hentropy said:
The point is, if you're playing that game, you're obviously not disgusted by the desensitization of hyperviolence enough to call it creepy.
This doesn't really prove or disprove anything anyone's saying, but for the 'record', no I don't play Doom (Doom 3's the only iteration I've ever enjoyed). Context is hugely important, and I already cited examples of games whose violence I object to enough to not buy.
It's bizarre to try to - seemingly - suggest I need to react with identical disgust at every single depiction of violence, just to have a 'consistent' attitude when admonishing media like Summer Lesson.
Increasingly, I
do see this whole thing about violence as a mislead - a convenient diversion, for one simple reason; pointing out a double standard doesn't somehow validate or justify one or t'other. To use a clumsy yet illustrative metaphor; if you're standing in a house on fire and chiding someone else for drowning, you're
still fucked...
I won't speak to your intentions. But I do think you, like pretty much everyone including myself, is affected by hundreds of years of cultural programming that you may not always be cognizant of. To pick out a specific example, you keep using the term "schoolgirl", as if that has any useful meaning as a word. Lumping every "girl" who goes to school as one group that is treated the same is inherently infantilizing. Trying to conjure up pictures in the mind of little girls when what is being discussed are young women in their latter teenage years.
As before, I feel that's an absurd irony given the subject matter; I couldn't infantilise girls any more than Japanese culture does on a regular basis... This game with its banal, coy, submissive schoolgirl, for example.
As for the terminology? Given it's a
literal description of what she is, it's surely an entirely appropriate word to use. Student, pupil, schoolgirl - it doesn't change anything.
There is a difference between "a teacher using their position of power to exert influence over someone vulnerable for self-gratification", and "two people attracted to each other after socializing a lot and deciding to maybe start a relationship after the responsibilities are over." Which happens all the time in real life. In the case of this game, it doesn't seem either is the case, as all you appear to do is flirt and socialize with her with no endgame of either long-term dating or sex. I might be wrong, though.
You forgot 'leer'.
As for the underlined: the ethics pertaining to what two people of-age do when both have moved on from school is irrelevant. This game clearly isn't depicting that.
Neither
consent nor age matter in terms of professional ethical conduct, though; a breach of trust/abuse of power by the authority figure leads to their rightful dismissal.
Even the most progressive games out there can be picked apart and examined for "problematic" cultural things, but we don't denigrate fans of Mass Effect or even Call of Duty for being war-mongers, there's a pretty good chance they just like that style of game.
What problematic things could people identify in Mass Effect?
But yet we recoil in disgust at something like this. I do think it's partially because of "oh that wacky pervy Japan!" brand of racism/xenophobia and a lingering cultural problem of wanting to see the worst in people for indulging in certain erotic fantasies.
A distaste of anything that smacks of grooming and abuse of power equals "racism/xenophobia"
since when? Because that's what a 'creepy' gut reaction is to something like this is, an expression from a Western perspective (this is a Western site, after all) that what's depicted is unethical.
A Fork said:
Even without sound, doesn't this game kind of feel better than the older games, when basically what you are doing is watching people die?
I'm afraid 'Eh?' sums up my reaction to that question. "Feel" in this context is insanely subjective, and define what "the older games" actually means and I might be able to reply.
Either way, as I said to Hentropy; this isn't about violence, and no amount of pointing out perceived double standards mitigates or absolves one or the other.
Well, it resembles a dating sim, except instead of staring at a 2d sprite that never moves, you are staring at a 3d girl moving around in VR. The point is either to sell you a story, or more likely to elicit a positive reaction. Watching the trailer, you get that "there is an attractive animu girl I don't know staring into my soul" feeling, which is can be either good or creepy. If you're a weirdo like me, you get nervous and your heart rate goes up. You get a warm fuzzy feeling when she smiles and can't help but smile. That's pretty neat.
Remove Summer Lesson's context, and I have zero issues. But we're not talking about the appeal of dating sims - we're talking about what kind of reactions to this specific game's scenario may be considered understandable or not, as opposed to wacky puritanism or even, apparently, xenophobia.
Arguably, if someone could prove the 'character'/POV is supposed to be about the same age or just a few years older than the girl? Then I'd certainly take back a lot of my challenges and criticisms. It would be a cheap cheat, of course, because as has already been mentioned, older men than the pupil's age group will be buying and playing it, all to 'experience' flirting with a schoolgirl. Still, in terms of cheeky, sneaky design it'd be hard to argue against.
You make something very cute, people will buy it. It's like watching a romance anime and one of the leads blushes and gets really nervous, and you get that warm fuzzy feeling again.
"Warm fuzzy feeling"? I probably roll my eyes and reach for the remote, an off switch, or a brick to throw. ;-)
This time you are the MC, or at least in his shoes, and I mean, I understand that it may give of bad vibes.
In a way, that's pretty much all expecting, i.e. not for my - or Steve's, or a few other people's in this threads - reactions to be attacked and dismissed as hypocrisy at best, and puritanism and racism at worst.
wulf3n said:
I'm well aware of the legal and ethical responsibilities of professional tutors/teachers.
Apparently none of it came to mind when presented with a 'flirty'/leery tutor-pupil relationship sim. Or don't you see any issue with leaving a son or daughter of your own, unsupervised, alone in their bedroom?
And no, pointing out 'it's not real' doesn't mean the context is somehow immune to criticism, or that it cannot or should never elicit a potentially negative reaction.
I would hope terms that also set of alarm bells would be murder, vehicular homicide, theft, just to name a few.
Do I need to keep listing my issues with Western attitudes to violence in every single post to every single person? Do you want a textwall on why I don't buy Assassin's Creeds or GTA's, and why I find the new Mafia game to look like a loathsome little game, as proof, perhaps?
And, as stated a few times above: this conversation isn't about violence, and pointing out our problems with it has nothing to do with Summer Lesson or a reaction to it.
saltyanon said:
The reason for having a full male cast for FFXV isn't to pander to males either, if you haven't realized yet, and it's just as "creepy" as what you seem to object to.
You'll need to elaborate on the underlined, as I've no idea what you mean. The only thing I know about that game is that I don't like FF (bar VII and VIII back in the day), and those odious seeming, terribly designed protagonists are reason enough to avoid any game.
Callate said:
"Creepy" is an effective dismissal, but it doesn't actually mean anything more than a kind of visceral disgust. And with it, an excuse not to engage or examine.
If you've read most of my posts in this thread, you should see I'm not beginning and ending with that gut reaction. What I won't do, however, is bow down to platitudinous moral relativism where nothing can ever mean anything, and no contrary reaction or opinion can be tolerated.
If someone should be required to try to understand another culture's quirks and foibles, then the 'defender' of such quirks and foibles needs to understand the perspective of the perceived outsider. The rationale for why someone in the West would see Summer Lesson as creepy or disturbing surely isn't hard to follow (the NSPCC pdf I linked to should suffice).
I think it would, in fact, be equally relevant to suggest that a game where you kill hundreds of people with an automatic weapon is "creepy" if you translated the game's context to real life.
Again, pointing that out doesn't magically make everything Summer Lesson may represent beyond reproach. And, for the hundredth time in this thread, perhaps; I object to my own culture's attitude to violence (and objectification/sexism).
I might still agree, to some degree, that such games ought to be held back from children who are still forming their ideas about appropriate ways of addressing conflicts in their lives; I'm not 100% certain that there couldn't be an issue of someone coming to the conclusion from being heavily immersed in such a context that those who oppose one are "enemies" who need to be "destroyed" and the world is a threatening place of constant conflict- even if they would never actually pick up a gun and shoot someone.
I do not believe such games are harmful- or at least, that any harm they might do can be simply and easily divorced from good they do. And I could go on about that, but this is already going to run long.
And that's something I more or less agree with, making much of the rest of your post redundant in terms of me actually replying at length to every line or paragraph (given what you're challenging isn't something I was asserting).
What is the harm of this game?
Must a game or any work of entertainment/art be proved to be solely responsible for harm for it to be criticised, or for it to reflect unsettling things about a given culture or society?
And is there some suggestion- perhaps chimerical, perhaps no more so than the "negative" suggestions made about it- that perhaps the game might do some good?
I don't believe individual works cause anyone to do anything - but that doesn't mean there is then a demonstrably
positive impact.
"Creepy" denies the need for the examination. And it denies empathy- because when I imagine someone who's terrified of talking to a member of the opposite sex turning to a game like this, I don't find the image in my mind creepy. I find it pitiable.
So I should've simply called the game pitiable - or even pathetic - instead?
The last big use of the term "creepy" I recall was in reports and Internet babble about the Santa Barbara murderer, Elliot Rodger.
Among all the talk about MRMs and the Internet, I couldn't help but notice that the first three people he killed were his roommates- the people he saw every day, the people he should have had the closest connections with.
Who probably thought he was creepy.
Could something like Summer Lesson perhaps have made someone like Elliot Rodger feel less alienated and isolated? Less like he was being denied something that came so easily to everyone else?
Would we deny that possibility because it's easier to call something "creepy" and push it out of sight until something snaps?
I'm not entirely sure how I can even begin to respond to
that. A scumbag like Rogers was, seemingly, the product of a dysfunctionally masculine society and culture on a number of levels. If something as 'pitiable' as Summer Lesson is the answer, then you're surely asking the wrong questions.
That line was unclear, apologies. I just meant that, in certain circles, we're awfully eager to assume that, say, there's clear repercussions to tolerating a game like Summer Lesson, but no consequence to promoting a broad assumption that such a game and those who play it are somehow gross.
My position isn't that such a game has a clear consequence (if I did, I would - logically - want it or any other thing actually
banned). Originally, my own reason for posting was to defend an instinctive cross-cultural reaction, i.e. that such a reaction can surely be considered rather healthy and expected - not odd, puritanical, or racist ('It looks a bit like grooming' should suffice as a justification for a Western to be 'creeped' out. see the NSPCC pdf).
Thrice Once more with feeling; I'd defend the right for the author to create it, a player to 'play' it, and I'd defend the right for others, especially anyone in the West, to judge it.
And I agree (hopefully that's clear) that the issues are worth examining- but I would also argue that, shy of strong evidence to the contrary, we should hesitate to assume that people who indulge in fantasies of teenage girls treating them with admiration and affection are imminently more worthy of ostracization than those who indulge in fantasies of consequence-free action-movie style gunplay.
If I just condemned men for finding teenage girls attractive I'd pretty much be condemning the entire planet's population of straight males... It's the
context of this game that I find objectionable, for the reasons I've gone into time and time again in this thread (and if that doesn't satisfy some, then;
tough, behold the impasse and just don't continue posting with me 'cause we're apparently not going to achieve anything but mutually wasted effort/time).
My default position is always that things should be allowed, short of compelling evidence of harm, and that finding something "offensive" alone is not reason for that something to be destroyed.
...which is fine,
given I've never suggested that it should be. If we're specifically looking at exploration of fantasies of any stripes, taboos included, then any and all should be safely explored and, where appropriate, expressed. But no one should expect everyone else to just smile and nod when confronted with examples, no matter how perceived-vanilla it is to those immersed in a culture or subculture. To expect that is surely to misjudge human nature by a country mile.
And that, I'd argue, is what people did when they leapt for the puritan label in this thread.
