When I heard that VICE Gaming was rebranding to Waypoint, my reaction was a hearty "shrug and move on". In the past, VICE Gaming has been responsible for some truly terrible articles about games many of my friends and I are interested in, most notably the Senran Kagura series. I won't bring them up here, but suffice to say, I've written many angry words in the past on the subject.
Consequently, when I happened to see this tweet earlier, my immediate reaction was to predict yet another ill-informed, overly judgemental article about the prevalence of boobs in the game, without exploring any of the things that actually make it an interesting series. (Yes, yes, gratuitous plug for my own work there, but I've written a lot about Senran Kagura.)
Out of curiosity — or perhaps partly to vindicate what I will freely admit was prejudice — I clicked through to the article when someone else shared it and took a look.
My goodness me.
I was genuinely surprised to read not the usual screed about how it's a piece of misogynist filth that everyone should feel ashamed of the mere existence of, but instead a good interview with series creator Kenichiro Takaki about his philosophy towards character design, sexualised content and all manner of other things. Even more notably, the article acknowledges that Senran Kagura games are actually damn fine brawlers in their own right, and far from being simple ecchi delivery vehicles.
I have to give some kudos to Waypoint for publishing this article, and to Patrick Klepek for writing it in the first place. I've had my differences of opinion with how Klepek covers things in the industry in recent years — like many other full-time games journos, he has often shown a significant lean towards the oft-irrational "social justice" side of the spectrum — but in this instance, he's done what he was once known for back in what many regard as "the good old days". It's a solid piece of reporting with some interesting questions and no moral high-horsing. Klepek acknowledges that Senran Kagura's sexualisation is not the sort of thing that generally appeals to him, but doesn't put it down for that; moreover, he even says that he's enjoyed playing the games after a few hours.
The article is just plain nice to read; a breath of fresh air in the current climate. Every interview I've read with Takaki in the past has shown him to be an incredibly enthusiastic creator with a clear vision; he's someone who's passionate about his work and utterly in love with the characters he and his team have created, and this absolutely comes across in Waypoint's piece. It makes me happy. It makes me really happy to see this.
And when I'm happy to read something, I absolutely don't mind sharing it with other people. You'll notice that I've added a direct link to the article in this piece rather than using archive.is to deprive the site of ad impressions, and this is because I firmly believe that this is the sort of thing we need to see a lot more of in the future.
I've grown very tired of writing the same article about the shitty deal Japanese games get when it comes to the Western games press, and yet every time I see another ill-informed rant on anime girls, I feel I have to say something, because not enough other people are. I'm sure you can understand and appreciate how absolutely wonderful it is to be able to share a piece of writing about the games I enjoy so much that doesn't tear them to shreds, that doesn't brand anyone who enjoys them as some sort of sexual deviant, and that does allow a creator to celebrate both the success and popularity of their work while acknowledging that it may not be to everyone's liking.
While VICE Gaming's past misdeeds mean that Waypoint has a lot of work to do in order to gain my trust, this article is very much a step in the right direction, and I think everyone — particularly those who have been angry about poor coverage of Japanese games in the past — should acknowledge that; hell, celebrate it, even.
Let's see more of this in the future, please, and less of the moral crusading. Games are fun; games are thing that people get great joy from; games cater to diverse interests and tastes. The games press of recent years seems to have forgotten that somewhat, despite regularly spouting buzzwords like "diversity" (when what they actually mean in most cases is "people who aren't white" rather than true all-encompassing diversity). But seeing articles like this gives me a glimmer of hope that we might have turned a corner.
Now we just need to see other sites follow suit — and Waypoint to continue in this manner.
[EDIT: It did not. How naive I was.]
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It’s a reasonably good article, but I feel uneasy about how Klepek is directing blame at Japanese game developers for not wanting to talk about their artistic decisions with regards to sexual content in games.
Clearly Kenichiro Takaki is an outgoing and gregarious individual who is happy to talk frankly to the press. That’s great (I really like the guy), but it’s completely unfair and unreasonable for Klepek to expect all other Japanese creators to do the same.
Even ignoring the varying temperaments of game developers (not everyone is going to be as friendly as Takaki) there are plenty of other developers out there who just won’t feel comfortable speaking to journalists, especially to a non-Japanese speaking reporter from a different culture who has shown themselves to be biased in much of their previous work. Klepek has a history of falsely representing his work as fair and balanced (deliberately or not) and misrepresenting the positions of those he disagrees with. The example I think of most often is when he got translators to talk about how completely literal Japanese-to-English translations are often difficult or impossible – which is a fair point – but then used this to defend the English Fire Emblem: Fates script, which doesn’t translate parts of the Japanese script so much as completely rewrite them from the ground up.
Also, even if Klepek himself writes a neutral article I suspect he knows that there are many other people out there who won’t have any compunctions about using the words of game developers in these interviews to further push the “sexist, misogynistic and gross!” narrative. I don’t blame developers for not wanting to expose themselves to that.
Something tells me that if this was any other demographic and subject matter (say, a queer developer from the US who made a controversial indie game about race or gender) you wouldn’t see Klepek blaming the developer for fanning the controversy and insisting that they have to talk to journalists to set the record straight. Also, it’s pretty insulting to straight up suggest (as Klepek does) that creators and PR reps are lying when their answers don’t match up with his preconceptions.
I suspect that what most developers and fans of these sorts of games want is to just be left alone to get on with making and enjoying them in peace. By all means, journalists should review, analyse and otherwise report on these games (you’ve done a pretty good job of this yourself, Pete), and of course they have the right to express their opinion of them. The problem is that a few Western journalists seem to view themselves as moral adjudicators, who get to decide whether this kind of content is “acceptable” or not. When, really, it’s none of their business.
As for Patrick Klepek – I think he’s got a lot of work and personal growth to do if he wants to convince people that he genuinely cares about having an open and honest discussion about these issues.
Agree with all of this. Klepek at least admits his inherent biases up-front in this article, which is progress after a fashion, but you're right; there are plenty of other writers out there still keen to push the "omg gross" angle. Polygon makes a living out of it, after all.
Still, I do think it's worth highlighting and praising a step in the right direction, as this is.
Well nice to see some good news. It is going to take time to rebuild that trust in my opinion since they are the first thing a Japanese exec in the industry reads to see how well their games are doing. Well right after the weekly sales figure on mediacreate.
This is also a pretty well done article from them https://waypoint.vice.com/en_us/article/touhou-and-the-quest-to-discover-an-audience-beyond-japan