Maybe I was ignorant about the greater context regarding cultural differences. My deepest apologies.
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If I read the thread right, the problem is Sony censoring them from Japanese games but not from Western ones.
Edit: As in "made in", not "sold in".
Edited by Medinoc on Mar 23rd 2021 at 9:06:36 AM
"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."Okay, so which Western games does Sony publish with uncensored panty shots and bathing scenes? I'm asking genuinely.
For the record, I am completely fine with censoring sexual content featuring characters who are underage in Western markets. I don't care what the Japanese say about age of consent: I live in the United States.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 23rd 2021 at 4:07:48 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Also, "anti-japanese move" isn't the only possible explanation. By default, I'd rather go with "They think they can get away with doing it against Japanese studios, and think they can't get away with doing it against Western studios, no matter how much they'd like to".
Edited by Medinoc on Mar 23rd 2021 at 9:11:59 AM
"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."Since this is Sony that we're talking about here, and major corporations are usually more interested in money than in cultural identity politics, the answer is always money.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 23rd 2021 at 4:13:30 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"And then a bunch of fans of that content try to defend it by claiming that you're racist if you don't allow it to be shown uncensored. In other words, Poisoning the Well. This is a song I've heard sung before.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 23rd 2021 at 4:17:58 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"There's a couple of points of contention here.
First, I'd like to point out that probably at least some of the discussion and coverage around this issue undoubtedly comes hand-in-hand with nationalist stripes. When Sony (a historically Japanese company) switches both its headquarters and marketing strategies to focus on a North American audience, it makes sense that Japanese nationalistic types (which we all agree exist) would get riled up.
It's the same sort of thing that drives a lot of people to rail against Tencent. While there are absolutely concerns over one company exerting this much financial influence in the industry, many of the arguments boil down to "this Chinese company is taking control of all these Western development teams!!!!111!11".
Second, there seems to be a huge rush to pin credit or blame on the platform's manufacturer, with no regard to attempting to comply with local laws or the will of the game's developers. Especially given that the lists I've seen on "censored" games include stuff that clearly has nothing to do with Sony - the big one I noted is removing red crosses from older game ports, due to the Red Cross throwing a bit of a legal fit with any media that does use that symbol to indicate health or healing. And it applies across ALL platforms.
It would not surprise me if a number of these people were predisposed to dislike Sony and/or prop up Nintendo (be it for nationalism, console warring, or something else), and the whole censorship thing was just how it manifested itself.
Edited by TotemicHero on Mar 23rd 2021 at 4:37:50 AM
Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)Basically, yes. It's simply incongruent that you want to censor games from one country or region, but you aren't willing to do the same with the games from your own country.
To be completely fair, Nintendo did the same in the past: They were more lenient with Japanese games than with western-developed games or their translations.
I asked earlier what specific content Sony is leaving uncensored in Western games that is getting cut from Japanese games. Nobody answered.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"The situation here is quite different, because Tencent works alongside with the CCP, and any money given to them is also siffoned to the Chinese government, which in turn is carrying out a genocide against the Uyghur.
As someone who had both Jewish friends and relatives, giving money to Tencent, or any Chinese company associated with the CCP, directly or indirectly, is like buying a German product made by a company associated by the Nazis during WW 2.
It comes down to the legitimacy of the censorship on its own. If the censorship is legitimate in a vacuum (and other legitimate areas for censorship aren't being ignored) then it’s not a racism issue and the people complaining are doing a milder version of “well bigotry is part of my culture so it’s wrong to not let me be bigoted”.
However, if the censorship isn’t legitimate in a vacuum then even if it’s equally implemented you can end up in a situation where there’s a disproportionate impact on one group even if they’re not deliberately targeted. The same way certain office restrictions on hair style have a disproportion impact on African-Americans.
I don’t actually know what the games being talked about are, what content is being censored or why, but that’s the basic principle around how it could either be being done in a racist way or not.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran@Fighteer: For one example I do know of, God of War III is a Western game. Look up "God of War III Sex With Aphrodite" on Youtube (you'll forgive me if I don't link it directly). Uncensored nipples and butt, the former being sexually rubbed in the on-camera part. (Only the lesbian sex is shown, so Hide Your Lesbians is not the case here.) I don't know of any recent Japanese games that have gotten that much over to America.
@all: Note that infighting between the American and Japanese branches of a console maker is pretty much a constant of the industry, as I understand it.
From what I remember and my understanding, it's a combination of:
- The censorship seems to be biased towards the anime aesthetic (i.e., you can have full on camera sex with prostitites and kill them if they're realistic, but a girl with the anime aesthetic in a swimsuit in one scene should be censored).
- The fact that the rules are not written in paper and are applied in an arbritrary "I know it when I see it" sort of way so you could submit a game thinking it should be fine, only to find out that you need to put in additional time and resources to to remove them, which is again, a bigger problem for small developers that didn't grow up in a Western culture and wouldn't know why violent sex against women is allowed but skimpy clothing isn't.
- The censorship being done even for games not intended to be released in America and Europe.
- The fact that the game can only be submitted for review in English, adding additional cost for non-English speaking small developers
Personally, I could definitely see why the practices above could be seen as discriminatory towards developers outside of America and Europe in a "Do as Romans do even if you're not in Rome" sort of way.
Edited by Servbot on Mar 25th 2021 at 1:25:50 AM
I am not going to wield as my main argument, but I do need to point out many situations like these has the "looks like an 8 year old but is Really 700 Years Old" thing.
That said, looking at the vast majority of games with anime aesthetics, they get away with a lot of panty shots, boob rubs, or otherwise outright erotic things than not. A-Cup Angst is probably the new Most Common Superpower for anime themed videogames, not to mention the ubiquitous Beach Episode or downright Gainaxing most Asian MMORPGs are known for.
Now, the worst mistake you can try here is to say "but there's western games with those too!" and yes. There are. But the point is not that "Western games don't have them and asian ones do", it's that "There's lack of censorship on both and plenty of eroticism on both".
I would wager this has to do with the fact it is so incredibly context dependent. We, most of all, as tropers analize these things and we know things can be justified, subverted, analyzed, etc.
But sometimes, they are just goddamn porn. And if you ask me, that is fine. There is a tinge of dishonesty when you are claiming something is some sort of cultural artifact, "inherent to a genre", or any some such of paper thin excuse, when all you see is just pornography. And it wouldn't be an issue if it was just pointed out it was solely for the purpose of titillation.
Just because you can get away with porn in one jurisdiction, doesn't mean that porn is any less porn.
I mean. Yeah. But. This isn't endemic to Japan, or the Video Games Industry. Welcome to capitalism in a world where great financial institutions and powers are centered on english-speaking bases.
Besides I'd argue that independent platforms such as GoG or Steam have done wonders to help indie developers a better chance at exposure. And funny I mention steam given how many outright erotic games they uploaded as of recent, so.
But uh yeah. Most of these issues stem from either capitalism, to which some voices such as Jim Sterling is happy to elaborate on more than I, or I frankly still fail to see how anime and japan is clearly a targeted victim here.
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothesIt's important not to get carried away. Requiring that things be in English is not racism. People need to stop throwing around that accusation whenever something they don't like happens.
Is it possible that anime as an art style is being censored more than Western styles? Maybe. I have no direct experience. But I've watched plenty of anime and holy shit is there a lot of fetish appeal going on. If I start looking at certain parts of Steam, the overlap between "anime" style games and "adult content" is extremely high.
Sure, maybe Westerners are a bunch of prudes who get squeamish when a grown man ogles someone who looks like a pre-teen dressed in a cheerleader outfit. I'll accept that. Call me racist.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"![]()
Except its not the whole Really 700 Years Old thing, they have been forcing censoring on things like Senran Kagura and such which are decidedly NOT that. They forced the cancelation of several games which later came out on switch, Xbox or PC.
But they fully allow Metro Exodus with a full strip club with topless dancers to come out the same year without issue.
Edited by Memers on Mar 25th 2021 at 9:02:46 AM
Are those dancers the point of the game, though? Is it a dating sim where you have to pick which topless dancer to woo and dress up in fetish outfits?
Granted: I don't know what Sengan Kagura is.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 25th 2021 at 12:05:33 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I don't know what Senran Kagura is either. But I can tell you that I would not be fired if I google image searched "Metro exodus" and my boss caught a glimpse of that screen though.
Edited by Aszur on Mar 25th 2021 at 10:08:26 AM
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes![]()
From what I gather, Senran Kagura is a fanservicy game about kunoichi training in a ninja school and the gameplay seems akin to a 3D Beat 'em Up (I'm not such if it is specifically a musou or not). I also think Clothing Damage is sued as a heath indicator that is also sued to titillate players.
Edited by MorningStar1337 on Mar 25th 2021 at 9:11:40 AM
Take The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt as an example. There is a ton of sex and nudity in it, yet nobody would hear about you playing that game and think, "Oh, what a perv."
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 25th 2021 at 12:18:27 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

So it's "anti-Japan" to censor panty shots and bathing scenes in video games? I'm still baffled here. How is any of this racism?
It's certainly market-driven censorship, but "artistic integrity" aside, none of this seems to be targeting Japanese culture so much as specific aspects of it that supposedly offend Westerners. I can see how one would be against this practice from a purist standpoint, but turning it into an accusation of racism feels like a case of Poisoning the Well.
Edited by Fighteer on Mar 23rd 2021 at 4:06:14 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"