You do realize if a prominent western game director created a character like Quiet in present day, and it somehow managed to get through all the corporate filters, they would at the very least never be allowed to work in the business again and possibly even harassed into suicide by deranged leftists. I’m sorry but that’s no small thing in light of the recent surge of hyper masculine, butt ugly girl boss characters. And as far as reducing nuclear stockpiles goes, I wouldn’t exactly consider that some type of far left issue. The INF treaty, which was also referred to in Metal Gear, was signed by Reagan and near unanimous in the congress. Also this is from the perspective of a Japanese native who grew up in post war Japan. I’m sure it has a different meaning to him than some self hating white American leftist that wishes we could have dropped the bomb on the bad whites instead of the bad Asians.
And playing Japanese games isn’t really about thinking Japan is “Based” (although their takes on immigration/views on outsiders would definitely fit under that category) it’s about a cultural escapism from current day shit which is not merely a “surface level” thing as you suggest. These sick people are upending millennia of cultural and biological norms in the span of a decade or two. But a good amount(I never said all) of their games are a fresh return to what was normal a mere decade or so ago. There are no LGBT Mario characters forced upon children, you don’t play as Zelda in lieu of Link
I don't disagree with what you say here about how heated and ridiculous the Western political climate is. I condemn the often sadistic treatment of people who go against the grain as much as anyone, and that is why i'm on Neogaf and not Resetera.
But I think you are turning a blind eye to a lot of things present in Japanese gaming and what their creators think.
Death Stranding features a new straight white male protag which is like a big foot sighting nowadays
Yes, and Death Stranding, in Kojima's own words:
"The attacks and violence seen online these days are out of control. So I designed this for people to take a step back and by connecting, relearn how to be kind to others. I don't think anyone in the world is opposed to that. Trump is building a wall, and the UK is leaving the EU. In this game, we use bridges to connect things. But destroying those bridges can instantly turn them into walls. So bridges and walls are almost synonymous. That's one of the things i'd like the players to think about in the game."
"This is about an era of individualism. Everyone is fragmented, in America or Europe, but at the same time we’re connected by the internet. This magical technology should have made people happy, but we’re battling each other."
It's painfully obvious where Kojima's political views lie and the intention of Death Stranding, whether it was effective at it or not, was to influence the player into the same viewpoint. I'll repeat again that focusing on the race of the character (which was only that way because it was modeled on his buddy Norman Reedus) is surface level stuff. You could say literally skin deep. It misses the forest (ie. we need a more communal, less individualistic world unlike what the right wing is creating) for the trees (the character is white, gaming is saved!!!).
Kojima is not chummy with Hollywood liberals like Guillermo del Toro for no reason.
they remade a classic where a blonde blue eyed straight male rescues a blonde blue eyed typical female
If you are referring to Resident Evil 4, there is a whole range of things which people (*not me personally for some of these points) complained about being woke:
Hunnigan, and i'm surprised no one mentions the merchant too, were race-swapped to black. Really didn't detract from anything.
Ashley no longer wears a skirt and the game prevents you from creeping on her (personally this was mega sad for me). The VR port of the original RE4 to Quest 2 also cut this.
The playful flirtation of Leon with Hunnigan was removed (Leon in general is really de-nutted in the remake). The Hunnigan conversations are now just very dry mission talk. The VR port of the original RE4 to Quest 2 also cut this in a really ham-fisted way by flat out removing lines of dialogue.
Ending dialogue was changed to be more yass queen:
Removed:
It's one of the more egregious examples of a game that has been thoroughly sanitized to avoid accusations of sexism. But also not surprising considering the leaked internal Capcom documents showing they are moving in a more politically correct direction:
The contents of the Capcom ransomware hack has begun leaking online, featuring news on Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, and other games; along with politically correct business strategies.
nichegamer.com
Yakuza, according to the creator was a “story about men, written by men, primarily for an audience of men.”
I'm glad you brought up Yakuza. Yakuza may have been a “story about men, written by men, primarily for an audience of men.”, and to a large extent that remains true (although the audience for Yakuza now encompasses a broader range than who it was originally aimed at). However, Yakuza: Like a Dragon was one of the most on-the-nose political games i've ever played. A fair warning as there will be some spoilers here. A villain in the game is a group called Bleach Japan, a puritanical NIMBY group which is very reminiscent of socially conservative interest groups, who want to purge Japan of its 'gray zones' where illegal activities like prostitution are more permissible. The leader, Sota Kume, is essentially a Japanese Ben Shapiro, and the group is an arm of the Citizens' Liberal Party, whose leader Ryo Aoki is the major antagonist in the game. People might think 'Liberal' in the name would suggest a left wing nature of the party but anyone who takes even a cursory glance at Japanese politics will see that the long ruling political party in Japan is the "Liberal Democratic Party" - which has a nationalist conservative platform. The CLP is portrayed in the same vein as the LDP and can be viewed as a fictional stand-in. The game doesn't just stop at the ragtag group of outcasts fighting with Bleach Japan in the streets either - you literally run against the CLP in an election. I don't know how all of this can be viewed as anything other than a direct critique of status quo Japanese political conservatism, or at the very least trying to contextualize the experiences of the people it's against.
The game might be about masculinity but it touches on numerous aspects that could be considered left wing particularly in its sub-stories:
Also if it was Tosh Nagosh that the original quote about it being a “story about men, written by men, primarily for an audience of men.” belonged to - well, he left the company years ago to grab the Chinese NetEase money.
SEGA have also tried to sanitize the image of some aspects which could be considered transphobic in the West, such as the sub-quest in Yakuza 3 where Kiryu is forced to flee a crossdressing NPC and refers to it as, well, "it". This was removed not just in the West but in all regions of the remastered game to comply with, to quote the producer, a change in moral values.
This is not surprising considering the following:
RGG Studio changes its Twitter icon like every other company during pride month:
Western gay people love Yakuza, and i've hung around plenty of Discords that lean right who absolutely loathe the series, for the exact same reasons.
As for Nintendo, it doesn't really have any examples in its games, I agree. It's purposefully ambiguous in part to get mass appeal. Nintendo's stances as a company though would surely piss off a lot of Shapiro conservatives:
Nintendo Japan Recognizes Same-Sex Marriages, in Defiance of Country’s Laws
Nintendo Japan is extending benefits to employees in same-sex partnerships even though Japan outlaws gay marriage.
variety.com
www.gamebyte.com
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