SirCannonFodder said:
Malygris said:
I knew somebody was going to make a point of throwing Japanese sex games into this, but I decided that as long as it's necessary to link to Wiki to explain to people what the hell you're talking about, it wasn't particularly relevant.
After thinking about it, I'll concede that since that particular genre has so far proved unsuccessful outside of Japan, it isn't relevant to an article about the western market. However, for the sake of indulging my pedantism, I'll go ahead and post the argument I was originally planning on posting anyway:
Except that you were using the absence of a sex game genre to back-up your point of such a pairing being unlikely to produce a commercially and/or critically successful game. While I can't comment on their quality, the fact that there's a thriving market for these games in Japan surely shows that they are at least commercially viable, does it not? As for it being "necessary to link to Wiki", I'd be willing to bet that if you asked any member on this website about them, there's at least an 80% chance that they'll have heard about them at the very least as "those weird Japanese porn games".
This is all true. Japanese game stores have ENORMOUS sections devoted to pornographic games, from the sex-themed dating sims to the mindless sex games that don't even have a plot. The industry is booming...in Japan. Germany also has a pretty big sex game industry. The thing is, in America, the general public has a much more negative view of sex than in most other places. Over here in America, it often isn't the violence that gets parents iffy, it is the sex. My mom STILL hates me watching R-rated movies with sexual content...and I'm 19, so there isn't a whole damn lot that she can do beyond try to nag me otherwise. Many parents are like this. They want their children to pretend that sex doesn't exist and try to shelter them from everything that contains sex.
Frankly, I think we should start changing the rules so that pornographic games can be a viable market. Even though I don't intend on ever buying them, for those who do want to buy them, there should be the option to. The big three need to stop worrying about their image and let AO games on their consoles, and retailers need to stop worrying about carrying AO games and how they would look. I mean hell, Books-A-Million carries Playboy, and Suncoast and Sam Goody have sections for porn movies. Porn shops should be able to carry AO games, but with the current rules of the AO rating, even porn shops can't carry porn games. Likewise, Gamestop should grow a pair and start carrying AO games. They are a specialty shop, and you can't overlook an entire genre of games because you are scared of angry moms. Suncoast doesn't overlook porn movies, after all. As long as you require an ID to buy them and, perhaps hide them from the view of a child walking by somehow, then I don't see the problem.
And gamers in general can benefit from a loosening of the AO rating's leash. As it stands now, the only reason why Fable and God of War got by with M ratings is because the sex was off screen. You saw the bare breasts, but you didn't see Kratos having that threesome; you only heard it. Had you seen it, God of War would have been branded with an AO right then. Brief nudity is allowed in M games, but the second that nudity is contained within a sex scene, then it gets an AO. If the AO rating was allowed to exist and not be used as a death sentence then we can see more mature games...and I don't mean maturity as in "BLOOD 'n BOOBIES!!!!" The content of games are severely limited because the AO rating is a deathblow, while the M rating is significantly more strict than the R rating when it comes to nudity/sex and other themes. The number of mature themes that developers can get away with is limited because the ESRB is entirely too strict.
Jesus, stop worrying about children getting their hands on M and AO-rated games and realize that they aren't marketed towards children in the first place...The only reason they get them is because the parents aren't doing their job, and we all shouldn't have to suffer because some soccer mom is pissed that Little Timmy saw some boobies because she wasn't paying attention to the games she buys him.
