Sony implements new policy censoring Japanese games for possible fanservice content

[Marik2]

The sounds of screeching weebs as they furiously hump their crusty pillows in anger is like music to my ears, screech some more weebs, screech more! Screech more of your potential loss of borderline child pornography, screech and squeal more, little piggies!

lol, you're quite enjoying this.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

That's pretty salty alright.

Maybe a timeskip so that all of the characters you want to fondle aren't still in high school is in order?

Seriously, it'd be easier for me to buy a "Censorship is bad" argument if we start talking about groping characters that are old enough to drive.

(Never mind that games getting localized to Japan can expect to have violence toned down, scenes where you manipulate dead bodies removed, and generally being touchy around nukes. It's a two way street)

Specifically about Senran Kagura, the girls are not in highschool in the localization's canon, they're just in an unspecific "academy" and have no ages to speak of (they literally removed that stat from their bios entirely). Also, fictional characters are fictional and have no actual age. You can say this little kid is 300 years old or you can say this grown woman is 14 (look at Yoko from Gurren Lagann part 1, yes, she's 14 during that saga) so over-focusing on those fictional ages is silly and tweaking them around won't achieve much.

Removing the stat block during localization doesn't change a characters age, the 300 year old loli is an obvious dodge, and the fact that Yoko is sexualized is...not a defense? Dunno why you're even bring that up, considering it's part of the problem.

Seriously, how is "multinational corporation gets antsy around sexualized minors" such an odd concept? People say "but what about Mass Effect/Witcher/God of War" and whatever, but what western game has a kid with her tits out?

Yoko looks grown. It's not the sexualization I'm referring to, it's that you can say her age is 18 or 25 and it's just as plausible. Point is, her fictional age is arbitrary.


The golden rule is that "either everything is ok or nothing is" when it comes to fiction(I assume you understand the term "fiction", not talking about things involving real people, only characters). Simple as that.


Steam has the right policy and Sony is floundering around, pretending to be virtuous by removing groping from a few games and censoring a few others as though it means something. If they actually cared even a smidgen about what you ascribe to them, you know what they'd do? Remove a good hundred or so titles from their store and update the psn to make the game's unplayable on the system and issue refunds. They'd never in a million years do that though cause it would cost them a ton of money and ruin their reputation. Still, if they actually thought they were somehow "protecting children" and weren't actually doing the absolute lowest of low bar virtue gaining move that's what they'd do, cause it'd be the right thing to do.

What we have here is a tepid, cynical attempt at appeasement and virtue signaling with almost nothing at stake and with anyone who'd criticize them being branded some sort of "child grooming sympathizer" which is not exactly a risky business decision to do.

Just because you dislike the content you should not take joy in seeing it censored. Try imagining your favorite game being the one that was censored if you can't understand this. And no, it doesn't matter what specific piece of content was specifically censored. It can be a tiny minigame or it can be the whole entire game being banned. Imagine your favorite game being banned based on arbitrary standards. That's actually at stake here.

Either all fiction is acceptable or no fiction is.

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

And just gets better and better for you AltNameJag and Amyss

https://nichegamer.com/2018/10/27/new-sony-censorship-policy-is-forcing-even-japanese-developers-to-censor-themselves-in-japan/


BEHOLD....THE SALT!

I said this before on another site forum, and I'll say it again: Did Sony's ball drop off? I'm all for being inclusive, but this is ridiculous! The Senran Kagura situation is one thing, but the rest is a no no. What happened to that company with "edge"? You're becoming 80s/90s Nintendo. I wonder if this is their overreaction to the "Me Too" movement.

It is pretty much it. Given the piss poor reputation of Vita's library and being a dumping ground for VNs and panty quests like Criminal Girls and Omega Labrinyth.

You also got a rising market that wants mature cinematic experiences and quite frankly Senran Kagura and most Japanese Games on the Vita dont fit that description

You clearly have never played Omega Labyrinth as that is if anything a bra quest and not a panty quest. Though admittedly the series has never been released in the states so I can't fault you for that. Suffice it to say the whole game is about finding a magic grail that makes the heroine's boobs bigger and experience points increase your breast size while in the dungeon and so on.


Though these games were never being made for the west to begin with and have similarly small budgets to reflect that so there's no issue regarding what western audiences want in gaming here. Sony is just trying weird new things, I see this like their PSP-Go of content policies. They'll soon revert to normalcy I'm sure haha.

That is why I meant by Panty Quests. JRPGs with some blantant thinly veiled sex mechanic that is totally not porn because they have to sell it at a physical storefront to reap the profit in physical preorder bonuses.

Say what you want about the west but t never beaten around the bush

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Yoko looks grown. It's not the sexualization I'm referring to, it's that you can say her age is 18 or 25 and it's just as plausible. Point is, her fictional age is arbitrary.

You're right, it's arbitrary.

And it's still 14. They're deliberately, intentionally, arbitrarily, sexualizing somebody they say is 14 years old.

The golden rule is that "either everything is ok or nothing is" when it comes to fiction(I assume you understand the term "fiction", not talking about things involving real people, only characters). Simple as that.

Quite frankly, that's a bullshit excuse. The pseudo-porn version of "its not illegal to for me to say it", except it could very well be illegal, and I don't want to be the unfortunate bastards who have to argue that with this Supreme Court.

Plus, it's Sony's platform. They can sell, or not, what they want. And we have the right to agree, disagree, or not care.

What we have here is a tepid, cynical attempt at appeasement and virtue signaling with almost nothing at stake and with anyone who'd criticize them being branded some sort of "child grooming sympathizer" which is not exactly a risky business decision to do.

Just because you dislike the content you should not take joy in seeing it censored. Try imagining your favorite game being the one that was censored if you can't understand this. And no, it doesn't matter what specific piece of content was specifically censored. It can be a tiny minigame or it can be the whole entire game being banned. Imagine your favorite game being banned based on arbitrary standards. That's actually at stake here.

Either all fiction is acceptable or no fiction is.

...see, one of my favorite anime movies, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, only exists because of extensive modifications to its source material, Vampire Hunter D: Demon Deathchase, mostly in ways that you'd be heavily against.

Again, you'd be having a much easier time with this argument if the "censorship" you were talking didn't involve groping people who weren't legally allowed to drive. The only "joy" I get from a decision like this is that I, personally, would enjoy these sorts of games a hell of a lot more if they weren't loli-bait. I would, in fact, like all these of these games more if they weren't soft-core porn, the hilarity of some of the Creative Finishes aside. At the very least, I wouldn't feel compelled to turn on the age-restriction tag for YouTube for my Senran Kagura videos.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Yoko looks grown. It's not the sexualization I'm referring to, it's that you can say her age is 18 or 25 and it's just as plausible. Point is, her fictional age is arbitrary.

You're right, it's arbitrary.

And it's still 14. They're deliberately, intentionally, arbitrarily, sexualizing somebody they say is 14 years old.

The golden rule is that "either everything is ok or nothing is" when it comes to fiction(I assume you understand the term "fiction", not talking about things involving real people, only characters). Simple as that.

Quite frankly, that's a bullshit excuse. The pseudo-porn version of "its not illegal to for me to say it", except it could very well be illegal, and I don't want to be the unfortunate bastards who have to argue that with this Supreme Court.

Plus, it's Sony's platform. They can sell, or not, what they want. And we have the right to agree, disagree, or not care.

What we have here is a tepid, cynical attempt at appeasement and virtue signaling with almost nothing at stake and with anyone who'd criticize them being branded some sort of "child grooming sympathizer" which is not exactly a risky business decision to do.

Just because you dislike the content you should not take joy in seeing it censored. Try imagining your favorite game being the one that was censored if you can't understand this. And no, it doesn't matter what specific piece of content was specifically censored. It can be a tiny minigame or it can be the whole entire game being banned. Imagine your favorite game being banned based on arbitrary standards. That's actually at stake here.

Either all fiction is acceptable or no fiction is.

...see, one of my favorite anime movies, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, only exists because of extensive modifications to its source material, Vampire Hunter D: Demon Deathchase, mostly in ways that you'd be heavily against.

Again, you'd be having a much easier time with this argument if the "censorship" you were talking didn't involve groping people who weren't legally allowed to drive. The only "joy" I get from a decision like this is that I, personally, would enjoy these sorts of games a hell of a lot more if they weren't loli-bait. I would, in fact, like all these of these games more if they weren't soft-core porn, the hilarity of some of the Creative Finishes aside. At the very least, I wouldn't feel compelled to turn on the age-restriction tag for YouTube for my Senran Kagura videos.

My point about Yoko was to show the above poster how merely aging up the chars outside of high school isn't something that needs any visual changes and that the removal of ages in the localization was indeed sufficient due to their arbitrary aged nature. Again, never broached sexualization at all.


Sony will do what it does, I never argued they should do something else, I just predicted that they will eventually undo this policy like their other ones such as "no 2d sprite games" and "English dub everything " which were undone secretly in the past. You can point out something being wrong without telling Sony to fix it. I personally trust them to see through this psp-go tier policy in due time.

And finally, using your own personal taste to justify support for this sounds excessively arrogant and selfish to me. You ought to support the games you enjoy being their true forms and if you dislike them in that state it's more healthy to just accept that dislike and move on to something you like rather than wish change upon them since by changing them you rob someone else of something they liked. You surely can find a musou style game with anime fighters using wacky fighting styles without needing to change up SK of all things. Like, try Fate/Extella or something. It's made by the same company (as far as gameplay goes anyhow).

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

My point about Yoko was to show the above poster how merely aging up the chars outside of high school isn't something that needs any visual changes and that the removal of ages in the localization was indeed sufficient due to their arbitrary aged nature. Again, never broached sexualization at all.

Sexualization is what this entire *thing* is about.

Sony will do what it does, I never argued they should do something else, I just predicted that they will eventually undo this policy like their other ones such as "no 2d sprite games" and "English dub everything " which were undone secretly in the past. You can point out something being wrong without telling Sony to fix it. I personally trust them to see through this psp-go tier policy in due time.

And finally, using your own personal taste to justify support for this sounds excessively arrogant and selfish to me. You ought to support the games you enjoy being their true forms and if you dislike them in that state it's more healthy to just accept that dislike and move on to something you like rather than wish change upon them since by changing them you rob someone else of something they liked. You surely can find a musou style game with anime fighters using wacky fighting styles without needing to change up SK of all things. Like, try Fate/Extella or something. It's made by the same company (as far as gameplay goes anyhow).

If having an opinion about how a thing I like could be better makes me arrogant and selfish, call me Ebanezer F. Scrooge. I'm not gonna drop a thing I like because it isn't perfect, and I'm not gonna avoid talking about the things I think are flaws in things I like.

See, Dreiko, I *like* Senran Kagura. I'd like it more if it didn't have quite so much bullshit. Or at least had a time skip so that an optopus isn't feeling up a naked 15 year old. I'm not gonna jump ship to Fate, a game series I've never had any interest in and which, ironically, went mainstream and clean compared to its H-game roots.

Heck, you could say Fate kinda proves the point!

 

[I can't enter my old name]

I mean, we aren't gonna see Persona 6 until 2030, there's time for change.

Is that before or after FFXVI?

On the plus side, if Sony decides to mess with Atlus, the next Persona might take place in college. That could be interesting.

(Never mind that games getting localized to Japan can expect to have violence toned down, scenes where you manipulate dead bodies removed, and generally being touchy around nukes. It's a two way street)

A lot of that is CERO shenanigans, with certain violent and cruel depictions meaning they will refuse to rate your game. It's kind of like Manhunt and Hatred getting the AO rating for no tangible reason, and those versions will never be allowed on consoles in a million years. CERO employs random people including non-gamers to play their games, whereas the ESRB is a survey where you can be fairly generous to your game.

The touchy about nukes part is CERO shenanigans again. Fallout 3 removed the Megaton quest because the localization team believed the depiction would make their game CERO unratable. Could it be out of respect? Totally, but the reason they gave was that it would make the game unratable.

It's reasonable that people do not want such an event trivialized, kind of like making a Ace Combat mission named "Pearl Harbor" where you attack a naval base. On the other hand, if you actually think about it, you can take a Fatman and kill almost everyone in Megaton yourself. You can't level the city but it's the same thing. Also, since the dialogue is already on the disk, Japanese PC modders already put the quest back in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWNqROaNqaM

Furthermore, Japanese localization of games kind of show the opposite. COD4 still has the nuke scene, and COD:WaW actually shows footage of the bombing of Nagasaki. Also in the Civ games, you can nuke both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and you'd think they'd remove those city names but no.

Heck, you could say Fate kinda proves the point!

That... almost makes sense, except Fate is still full of loli, and not just the short girls with big tits, but loli. The poster-child(heh) of Fate is literally a 1500+ year old in a 15 year old's body.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

My point about Yoko was to show the above poster how merely aging up the chars outside of high school isn't something that needs any visual changes and that the removal of ages in the localization was indeed sufficient due to their arbitrary aged nature. Again, never broached sexualization at all.

Sexualization is what this entire *thing* is about.

Sony will do what it does, I never argued they should do something else, I just predicted that they will eventually undo this policy like their other ones such as "no 2d sprite games" and "English dub everything " which were undone secretly in the past. You can point out something being wrong without telling Sony to fix it. I personally trust them to see through this psp-go tier policy in due time.

And finally, using your own personal taste to justify support for this sounds excessively arrogant and selfish to me. You ought to support the games you enjoy being their true forms and if you dislike them in that state it's more healthy to just accept that dislike and move on to something you like rather than wish change upon them since by changing them you rob someone else of something they liked. You surely can find a musou style game with anime fighters using wacky fighting styles without needing to change up SK of all things. Like, try Fate/Extella or something. It's made by the same company (as far as gameplay goes anyhow).

If having an opinion about how a thing I like could be better makes me arrogant and selfish, call me Ebanezer F. Scrooge. I'm not gonna drop a thing I like because it isn't perfect, and I'm not gonna avoid talking about the things I think are flaws in things I like.

See, Dreiko, I *like* Senran Kagura. I'd like it more if it didn't have quite so much bullshit. Or at least had a time skip so that an optopus isn't feeling up a naked 15 year old. I'm not gonna jump ship to Fate, a game series I've never had any interest in and which, ironically, went mainstream and clean compared to its H-game roots.

Heck, you could say Fate kinda proves the point!

It sounded to me like you're missing the point and hence can't actually like it because I think to anyone who does like it the fact that the fanservice in SK is entirely tongue-in-cheek is something obvious. I'm not sure if the comedic ecchi components somehow fail to work for you if the char is supposedly 15 (but looks fully grown and behaves similarly grown) or what have you but if you claim to like it then I will expect you to be aware of the fact that most of these moments are so clearly super over the top to the point of absurdity that to treat them with any amount of seriousness is to inherently miss the point about them. It's like treating a joke about death seriously and commenting about how death isn't funny and how you have to cherish life and how we have to honor the dead. Yes, even if the humor is extracted from a 15 year old being groped by an octopus or something, it's still you missing the joke if you get all uppity about it and try to make a serious case against child grooming when the subject is actually a joke.


Fate became more focused in lolicon fanservice with becoming mainstream actually. They didn't make any R18 visual novels after Hollow Ataraxia that is true but they definitely didn't make any actual changes and just did the bare minimum to fit within platform holders' rankings for whichever game they made. Prisma Illiya is still a thing (the show with 11 year olds tonguing eachother) and that one came out only a few years ago (and is very popular to boot) and while the more recent anime retelling of the original VN is based on the Realta Nua version it still doesn't actually change what happens but rather doesn't detail it with as much focus. And at any case, Senran Kagura never had anything remotely close to dick-worms raping a 7 year old for years so until her entire magic circuits were rewritten so you can't really compare the two as though their content was similar (and that part was not removed, it's even referenced in Fate/Zero with no doubts so it's not as though the canon was changed or something). Fate had a lot of stuff you can't show at all without making it r18 instantly like that whereas SK is pretty much just absurdist sexual humor.

 

[Something Amyss]

Seriously, how is "multinational corporation gets antsy around sexualized minors" such an odd concept?

It's an odd concept because of how common the alternative is, really. The fact that this hasn't been raising many flags for the last 20-ish years is kind of weird.

I wont even give them dishonor of being potential pedophiles. Being a pervert creep alone in a time when hollywood is cleaning house is proof that they are trying to desperately cling on to their fanservice crap when it is time for them to grow up.

Hell I wouldnt bat an eye if they were honest with their intentions instead of the mental gymnastics they perform to justify their sexual urges.

I don't think they're pedophiles, but it's amazing--even for groups of proud and professing nerds--to see people who can't understand the optics of wanting to fondle children might be viewed that way. Especially when it's so frequently only this scenario. The best case scenario is usually that they object to adult groping being removed as well, but even that's not a given.

It still doesn't mean they're pedophiles, band it's creepy as hell that this is still such a big deal in the modern world, regardless of age. People then wonder why women find them creepy with a straight face and I just can't even

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

It sounded to me like you're missing the point and hence can't actually like it because I think to anyone who does like it the fact that the fanservice in SK is entirely tongue-in-cheek is something obvious. I'm not sure if the comedic ecchi components somehow fail to work for you if the char is supposedly 15 (but looks fully grown and behaves similarly grown)

Almost all of these kids reference the fact that they're kids constantly, in the series about them growing up.

And if this is your idea of looking or acting "fully grown"

NSFW! https://youtu.be/q7ZAt33POhE

or what have you but if you claim to like it then I will expect you to be aware of the fact that most of these moments are so clearly super over the top to the point of absurdity that to treat them with any amount of seriousness is to inherently miss the point about them. It's like treating a joke about death seriously and commenting about how death isn't funny and how you have to cherish life and how we have to honor the dead. Yes, even if the humor is extracted from a 15 year old being groped by an octopus or something, it's still you missing the joke if you get all uppity about it and try to make a serious case against child grooming when the subject is actually a joke.

I'm well aware that it's absurd and a joke. I generally think they're funny.

It's also sexualizing minors to do it. That makes it less funny. I think it would be more funny if it did less of the child nudity and more of the slapstick absurdity. Or at least swap the child nudity for adult nudity.

It would also be a lot less "approaching the edge of illegality".

 

[bluegate]

The sounds of screeching weebs as they furiously hump their crusty pillows in anger is like music to my ears, screech some more weebs, screech more! Screech more of your potential loss of borderline child pornography, screech and squeal more, little piggies!

lol, you're quite enjoying this.

Sure am😁

In a separate topic, I am always depressed when I think of Suikoden and wish there was another one only to remember that Konami made that series. Now that's something to be upset about...

It helps to think that the current state might be for the better for the series.

The series had a good run with Suikoden 1 through 3, there was some good fun and innovation in those games. Four and Five were alright, but because they were prequels set in far away places they felt more like some fan fiction rather than part of the actual story.

I wouldn?t trust the modern Konami to be able to create an RPG with a high enough level of quality that would be able to rival 1, 2, or to a lesser extent 3, during their time. It would probably be a low effort RPG with anime tropes up the wazoo, who knows, if the developers feel especially sexually frustrated they might just turn it into a waifu collector too🤮

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

It sounded to me like you're missing the point and hence can't actually like it because I think to anyone who does like it the fact that the fanservice in SK is entirely tongue-in-cheek is something obvious. I'm not sure if the comedic ecchi components somehow fail to work for you if the char is supposedly 15 (but looks fully grown and behaves similarly grown)

Almost all of these kids reference the fact that they're kids constantly, in the series about them growing up.

And if this is your idea of looking or acting "fully grown"

NSFW! https://youtu.be/q7ZAt33POhE

or what have you but if you claim to like it then I will expect you to be aware of the fact that most of these moments are so clearly super over the top to the point of absurdity that to treat them with any amount of seriousness is to inherently miss the point about them. It's like treating a joke about death seriously and commenting about how death isn't funny and how you have to cherish life and how we have to honor the dead. Yes, even if the humor is extracted from a 15 year old being groped by an octopus or something, it's still you missing the joke if you get all uppity about it and try to make a serious case against child grooming when the subject is actually a joke.

I'm well aware that it's absurd and a joke. I generally think they're funny.

It's also sexualizing minors to do it. That makes it less funny. I think it would be more funny if it did less of the child nudity and more of the slapstick absurdity. Or at least swap the child nudity for adult nudity.

It would also be a lot less "approaching the edge of illegality".

Really, for me it is how immature Japan is about sex, it tosses you all thes

Given RDR2 and Witcher had explicit sexual content, maybe this is a good time for Japan to take a look at fanservice and trade it for genuine sexual maturity and admit that they want to see bare tits at the minimum, none of the slapstick sexual humor masquerading itself as fanservice. Genuine lesbianism from Katsuragi for example, or depictions of softcore sex, like I wouldn't bat an eye if Japan just grows a pair and be more sexually mature. That would avoid censors easier since it doesn't feel like creepy fanservice for a bunch of 13-16 year olds too scared of looking at actual porn or Otakus who can't afford actual sex.

 

[I can't enter my old name]

Given RDR2 and Witcher had explicit sexual content, maybe this is a good time for Japan to take a look at fanservice and trade it for genuine sexual maturity

CERO will not rate your game if it has sex and nudity, which cuts them off from the console market. See the Japanese versions of Witcher 3 and GTAV. PC-only games on the other hand are whatever goes, except genitals.

It's one of the many joys of self-regulatory agencies born from moral panics.

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

Given RDR2 and Witcher had explicit sexual content, maybe this is a good time for Japan to take a look at fanservice and trade it for genuine sexual maturity

CERO will not rate your game if it has sex and nudity, which cuts them off from the console market. See the Japanese versions of Witcher 3 and GTAV. PC-only games on the other hand are whatever goes, except genitals.

It's one of the many joys of self-regulatory agencies born from moral panics.

This is exactly why Sony has gone off the deep end. The years of mental gymnastics to have nudity and sexual themes in their game have finally come back to bite them wholly in the ass now that other countries isn't having any of Japan's attempts to sidestep the issue. Either they can reform or there will be more impotent rage from these weebs who only cares if their fanservice games are being hit.

Regardless the bubble has burst for these bastards and I am happy to see that they finally paid the price for flooding the market with shovelware fanservice games and VNs.

 

[Schadrach]

And again, the whole "fantasies will seep into your mind and secretly alter your behavior" thing, when said about murder in videogames, is the ravings of moral-panic-having religious conservatives from the mid 90s, so I say we keep rejecting it even when it applies to things we are personally morally outraged about, too.

Huh...

I guess you'd better go inform everyone who is employed in the fields of PR, advertising, and propaganda that their fields (the use of media to influence and alter people's thoughts and behaviors) and the research upon which their work is built (dating back millennia) are simply "the ravings of moral-panic-having religious conservatives from the mid [19]90s[ce]."

So, what you're saying is that, despite research to the contrary, games really do cause violence? Because ironically it and the current crop of moral panic when they need evidence to back their positions fall upon the same sort of media effects research by many of the same researchers (most notably Karen Dill since her 2000 paper is one of the most cited on violence in games [because it makes exactly the desired argument for that moral panic], and her book [which basically makes a cultivation effect argument for all media on all topics] gets cited by the sex in games moral panic).

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

And again, the whole "fantasies will seep into your mind and secretly alter your behavior" thing, when said about murder in videogames, is the ravings of moral-panic-having religious conservatives from the mid 90s, so I say we keep rejecting it even when it applies to things we are personally morally outraged about, too.

Huh...

I guess you'd better go inform everyone who is employed in the fields of PR, advertising, and propaganda that their fields (the use of media to influence and alter people's thoughts and behaviors) and the research upon which their work is built (dating back millennia) are simply "the ravings of moral-panic-having religious conservatives from the mid [19]90s[ce]."

So, what you're saying is that, despite research to the contrary, games really do cause violence? Because ironically it and the current crop of moral panic when they need evidence to back their positions fall upon the same sort of media effects research by many of the same researchers (most notably Karen Dill since her 2000 paper is one of the most cited on violence in games [because it makes exactly the desired argument for that moral panic], and her book [which basically makes a cultivation effect argument for all media on all topics] gets cited by the sex in games moral panic).

Competative video games do boost short term aggression in the same way that sports can, and when combined with, say, alcohol, has real world effects. That's why some stadiums don't serve alcohol anymore.

What've you got saying advertising and propaganda are ultimately useless?

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

And again, the whole "fantasies will seep into your mind and secretly alter your behavior" thing, when said about murder in videogames, is the ravings of moral-panic-having religious conservatives from the mid 90s, so I say we keep rejecting it even when it applies to things we are personally morally outraged about, too.

Huh...

I guess you'd better go inform everyone who is employed in the fields of PR, advertising, and propaganda that their fields (the use of media to influence and alter people's thoughts and behaviors) and the research upon which their work is built (dating back millennia) are simply "the ravings of moral-panic-having religious conservatives from the mid [19]90s[ce]."

So, what you're saying is that, despite research to the contrary, games really do cause violence? Because ironically it and the current crop of moral panic when they need evidence to back their positions fall upon the same sort of media effects research by many of the same researchers (most notably Karen Dill since her 2000 paper is one of the most cited on violence in games [because it makes exactly the desired argument for that moral panic], and her book [which basically makes a cultivation effect argument for all media on all topics] gets cited by the sex in games moral panic).

Competative video games do boost short term aggression in the same way that sports can, and when combined with, say, alcohol, has real world effects. That's why some stadiums don't serve alcohol anymore.

What've you got saying advertising and propaganda are ultimately useless?

The type of aggression games and sports boost is tied to competition, one where you don't forget right and wrong (or come to think of wrong things as right) but rather one where you're more likely to react violently to things than you were before by a minor amount. It's like how you're more irritable when you're hungry so you are more annoyed by things you'd otherwise overlook. It's a side-effect of competition.

If anything, learning to compete while maintaining composure and not falling victim to that human tendency is a benefit. In any case, the effect being a temporary one (and one that expires quickly) would mean that unless someone is playing some type of portable game with sexual situations in it in public there's absolutely no risk of any adverse effects caused by games because by the time the player was to enter in contact with a potential victim the effect would have run out. Most people tend not to play such games in situations with prying eyes anyways so there's literally no leg to stand on even if one were to take the absolute worst case scenario to be the case, which is something I reject in the first place.

I reject it because competition is a way of channeling violence, a way of using it in a civilized way, its nature is fundamentally that of violence but with the harm minimized to a point that society deems tolerable. That alone is not enough to make it of a fundamentally different nature so it is natural for competition to make one feel a little bit more violent too. On the other hand, playing a game with sexual situations is nothing like actually being in sexual situations though, and also has nothing to do with molestations and what have you since game characters are not in possession of an actual will that one can act despite of, so there's a bunch more gaps in logic here if you wish to claim a link. Fundamentally, as long as game chars lack a human-like AI that can form its own will and ego, you can't call anything you do to it neither murder nor sexual assault nor grooming nor anything else. It's just fun, just playing with cutouts that just happen to not be made of paper.


In the end we are all free to draw stick figures and write our own scripts and play-act any sort of fictional depraved activity in our own privacy for entertainment and even if you ban every game ever made that won't ever cease to be the case. I wouldn't want to live in a world where you could control people enough where you can make it not be the case.

 

[gyrobot_v1legacy]

I am starting to see a derail in this topic. Focus on the recent happenings and not on the psychology of how video games affects people

 

[Cette]

It sounded to me like you're missing the point and hence can't actually like it because I think to anyone who does like it the fact that the fanservice in SK is entirely tongue-in-cheek is something obvious. I'm not sure if the comedic ecchi components somehow fail to work for you if the char is supposedly 15 (but looks fully grown and behaves similarly grown)

Almost all of these kids reference the fact that they're kids constantly, in the series about them growing up.

And if this is your idea of looking or acting "fully grown"

NSFW! https://youtu.be/q7ZAt33POhE

or what have you but if you claim to like it then I will expect you to be aware of the fact that most of these moments are so clearly super over the top to the point of absurdity that to treat them with any amount of seriousness is to inherently miss the point about them. It's like treating a joke about death seriously and commenting about how death isn't funny and how you have to cherish life and how we have to honor the dead. Yes, even if the humor is extracted from a 15 year old being groped by an octopus or something, it's still you missing the joke if you get all uppity about it and try to make a serious case against child grooming when the subject is actually a joke.

I'm well aware that it's absurd and a joke. I generally think they're funny.

It's also sexualizing minors to do it. That makes it less funny. I think it would be more funny if it did less of the child nudity and more of the slapstick absurdity. Or at least swap the child nudity for adult nudity.

It would also be a lot less "approaching the edge of illegality".

Just so we're clear am I now on a watch list for having clicked that youtube link? Because it sure as shit feels like it should be grounds for that.

If this is what people are trying to preserve then burn it all to the ground and they can try and put out the flames with their creepy creepy tears.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

It sounded to me like you're missing the point and hence can't actually like it because I think to anyone who does like it the fact that the fanservice in SK is entirely tongue-in-cheek is something obvious. I'm not sure if the comedic ecchi components somehow fail to work for you if the char is supposedly 15 (but looks fully grown and behaves similarly grown)

Almost all of these kids reference the fact that they're kids constantly, in the series about them growing up.

And if this is your idea of looking or acting "fully grown"

NSFW! https://youtu.be/q7ZAt33POhE

or what have you but if you claim to like it then I will expect you to be aware of the fact that most of these moments are so clearly super over the top to the point of absurdity that to treat them with any amount of seriousness is to inherently miss the point about them. It's like treating a joke about death seriously and commenting about how death isn't funny and how you have to cherish life and how we have to honor the dead. Yes, even if the humor is extracted from a 15 year old being groped by an octopus or something, it's still you missing the joke if you get all uppity about it and try to make a serious case against child grooming when the subject is actually a joke.

I'm well aware that it's absurd and a joke. I generally think they're funny.

It's also sexualizing minors to do it. That makes it less funny. I think it would be more funny if it did less of the child nudity and more of the slapstick absurdity. Or at least swap the child nudity for adult nudity.

It would also be a lot less "approaching the edge of illegality".

Just so we're clear am I now on a watch list for having clicked that youtube link? Because it sure as shit feels like it should be grounds for that.

If this is what people are trying to preserve then burn it all to the ground and they can try and put out the flames with their creepy creepy tears.

I always have a hard time trying to talk about these games because, ultimately, I like them. The clothes destruction is a neat mechanic to represent armor and damage taken, the creative finishers (KO a character next to specific areas of the map and you get the mini-cutscenes in that video), etc...aren't necessarily bad.

But they could really do the equivalent of changing a camera angle without affecting the rest of the game at all. It'd piss off the ebophillies and the...I dunno, hyper-purists, but it'd be much easier to sell.