Jump to content

Top Hat Studios issues statement saying they will not censor Sense - 不祥的预感: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story


Recommended Posts

This story only gets more ridiculous the further back you go.

 

In 2019, the developer of the game gave an interview  where he went on a rant about censorship and the usual nonsense you hear from the anti-SJW crowd, but here's the best part.

 

Quote

The response from gamers has been great, I feel like I tapped into something missing in the market right now, mainly because I am one of those gamers who feel like the AAA industry doesn’t want me around and is actively trying to get rid of me.

 

I really hope to keep living up to their expectations and fully intend to work FOR them first and foremost. They’re customers first, but the number of people that have put their trust in me to make this game is incredibly humbling. I actually think about that all the time, and keep it in the front of my mind when I make decisions.

 

The gaming media has been the exact opposite.  Most of the mainstream outlets have largely and purposefully ignored us. Whistleblowers have let us known we’ve been outright blacklisted by several.

 

According to the developer, there's a conspiracy to blacklist his game by several of the big gaming sites.

 

giphy.gif

 

Mainstream gaming sites ignore hundreds of indie games every year. The ones that usually get attention tend to be more polished than your standard indie game. 

 

Why would there be an intentional decision to ignore this game? It's not like it was generating a lot of hype before release, or won a bunch of awards. It's just another indie game that mainstream sites wouldn't take the time to cover, because they probably didn't even know it existed.

 

But no, according to the dev, not only have the people at these companies talked about making the decision to not cover a game no one had heard of by a first time developer no one had heard of, but other people at those companies contacted the dev to tell them about the conspiracy.

 

Courting controversy has always been part of this game's marketing.

 

 

Edited by Abby_TheLastofUs
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

41 minutes ago, TolmanianDevil said:

Then as others have pointed out, why this game.  With Dead or Alive, Black Desert, Senran Kagura, Monster Monpiece, Galgun just off the top of my head i don't understand why this one is targeted.  has the landscape changed so much since the other games I've mentioned that this much ire is directed at this game in particular?

 

Subject of this thread = Indie and Western

Games you've listed = Not Indie and not Western

 

It's really that simple xDxDxD

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Death threats fake or not idgaf (but surely this worked), checked out reviews might be be pretty decent Metroidvania its on Steam Sale right now for any interested. Bought it with dirtcheap Hatred.  Peace.

Edited by Beliar4
Typo
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, TolmanianDevil said:

The syntax of the comments are extremely similar.  What I mean by this is the typing style - if you read different posts on this thread for example, they come across differently as they should for each separate person. 

That's because if you look at some of the posts on twitter some of these examples are from the same few vocal people. There's was even two people almost replying to every comment or tweet on it complaining about the game.

 

This is one of those situations if they ignored it would've blew off and never picked up into what it was until they made their post. Even when you look at most Switch News sites most of them just had a every short like two paragraph article on the games eventually Switch release. No one actually picked up this "News" until Top Hat made the original post claiming censorship. (At that time too alot of these comments didn't delve as harsh as they did, they definitely got worse over time from the back and forth fighting over it.)

 

2 hours ago, Lance_87 said:

 

Subject of this thread = Indie and Western

Games you've listed = Not Indie and not Western

 

It's really that simple xDxDxD

Pretty much how it goes. I mean when porting most Asian Games over here we see the "controversial" boob sliders go. But yet Western games like Conan Online and CyberPunk 2077 can let you customize your junk freely including size.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

every  blue checkmark twitter rises hayfork and torches when ND got death threat, but when this small indie got them none of these clowns have talked about it....

 

for god sake it's just a video game with a freaking fictional characters, how the heck a pixelated Mellons can trigger someone to send death threat to a dev or an artist?

 

I read some of the tweets even got mad at Nintendo of this.... lol! this isn't made by Nintendo in the first place, clearly shows that these people don't even play video games, they just wanna harvest likes from other people's  works.

 

and now cleavage and big titts is representing violence??? 

Edited by yellowwindow7
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 1/1/2021 at 3:17 PM, scemopagliaccioh said:

Death threats have been extremely  common since the dawn of the internet, it's only recently that people glorified their importance, or lack thereof.

 

The problem is it's virtually accessible anywhere now. Back during the dawn of the internet you had to go to a desktop computer, use a dinosaur dial-up internet connection, put in your login and password, and wait for the computer to finally connect.

 

Things like the old message boards and the old Yahoo chatrooms had their share of people using death threats. But because you had to be at a computer and go through a slow connection process, that limited a lot of the morons and assholes.

 

Today the internet is in many ways almost instantaneous. Everything is streamlined, every idiot has a smartphone which instantly connects with Facebook/Twitter which means a lot more people can write angry messages towards something they don't like. People realized if they get enough of them to threaten someone, the other side will cave in and cater to the cancel culture.

 

A big reason why we're in the shithole we're in today can be traced back to how people handle themselves on social media. It's gotten out of control.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Spaz said:

 

The problem is it's virtually accessible anywhere now. Back during the dawn of the internet you had to go to a desktop computer, use a dinosaur dial-up internet connection, put in your login and password, and wait for the computer to finally connect.

 

Things like the old message boards and the old Yahoo chatrooms had their share of people using death threats. But because you had to be at a computer and go through a slow connection process, that limited a lot of the morons and assholes.

 

Today the internet is in many ways almost instantaneous. Everything is streamlined, every idiot has a smartphone which instantly connects with Facebook/Twitter which means a lot more people can write angry messages towards something they don't like. People realized if they get enough of them to threaten someone, the other side will cave in and cater to the cancel culture.

 

A big reason why we're in the shithole we're in today can be traced back to how people handle themselves on social media. It's gotten out of control.

Definitely don't miss dial up with AOL in the mid 90s, was awful

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, SnowxSakura said:

Definitely don't miss dial up with AOL in the mid 90s, was awful

 

I never said it was great because it wasn't. But at least it filtered a lot of the idiots, because a lot of people back in the 1990s still didn't know how to use a desktop computer.

 

Now the internet is something that western culture has taken and used to try to censor, bully, harass, mock and ridicule anyone that doesn't conform to an ideology. What just happened to Top Hat Studios is a perfect example of this.

 

Sometimes I miss when people just checked their e-mail for a few minutes, quickly browsed the internet and signed off.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 02/01/2021 at 6:16 PM, Abby_TheLastofUs said:

I looked through that tweet that was linked here, and I saw maybe two or three replies that could be read as asking the game to be censored. Most of the negative comments directed at it are making fun of the game, not calling for it to be cancelled. There's over 700 replies, so there's the possibility I could have missed something, but more likely it seems this is a manufactured controversy on the publisher's part to increase sales of a game that's already bombed on Steam.

 

Scrolling through the Top Hat Studio's twitter account, they average less than 30 retweets per tweet, but their anti-censorship posturing tweet got over 4000 retweets and they gained over 2000 new followers in a day. It's maybe the most attention they've ever gotten. 

 

Meanwhile, the game has been out since August on Steam and has only 125 reviews and at one point it was pulled from sale due to poor player feedback. The most recent reviews are applauding the devs for "sticking it to the SJWs", with some stating they aren't even going to play the game. They just want to support the devs.

 

Like I said at the top, this whole controversy was cooked up by the publisher to get people to buy a game that bombed. People make fun of a game that no one was going to buy, publishers use the newfound attention to play the victim and get some sales out of it. 

 

 

That may be, but anything that draws attention to the evils of private company enforced censorship is a positive thing as far as I’m concerned.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have actually heard of this game before this, and I seem to vaguely remember there being an article or something where one of the developers was commenting on "cancel culture" or whatever. (Edit: After skimming through the thread, it seems @Abby_TheLastofUs has posted a link to the article/interview I was talking about). Pretty much have zero interest in the game, even after looking into gameplay and reviews, so I'm kinda indifferent to this. The drama surrounding this game baffles me to be honest, it's hardly the first game to have sexualised female characters, and a lot of the people I have seen in screenshots/receipts getting irate over it seem to be "TERFs(?)" for some reason.

 

Either way, good on them for not censoring the game I suppose, but I imagine things like this are sadly very, very common in the industry, and I imagine a lot of developers/studios just don't really even bother to bring it up publicly. Not gonna lie, this whole thing smells a little fishy to me, I'm not going to say it's manufactured drama or whatever because I have no proof that it is (or isn't), but it just seems very strange in a way I can't quite put my finger on, especially when comparing it to other "outrages" over games or something such-and-such developer said in recent years.

Edited by SuperSmexy500
Link to comment
Share on other sites

So I`ve played the game and I frikin love it. Metroidvania it isnt because your character dont have any skills or unlock more skills maybe later i just gain access to 3rd floor of the haunted building. Its resident evil style gameplay find that to do this to combine with that to unlock this etc./ you`re cyberpunk girl transfered 100 years back so all cyberpunk stuff end at prologue, also all that non-censored stuff pretty much end with prologue, silent hillish you got that building that have 7 floors you unlock map pretty early. Saving is back resident evil style you can save at tv stations and you need vhs (betamax) tapes. Enemies are ghosts, you need to run from them, hide in special places and try to make offering to calm their anger. All in 2.5D. (Gameplay something similiar to Lone Survivor if anyone played it.)

Edited by Beliar4
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, Spaz said:

 

The problem is it's virtually accessible anywhere now. Back during the dawn of the internet you had to go to a desktop computer, use a dinosaur dial-up internet connection, put in your login and password, and wait for the computer to finally connect.

 

Things like the old message boards and the old Yahoo chatrooms had their share of people using death threats. But because you had to be at a computer and go through a slow connection process, that limited a lot of the morons and assholes.

 

Today the internet is in many ways almost instantaneous. Everything is streamlined, every idiot has a smartphone which instantly connects with Facebook/Twitter which means a lot more people can write angry messages towards something they don't like. People realized if they get enough of them to threaten someone, the other side will cave in and cater to the cancel culture.

 

A big reason why we're in the shithole we're in today can be traced back to how people handle themselves on social media. It's gotten out of control.

Don't agree on this, I used to administrate forums back before everyone and their mothers began using Facebook in early 2009, and back then, it was much much more easy  to gather informations on people posting, an ip ban was actually effective, nowadays, a pointless joke, still, the providers got better and now  you don't get  much information  from an IP, and it's even harder to get the "real" IP.

Social media is a different kind of beast, you shouldn't be giving your data on the Internet, and, if you're obligated to do it for work related reasons, you should simply make multiple accounts, some for Internet use, and an official one  for work, if someone thinks their "original" opinions on twitter/reddit/facebook, warrant their  exposure, that's entirely a problem they brought on themselves, "Anonymous" precedes  a bunch of kids wearing Guy Fawkes masks playing script kiddie, but there's nothing you can do if they spam nonsensical words like "cringe", and then proceed to feed  their ego.

But still, never saw the problems escalating to homicide, even if you manage to get informations on someone you'd need, a deranged mind, being close to where the person is, a good deal of luck  to avoid having troubles before they're able to kill the person, an highly likely lack of experience  with firearms that would not help you during the critical moment, since  a person this disturbed would alert the people selling guns/shooting polygons (am I safe myself doing business with them? This person could not think about the consequences  of their actions), do I know this person's routine? Could they have someone living with them putting more chaos and unexpected outcomes  in their plan? Is the person ready to see blood? Or is it the first time, get frozen in the heat of the moment (huh, puns) allowing the person defending themselves to react, potentially even killing the aggressor? And that's talking about killing a normal person, it gets much more complicated, and, dare I say, downright impossible against an actress like the Abby VA or this faceless corporation. Death threats have always been a joke, but people  nowadays use them either to support what they like and create excuses, or just mock them for giving importance to this, it's interchangeable, depending on either political leaning,  or sunk cost fallacy, this thread itself represents a microcosm if it. As for Social media shit, it's kinda the problem when something is allowed to grow too big, defeating the purpouse of capitalism itself, only way I see it solved, is to "nationalize" the places, to make them less "cool" and  disperse  the userbase.

Edited by scemopagliaccioh
Link to comment
Share on other sites

32 minutes ago, scemopagliaccioh said:

Don't agree on this, I used to administrate forums back before everyone and their mothers began using Facebook in early 2009, and back then, it was much much more easy  to gather informations on people posting, an ip ban was actually effective, nowadays, a pointless joke, still, the providers got better and now  you don't get  much information  from an IP, and it's even harder to get the "real" IP.

 

I've used forums since around 2002 - 2004 so I've had a lot of experience dealing with morons. The way people act hasn't changed, what has changed is a lot more people having instant access to the internet.

 

I still remember going to MySpace groups back in the day and having my share of quarrels with assholes. These days people are more prone to just block others or lock a thread if it gets too out of hand. An IP ban would be reserved for the real bad offenders who broke the rules and threatened people, but even back in the late 2000s there were ways around the IP ban. Today it doesn't serve much purpose.

 

What has developed over the past decade is the PC cancel culture. I definitely noticed things were starting to get really bad on Facebook back in 2011 - 2012 when the Casey Anthony trial was going on. So many people wasted their time arguing over a pointless trial. Then the 2012 Presidential Elections came around. I was blocked for saying things remotely positive about Barack Obama, like they couldn't handle someone else disagreeing with their viewpoint. I never liked Facebook to begin with, but in 2019 I finally decided to cut the cord for good.

 

All I see out of Facebook and Twitter anymore is the angry mob mentality, which has attacked companies like Top Hat Studios because of well, making the decision not to censor their game. It's a completely fruitless endeavor, but people are so eagerly clamoring to the cancel culture which is the world we live in today. It absolutely sickens me to no end.

 

40 minutes ago, scemopagliaccioh said:

As for Social media shit, it's kinda the problem when something is allowed to grow too big, defeating the purpouse of capitalism itself, only way I see it solved, is to "nationalize" the places, to make them less "cool" and  disperse  the userbase.

 

That's any website really. Twitter was sort of the small guy back when they started with a small following. Now it has evolved into a corporate behemoth swallowing anything that gets in its way.

 

The best thing that Twitter can do is to kill itself. Nothing good comes out of it, it's a soulless void used by people to spread shitty internet memes and brag about their arrogance.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Beliar4 said:

So I`ve played the game and I frikin love it. Metroidvania it isnt because your character dont have any skills or unlock more skills maybe later i just gain access to 3rd floor of the haunted building. Its resident evil style gameplay find that to do this to combine with that to unlock this etc./ you`re cyberpunk girl transfered 100 years back so all cyberpunk stuff end at prologue, also all that non-censored stuff pretty much end with prologue, silent hillish you got that building that have 7 floors you unlock map pretty early. Saving is back resident evil style you can save at tv stations and you need vhs (betamax) tapes. Enemies are ghosts, you need to run from them, hide in special places and try to make offering to calm their anger. All in 2.5D. (Gameplay something similiar to Lone Survivor if anyone played it.)

 

How long was the playthrough for you?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Eraezr said:

 

How long was the playthrough for you?

I just start yesterday and play for 2 hours as i mention ive only reached 3 floor out of 7. Calm 2 out of 13 ghost? (theres achievement mention theres 13 ghosts). Stuff that people want to censor is heavy in prologue, holo-titties in your face, but when you enter haunted building only main character is well "equiped" what you soon forgot about because avioding ghosts and stuff. Im gonna play more today evening try to reach floor 4 or 5. I will post here how long take me to beat when im done.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1. They may have exaggerated.

 

2. I for myself dont believe they have exaggerated. Why? Because look at the fkn internet nowadays. The idiot cancel culture and the Twitter mob. I seriously can see the SJW fighting this because why would you portrait women with big boobs? You evil evil game developer!

 

3. Even if this is exaggerated, I have massive respect for the devs because they put out a message that says "funk the cancel culture, funk the Twitter mob, we stay true to our principles which means no censorship". This alone wins them the internet for the day.

 

Edited by AtotheMtotheZ
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Backed this a long time ago and noticed it already released, but I remember the game was also planned for PS4 and Vita, yet while it already hit Switch and Steam I'm wondering if they had to cancel the release on Sony platforms due to the erotic nature of the game, they clearly stated that they will not censor the game in any way nor cut their creative freedom, -which is admirable, unlike that Agony and Lust For Darkness did at the start, yet them redeemed themselves, at least on Steam- so yeah, I was wondering if this won't release on PS4 or Vita or it will just take more time for these platforms.

 

 

That is a great statement too, I wish every company would not blindly accept their censoring and at least raise a voice of common sense, when in most cases -especially for japanese developers- there isn't anything to censor and the age ratings are totally inacurate and false, and Sony just decide they don't want these games on their platforms.

 

Here you can see the platforms, but doesn't look like they updated it for a long time: http://projectsensegame.com/buy.html

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i saw this only recently and would like to know as well. Good to see a company that does not want to censor their creative freedom or expression

 

this was on an update 3 days ago, Jan 7, 2021

" Onto the PS4 version, we likely looking to do a dual release alongside vita within this quarter. We are trying to plan for next month, but have not yet confirmed this. The game is already out of PS4 QA though, and has passed. So we are simply finalizing dates rather than waiting on anything technical there. The PS4 release should have a universal release (all regions) on the same day.  "

Edited by Void
  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh thanks a lot for that piece of information, I didn't want to research too much since, especially for games that feature CG art like visual novels, I don't like to spoil any of it, so I don't like to check news sites or Twitter, I found the statement while dodging game art, haha. So thanks a lot~

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...