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Niche Gamer: "Gamedevs, stop apologizing to people who don't buy or play video games."

This is socialism 101. Everywhere socialism gained root they adopt this "revolutionary mindset", where a future utopia justifies any crimes they might commit today. In their minds they are fighting for the "greater good", and it doesn't matter they have to do.
The whole thing, it is ridiculous. We are living in an age of untold abundance. I hear there are rumors of families that have been living for generations mainly on welfare and public housing. With the internet, incredible amounts of entertainment is available for free to even the poorest, what would costs thousands a month is now free. With subsidized and automated farming food is ultra cheap and it is rare for someone to go hungry on the US.

In the coming decades we will have unconditional basic income, and many will be able to cover their basic needs with it. Does it matter that there are a few wealthy billionaires that will have even more luxuries? Of course not, they also provide something to aim for to those with greater capacity. Allowing those that want more luxuries to be inspired to develop revolutionary technology or services and gain equal amounts of wealth while improving society. In just about any socialist regime, it is the dictator and his close allies that gain the untold wealth, it doesn't go away. And even if the dictator didn't abuse his power, what good is it for everyone to live barely above covering their basic needs?

Take a person with 200 million dollars, distribute his wealth equally across the entire U.S population, it makes practically no difference to anyone as it will be less than a 1$ one time payment. But it makes all the difference in the world to the guy with 200$ million, who will gain millions in dividends annually.
 

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
If I may...

The "attacks" are not just "perceived" anymore when developers are getting fired over tweets, political affiliations (in the case of Lucky Palmer) and short of that on the wrong end of a throughout character assassination campaign, and if the studio doesn't comply with demands to fire developers or "listen" to the "critics" and censor the game, or cancel it (in the case of Deponia, Jet Suit Larry, and Dead or Alive Extreme 3), then that studio and its games get distorted negative coverage (Polygon outright admits Bayonetta 2 has 2 points docked off a 10 score just because of political opinions about whether that game should exist, Kingdom Come Deliverance has been called a buggy unplayable mess, a racist concept, and its existence disgusting enough to be denied all kind of coverage... which is called blacklisting, and isn't usually supposed to be a good thing when it comes to press)

The results are obvious enough. A lot of game genres stopped existing, or at the very least are never getting exported again. Those games have their audience. They have a hatedom that deemed they could not just ignore them, but they should be purged from existence. That could be called intolerance. It's understandable enough the original audience isn't thrilled and content to listen in silence when logical fallacies are used to justify this wicked train of thought (a restaurent which removes meals from the menu just because someone doesn't prefer them will soon be out of meals to provide. Even water has a tiny minority of people allergic to it.)

Which brings me to your first sentence. "Reading this thread has been really depressing." How so?
This healthy exchange of opinions is refreshing if all sides can speak their mind about what they like and what they don't. Reading a topic where everyone agrees with you must be boring, and oblivious to the real world where tastes can't really be enforced.

"Growing up"? That would be pretty boring for an escapism entertainment medium to be shackled down back to fixed expectations and taboos.
What expectations are these? Who treats the word "adult" as an approval term?
Why are the suggestions to make it "grow up" involve more censorship to protect weaker minds from a mental bomb, almost as if... it's a rebranded "think of the children!"
Why does "growing up" the medium involve changing the existing pool rather than making exclusive brand new games centered about that mission statement, and why can't all of it coexist like adult people who think differently can coexist in a same environment?


"Critique the intentions of artists"? My favorite part.
This sounds like the theory of the Death Of The Author.
The initial reading of the work, assuming good will, in context, even following author notes and clarifications to clarify the conveyed message as much as possible... To hell with it.
The work needs to be read assuming malice, prejudice (we're reading it that way to fight prejudice, uh-huh), problematic tones, and microaggressions, through the lense of politics. That reading is the correct reading, especially when done by an "expert" on social studies.
THEN, the author needs to be held responsible, and questioned, for the problematic intentions the secondary reading uncovered.
Eiji Aonuma must have been hella confused when they asked him to explain himself about the Zelda triforce comments.

This sounds so fascinating to me. A lot of sects and schisms splintering off bigger religions started with a similar idea of secondary meanings exclusively holding the truth that only trained eyes that happen to hold a respected venerated social status, or people following their teachings and methods, can read.

Are you applying that theory here, when you think the concept of "dogwhistling" means that the mere use of a pejorative already is proof of "guilt"?

Putting "guilt" charitably, because going from this thread if some artistic choices to draw imaginary women are "sexist" or "mysoginy", which implies an intense hatred and contempt of women everywhere, then the jury is still out whether you're the best placed person to post such big career-ending accusations about people who barely proved anything beyond them mocking the current day version of bible thumping offended soccer moms out to ban D&D and satanist JRPGs.

You are putting a little too much power behind what a few people on Twitter or at videogame sites say. Are you sure that they are the reasons some genre don't exist anymore? Are we sure this is actually why some games aren't getting exported anymore?
 

Dr. Claus

Banned
You are putting a little too much power behind what a few people on Twitter or at videogame sites say. Are you sure that they are the reasons some genre don't exist anymore? Are we sure this is actually why some games aren't getting exported anymore?

Given how much shit they routinely give Japanese developers in particular and how often they and their communities go on witch hunts to ban/silence certain games and their fans? Yes. Just look at Omega Labyrinth and DoA X3.
 

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Given how much shit they routinely give Japanese developers in particular and how often they and their communities go on witch hunts to ban/silence certain games and their fans? Yes. Just look at Omega Labyrinth and DoA X3.

So can someone also please look at how those games sold in America too? I don't believe a multi-million dollar company will pass up say $30 million just because some people on Twitter didn't like the extra large boobs bouncing around in a game.

For goodness sake Dragon's Crown was released here to huge acclaim! And it looks like......

dragons-crown-ps4-patch.jpg
 

Dr. Claus

Banned
So can someone also please look at how those games sold in America too? I don't believe a multi-million dollar company will pass up say $30 million just because some people on Twitter didn't like the extra large boobs bouncing around in a game.

For goodness sake Dragon's Crown was released here to huge acclaim! And it looks like......

dragons-crown-ps4-patch.jpg

And remember just how much shit it got from nearly every gaming "journalist"? Developers/publishers simply don't want to deal with that shit anymore so they are relying on English-Asia releases, so if you want the game you can import it.

Hell, this was literally confirmed by Koei Tecmo: https://techraptor.net/content/dead-or-alive-xtreme-3-not-coming-west-due-to-potential-backlash

Play-Asia also did a full, detailed blog post on this subject as well:
https://www.play-asia.com/blog/2017/12/14/video-game-localisation-asia-english/

So yes, those dipshits (or their cult-like political doctrine) are most assuredly causing issues and developers/publishers want none of it.
 
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H

hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
it's getting to a point where using the term SJW in a derogatory way is a dog whistle for having homophobic, mysongonistic, and (sometimes) racist opinions.

I'm gonna nope that. The whole mentioning SJWs makes you alt-right thing is horseshit. Funny thing - first time I heard it used was my mum describing an over-earnest young lady who had the appearance of one who knits their own yogurt, campaigning vociferously in unrelated arenas that people should stop drinking diet coke because it gives you cancer. This was back in about 2005 I think, before the alt-right was a thing. I've used it since for the pompous self-righteous little shits.

Second thing I'm going to bring up: Having an adult conversation about immigration, integration, race and religion is impossible because on one hand we have the alt-right, plus Farage and other wankers doing what they do, and on the other we have the SJWs saying that anyone who doesn't consider every immigrant an absolute angel is a racist. I was an immigrant for a few years, and while I behaved pretty well I saw the harm others from my background did, as well as the good (much of both being unintentional - a simple product of us being there and where we had come from). We really do need to have adult conversations about the effects of immigration - how schools cope with kids who can't speak English, how the bottom of the jobs market is now inaccessible to those not from Eastern Europe, etc, but we can't.
 
You are putting a little too much power behind what a few people on Twitter or at videogame sites say. Are you sure that they are the reasons some genre don't exist anymore? Are we sure this is actually why some games aren't getting exported anymore?

Those admittedly few people on twitter (even the biggest "controversies" are just a circlejerk of a few dozen people) have resorted to doxxing, hate mail directed toward minorities working at the company (the Tomodachi Collection situation), and gross distortion of the facts, and have symphatizing people at mainstream media and the specialized one game developers rely on for promotion, only to find review scores (and metacritic scores tied directly to their development scores) slashed.

Deponia had "journalists" rejoicing the series ended, and that its fans need to learn one such problematic series needs to end. The fourth game released unpromoted. Jet Suit Larry has an Eurogamer reviewer writing a news article where she's upset her previous 2/10 review of the previous game didn't deter the developers from making a new one, and that the series has no place today. The very guided Super Seducer visual novel that has only one possible ending and everything uncouth leading to early game overs... that they got banned from PSN after expensive certification and release and asking Steam for clarification how come it's still allowed on their premises... was for example banned not because of its content but because games made about pick-up culture are inherently problematic and shouldn't exist, period.

Koei had a Casca costume removed from the overseas version of Berserk, that's otherwise a mature-only version uncensored from the JP version, despite being promoted in the trailers, directly because of a blitz of articles. They confirmed in various statements about Dead or Alive Extreme 3 (which was imported from Asia to specifically be offended about, and in a self proclaimed bid to stop these asian english releases in the future) and DoA6 the press reaction is what "made them think" that content was impossible to release overseas despite them already prepping for it. Namco has a Summer Lessons VR game (that's wholesome, by the way) suffering a similar media blitz and forced into JP-only status, and considering making some content exclusive to Japan and Europe, which they already started doing with Digimon (and that tweet was by the way deleted because some "fan" threatened suicide to Harada pretty convincingly, to put it mildly, if he didn't) Only Xseed is exporting that kind of games anymore, and pretty sure they had some staff accused of career ending charges, and asked pretty directly by press why they keep bringing that genre at all "in 2016".
The outrage about Steam's policies now allowing content it didn't before, under the guise of "bring back curation" to "protect from insensitive content" like in the "good old days of steam greenlight" (when even famous veteran developers like treasure and their ikaragua version were denied)... that should be pretty telling.

Praising the localization of Fire Emblem Fates and Tokyo Mirage Sessions, both of them glorious trainwrecks with as much exposed skin as possible covered and as much woke statements and "jokes" slipped in the writing, not to mention the "..." conversation, and being upset at Xenoblade 2 and Persona 5 going the other way to the point of using the same glitched screencaps of characters clipping through walls...

I could go on even further. There's less and less of these games making it over, and I doubt reviewers gloating about this end result on twitter need you to underplay the current trend.

And remember just how much shit it got from nearly every gaming "journalist"? Developers/publishers simply don't want to deal with that shit anymore so they are relying on English-Asia releases, so if you want the game you can import it.

My, how could one ever forget about that.
Jason Schreier was so upset by the game he wrote an article how the artist, Kamitani, is a 14 year-old sex obsessed horny teenager, and how the game is sexist. For that matter, since it begs reminding, the traditional definition of sexism (not the one where "some animals are more equal than others" because some traits one is born with invalidate experiences of oppression, rape, etc) means "unfairly discriminating between how men and women are treated".
So the artist let the personal insult slip aside, and showed him art of muscular gnomes, you know, "objectified" males just as females were in the game (ah, the innocence of those days. Now males can't EVER be objectified unless their dick is prominently visible or throbbing from clothes. Which means never, considering console cert conditions. Sorry Nomura, you just weren't trying hard enough with the boys band FF15 you said explicitly was marketed to fujoshis.)
What Jason did was to try and bury the artist's career with a fabricated "homophobic" accusation, because obviously he was showing "gnome gay softcore porn" to corrupt him, "assuming" the good woke journalist "can only be gay if he's against those boobies".
 
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mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
And remember just how much shit it got from nearly every gaming "journalist"? Developers/publishers simply don't want to deal with that shit anymore so they are relying on English-Asia releases, so if you want the game you can import it.

Hell, this was literally confirmed by Koei Tecmo: https://techraptor.net/content/dead-or-alive-xtreme-3-not-coming-west-due-to-potential-backlash

Play-Asia also did a full, detailed blog post on this subject as well:
https://www.play-asia.com/blog/2017/12/14/video-game-localisation-asia-english/

So yes, those dipshits (or their cult-like political doctrine) are most assuredly causing issues and developers/publishers want none of it.
Those admittedly few people on twitter (even the biggest "controversies" are just a circlejerk of a few dozen people) have resorted to doxxing, hate mail directed toward minorities working at the company (the Tomodachi Collection situation), and gross distortion of the facts, and have symphatizing people at mainstream media and the specialized one game developers rely on for promotion, only to find review scores (and metacritic scores tied directly to their development scores) slashed.

Deponia had "journalists" rejoicing the series ended, and that its fans need to learn one such problematic series needs to end. The fourth game released unpromoted. Jet Suit Larry has an Eurogamer reviewer writing a news article where she's upset her previous 2/10 review of the previous game didn't deter the developers from making a new one, and that the series has no place today. The very guided Super Seducer visual novel that has only one possible ending and everything uncouth leading to early game overs... that they got banned from PSN after expensive certification and release and asking Steam for clarification how come it's still allowed on their premises... was for example banned not because of its content but because games made about pick-up culture are inherently problematic and shouldn't exist, period.

Koei had a Casca costume removed from the overseas version of Berserk, that's otherwise a mature-only version uncensored from the JP version, despite being promoted in the trailers, directly because of a blitz of articles. They confirmed in various statements about Dead or Alive Extreme 3 (which was imported from Asia to specifically be offended about, and in a self proclaimed bid to stop these asian english releases in the future) and DoA6 the press reaction is what "made them think" that content was impossible to release overseas despite them already prepping for it. Namco has a Summer Lessons VR game (that's wholesome, by the way) suffering a similar media blitz and forced into JP-only status, and considering making some content exclusive to Japan and Europe, which they already started doing with Digimon (and that tweet was by the way deleted because some "fan" threatened suicide to Harada pretty convincingly, to put it mildly, if he didn't) Only Xseed is exporting that kind of games anymore, and pretty sure they had some staff accused of career ending charges, and asked pretty directly by press why they keep bringing that genre at all "in 2016".
The outrage about Steam's policies now allowing content it didn't before, under the guise of "bring back curation" to "protect from insensitive content" like in the "good old days of steam greenlight" (when even famous veteran developers like treasure and their ikaragua version were denied)... that should be pretty telling.

Praising the localization of Fire Emblem Fates and Tokyo Mirage Sessions, both of them glorious trainwrecks with as much exposed skin as possible covered and as much woke statements and "jokes" slipped in the writing, not to mention the "..." conversation, and being upset at Xenoblade 2 and Persona 5 going the other way to the point of using the same glitched screencaps of characters clipping through walls...

I could go on even further. There's less and less of these games making it over, and I doubt reviewers gloating about this end result on twitter need you to underplay the current trend.

Again I ask both of you guys are we sure it's not the lack of sales that's stopping these companies from bringing the games over to the West. I "know" what they "said". But why are you so quick to believe a corporation that's trying to cover up for bad sales in the West with a lame excuse of "potential backlash". Really Koei? You are willing to throw away $30 million over "potential backlash"?
 
Again I ask both of you guys are we sure it's not the lack of sales that's stopping these companies from bringing the games over to the West. I "know" what they "said". But why are you so quick to believe a corporation that's trying to cover up for bad sales in the West with a lame excuse of "potential backlash". Really Koei? You are willing to throw away $30 million over "potential backlash"?
I've heard in japan respect and not offending others while also apologizing for misdeeds is taken at high value.

We can see the past sales, and even current higher ones result of imports. In any case, it is not that big a loss, since if they release in english in japan a lot of sales are made to the west through imports without incurring the wrath of the western press.
 
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dirthead

Banned
Ignoring all the nonsensical arguments about nothing, why the hell hasn't Dragon's Crown been released on the PC?

I know it's emulated now, but it's just money on the table for the company. Seems stupid to not release it.
 
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