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Post by wyrdwad on May 13, 2014 20:45:10 GMT -5
Did I read correctly that the subtitle of this game is "Undead and Undressed" Why are you defending this again? Because it's a fun, well-written game that's tasteless, yet poignant and funny, in the same vein as South Park. Why are you attacking it again? -Tom
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Post by Ike on May 13, 2014 22:31:35 GMT -5
Because you're trying to claim it's some kind of parody against shitty gender role reinforcement in one of the worst areas of modern media and yet it seems to be reinforcing all of the worst things about it?
This is the sort of thing that makes me ashamed by association and is the kind of product I would very, very much like to see less of in gaming going forward. To use your pizza metaphor , it's as though the company thinks it can't sell pizzas without piling the pepperoni on every slice, even when I didn't order it, and instead of fixing the problem simply throws on mushrooms I also didn't ask for, yet I'm apparently the bigot for complaining that I am forced to eat pepperoni or go hungry.
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Post by wyrdwad on May 13, 2014 22:56:56 GMT -5
Because you're trying to claim it's some kind of parody against shitty gender role reinforcement in one of the worst areas of modern media and yet it seems to be reinforcing all of the worst things about it? You seem to be reading selectively. I keep explaining, in no uncertain terms, that it is a CELEBRATORY game. It's like a roast: it satirizes Akiba culture quite brutally (even going so far as to have one of the main villain's reasons for choosing Akihabara as his battleground be the high concentration of virgins compared to anywhere else!)... but it also clearly revels in it. This is a game from a developer who absolutely realizes that Akiba is a screwed-up place, but still LOVES IT, because dammit, Akiba is a really cool little town, even WITH all the messed-up stuff it stands for. There's nowhere else like it on earth, and sometimes, we need a "den of sin" to unwind -- it's the reason Las Vegas is popular, and it's the reason Akihabara is popular. It's just a different variety of den. If that offends you, then this game is not for you. But I absolutely loved it, and I think others who appreciate this style of game will love it just as much. And there's NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. No, you can just go get a different pizza from a different pizza parlor. Contrary to popular belief, there are plenty to choose from. The reason you're the "bigot" is because you're basically the customer going into that pizza parlor, telling the guy behind the counter that they use way too much pepperoni, and then when the guy behind the counter politely tells you, "I know we use a lot, but people seem to really like it!", you just RAISE YOUR VOICE and pretty much DEMAND that the pizza parlor shut down. You can't have it that other people are enjoying this pizza, simply because YOU don't, and you feel that YOU should. Or maybe you just feel offended because you believe you didn't get what you were promised. But I'm not promising anything I can't deliver here: Akiba's Trip exploits men and women in equal measure, for social commentary and toilet humor purposes in equal measure. That is absolutely true of the game. If you somehow interpreted that to mean it's fair and just to both genders, that's not my concern: I believe I was quite clear that it's UNfair and UNjust to both genders. The point is, it doesn't favor one over the other, and that's pretty revolutionary for this type of game! So sir, I'm sorry to say, but it seems this may not be the pizza place for you. I'd urge you to move on to another restaurant. You're disturbing the other customers. ...The funny thing is, this very well COULD be a game you'd enjoy. Its satire really is clever, and really is as biting as they come. But you're so prejudiced against it solely because it's not MEAN-SPIRITED toward Akihabara that I'm almost certain you'd MAKE yourself not like it. I would like to point out, however, that you're still judging a game you've never tried. And as far as I'm concerned, when judgment is passed without experience, that judgment means absolutely nothing. It's condemnation of a concept, with absolutely no first-hand knowledge of its execution. Everything you know about the game comes from me, and I'm not used to having to DEFEND games like this -- I usually just gush about them, and that's all I need to do... because most people are good-humored enough either to enjoy it for what it is, or walk away and let other people enjoy it for what it is. Life is too short to condemn others for the things they enjoy when they're doing no one any harm. Play it. Then criticize all you want. Otherwise, just move on. You're not doing anyone any favors here. You're only creating tension and animosity where there should be fun and enjoyment. -Tom
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Post by wyrdwad on May 13, 2014 23:28:22 GMT -5
Sorry to be getting so "huffy." I don't mean any offense, I'm just... offended! I legitimately love this game. I was one of its strongest proponents at XSEED, I beat it before anyone else, I translated the majority of it, I edited the majority of it, I oversaw the entire English dub for it, I'm overseeing QA for it, I was the one who originally suggested adding the male strip portraits, and I'm STILL not tired of it. Not by a long shot. This game shocked me. I wasn't expecting to like it at all, much less to this extent. And even more, I wasn't expecting to RESPECT it as much as I do. There's a lot of depth to it, and a lot of layers behind it. I love what it does, and I love what it stands for. It's a fun game with a great atmosphere, a hilarious irreverence, a total lack of concern about political correctness, and yet... a lot of heart, at the same time. Its writing is solid, its characters well-developed and likable, its story ludicrous but fun, and its "naughty" factor both extreme and subdued at the same time. Sure, it's a little rough around the edges, but it shines where it counts, and it's provided me and the entire staff at XSEED countless hours of enjoyment. We're a pretty diverse group, and yet we ALL loved this game when we first evaluated it. Every one of us was taken with it, and all for different reasons. And that's what makes it so beautiful. It's a game worth defending, and I will defend it like it's my child because at this point, it basically is. I've devoted well over a thousand hours into this project at this point -- probably thousands, plural -- and I did so largely by my own choosing. There aren't many games I champion to this extent -- the last was Corpse Party -- and so when people just outright dismiss it because it doesn't perfectly align with their moral compasses, I TAKE IT PERSONALLY. 'Cause Akiba's Trip is a good kid, yo! -Tom
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Post by Ike on May 14, 2014 0:59:52 GMT -5
My beef is less with the game and more with otaku culture in general. It's one of the things that offends my sensibilities because it's purely materialistic in the worst way and the people who are the most into it try to behave as though it isn't by elevating its elements into the same realm of high art, where they don't belong. It's fine if you enjoy it, but I can't see it as anything but overwhelmingly misogynistic and childish, and it's become the touchstone of a lot of the content that seems to come out of Japan nowadays. I hate having my negative feelings vindicated virtually every time I pick up a game with an anime character on the cover and knowing with damn near certainty that at some point, a 12 year old girl is going to be sexualized in some way. It's too hard for me to roll with and seems completely unnecessary. Also, sex in games is weird to me, and I don't think it will ever not be weird to me, because where you and other people seem to read a lot of depth into video game characters, I don't think I've played very many games where there are characters I could honestly call deep and not feel disingenuous about it. Nier comes close, maybe. Games in particular are still a very immature medium and the praise I see lauded on them for tackling "serious" or "deep" issues absolutely confuses me given how poor they are at really exploring the depths of human psyche. No video game is ever going to come close to accurately representing the sort of heartache and mental dissolution of a person watching a loved one die of cancer, or an adolescent's interpretation of society's norms that are imposed upon him, to give a few examples, without having to put those things behind a "gamified" veneer of metaphor, which is usually hitting stuff with a sword. It's easy to identify with Nier's rage and obsession, but not so much his massacre of millions of shades, because it doesn't and can't reflect real life. Same with sex in games. Catherine tried to do that, but at the end of the day it was still a block puzzle game, where the choice is a black-and-white scenario between two women, one of whom is a literal demon and thus doesn't reflect on real life in any significant way. There's nothing very deep there, unless your level of depth extends to "wow, this block puzzle is hard to figure out, just like relationships! whoa!" So when I see things like this, where there's a lot of obvious marketing involved and the game is even crass enough to have a subtitle like "Undead and Undressed," it feels like pandering to me, not artistic expression, or exploration of anything actually deep or significant or human, because I'm going to guess that whatever statement this game is trying to make, however cleverly it may do it, it ultimately boils down to the main character working out their struggles by hitting things. Because it still has to be a game. So what's the purpose of all the sexuality? What does it actually do besides titillate? Is it there to give the player a boner? Or to compare it to an actual piece of literature, is it like Gravity's Rainbow where Slothrop fucks a girl of ambiguous age in the boiler room of an orgy boat, written with a high level of detail and mixing together eroticism and intense shame, in order to establish how much of a depraved asshole he's become? Gravity's Rainbow is a book where somebody is having sex every few pages or so, but it never sells itself on that point, where your game sells itself on the sex right on its cover and at every opportunity. If it's all art to you, is it apt to compare those things? edit: having looked up a gameplay trailer, within about 60 seconds of this video, a girl is disrobed and we get a shot of her asscrack. come on.
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Post by 9inchsamurai on May 14, 2014 1:11:16 GMT -5
I'm gonna interject here a little bit and ask Ike how he feels about "genre" literature. The complaints you've thrown at video games not being good enough to tackle serious or deep issues sounds an awful lot like literature critics rejecting the notion that horror/fantasy/sci-fi can't tackle serious and dramatic issues because at the end of the day they're still in the realm of make believe, right? If you want to play games that take a more traditional "drama" approach to their content then you can totally play a ton of Interactive Fiction games that people are making all the time. I don't think those games are very engaging and I personally would much rather play a game that uses its mechanics or gimmicks as metaphors for issues because that sounds more enjoyable to me than the alternative.
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Post by wyrdwad on May 14, 2014 1:57:58 GMT -5
Ike: First of all, that trailer is for the first Akiba's Trip. The game we're releasing is Akiba's Trip 2 -- and we're the ones who removed the 2 and replaced it with the "Undead & Undressed" subtitle, because we felt it perfectly represented the silly, low-brow nature of the game's humor. And make no mistake, this is a low-brow game. It's high art... but low brow. The two are NOT mutually exclusive, as far as I'm concerned. I keep making comparisons to South Park, but that's because I think it really is an apt comparison. South Park has brilliant episodes that satirize virtually every aspect of American life, and it hits HARD sometimes (so hard that Isaac Hayes quit the show after his religion was slammed into the ground mercilessly)... but then there's the episode where Stan's dad takes a drug that gives him elephantitis of the testicles, but rather than getting mad, he loves it since he can now hop around town on his giant balls as if they were bouncy rubber superballs -- and he gets the rest of the men in town to take the drug as well so they can join him. Now, there's no denying that that's crass. It pushes the boundaries of what's acceptable on TV, too -- you SEE the giant balls of every man in South Park during that episode, uncensored. It's got shock value, it's disgusting, it's demeaning... but it's also absolutely hilarious, at least in my opinion, and sticks out as a great example of South Park pushing the envelope. Another example from the same comedy duo is their recent(-ish) Broadway musical, "The Book of Mormon." It's racist, it's offensive, but HOLY CRAP is it good, and it manages not only to satirize Mormonism beautifully... but also to point out (if you really listen to the lyrics and think about them) that Mormons may believe in some pretty crazy stuff, but their teachings are all very positive and uplifting -- it's weird to say this, but The Book of Mormon is actually pretty complimentary of Mormons in the end, showcasing pretty much every Mormon character in it as naive but sweet, a little slow but lovable, and always with his or her heart in the right place, always seeking to make the world a better place (even if he/she has no idea how to go about it). It's that duality that makes Matt Stone and Trey Parker such comedic geniuses. They can create some of the most offensive, crass, low-brow stuff ever broadcast on American TV or performed on the stage, but still manage to infuse it with some true depth to give it a certain poignancy that's missing from its contemporaries. This is, I feel, exactly what Akiba's Trip does. At this point, I'm afraid I might be overselling it, since I've been forced to articulate my own opinions of it in far greater detail than I typically find comfortable... but I truly do feel that it captures that same duality as South Park. It makes me laugh, it makes my jaw drop with shock every now and again, and even the voice director for the dub was heard remarking "oh, man, we're so going to hell!" during the session... but he said it with a smile on his face, after an hour straight of just laughing nonstop as the actors had the time of their lives delivering some of the most ridiculous lines they've ever been asked to say (with some stage directions you would never hear anywhere else!). But it also actually had me tearing up a little during one of its endings -- no joke! To answer your questions, though: "So what's the purpose of all the sexuality? What does it actually do besides titillate? Is it there to give the player a boner?" Actually, it doesn't really titillate, and it's definitely not there to give the player a boner. This is not Senran Kagura, where the fanservice is clearly there for exactly the reason you think it is. The hardest thing to articulate in regards to Akiba's Trip is that the fanservice honestly is just NOT SEXY. It's not presented in such a way that I can see anyone really "getting off" to it at all (with the SOLE exception of the strip portraits, which is why I wanted so badly to have equivalent portraits included of the male characters, to help maintain the overall balance of the game). The nudity in Akiba's Trip is, at least in my opinion, representational of Akihabara's culture of excess. It's actually treated surprisingly seriously in the game -- the characters aren't all like, "AW YEAH, LET'S GO STRIP SOME PEOPLE!", but rather, they're legitimately concerned about the safety of the town they love so much, and they're willing to do whatever it takes to defend it... even if that means stripping its residents. It's almost there for irony's sake: Akiba is a town where fanservice is more prevalent and more accepted than just about anywhere else in Japan (excepting for Sapporo, perhaps, judging by some of the wall murals I saw during my visit there in 2002!), and the whole idea of HAVING to strip everybody in sight in order to save it is like a fanboy's wet dream... and yet, the game puts way more stress on the fact that Akiba could be DOOMED without you, and makes it feel more like a battle than anything else. It sort of intentionally desensitizes you to the concept of stripping passers-by on the street, making you care less about their exposed bodies and more about the clothing and weapons you can get from them, to aid you in your ultimate goal of saving their lives (and their ways of life). In other words, Akiba's Trip takes what should be shamelessly sexual, and pretty much removes all the sexuality from it (again, with the exception of the strip portraits). It's shocking at first, but you get used to it almost frighteningly quickly, and what you're doing no longer even fazes you (nor the characters) after only a half-hour or hour of play. It's just a means to an end -- the dirty work required to save the town you love. ...The town where crazy otaku go around stripping people on the street. And then tweet about it. This sort of parallels Akiba culture itself eerily well. If you spend some time in Akiba, you're going to be so inundated with fanservice that you won't know what to do with yourself. But if you spend MORE time in Akiba... you won't even notice it anymore. It just becomes part of the background. The sexual appeal of the town is fleeting, and once you dig beneath it, you find a town with its own bizarre, twisted cultural norms that... oddly enough kind of work. It's a very successful town with a very good worldwide reputation despite containing so much cartoon smut that it would make Las Vegas blush, and it achieves this by creating a divide between the Akihabara visitor and the Akihabara native -- the one who goes there to buy smut, and the throngs of people who work there to sell it, getting rich quickly off the backs of the horny and having a blast doing it. It's a weird, mixed-up place, and Akiba's Trip does an amazing job capturing that same weird, mixed-up vibe... and both pointing out just HOW weird and mixed-up it is, but then quickly getting you used to it as if you were an Akiba native yourself, and making you realize how great it is that it IS so weird and mixed-up -- it just wouldn't be as cool a place if it weren't! The game wouldn't work without the sexual component. It wouldn't be Akiba if it didn't have a certain layer of smut beneath the surface... but it also wouldn't TRULY be Akiba -- not the REAL Akiba, anyway -- if the smut were the main focus. Just as the characters in the game value the safety of such a charmingly, disturbingly unique town over the chance to glimpse some bare boobs, so too will the player. At least, ideally. ...Of course, part of the game's conceit is that it's designed to sell based on the lie that it's a sexy, fanservicey experience. All of the advertising plays up the sex factor big time -- your reaction to Akiba's Trip 2 trailers likely wouldn't be much different from your reaction to the Akiba's Trip 1 trailer you watched -- but the simple truth of the matter is, Akiba's Trip is not a sexy game. What it is is a clever game. A fun game. A shocking game. A crass game. And an awesome game. ...But perhaps not the game for you. -Tom
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Post by sabbacc108 on May 14, 2014 4:15:02 GMT -5
Catherine tried to do that, but at the end of the day it was still a block puzzle game, where the choice is a black-and-white scenario between two women, one of whom is a literal demon and thus doesn't reflect on real life in any significant way. There's nothing very deep there, unless your level of depth extends to "wow, this block puzzle is hard to figure out, just like relationships! whoa!" I feel like you're selling Catherine a little short---after all, the game had eight different endings based on your actions in the game, including two where you decide that being in a relationship isn't the best thing for you at this time in your life. Not exactly "black-and-white" in my opinion.
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Post by moran on May 14, 2014 7:47:51 GMT -5
I think the real question here is, is it just their torso's that are susceptible to sunlight? Because a lot of these people aren't wearing much clothes as it is.
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Post by Allie on May 14, 2014 7:49:36 GMT -5
MASSIVE HONKIN' TOMWALL O' TEXT!!! Desensitizing someone to blatant classless smut isn't going to necessarily make somebody embrace it or be any less disgusted by it. And since now they don't even find it provocative (but still find it shameless and disgusting), what point did it have? People tend to give every work of entertainment the "Death of the Author" (for those unfamiliar, that means the author's original intent is no longer valid because a large number of fans have navel-gazed it so deeply that their consensus becomes the "proper" interpretation) treatment now, assigning socio-political meaning to everything when it isn't necessarily the case.
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Post by Joseph Joestar on May 14, 2014 9:09:56 GMT -5
"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar..."
- Some guy that talked about dongs and pussies for a living
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Post by wyrdwad on May 14, 2014 11:10:38 GMT -5
People tend to give every work of entertainment the "Death of the Author" (for those unfamiliar, that means the author's original intent is no longer valid because a large number of fans have navel-gazed it so deeply that their consensus becomes the "proper" interpretation) treatment now, assigning socio-political meaning to everything when it isn't necessarily the case. All I can really do is ask you to take my word on this, but honestly, the purpose behind this game's story is plain as day when you actually play it. It's not subtle with its social satire at all -- no "death of the author" here whatsoever. We've all independently come to the same conclusions about the story from our individual playthroughs, and the game's producer himself confirmed all of our assumptions pretty definitively. But even if he hadn't, and even if I were the only one who'd played it, it really does wear its message and its themes on its sleeve -- it's as blatantly obvious as... well, as South Park or The Book of Mormon! So if you find those shows distasteful or devoid of worth, then you'd likely find the same to be true of Akiba's Trip. That part, along with countless other gameplay elements that make no sense when you think about them, gets handwaved away quite a lot in the game. You have three sets of HP: headgear, shirt and pants. And as long as ONE of these three isn't at 0, you're still alive. So you can literally be walking around town in your underwear and a pair of headphones, and you'll be safe from the sun... but if anybody pulls those headphones off your head, YOU ARE DOOMED. If I may switch gears here, though... why are those of you who've been arguing against this game so dead-set on dismissing it as pandering garbage? Is the mere idea that it might have more substance to it than that just so implausible to you that you can't accept it? Does it make you more comfortable to assume that only high-class games can be high-quality or well-written? Or do you just WANT it to be a bad game so much because of what it represents that you're unwilling even to entertain the notion that it might not be? I know I work for the company that's publishing it, so there's always the worry that I might have an agenda in posting about it... but I think you guys know me well enough by now to know that that's not how I operate. Nothing in my job description tells me I have to gush about games on random message forums, and it's my general MO simply not to talk about the games we publish that I don't like. If I gush about one of our titles, it's because it's proven itself to be a worthwhile game (at least, in my eyes), and I'm genuinely EXCITED for others to play it and experience what I experienced. I wouldn't champion it if it weren't worth championing, and my goal here is no different than it was when I created topics about the Strider reboot, or Song Composer 575, or La-Mulana -- it's a game that genuinely impressed me and that I want to share with people. So I guess what I'm getting at is, LET ME SHARE IT AND STOP BEING KILLJOYS, CONSARNIT. I've posted about this game all over the place, and nowhere else on the internet have I encountered this many buzzkills. Which is bizarre, since I've also posted about this on NeoGAF, and NeoGAF is renowned for its buzzkill-to-happy-person ratio. -Tom
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Post by Allie on May 14, 2014 12:22:07 GMT -5
I think a large portion of it is backlash to overhyping a game that sells itself on being low brow as a socio-political magnum opus that changes the way we all think about life, and the human condition.
It's not; it can't, and it won't.
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Post by wyrdwad on May 14, 2014 12:31:10 GMT -5
I think a large portion of it is backlash to overhyping a game that sells itself on being low brow as a socio-political magnum opus that changes the way we all think about life, and the human condition. I don't think I ever made a claim quite THAT grand -- only that it's clever, witty and well-written, and genuinely good satire. The "revolutionary" aspect I mentioned in the OP is solely in regards to the male strip portraits, since I don't believe any other localized game has ever been released with added fanservice in an attempt to equalize a game's gender representation... and personally, I think that's kind of a big deal! Whether you agree with that part or not, though, it is something we're doing that nobody else has tried (thus my use of the word "revolutionary"), and that's why I'm really excited (and proud, honestly) to be a part of it. I feel we're doing a very good deed for the whole of the industry here, and nothing will convince me otherwise. So clearly, we can only agree to disagree on that. Gender balancing aside, though, I still say it's a very good game for all the reasons I outlined in my last two responses. But if you just can't get past the concept enough to enjoy it for what it is, you should probably move on. Not every game can be for every gamer, and this is seeming more and more that it's not the game for you. -Tom
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Post by hashin on May 14, 2014 13:04:07 GMT -5
So will there be a demo for it? Will it be available on PSN? Is there obligatory touch controls? I will be offended if there's mandatory touch controls, I don't like to touch my screen.
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