According to a recent BBC article, Ubisoft is pulling its brain-training game, Mind Quiz, from UK shelves in response to a complaint that it "uses a term abusive to people with disabilities."  The aggrieved party, a Belfast woman named Nicola, was labeled with a "bad word" by the game after an underwhelming performance on some of the mental challenges.  The BBC article does not specifically say what the bad word was, and I came away empty-handed after a Google News search.  It should be noted that in today's climate of extreme political correctness, it could have been anything from "You're stupid!" to "You play Sudoku like a drooling retard!  Please kill yourself!"

The situation is compounded by the fact that Nicola had recently lost her young son, who was stricken with cerebral palsy, to a bout with pneumonia.  Incidentally, Nicola's father also has cerebral palsy.  This unfortunate state of affairs, coupled with the presence of the bad word, forced Ubisoft into damage control mode.

While Nicola's situation is unquestionably tragic, it does nothing to change the fact that this is a ridiculous case of a corporation kowtowing to a culture of brazen absurdity.  It's a brain-training game!  If I was performing on the bottom tier, I wouldn't want such a fact to be sugar-coated.  Honesty is always the best policy.  If my math skills are so poor that a bad word could be used to describe my shortcoming, I would like to think that I am mature enough to handle it.

Personally, I am not shocked by this knee-jerk reaction.  In an era where hugs supposedly solve every crisis on the planet, it is to be expected.  But why was the British Board of Film Classification not all over this?  It is their responsibility to review, rate, and censor games that contain objectionable material.  If the enigmatic bad word in question is so unbelievably horrible, why did they fail to protect us from its evil grasp?  Perhaps they were too busy stifling creative freedom elsewhere.

All of this uproar reminds me of an incident that took place a few years back.  I was playing Super Smash Bros. Melee, and I was having a pretty good time with it.  Then the unthinkable happened.  Mario turned directly towards me and broke the proverbial fourth wall in the worst way possible.  He told me that I was an asshole, and the reason for my sexual drought of 2002-03 was a combination of my pathetic one-liners and undersized penis.  Still in shock, I wasn't prepared for what came next.  Yoshi arrived on the scene, and he was carrying a crudely designed effigy of my mother.  For the next twenty minutes, all my imaginary childhood friends proceeded to do unholy things to it.  I won't delve into the details, but suffice it to say that Samus Aran's Grapple Beam was involved.

Deeply offended, I phoned the ESRB at once.  They were unable to do anything about the matter.  As it turns out, they were in the midst of a crisis involving Final Fantasy VIII.  One of Shiva's aquamarine areolae had popped out from her mystic bikini, and all resources were being diverted to respond to this calamity.  I was left to fend for myself, with only my common sense and rationality to protect me from all the bad words and offensive images out there.