Censorship in gaming

[Zenpai]

Another day, another blog.

 

So recently, I’ve been watching a lot of the videos included in the Censored Gaming YouTube channel (go subscribe to them, it’s really good) and it got me thinking about censorship in gaming (and in general).

 

So… why are things censored? (And by censorship, I mean differences in the same game between different regions).

 

There may be a lot of reasons, but generally, those have to do with either cultural differences or local legislation (and its varying degrees of strictness). And usually, the two main factors that will make the censorship hammer fall down are sex and nudity (or sexual suggestiveness) and violence, with the former being more common than the latter, at least here in the West.

 

 

 

 

But… is there any valid reason to censor content?

 

 

In the vast majority of cases, I do not believe so. First of all, we have ratings for a reason. It’s one thing to want to maybe tone down the original to attain a lower rating (as long as you don’t compromise on your vision), or to comply with local regulations in a specific country (which are frequently excessively strict, but that’s a topic for another conversation), but to give different regions different content just because of different sensibilities is something I do not think should be done.

 

Even toning down your game for a lower rating may not be all that excusable. The average age of gamers is currently 35 years old. Unless your property is fundamentally targeted towards a lower demographic (a Spongebob game rated PEGI 18 would be… interesting, to say the least), ratings should rarely be taken into consideration. The number of games rated M or PEGI 18 has risen immensely over the last decade and they haven’t been selling any less because of it.

 

 

 

 

But after seeing most of the videos in the Censored Gaming channel, it seems we still have censorship in games. A lot of it. Why is this, then?

As I’ve told you before, the biggest reasons for censorship in gaming are sex & nudity and violence, with the former being much more of a problem here in the West, and the latter being a more touchy subject in Japan.

 

 

Regarding violence, it seems to me that the problem resides more on the rater’s personal sensibilities rather than an actual need to censor something. As I said above, the average age of gamers is almost double 18 years old, so I do not really believe there's motive to cut any stronger content from games.

 

Sure, there are people with different sensibilities, but… they can just not buy the game (shocking idea, I know).

 

Game publishers and raters sometimes have this idea that they must censor a game for everyone if some people might find the content offensive or disturbing. I’m going to let you in on a little secret: YOU CANNOT PLEASE EVERYONE. For comparison's sake: most people do not enjoy certain kinds of movies. Some don’t like dramas. Some don’t like action movies. Some don’t like animated movies. I, for instance, do not enjoy musicals or horror movies. There are even some people that do not enjoy comedies (I’ve met them). The same applies to games. Some people don’t enjoy platformers. Some don’t like shooters. Some don’t enjoy fighters. And so on and so forth. It’s exactly the same with “stronger” content. Some might find it objectionable, but some might actually appreciate the developer’s boldness in including that stronger content.

 

Again, you cannot please everyone. Different people have different sensibilities, but that’s no reason to censor someone’s artistic vision.

 

(Yes, videogames are art. Shocking idea, I know).

 

 

 

As for sex, nudity and sexually suggestive content – this is something that the West has a bit more of an issue with than Japan (you’ve seen the games they put out, right?). Even though Western games have become bolder, including more sex and nudity lately, there is still a lot of censorship and controversy with regards to suggestive content.

 

Even if the game doesn’t contain any actual sex or nudity, there are a lot of games, especially those from Japan, that contain a lot of… interesting outfit choices showing a lot of skin. Sadly, the number of games that “tame” those images and cover up all that naughty, naughty skin is too big to count.

 

I believe this is, again, mostly due to the belief that the majority of people that play games are children and that these kinds of images might “corrupt” them. Somehow.

 

 

 

 

Well, besides the arguments I already presented when talking about graphic violence which also apply here (gamers’ average age being very high, being impossible to please everyone, people with any issues just not buying the game), I would like to add an additional one… have you seen the kind of suggestive content NO ONE seems to have a problem with? There is an insane amount of content featuring real live women in extremely skimpy clothing or suggestive topless men out there, be it magazines, TV shows, movies, even huge billboards – all in perfect view of any children – and yet no one seems to care. But as soon as you see suggestive polygons in a video game… no, no, no, that’s going too far!

 

 

 

 

To be honest, I think the West’s priorities are kind of backwards. So, blood, gore and violence are more acceptable than… people’s bodies? I believe one’s definitely more natural than the other…

 

 

Regarding sexual suggestiveness, there is something that is a little less black-and-white – the display of minors in suggestive clothes. A lot of characters, especially those in Japanese videogames, are extremely sexualized minors. While I do realize that this might be a bit… touchier, I also do not believe this should be censored. Unless you have the sexualization or promotion of exploitation of actual real live minors (which, goes without saying, should definitely not be allowed), I don’t really see this as a big problem. Real people and mere representations are different things. I’m not a big believer of “seeing leads to imitating” (I don’t quite think everyone that saw Brokeback Mountain suddenly turned gay). Furthermore, actual teenagers (and sometimes even children) dress in extremely revealing clothing in real life and I don’t really see that many people complaining (whether it’s in good taste or not is another thing entirely). And to be honest, it’s not like sex isn’t the first thing on teenagers’ minds (the rates of teenage pregnancies speak for themselves).

 

 

These are the “big offenders”, but there are some other topics that might also raise some red flags with raters:

 

 

• ·         Religion and occultism – some religious and occult symbols like crosses, pentagrams and hexagrams are sometimes censored to avoid offending any religious sensibilities. Regarding this, the only thing I have to add is: guys, anyone that might have a problem with this is most definitely not the game’s target audience anyway. I know you’re trying to avoid any possible bad publicity, but… have the balls to stand by the creator’s artistic vision. Actually resisting external pressure to censor things will only get you good reputation among the gaming community. And if the problem is the children... guys, I would be very surprised if any child knows a single one of those symbols apart from crosses. It's like showing someone the answer to a riddle they haven't been told: it's going to mean nothing to them.
• ·         Alcohol – Basically, some people think that if you include alcohol in a game, kids will immediately raid their parents’ stash and get super wasted. Um, guys… I’m pretty sure children have been to family meetings and seen people drink. A lot. And no one really seems to have a problem with it. Again, seeing doesn’t lead to imitating. Chill.

 

 

 

 

For censorship to go away, we basically need to get rid of two things: the idea that gaming is mostly for kids (see above) and raters’ and publishers’ unwillingness to accept criticism and “bad word of mouth”.

Because sometimes, censorship derives from nothing more than a desire to avoid being talked about by that most hideous of fiends: the Social Justice Warrior.

 

In recent years, the Internet has seen the rise of the social justice warrior – people that take social progressive activism to such extremes that all it makes people want to do is the exact opposite.

 

Guys… so what if people feel “offended” by your product? As I said above, it’s impossible to please everyone. By definition, art will always upset someone. Just have the balls to stay true to your vision and… ignore these people. It’s not really that hard, all you have to do is… nothing. And to be honest, those are the people that wouldn’t even buy the game in the first place. And the censorship you would do would probably just drive the people that would buy it away. There are plenty of people, some of which I know personally, which just flat out refuse to buy any game with needless censorship like that. Again, it’s all a matter of staying true to your vision.

 

(Also, noticed how I used quotes on the word “offended”? Yeah, that’s more of a tantrum. Just do like you would any baby and ignore them).

 

 

 

There are three games in recent memory that have been the object of very strict or just… bizarre censorship choices:

 

Tekken 7 – there have been two long-standing characters in the fighting game series called Roger and his son, Roger Jr., both of whom are… kangaroos (Japan, amirite). Well, we’ve had these characters in the games ever since the second Tekken, which came out back in the time of the original Playstation, but suddenly, Roger Jr. went missing from the most recent iteration, Tekken 7. And why was this? Because… of fear of the social justice warriors. Since there was an extremely viral video containing a man punching a kangaroo that was met with a lot of backlash, the production team got scared they might receive backlash and just decided to cut the character entirely from the game. That’s right – they hadn’t even received any complaints yet – they just decided to cut him preemptively.

 

So apparently, it is so common for (so-called) animal activists to not be able to make a distinction between fiction and reality that the developers just straight out want to avoid all of their crap and would rather cut the character out of the game entirely than deal with it.

 

Um, Harada-san (producer of the Tekken series)… is it so hard to have the guts to ignore a bunch of crybabies? They hadn’t even done anything yet, you were just so scared of the potential backlash that you just decided to avoid it entirely. Come on, Harada-san, have some balls!...

 

Oh, and you know the best part? Kuma (a bear) and Panda are still in the game. Why? Because they’re stronger than humans. So apparently, it’s perfectly fine to engage in (fictional!) animal abuse if the animal is stronger than a human? It’s suddenly not animal abuse anymore?

 

 

 

 

Tokyo Mirage Sessions – Tokyo Mirage Sessions was a fusion between two extremely popular JRPG series – Fire Emblem and Shin Megami Tensei – and as such, there were a lot of people fervently anticipating it. The game was fairly well received, but there was something that fans were quick to notice – the censorship hammer fell down on this game. Hard. There were a lot of changes made to the game, but I’m going to try and condense them as best as I can:

 

• ·         Many revealing costumes were… made less so. However, one thing that’s baffling is that the censorship was not consistent. Despite some costumes having been altered, some that are just as revealing were left untouched. There are even cases of the same costume being censored in FMVs, but not in the actual gameplay, which is all the more odd.

o   One infamous example of this censorship is the "vagina bones" controversy, which… well, it’s best if you see it for yourselves.

 

 

• ·         The game revolves around idol culture, something very intrinsically Japanese. One of the aspects of idol culture is gravure modeling, which is a specific kind of modeling that involves a kind of playful eroticism. There is a mission in the game revolving entirely around gravure modeling… in the Japanese version, that is, because the entire mission was changed to just revolving around regular modeling in the Western release. Costumes were changed, references were changed… even the voice actors had to record new lines, despite the voiceover being exclusively in Japanese in all versions of the game (well, at least they’re going for consistency, I guess…)
• ·         All of the Japanese DLC is available in the West… except, you guessed it, the hot springs DLC. Because you can’t have none of that naughty, naughty skin showing!

 

 

It’s best if you see Censored Gaming’s video on the game, since listing all of the changes would make for too long a read (and a picture is worth a thousand words).

 

To be honest… it’s just appalling to see the lengths to which Nintendo went just to remove something that is fundamentally innocent. It’s all the more baffling considering that the game has a Teen/PEGI 12 rating and that the character’s ages were all raised in the Western release, meaning they were all adults. Nintendo says that the changes were made “Due to varying requirements and regulations in the many different territories Nintendo distributes its products”. I would really like to see those regulations, because I’m definitely calling this bullshit until I do. Some of the changes even affect the bloody artbook, for God’s sake!

 

 

Dead or Alive Extreme 3 – This game was notorious for having been the subject of a big controversy a few years ago. When asked about why the game wouldn’t be released over in the West, a representative for Koei Tecmo stated “Do you know how many issues happening in video game industry with regard to how to treat female in video game industry? We do not want to talk those things here. But certainly we have gone through in last year or two to come to our decision. Thank you. [sic]”.

 

This is notable for showing the influence social justice warriors can have in gaming, since we’re now reaching the point where they have become so toxic that game developers don’t even want to release the game in the West just to avoid all of the backlash.

 

Sadly, it seems we're now at a time where we can no longer just… vote with our wallets. There are now cases where someone’s point of view must be upheld, no questions asked. No more respecting other people’s opinions, no more just realizing that these are just… fictional characters (again, see above for how standards in gaming are somehow much stricter than they are for other media). No. They are right, we are wrong, their word is law and we must comply. A bit of… social dictatorship, if I may say so.

 

Fortunately, there’s a way to get around this “block”: since the Asian version contains English subtitles and both the Vita and the Playstation 4 are region-free, we can just freely import the game (if you don't mind the possible customs tariffs). Though it’s still sad that we have to resort to importing just to get around this big collective adult tantrum.

 

Here's Censored Gaming video’s on the subject and some of Play-Asia’s tweets regarding the controversy.

 

 

 

 

It’s a bit sad that we’re in 2017 and we still have this many censored games. It’s all the more baffling when you consider the stricter standards gaming faces in comparison to other kinds of media. It seems that if you put some content in, for instance, a comic book, or a movie, no one would really care, but put them in a game, and suddenly, it’s absolutely horrendous! This is not to say that those other media don’t occasionally suffer cuts and changes, but the censorship scale is clearly very tilted.

 

I mean… just leave our games alone. No one that is actually going to buy them is going to have a problem with the content you’re putting in. And if by some chance they do have a problem… you’ll lose one or two customers. It’s not a big deal. You would lose a hell of a lot more by censoring things. Again, some people will actually boycott the game if there’s any kind of change applied to their regional version.

 

Also, people have ways of getting around stuff. I’m sure you’ve heard of a little thing called piracy, right? I believe it’s not so good for business.

 

(Also, censoring things just gives you more work to do. Just sayin’.)

 

 

 

 

I’m not saying there isn’t stuff I disagree with, but that doesn’t mean that I should be the reason everyone else is deprived of content that I personally find objectionable. Just because I disagree with something, doesn’t mean I want it banned. And not everyone is going to be a potential buyer anyway. We don’t have the money to get all of the different games that keep coming out.

 

Again, just be true to your vision and keep what you want to keep. You’ll get much more respect from us that way. Just look at Yoko Taro, the director of Nier, and Ken'ichiro Takaki, producer of the Senran Kagura series: when asked about why his games are so fanservice-y, Taro just replied that he “just really likes girls. That’s all.” And Takaki has his famous “Tits are life, ass is hometown” quote. And while they might get a bit of flak for that, their audiences (i.e. the people that are actually going to buy their games) respect them all the more for it.

 

As long as you don’t have stuff that definitely shouldn’t be anywhere, like political propaganda, hate speech or, God forbid, child pornography, your content is never going to be all that big a deal. That doesn’t mean you should just start offending people for no reason, of course, but as long as you keep within the realms of common sense, it’s fine.

 

 

 

 

Look, we have ratings for a reason. Games are geared towards a specific demographic. If you need to raise the rating to accommodate your content, then boldly do so (unless you really want to target a lower audience). Otherwise, it’s fine. Again, most gamers are adults these days, so even if a game gets rated M or PEGI 18, if you can trust a person to vote*, then you can trust them to handle pretty much everything. Just… please leave our games alone. While I do realize that local laws may sometimes prevent you from doing so, try to leave games as untouched as possible (and I do mean local laws, not local review board members being extremely easy to trigger).

 

 

I guess that’s enough rambling for today. See you guys next time!

 

 

*I actually don’t think some people should be trusted to cast a vote and if recent events have shown us something is that we should clearly have more requisites than just age to be granted the right to vote I wrote this more for the sake of my argument than actually believing anyone over the age of 18 has the capacity to make an informed decision over the future of their country so that was my discreet political plug in an otherwise completely apolitical post I’ll be going now kthxbye

Edited December 23, 2017 by jrdemr

[Zenpai]

(OK, clearly something changed ever since the site revamp because I put in a lot of images but now it all seems like a giant wall of text. I'll try to see what's wrong later.)

 

EDIT: Found out the problem, images inserted.

Edited August 27, 2017 by jrdemr

[PiotrekHenry]

Let me sum censorhip in current games for you:
One of the biggest reasons (aside from culture, religion etc.) of censorship is LOWERING PEGI RATING in order to (supesedely) legally sell games to a wider (younger) audience.
As for why Censorship is completely unnecesary - Modern consoles have sonething called "Parental controls" which could handle the censorship for anyone under the required PEGI and give uncensored content to any adult.
As an adult I REALLY hate getting censored or ripped content. I paid for 100% of the game, not 70% of it.

[Remilia Scarlet]

Censorship is a crime and needs to die.

[SnowxSakura]

Censorship is sometimes necessary to localize a game, microbikinis on a 13 year old in xenoblade, or the shower massage minigame on "loli" characters in mugen souls is a good example of why they censor titles

 

also vagina bones? It was the pelvis

 

to add to that, the censorship is mainly for the parents that buy games for kids, they rarely censor mature rated games unless they violence is too high to even attain an M rating. Not only that, but they could risk government intervention if they feel they're overstepping their bounds(like they did in the 90s which eventually caused the formation of the ESRB)

Edited August 27, 2017 by SnowxSakura

[Facas]

i live for about 3 years in a european country were you have a lot of censorship. for ex gta san andreas don t have blood, metal gear solid 5 has normal and censured version. also sleeping dogs and dead nation cannot be bought were.

i m totaly agaist it because we leave in a free country, at least is what they say. our id card should be enough to buy this sexual or violent games.

 

p.s. playing this type of games dont make you a mass murderer or sexual predator

Edited August 27, 2017 by Facas

[olimoo101]

I'm against censorship in any form of art. The only kind of work that I would disagree with releasing to the public is work that actually harms people, and so far I haven't seen a game that has had that impact on people, so I'm basically completely against censorship. Also something that's related to censorship are rating systems. I honestly think that if a kid is playing something that they shouldn't be then the blame should be completely on the parent. I think that rating systems are a lazy way to monitor what people of different age groups can experience and take belief out of the idea of the individual. With that said, I think the perception of young children being largely affected by what they experience in art is completely overblown. Personally my reaction to the gore and sex in God of War was a shrug when I was ten years old and that hasn't changed one bit to now. So even if I was told I had to create some type of rating system even if I don't believe in it, I would create one rating for people below twelve years-old and one for people above the age of twelve.

 

There's my piece of mind on censorship

[Zenpai]

Now with images so that you guys will have more to see than a giant wall of text.

[mako-heart]

tl;dr and the youtube channel is crap. and ive been subbed before it was relevant to any mother fucker. 

[Senor_T_Dub]

To be clear your examples are not censorship. Censorship is the suppression of speech or communication by another group (media outlets, the government, etc.). Forcing South Park the Stick of Truth to remove scenes to be legally sold in Australia is true censorship. Changing the content of your product to suit a different market or to prevent backlash is a decision made by the developer or publisher. It would still be legal in most cases to sell the above games but there may (or may not) be negative press around the content. Preemptively avoiding negative press is not the same as being censored. Remember people die in China and North Korea and elsewhere for the things they say, so be happy that the worse you see is the loss of "vagina bones." That said, I do get the frustration over the changes but just remember, given the current political landscape in many countries, drawing the ire of those in charge is not worth it when it could be avoided by a handful of small changes. 

[Satoshi Ookami]

Censorship is, together with English dub, the worst thing west brought to gaming industry.

[Senbon Kaguya]

I only get mad when they cut stuff out like dialogue that had no meaning to be censored or if it's stuff crucial to the story. When small things get changed and it really doesn't affect my game, that's fine.

 

Also holding games back due to SJW crap or anything along those lines is borderline stupid. What happened to voting with your cash? Sure you can import but goddam, I would love to just pay for a game I really love in my country and play it. Not having to care what some snowflakes said about it and keep the game from ever coming west.

 

28 minutes ago, Satoshi Ookami said:

Censorship is, together with English dub, the worst thing west brought to gaming industry.

 

I liked the english dub in Persona 5, I don't mind it in games but I can see why some people don't.

Edited August 27, 2017 by Cielle

[ShadeSplit]

Censorship never makes sense, and still finds ways of becoming more ridiculous. A great example...

 

 

I find it very difficult to believe that any sane person could look at the image on the right and deem it "inappropriate" and then look at the image on the left and think that it's "suitable". Yet this is the type of behavior that we continue to see. Why is this accepted as necessary? Why do this at all? No one ever has a logical answer.

[Dav9834]

I'm a big proponent of free speech, especially in art. 

I hate to bring up the confederate monuments as an example because I think there were some extremely racist people involved. 

But on the other hand, I have no doubt others weren't and wanted them there so we don't forget what happened. 

 

Whether it be historical(good and bad), or video games, or movies, or books, I don't believe in censorship. Not like this. 

 

Ya know my friend in Germany, the schools don't teach about the holocaust, and it's deemed inappropriate to talk about. 

They went full censorship. 

 

In the US, we are taught about wars and skirmishes that show badly on all sorts of countries and ourselves. Including terrorism.

It's so we know and don't make the same mistakes(well it helps...) 

And censorship in video games, is just limiting what we can learn(good and bad).

From half naked men and women, to wars, to homosexuality, to religious overtones that conflict with other religions, to shooting people in an airport(which a lot of people felt emotionally and ethically bad about doing so, which is a good thing). And of course the most popular(and ridiculous censorship for its time) Hot Coffee  of which now there's full on sex scenes in games.(actually if you played phantasmagoria back in the early 90s, ya we had sex scenes back then too in video games)

 

So my views on censorship are pretty strong. (there are a few things like rape videos, child sex videos, etc. That I do believe in censoring though, that's not ok)  

 

 

[Zenpai]

5 hours ago, SnowxSakura said:

Censorship is sometimes necessary to localize a game, microbikinis on a 13 year old in xenoblade, or the shower massage minigame on "loli" characters in mugen souls is a good example of why they censor titles.

 

This falls under "different sensibilities" between different regions, but while I'm also a bit squeamish about oversexualized young minors, I also do not believe that kind of content should be censored. Again, real people are different from mere representations. Just because I'm squeamish, doesn't mean should prevail over everyone else's. And if I don't like it, I can just... not buy the game. It's not that hard.

 

 

5 hours ago, SnowxSakura said:

also vagina bones? It was the pelvis

 

Hence why it was inside quotation marks. I know the correct term, but that's the name the controversy was known for.

 

 

5 hours ago, SnowxSakura said:

to add to that, the censorship is mainly for the parents that buy games for kids, they rarely censor mature rated games unless they violence is too high to even attain an M rating. Not only that, but they could risk government intervention if they feel they're overstepping their bounds(like they did in the 90s which eventually caused the formation of the ESRB)

 

If a game is for kids, then it should already have only the content appropriate enough for young audiences. Again, if a game is fundamentally targeted for younger audiences, I have no problem with changing some content if the developers accidentally went a but further than they should have.

 

And why are the parents a factor in this? This is supposed to be about the players, not their families.

 

And since the ESRB already exists, the government already did all the intervention it needed to do.

 

 

3 hours ago, mako-heart said:

tl;dr and the youtube channel is crap. and ive been subbed before it was relevant to any mother fucker. 

 

Well, this certainly contributed a lot towards the conversation and wasn't rude at all.

 

 

2 hours ago, Senor_T_Dub said:

To be clear your examples are not censorship. Censorship is the suppression of speech or communication by another group (media outlets, the government, etc.). Forcing South Park the Stick of Truth to remove scenes to be legally sold in Australia is true censorship. Changing the content of your product to suit a different market or to prevent backlash is a decision made by the developer or publisher. It would still be legal in most cases to sell the above games but there may (or may not) be negative press around the content. Preemptively avoiding negative press is not the same as being censored. Remember people die in China and North Korea and elsewhere for the things they say, so be happy that the worse you see is the loss of "vagina bones." That said, I do get the frustration over the changes but just remember, given the current political landscape in many countries, drawing the ire of those in charge is not worth it when it could be avoided by a handful of small changes. 

 

As stated in the original post, I define censorship as " differences in the same game between different regions", though I would even go further to define it as "any change contrary to the product's original vision made under the influence of an external source and not independently by the director or developers".

 

And regarding the political landscape in other countries... well, I assume most of us live in free, democratic countries. But if by some chance you live in a country whose government isn't the healthiest... well, then I think that country has bigger fish to fry than censorship in gaming.

 

But regardless, censorship is censorship and shouldn't be tolerated.

 

2 hours ago, Satoshi Ookami said:

Censorship is, together with English dub, the worst thing west brought to gaming industry.

 

I do realize some people just prefer dubs, and I don't blame them for it, the problem is when those dubs are just forced upon everyone (which is also a form of censorship).

 

As long as you have dual-audio, it's fine.

 

Also, Japan has numerous cases of censorship, even to their own games (with the Western version being the one uncensored). Just check out Censored Gaming's channel and search for "Japan". They even have a series of videos about video game censorship in Japan.

 

 

1 hour ago, Cielle said:

I only get mad when they cut stuff out like dialogue that had no meaning to be censored or if it's stuff crucial to the story. When small things get changed and it really doesn't affect my game, that's fine.

 

I mean, if it's something minor in a region-locked console, it's not going to prevent me from getting the game, but it will surely rustle my jimmies.

 

(I'm still super pissed off about the censorship of swords in Dragon Ball Fusions).

 

28 minutes ago, Dav9834 said:

I'm a big proponent of free speech, especially in art. 

I hate to bring up the confederate monuments as an example because I think there were some extremely racist people involved. 

But on the other hand, I have no doubt others weren't and wanted them there so we don't forget what happened.

 

Think about it this way: would Germany think it was in good taste to make a statue of Hitler just to remember the atrocities of the third reich?

[Kapika96]

Censorship in games is in a terrible state. Can you believe I once almost saw an ankle in a game once? Oh, the horror!

[Avalynch]

Censorship is the scum of the earth.

[Such-A-Goonie]

This has nothing to do with censorship. You can import those games as they are released in Japan and nobody will stop you. The whole "censored games" discussion is about people wanting their games to explicitly tell them the lolis are underage, imho.

[TheGwynbleidd]

Some video games are art and have a better story than some of the movies Hollywood makes these days, you cannot simple censor them. This is just a phase in the history of gaming, it is being criticised and cencored the way movies were back in their early years. As OP mentioned ''You can always not buy the game'', but I guess some people need to start a witch hunt on video games because they ''cause'' violence and emotional problems.

[Zenpai]

Just now, TheGwynbleidd said:

This is just a phase in the history of gaming, it is being criticized and censored the way movies were back in their early years.

 

Sure hope so, buddy.

 

Then again, movies are still censored these days, it's just not as frequent or as publicized (or as stupid) as with gaming.

[SnowxSakura]

9 minutes ago, Such-A-Goonie said:

This has nothing to do with censorship. You can import those games as they are released in Japan and nobody will stop you. The whole "censored games" discussion is about people wanting their games to explicitly tell them the lolis are underage, imho.

Pretty much this

 

It should also be noted that even if the developers decided to not censor any content, the ESRB can reject the game and tell them to censor content anyways to meet ratings requirements. I'd rather be able to play a game somewhat censored, than not at all. 

Edited August 27, 2017 by SnowxSakura

[DrBloodmoney]

Its only censorship if it is done by an outside force, i.e. A governing body. If it is done by the creator / publisher it is not censorship, it is just sales, marketing and audience targetting. 

[Zenpai]

19 minutes ago, Such-A-Goonie said:

This has nothing to do with censorship. You can import those games as they are released in Japan and nobody will stop you. The whole "censored games" discussion is about people wanting their games to explicitly tell them the lolis are underage, imho.

 

11 minutes ago, SnowxSakura said:

Pretty much this

 

Good luck understanding games imported from Japan, then (I personally can, but that's another thing). Not to mention, games are much more expensive in Japan and we shouldn't have to resort to importing just to be able to enjoy the game in its original form. When coming to the West, games should be translated and little more than that.

 

 

14 minutes ago, SnowxSakura said:

It should also be noted that even if the developers decided to not censor any content, the ESRB can reject the game and tell them to censor content anyways to meet ratings requirements. I'd rather be able to play a game somewhat censored, than not at all. 

 

Of course it's better to play the game somewhat censored than not at all, but that doesn't mean censorship itself should be done or advocated for.

 

It's also better to lose just one leg instead of both, but losing even one leg is pretty bad, wouldn't you say?

 

 

5 minutes ago, DrBloodmoney said:

Its only censorship if it is done by an outside force, i.e. A governing body. If it is done by the creator / publisher it is not censorship, it is just sales, marketing and audience targetting. 

 

I respectfully disagree, though I have already disclosed what I consider to be censorship twice in this topic.

 

Also, there is such a thing as self-censorship (as in the case of Tekken 7 and Dead or Alive Extreme 3).

[BG_painter]

 

5 minutes ago, DrBloodmoney said:

Its only censorship if it is done by an outside force, i.e. A governing body. If it is done by the creator / publisher it is not censorship, it is just sales, marketing and audience targetting. 

I have to disagree. If you change something like @GameOverComesAll pointed out to not break an "invisible" rule of social acceptance than it IS censorship. It even bothers me more when this invisible rules are applied by ppl, like critics, or that have a political agenda and are not consumers to this products.

Cultivation Theory have already been debunked in the 90's when critics alleged by constant exposure to violence, gamers would became violent. Nowadays it's the same trend but only with a different parameter the "sexist". This is also another reason that i think it's very important for female consumer gamers like myself say out loud, over and over, that WE ARE NOT offended by those representations. Tbh, girls gamers are the most laid back, open minded women i ever met. ?

i would also like to share a video of a game developer that started a channel in utube to pretty much stand by us gamers and he has great insight in these topics. He is not talking specifically about censorship, but he talks about the cultivation theory that is used to justify censorship. He is Troy Leavitt (u guys probably know him already )

 

[Vampirehunter145]

?And why the parents exist in a house? You have the labels, you have a system that indicates what type of content is in a videogame with various warnings. ?Why extreme censorship? European, U.S and Canada political correctness have reached us. Hell no, i won't get traumatized by seeing a pair of natural woman breasts in a videogame (i won't, either on the real life), or watching blood or strong language in a scene won't get me crazy. Of course, i won't play things like Mortal Kombat, Deadpool, Singularity or Bayonetta in front of my 4 year old nephews.

Edited August 27, 2017 by Vampirehunter145