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Post by lurker on Oct 16, 2018 20:14:13 GMT -5
God of War did get criticized for the sexual content, though. It's not like it was a controversy free game. I don't remember any criticism of God of War 1-3 for their sexual content, I could be wrong, but it wasn't a big controversy at least (at least not compared to something like Hot Coffee) But I just don't understand these debates we have over content nowadays, this is shit we figured out a literal decade ago and we've only gone backwards since. Vote with your dollar, if you don't like something don't play it, nobody has the right to dictate to others what they can and can't play, it's literally as simple as that, I hate the idea of a corporation like Sony feeling like they can choose what I, an adult, can and can't play, I actually don't care much about Senran Kagura itself, but that's a really bad precedent, although as it's been pointed out Sony has always leaned this way. For what it's worth it's equally stupid when people get upset over content from a right wing angle, like the Battletech pronouns controversy or the controversy over LGBT content like in Last of Us Part II (why is that a controversy to begin with?) Basically there's an attitude going around in general of people who want every game that comes out to reflect what they personally would approve of, that's not that works at all. Eh not really. If anything the debates have only gotten more noticeable, whereas earlier it was easier to ignore. |
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Post by GamerL on Oct 16, 2018 20:29:23 GMT -5
It seemed like it was all settled when Jack Thompson was disbarred and then the final nail in the coffin was the supreme court ruling in 2011.
Games get to be whatever they want to be and gamers get to play what they want without worry, right? Wrong.
I honestly find it amazing that 25 years later after it really all began video games remain a hotly controversial thing and it seems unfairly biased towards games, you don't see films or television get quite this amount of flak, Game of Thrones for example has a lot of sex and nudity and everybody loves that show, why is that ok but not for video games?
There's nothing TV and film should be able to get away with that video games shouldn't as well.
But now we live in a cultural climate where people literally want any and all forms of sexual content to disappear from games completely, where people are going to CELEBRATE something like the removal of this Senran Kagura thing, nope, I don't get it.
Something like Senran Kagura is the video game equivalent of anime and like anime it's a very acquired taste that not everyone is gonna be into, that's fine, but it deserves a place same as any other game.
When are games going to finally get the same amount of respect every other medium gets, where you have a broad range of content for a broad range of audiences and you get to choose what you like but you don't get to choose for others what they like? Seems 100% logical to me but we don't live in very logical times.
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Post by Digitalnametag on Oct 16, 2018 20:32:51 GMT -5
I'm with GamerL here. Sony America shouldn't be dictating content that has already been ESRB approved. |
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Post by lurker on Oct 16, 2018 20:41:25 GMT -5
you don't see films or television get quite this amount of flak, Game of Thrones for example has a lot of sex and nudity and everybody loves that show, why is that ok but not for video games? It really depends, though. In the case of Game of Thrones, the criticism is mostly aimed at the rape scenes, which either don't happen or don't happen nearly as much in the books. |
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Post by Discoalucard on Oct 16, 2018 21:35:25 GMT -5
If you think censoring something like Senran Kagura is ok, what's your defense for why Grand Theft Auto shouldn't haven't been banned back in the day? You can beat hookers to death, was Jack Thompson right all along about "murder simulators"? If you think removing sexual content is fair game I'm not seeing the argument for cherry picking sexual content over violence, why shouldn't Doom be way toned down? Sony's own God of War 3 featured both graphic violence and sexual content, where was the outrage then? And like I said, were old Joe Lieberman and Jack Thompson right about Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto all along? I see this take achingly often, and it's a false equivalency. The argument against violent video games was that it would turn regular kids violent. Except, violence is not normalized in society. Everyone knows it's wrong, except for psycho/sociopaths. On the other hand, sexual harassment is a very, very prevalent fact of life for many, many women. And it's been in the spotlight lately, since we have a president accused of sexual assault, and an alleged rapist now on the supreme court. Unlike "violence in video games" narrative, this isn't a chicken-and-egg scenario - while violence has been a part of video game language since the beginning, so you could kind of argue that it teaches young kids violent behavior, sexual groping is not - it's pretty "new", outside of old PC games. Video games don't teach people to do this, but it is already built into society, especially in the way that we're trained not to believe women. This is what rape culture is. But when games start popping up that are permissive of it...it's very easy to see why a platform holder thinks it's a bad look. At least, that's my assumption, because at this point Sony's actual rationale is up in the air. |
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Post by GamerL on Oct 16, 2018 22:44:39 GMT -5
I think it a false equivalency because it's still saying the same thing at the end of the day, that seeing something depicted in a video game is going to influence someone's real life behavior.
This is a very old debate that goes beyond just video games, in the 1980s people thought Dungeons & Dragons and heavy metal music were responsible for deaths and suicides, in the 1950s they thought Batman and Robin would turn kids gay, the examples of moral panics over media goes on and on from rock 'n roll to gangsta rap, heck I think even certain forms of poetry in the 1800s was accused of being a corrupting influence on the youth.
It's just the basic idea of does fantasy and escapism influence real life behavior? I don't think so, because at the end of the day media is reflective of the world we live in, not shaping it, violent people commit violent acts because of deep seeded problems that go way deeper than any movies they've seen or games they've played or whatever, same deal with sexism, people who have serious issues with women and would do something like sexually harass someone do so for more deep seeded reasons than the media.
In other words taking away certain forms of media is not going to solve these problems, it's not the root cause.
Also, another factor to remember is context matters, in this particular instance we're talking about Senran Kagura, an anime styled game and the mode in question, as I said, features Mickey Mouse looking gloved hands touching the girls, that just seems too goofy to me to get real upset over, if this was a realistic styled game featuring graphic depictions of rape, it would be more understandable why Sony wouldn't approve it.
Even then though I still think voting with your dollar is the better route than censorship, I'm reminded of the game Hatred, which was a game explicitly about a mass shooter, I would never play it and support it, but I wouldn't be against it's release nevertheless.
The trouble with censorship is it takes power out of the hands of you, the consumer and into the hands of someone that is not you, you should have the right to decide what content you consume, not a third party, I'm just not comfortable with that power being in the hands of a third party.
As a fun bonus, here's a clip from the Tom Hanks movie Monsters and Mazes which was about a fictionalized version of D&D driving a young man insane to where he can't tell what's real and what's a game, tell me this isn't laughably ridiculous nonsense, the type of attitude that made this is the attitude we are still dealing with in 2018.
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Post by kaoru on Oct 17, 2018 3:10:27 GMT -5
Sometimes I wonder in what perfect world people lived, where console manufacturers never dictated what could or couldn't be on their paltform before the recent SJW or whatever outbreak. They always did. And not just the example of Nintendo of America of the 90s having strict rules, popular H visual novels getting ported to consoles always had the sex scenes removed because they just did not allow it on there. Mafia II censoring its pinups and The Evil Within the violence in Japan, because attitudes and rules over there changed too. The beheading in Snatcher or the boob grabbing in Policenauts in some versions, too, to note older examples. Not to take a hard stance for or against it, just the "nowadays" getting thrown around seems weird to me, while sitting on my fence.
Not sure why Sony America can't just come out and say "we have stricter rules about sexual content now, that's why the mode is not acceptable anymore while it was in previous games" or antyhing like that. Since that's the only reasoning that makes sense anyways.
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Post by GamerL on Oct 17, 2018 4:23:19 GMT -5
What's changed "nowadays" is the attitude gamers themselves had about this stuff, gamers used to always be against censorship, now we have people APPLAUDING it, that's what I don't get.
I'm a purist and I think games and media in general should remain in their purist original form as possible, I hate the thought of a game being different here in America than places elsewhere just because, I also think it's BS how Japan themselves censor games and I would be pretty unhappy about it if I was Japanese.
I mean come on now, what, would people be happy over Nintendo changing the blood to "sweat" in the SNES version of Mortal Kombat today? How is it not obvious that kinda crap just sucks?
This isn't just about Senran Kagura itself, it's the bad precedent this is setting if some gamers are going to be happy about it.
I hate the thought of games getting toned down from what they were several years ago, that's going backwards, I've also noticed for example some people giving Last of Us Part II flak for it's violence, huh? The first game was violent, it's set in a grim post apocalyptic world, why wouldn't it be violent? To tone it down would be dishonest and only water down the entire friggin' point of the series to begin with.
I haven't played it yet but I've also heard the new God of War is way toned down from what the series used to be, that's just....lame, man.
This isn't a political thing to me, this is all just about lameness versus not lame, I'm a grown ass adult and would expect a Mature rated title to have... *gasp* mature content!
I am not, by the way, saying every game needs to be loaded with sex and violence, I am only advocating devs being free to make what they want to make and not have to kowtow to public outcry or other moral watchdogs when a game does happen to feature mature content.
Also, full disclosure, I just cannot personally grasp this stuff, the days of Jack Thompson left a bad taste in my mouth now and forever over this subject, "Hot Coffee" alone will always make this seem like hysterical grandstanding and pearl clutching to me, maybe I'm just stuck in the past, agree or disagree with me, this is just my personal view on the matter.
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Post by X-pert74 on Oct 17, 2018 4:47:02 GMT -5
Griff, you have a very alarming tendency to paint entire groups of people in the same light. Clearly, "gamers" were not unanimously opposed to censorship of any kind, either back then or today. It is overly reductionist to claim that that was ever the case, and that the idea of someone being opposed to this content is entirely new, or unique to today's culture.
Sony has the right to allow or disallow whatever they want on their platform. You can't force a console manufacturer to allow games onto their system if they are opposed to said games (or certain content in said games) for whatever reason. You can feel free to dislike it, and you don't have to support them if this policy of theirs bothers you, but ultimately, they're allowed to make this decision for themselves. I do think Sony should make a concrete stance on this and be forthcoming about it, rather than waffling about and failing to inform third-party companies of what's up in a timely fashion, thus causing them financial hardship. But ultimately, you can't force Sony to be okay with this. If it really bothers you, you can always get the PC version, since that will be uncensored.
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Oct 17, 2018 7:18:57 GMT -5
People aren't suddenly becoming big fans of censorship, GamerL, take a chill pill. For every person who's glad about a certain bit of censorship, there's about 1000 people with foam at their mouths screaming about semantics regaring the word censorship and throwing around slippery slope arguments. It's getting tiring, to be honest. Also, as far as The Last of Us 2 and the God of War reboot are concerned. The former drew controversy specifically because of violence against women. And also, extreme violence and gore just isn't everyone's thing. There are movies and games that people are missing out on because the creators felt the need to make them as disgusting as they are. I think it's valid to critisize that. The God of War reboot, meanwhile, looks like me like it aims for quite a different tone as the originals. I haven't played it so I can't say if it's actually less violent, but I can imagine how it would simply not fit the game. And also I honestly don't see how making it more violent would've made it better. |
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Post by edmonddantes on Oct 17, 2018 8:59:08 GMT -5
What's changed "nowadays" is the attitude gamers themselves had about this stuff, gamers used to always be against censorship, now we have people APPLAUDING it, that's what I don't get. At the risk of being controversial... The "gamers" you see applauding censorship may not A) have actually been gamers and B) may have been just trying to look good in the modern social climate. I've said it before... sexual content/representation/sexism issues these days seem to have become what Environmentalism was in the 1990s. Dunno how many remember, but it used to be that anyone who showed concern for the environment was seen as "enlightened" (it got so ridiculous that Whitley Strieber, a guy most known for claiming to have been visited by aliens, claimed a daughter of a friend had gotten special wisdom from her own abduction experiences and one of his proofs was "she's very concerned about the environment." The kid was six at the time, by the way... yeah, it must be aliens.) Now, environmentalism was a sound philosophy with a lot of truth to it at its heart... but the above-mentioned pedestalizing caused a dual-reaction: by extension of it being the "enlightened" value, anyone who disagreed was seen in a cynical light: Oh, this guy has stocks in a company that pollutes. Oh, this company just wants to cut costs. Back then, you couldn't point out something like "they actually use the methane generated by landfills to create power" without being accused of being an apologist. I'm guessing this all sounds very... applicable to something else right now. And again, the modern attitudes actually have a lot of merit in and of themselves... the problem is the proponents of those attitudes are going about it all the wrong way. I just know I'm gonna need to come back and boldface certain parts, because in this modern climate, people tend to miss the parts where you say "I actually agree with the core ideas, its the way people are handling them that I have an issue with" parts. I myself would never want to play Senran Kagura. But I don't want to deny it to other people. I'd rather they just have fair warning of what kind of game it is so they can make an informed decision. |
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Post by ZenithianHero on Oct 17, 2018 9:34:23 GMT -5
There is something going on with the sexual harassment subject. It's a strong enough subject matter that can cause people to boycott a game. Take the latest Valkyria Chronicles game for example. The scene where a major character groped a girl (but still got punished by said girl for doing so) became a known controversy in message boards. Sony may not want to associate with games that have touching minigames and features anymore. Is this a right call to just backseat moderate these games? Probably not. Age rating boards may want to look into this sorta thing and Sony should not interfere if ESRB or PEGI is okay with it. After all just like many controversial scenes in fiction, it is to give depth in what kind of person that character is or any struggles the character (yes, men can get uncomfortable too) face. Sometimes there is an end result to it all. Senran Kagura, well, probably doesn't. Like so many otaku games the fanservice is just there for humor or attract waifu marketing potential. |
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Post by acidonia on Oct 17, 2018 9:38:48 GMT -5
Instead of removing the content why not just make Menu options To disable or change certain scenes with certain content included like they do with games with Blood/On/Off codes. Though these find of features never get advertised even games like Bullet storm had such a mode which toned down all the Swearing a feature that would of made House of the Dead over kill actually not annoying to play. That and they could of called it TV edit mode and have it fully of badly chopped up audio on purpose then it fit in with Rest of the Series tone more.
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Oct 17, 2018 10:42:40 GMT -5
Instead of removing the content why not just make Menu options To disable or change certain scenes with certain content included like they do with games with Blood/On/Off codes. It would still be available on their system, though, so that doesn't make any difference as far as Sony's deal goes. |
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Post by edmonddantes on Oct 17, 2018 11:37:28 GMT -5
At the risk of being controversial in the opposite direction...
This game is uncensored on the PC, right? I imagine this might go the same way Mortal Kombat did during the Genesis vs SNES days (just a refresher: the Genesis version was censored but could be uncensored with a secret code, the SNES version was censored no matter what. Genny outsold the SNES by a wide margin.)
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