Over the last few hours, the video game blogosphere has been going insane over the inclusion of the word "sambo" in Scribblenauts.
Joystiq and Kotaku, just to name two outlets, have covered this topic, and I think blew it way out of proportion.
Kotaku in particular, went into a whole piece connecting the word "sambo" with the racist connotations while completely glossing over the other meanings of the word, even when they use the developers explanation in their own story.
Slaczka said that the word was included in Scribblenauts because it is an ingredient of the Ecuadorian dish Fanesca, which is listed, on Wikipedia, as including a "figleaf gourd," or "sambo".
- Kotaku
What they didn't do until hours later and until a user brought it up, was include an image of what that definition of "sambo" is. Take a look:
Image from Kotaku commenter DwarfP
Image from Kotaku commenter DwarfPI'll be damned if that doesn't look like a watermelon to me.
From Joystiq:I'm not ignorant to the racial connotations to the term. But I'm very disappointed in many of these blogs and news outlets that completely gloss over the reason the developers actually put "sambo" in the game. I don't think 5th Cell is wrong for putting "sambo" in the game if they intended it as the local term for fig leaf gourd. The problem is people looking for racism that isn't really there.
As for the watermelon-like appearance? "We reuse art," he said. "Fig leaf gourd looks a lot like a watermelon. It's just an alternative name in a giant list of tens of thousands of names."