Whew, that got pretty heated, huh? I make absolutely no apologies for yesterday’s post: it needed to be said, and I stand by every word of it. To reiterate: if you don’t like ecchi content in your games, that’s absolutely A-OK. The second you start branding people who do like ecchi content in their games as paedophiles, though, that’s when you cross a line from “opinionated person” into “total cunt”.
I’m really disappointed to hear of the number of NeoGAF bans that have resulted from the article I mentioned yesterday. (Still not going to link to it.) Quite a few friends — and quite a few new acquaintances — all found themselves banned simply for expressing dissent or dissatisfaction with the article, often in a polite manner. And no, that’s not just excuse-making — they really were polite about it. More polite than I was yesterday, anyway.
I’ve never been a member of NeoGAF. Not through lack of trying, though every time I have tried, my email address hasn’t been “good enough” for them to allow me in, whatever the hell that means. In one particular instance, it took nearly two years for my “application” to be rejected; I didn’t try again after that.
NeoGAF is regarded by many as the de facto gaming community online. It’s where all the game journalists from the mainstream publications hang out, it’s where game developers and publishers hang out — in short, it’s a huge, centralised place to talk about games. Or at least, it should be: in the last few years, however, there’s been an increasingly tight leash put on exactly what is and is not acceptable to talk about there — and, relevant to what we’ve been talking about, a lot of the stuff that is outright banned from discussion falls under the Japanese gaming umbrella.
Trouble is, from what I can tell as an outsider to the overall community, there is pretty much no rhyme or reason to what is and is not acceptable. Senran Kagura is acceptable, it seems — or, at least, it was; a significant number of participants in the long, active Senran Kagura thread got banned as part of this latest nonsense — but something like Criminal Girls is not. Japanese games are the only games that appear to be subject to this much scrutiny; big Western games are discussed without any issues whatsoever, regardless of if they have any sexual or violent content in them.
I don’t want to dwell too much on NeoGAF because, as I’ve already said, I’m not a member there and so cannot comment with authority from the perspective of an actual community member. What I do want to talk about, however, is the broader problem that NeoGAF’s situation and yesterday’s debacle really highlights: the fact that it’s deliberately (and, I’d argue, maliciously) creating a divide between different “strata” of people who enjoy video games. In other words, if you like one of the “approved” games, you’re absolutely fine; you can continue discussing games and gaming culture as much as you like. But if you like one of the “forbidden” games — regardless of the fact that these games are not illegal, are not banned and are sold at retail — then your opinion is, it seems, automatically invalid; you’re not welcome to discuss it in the Internet’s equivalent of “polite society” and are instead forced underground to find cliques and subcultures who will accept you for your tastes, rather than everyone being in a happy melting pot respectfully exchanging opinions and learning from one another.
As I’ve argued before both here and over on MoeGamer, this situation does a lot of creative works an enormous disservice. In my last ever JPgamer column at USgamer, I commented on the fact that a lot of the games that are habitually branded as “creepy” (or worse) by mainstream critics actually tick a considerable number of the boxes that these people tend to want to see as evidence that gaming is “growing up”.
Female protagonists? Or at least women in important positions with regard to the narrative? Sure; check out the Neptunia series, Omega Quintet, Criminal Girls, the Agarest series, Akiba’s Trip, Monster Monpiece, Moe Chronicle, Demon Gaze, Dungeon Travelers 2.
Unconventional storyline that isn’t simply “solve all your problems by punching/shooting/swording them to death”? Sure! Check out the Atelier series, Recettear, the Ar Tonelico series and plenty more.
Ambitious narrative themes? Sure! Take a look at The Witch and the Hundred Knight (coming soon to PS4!), Time and Eternity, Senran Kagura, Criminal Girls, Ar Tonelico…
You get the idea: these games don’t get anywhere near enough credit and are, more often than not, either ignored or derided by people purely on the grounds that they’re open and up-front about — in most, not all cases — wanting to indulge in a bit of light-hearted, cheeky teasing as part of their overall aesthetic. In some cases, the ecchi content is even used genuinely effectively to depict the growing relationship between characters; Time and Eternity and Demon Gaze were both particularly good in this regard, reflecting the protagonist’s sexual frustration and the growing relationship of trust and love between the player character and their main quest-giving “contact” Fran respectively.
Now, as Brad Gallaway wrote in his absolutely exemplary review of Dungeon Travelers 2, “people who are allergic to skin-heavy content might have a hard time getting past it to enjoy the game underneath. And honestly, that’s all right. I’ve always said that not every game is right for every person, so bouncing off of Dungeon Travelers 2 for that reason alone would be totally understandable.” This is the point that appears to be most frequently missed: games are not always for everyone. Sure, there are plenty of box-ticking focus-grouped triple-A games out there that are designed to appeal to the broadest possible demographic: they have to, because they cost an absolute fortune to make, so they’d better sell through multiple millions of copies to prove all the developers’ hard work wasn’t for naught.
But here’s the important thing: not every game is like that, nor should it be. Games with ecchi content are designed for a specific audience — and that audience cannot simply be defined or written off as “horny teenage boys”, as it usually is, though they are certainly part of it. In reality, the market for otaku games is male and female; young and old; straight and gay; trans and cis; and made up of pretty much each and every race, nationality and religion. The one thing they have in common? They like what they like. Simple as that. And these games are designed to push their buttons without caring what people outside that existing niche think of them. And that’s absolutely fine.
Tastes in art are complex, fluid, ever-changing, and one person can be into lots of things. You can enjoy high-class art and the most lowbrow of entertainment, and I know plenty of people who do. Likewise, you can also choose to enjoy just high-class art or just the most lowbrow of entertainment, or something middle-of-the-road. In the world of games, you can be someone who plays every “walking simulator” out there and believes they’re the future of interactive entertainment. You can be like my Dad, and only ever play Microsoft Flight Simulator. You can play nothing but hidden object adventure games. You can be someone who just plays Call of Duty with their friends on weeknights. You can be someone who has invested a thousand or more hours into Dota 2. Or you can be someone who enjoys games where anime girls have breasts and flash their panties.
Or — and here’s how you get the richest possible experience from one of the most exciting and complex forms of creative media in the world in 2015 — you can be into multiple things, and you can be open to new experiences. You don’t have to like everything, and you almost certainly won’t. That’s all absolutely, completely and utterly fine; the diversity in tastes is one of the best things about modern gaming, and the fact that month after month, all manner of different tastes are specifically catered to by developers and publishers is absolutely brilliant.
What’s emphatically Not Okay by any stretch of the imagination is, as we’ve already said, shaming people for what they are into, regardless of what it is. Don’t like anime panties? Fine. Don’t throw horrible names at people who do. Don’t like Gone Home? Also fine; likewise, don’t throw horrible names at people who do. Don’t like Call of Duty? Also fine… you get the idea, no? To sum up: don’t be a total cunt.
A little respect goes a very long way. And gaming culture as a whole is not remembering that fact right now, and it saddens me greatly. Let’s all try and do our bit to make our wonderful medium a little bit better for everyone, shall we?
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To start, I think it would show a little bit of respect to drop the “no links or names” position you’re taking on this. We’re not talking about Voldemort here, the real ill of society, and who knows what conquering alien civilization might read this blog someday without the context. That said, I’ll try to play along on your turf and try to word myself appropriately.
I thought the article in question had some good points but they’re points that are harder than need be to see in what I feel is a too jumbled collection of thoughts for a professional editorial. This makes discussing the article itself and feedback to the article a bit tricky because you’re never really talking about one thing. Japanese games, Japanese culture, consumers of those, sexuality in games, sexism in games, games growing up, moralities, nicheness and even paedophilia; it’s all a lot to chew. Trying to talk about any of it, you’re going to end up spitting out some of the rest of it on your listener’s face.
I don’t think the writer was calling for all games cater to one crowd or feels that it’s not okay for people to like or dislike different things. I also think there is a valid concern over what is overly represented and underrepresented in games in regards to sex and females and what is acceptable to be the norm rather than niche. That’s not directed towards Japanese things specifically but I feel the article and author sort of wibbled and wobbled on this too, so again with the spittle.
I do think a fair amount of criticism he has received, maybe some of it here, is unfair towards him but at the same time, he makes it very hard to agree with him. For every rightful “in my defense” he seems always follow it up with a sneering remark that correlates the the “current climate” (Jared Fogle) with “defending games about Child Molesting” or some snide ironic Twitter remark. He ends up saying the exact things he claims he isn’t trying to say. It’s really unfortunate, but I do feel he has a history of work and remarks that portrays a remarkably low bar for what he considers to be sleazy* and apparently equatable with real pedo or the defense of. I say apparently genuinely, because I am undecided with how serious he holds these beliefs or if he just subscribes to the culture of “pedo” falling the acceptable name calling category. I really don’t know which is worse.
(*Pre-reresponse to those who would care: naming off something he finds too sleazy that really IS too sleazy is not a counter to this, no matter how thick the irony it is delivered with.)
As I said, this is all hard to talk about coherently and I don’t feel I’m doing any better. I needed to get this out and for some reason, this seemed like the place. As I mentioned, there’s a lot about the article over all that I agreed with and there’s a lot of criticism of it that I don’t, yet I have no where to speak comfortably in agreement or disagreement when the side I’m mostly on might find me too “creepy” for their circle.
I’m really bummed out over this, as I really like that classic games podcast that the writer and his Job’s Lackey work on together. I didn’t even get around to mentioning how annoyed I am with THAT guy right now, oddly I think he ticked me off more with a couple of tweets in relation to this incident than the incident itself.
While I agree with you to an extent, I think it’s a bit disingenuous to try to defend all ecchi/moe games. Something like Dungeon Travelers 2 has good DRPG gameplay to go along with its aesthetic, but games like Time and Eternity or Agarest are just plain bad. I know they fall under the common umbrella of games derided by most just for their character designs and such, but I feel it weakens your argument if you include games that are legitimately poor. I also think you exaggerate a bit when you call the plot of a game like Senran Kagura “ambitious”.
Matter of taste, not fact. I enjoyed Time and Eternity a great deal. It was flawed, sure, but I wouldn’t call it “bad”. Likewise for Agarest. They wouldn’t have made three of them if there weren’t people out there enjoying them and thinking they were worthwhile.
Everyone’s tastes are different, so it’s not particularly fair to people to say “well, these games are allowed and worth defending, but these ones aren’t.” I’ve had some of my favourite gaming experiences of the last few years by taking a chance on titles that popular opinion and the media claimed were “bad”, so I don’t really buy the “some games are more worthy than others” argument, I’m afraid.
That’s just me though, and you’re more than welcome to your opinion, since you expressed it without being an arse! 🙂 Just thought I’d clarify why I, personally, take a broad stance on this topic.
I’m with Pete on this one. Opinions, still not fact, no matter how much the internet age wants them to be. We each come at a game with our own biases and leave with our own opinions. And the same tribalism that existed when you were in high school between the jocks and the nerds can rear it’s head even when it’s the nerds and the nerds. It’s better to just let people enjoy what they enjoy and find something else that you would enjoy more if it bothers you so much.
Quite. As an aside, Sigurd, I don’t think I’ve ever said thanks for you reading and commenting on so many of my posts. We seem to have pretty similar views on a lot of things; it’s always comforting to know that I’m not standing completely alone with these opinions!
But what if we couldn’t?
I am talking about the Yakuza, Sengoku Basara, Ace Attorney and Dragon Quest fans who have been denied localization and couldn’t afford to buy the game? While these niche fanservice games are getting localized, fans of games that would improve Japan’s rep is constantly getting denied the games that would positive attention.
True enough — however, for whatever reason, these *are* the games that are getting localised.
Presumably they have been proven to sell well (relatively speaking — Senran Kagura recently celebrated selling a million copies, which is small fry in triple-A terms, but a big deal in the niche sector) and have people who passionately believe in them. Anecdotally speaking, that would certainly be the case; I know plenty of people (including myself) who are more than happy to grab limited edition versions of niche Japanese games while they would baulk at the possibility of spending £250 on a Halo collector’s edition. In other words, there’s a market there. And it’s a market worth supporting; since these titles appear to be the ones that publishers regard as being worth bringing to the West, continuing to support them will (should?) encourage them to broaden their remit and bring other games over.
And it’s not as if we don’t get *any* “mainstream” (for want of a better word) RPGs, anyhow; the Final Fantasy series says hi as the most obvious example, but there’s also Trails in the Sky/Trails of Cold Steel, the Ys series and plenty of others besides.
Part of the issue, though, is that even the more “respectable” (as you see it) games don’t get a lot of attention from the press. People who play and love them will talk about them and champion them all day on social media, but so far as many publishers are concerned, if they’re not getting column inches, they’re not getting awareness, unfortunately. I wish it were different, I really do. But until the games press stops trying to be so generalist and instead embraces specialist writing for specific audiences, we’re always going to have this problem because there’s simply too much out there for even a big team at a huge site like Gamespot to be able to cover effectively.
Now reflecting on it. We are a looking at a cynical market that looks at the worst. Sexism, the wrong games localized. If i had to ask why big devs given up on the west i would say the sheer cynicism Eastern devs are unfamiliar with is the reason