic or cultural demographic. I will always first defend the victims of racism, but if I am able to (and have the patience for it), I will try to help the racist themselves by doing what I can to help them alleviate themselves from such a toxic and hateful mindset. When I see someone harassing someone for their disability, it always appears to not come from a place of ignorance but rather from a place of cruelty - which isn't to say that racists can't be cruel at all (quite the opposite in fact), it's more an observation I've made that the majority of racist behaviour (that I've both observed and experienced) appears to come from a place of fear and ignorance. I don't see being black as a tragedy. I don't see being gay, transgender, transsexual, young, old, biologically male/female... as tragedies - it's societal attitudes, ignorance and treatment of people based on these qualities that is the tragedy - the rejection/mistreatment of people based on those qualities is where the hurt stems from and we are right to challenge it. For a lot of disabled people, and their families, the tragedy is the disability itself - to harass people for it always just kind of struck me as something you couldn't blame "general idiocy" for.

I have no doubt in my mind that the thought never even occurred to any developer at Re-logic even once that use of word "Spaz" could have any potential to cause any hurt to anyone - if it did, I'm quite sure we wouldn't be here having this conversation. I don't personally take offense from when Re-logic (or in fact most Americans) use the word "Spaz". I know for a lot of other people though, it is something that does cause hurt - and I'm again quite sure that this isn't what any of the good people such as yourself or the developers either intend or mean to happen. This is why what I've put out is really just a recommendation - a strong recommendation that I'm pushing for perhaps, but still just a recommendation.

Here is an MSNBC article from last year on the backlash "Lizzo" experienced after having used the word "Spaz" in one of her songs: here.

I put the issue to the disability subreddit (without mentioning Terraria explicitly in the post - although I do in one reply) asking how Americans feel about use of the word "Spaz" and the results are quite mixed with what appears to be a tendency leaning to people not being aware of the words ableist meaning - but there are some Americans who are aware of it. I was curious how the word was viewed in the States specifically and it appears that most of the ableist understanding of the word comes from outside the US. You can see the results for yourself though, although I should be honest and mention that I did frame the question with a certain level of bias (though I tried not to) because I has just been getting harassed by a lovely specimen of humanity (/s) within the Terraria subreddit who found serious issues pertaining to disabled and orphan kids as being something of immense hilarity (I can't say I shared their same enthusiasm).

https://www.reddit.com/r/disability/comments/15i3z0n

Block text? Pfft! My day isn't complete unless I've written at least one essay on geopolitics or the socioeconomic implications of language use in sandbox video games...

Thank you for the response. I'll leave you with something light because I wanted to stick this in there ^^^ somewhere but didn't know where to put it....

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When I was about 10 years old I was playing one of the Spyro games on the Playstation - I forget the details exactly but one of the characters says to Spyro something to the effect of "Oh boy Spyro! You sure do have some spunk!". Later in life I would learn of the American meaning of the word "Spunk" being like "pizazz" or "mojo" - in Britain though, the word "Spunk" has a very different meaning, so you can imagine my confusion as to what that NPC was insinuating poor Spyro had in their possession :v

- WP

 

[Tunnel King]

the thought never even occurred to any developer at Re-logic even once that use of word "Spaz" could have any potential to cause any hurt to anyone

No, it didn't, because they didn't use that word. As was stated before, the bosses' name is a portmanteau of two other words, and the result isn't that word either. In my opinion, you are making a cognitive leap from seeing 4 consecutive letters in a made-up name that has has no earthly meaning other than this boss, to a singular word that you and many (but perhaps not most) others find very offensive. I get that you've become hyper-sensitive to that term because of your nephew, but there really has never been any other mention to us (Re-Logic and forum) that the boss name is offensive that I can recall or find.

You start out saying you've played this game for about 5 days, let's just say a month to be conservative about dates. This boss has been in Terraria since PC version 1.1, released on Dec. 1, 2011. That's nearly 12 years, without this tenuous association of words being pointed out. !2 years of countless videos, forum and other social media posts, mentions in guides and game news media, probably some game merchandise along the way. There are 62 accounts on this form that start with or contain 'spaz' as part the user name, most referring to this boss (I'm not sure how many are active accounts, if any). There's no taking back even a minute part of that, or preventing future use of the name, IF the name were to change. I'll wager there would be much greater blow-back and negativity expressed were it to be changed than what you suggest might happen if it isn't changed.

The Lizzo song - that did come up when I researched the use of the term when responding to you earlier. To be fair - that was an explicit and repeated use of the term, it was brought to attention immediately, and there was a positive response from Lizzo all in the span of 3 days time. I don't really think that situation is the same as what we are discussing, at all.

I put the issue to the disability subreddit

Well, it's good that you found a group of unbiased people to ask /s

And I'm sorry that you got that response in r/terraria, the level of polite discourse there is somewhat lower than what we aspire to here (in my experience). I mostly have a good opinion about that sub personally, but this is what happens (sadly) when you go onto the Internet.

I doubt that most Americans in general would know what 'ableist' or 'ableism' mean without a dictionary or web search. I also don't think most Americans even use 'spaz' in daily speech - I haven't heard it spoken in a good many years. It's more of a childhood/school-age use that tends to go away in adulthood.

I'm not sure what else to say about the boss name. I really doubt it will be changed, and I don't think your suggestion will see much traction in the community. In the end, I just don't see any there there, and I'm sorry that you feel that you do.

As I said earlier, I tend to agree that the Town Slime name could be changed, without the same issues as the boss name.

All of this is my opinion, not officially speaking on behalf of Re-Logic or anyone else.

 

[WraithPingu]

My nephews condition certainly raises my awareness of the term. It wouldn't be fair to imply that it's my sole impetus for looking to address the issue. I grew up around disability, my own sister is disabled, most of my friends at school were either ADHD or on the Autism spectrum - I myself would be diagnosed with ASD but not until my 20s. If I had to put my finger on it, I would say it comes from being British, speaking English English and having a general sense of not wanting to go around and make people feel unwelcome. I can't know for sure as it's not happened, but I imagine (or at least like to think that) I would make similar recommendations if the circumstances involved the potential to cause offence with any other potentially marginalised group.

Perhaps noone has mentioned it before. I don't think that means it hasn't been noticed though. Perhaps I'm just the first to say it, but I doubt I'm the first person to have thought it. I signed up to the forums so I could hopefully give the developers the heads up about an aspect of their game that could be misinterpreted as something (I believe is) not representative of their core values.

Of course the disabled community are going to be biased, they grew up being abused by ableists calling them Spazzes.

It's a recommendation and an opportunity to display both progressive attitudes and inclusivity.

Spasm doesn't have a "z" in it.

 

[waffle2001]

A terraria youtuber that I love watching said "we killed spazzy!" in reference to the boss. I know there was zero malicious intent behind it, but this is an example of how the name leads to the use of the slur unintentionally.