PlayStation's new censorship making you move away from the brand?

[Ptirle]

Anime style games are like cartoons, and cartoons are for kids. Maybe that's why.

[Herbset]

10 minutes ago, Ptirle said:

Anime style games are like cartoons, and cartoons are for kids. Maybe that's why.

Oh yes, Paradise PD is a great watch for all fellow 5 year olds. Dude time to move forward, don't be stuck with medieval mentality 

[Herbset]

I don't think the so called censorship is always intentional. Back in 2019 I wanted to register my organisation as Fat & Furious in GTA online. I was fined 50k for supposedly trying to type profanities. Turns out it was just a bug, couldn't use &. I mean sure I did loose 50k in gta dollars but I managed to name my organization what I wanted and I've been a proud creator of Fat and Furious for over a year now lol.

[Ptirle]

1 hour ago, Herbset said:

Oh yes, Paradise PD is a great watch for all fellow 5 year olds. Dude time to move forward, don't be stuck with medieval mentality 

I know lol, just thinking that is the reason maybe why Sony is doing what is doing. Don't know really. 

 

You have Twisted Metal gore scenes censored in Europe and not in the USA, then Foribidden Siren suicide scene censored in the USA and not in Europe or Japan, enemies that resemble children in silent hill are censored in Europe and Japan and not in USA and so on. 

Boobies and butts in some games and in some not, who knows....

 

But in anime you have girls that look like 25 or 30 and are really like 16 or 17, and other things, don't wont to name it... so yeah.

Edited March 16, 2021 by Ptirle

[mcnichoj]

1 hour ago, Herbset said:

Oh yes, Paradise PD is a great watch for all fellow 5 year olds. Dude time to move forward, don't be stuck with medieval mentality 

Ironically that's more of a recent mindset. Back in the day Walt Disney's full length feature films were meant for and watched by adults. The shorts with Mickey Mouse (and stuff from other companies like the Tom & Jerry shorts) were meant for children. The movies like Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Fantasia and Bambi get pretty dark while the Mickey stuff was light hearted. Children were also deemed not to have long enough attention spans to sit and watch in a theater. It wouldn't be till the '60s when we would start to get TV cartoons like The Flintstones and then the demographic started to shift to children but still some adults were around if people will remember they did do that smoking ad.

[Darling Baphomet]

I've yet to be negatively impacted by Sony's censorship, and I highly doubt I will be in the future. Games like the Witcher 3 & TLoU2 which have respectful depictions of nudity do just fine; the games targeted are most often tasteless or outright pedo-bait. If anything, I think the standards are too lax - I remember quitting Tales of Berseria - a relatively big name JRPG series, which I expected to be safe from the low brow pandering of niche titles - because they kept having 'skits' where an adult party member couldn't shut up about wanting to show her bits to the little boy party member. Obviously, censorship isn't going to fix what is without a doubt a cultural problem, but it's a start.

 

I've spoken about it at length before, but a lot of Japanese media seems to have this Madonna / whore complex with its female characters; they want to sexualize their women, but at the same time they fetishize this idea of the pure, innocent woman, and the only way to reconcile these two is to have fan service be at the expense of the characters. Evidently, this is much less acceptable in the west, and as such Sony makes entirely reasonable moves to avoid PR disasters. I most certainly don't trust corporations to be arbiters of morality, but I'll keep my complaints to things that actually matter.

 

Side note, apparently a lot of scenes with actual nudity (e.g. the TLoU2 sex scene) get censored in Japan - Japan seems to care primarily about the degree of nudity, while the west is more concerned with the tastefulness and ethics of nudity presented.

[Eagle]

On 16/03/2021 at 2:44 AM, RadiantFlamberge said:

I'm sure they don't play games at all. Another game Lieberman raised ruckus over was the gun game Lethal Enforcers (Genesis/SNES/PS1) with digitized characters à la Mortal Kombat, but nothing really graphic. When you shoot a criminal, there's just a red spark, then they flinch from the hit and flicker out. Most console versions are censored, somewhat - certain taunts from the criminals like "You missed me, pig!" and "You can't shoot me, copper!" are cut out. The SNES version renames the Drug Dealers mission to The Gunrunners, and Chinatown Assault to Downtown Assault. PS1's version isn't censored. If this got a PS4 rerelease, today's Sony would probably meddle with it.

 

The FCC needs to know this is 2021. One of my favorite channels is AMC's sister channel IFC. You can see a movie uncut and uncensored, only with commercials. Something with a R or a harder PG-13 rating will be shown as TV-MA, rather than watered down to get a TV-14.

 

Why would Lethal Enforcers be censored nowadays? There are multiple games in which you shoot enemies that, sure, may not be digitized photos, but with models similar to real life and, most of the time, based on real persons (through facial and motion capture). For example, L.A. Noire, which is also about a detective fighting criminals (of course, it's a really simplified explanation, but you get the gist) and has a realistic approach, cue the cutting-edge technology they used for the infamous interrogations, that made Team Bondi go bankrupt even though the game was a success. And I'd say that's considerably worse, because of nudity, themes such as drug use and adultery, etc.

Edited July 4, 2021 by Eagle

[JediKnight_327]

I think its just a little something to keep the SJW attention seeking employees feel valued because this wont cost Sony a lot of money and it will never be in the news (the real news). If tomorrow those employees say they hate guns and want guns banned in games they'll get told to f right off.

 

I think we should have all learned by now that predicting what a population wants based on who shouts the loudest is a stupid idea. Sony should bring back blog share and focus on what their customers really want instead of worrying too much about how an employee might feel if their SJW agenda isnt addressed.

[StewartBros]

11 hours ago, Helyx said:

Y'all sure love some tiddys.

 

Who doesn't? ??

[sealightbreeze]

Honestly, no. The censoring does not really bother me. I pay attention to the game and not the censorship. I am honestly just grateful we get the games at all. There are so many games that we in the US do not have. I am just happy when they localize new games. Besides- remember- a lot of kids and children play video games. And, there are parents who either don't pay attention to or don't care about game ratings. You don't need kids seeing stuff they do not need to see. 

[RadiantFlamberge]

14 hours ago, BRKs_Eagle said:

 

Why would Lethal Enforcers be censored nowadays? There are multiple games in which you shoot enemies that, sure, may not be digitized photos, but with models similar to real life and, most of the time, based on real persons (through facial and motion capture). For example, L.A. Noire, which is also about a detective fighting criminals (of course, it's a really simplified explanation, but you get the gist) and has a realistic approach, cue the cutting-edge technology they used for the infamous interrogations that made Team Bondi go bankrupt even though the game was a success. And I'd say that's considerably worse, because of nudity, themes such as drug use and adultery, etc.

The visuals would be left alone. If Sony cut anything, it would be in the voice acting and one of the mission titles. First to go would likely be the words "pig" and "copper", given that the criminals use them as derogatory terms for a police officer. There's also a good chance that Sony would change "Chinatown Assault" to "Downtown Assault" like it is on the SNES cart, because now they have to kiss China's keister.

[Eagle]

On 16/03/2021 at 11:03 PM, RadiantFlamberge said:

The visuals would be left alone. If Sony cut anything, it would be in the voice acting and one of the mission titles. First to go would likely be the words "pig" and "copper," given that the criminals use them as derogatory terms for a police officer. There's also a good chance that Sony would change "Chinatown Assault" to "Downtown Assault" like it is on the SNES cart, because now they have to kiss China's keister.

 

Multiple games out there have characters that say "pig" to refer to a police officer (GTA and the likes), LOL. And I really don't think a simple title would be altered, considering Chinatown is a common name for neighborhoods (cue games like Watch Dogs 2 and etc.), and because... it's a title, after all.

Edited July 4, 2021 by Eagle

[ccrocker58]

On 3/16/2021 at 3:07 AM, Rozalia1 said:

 

That is why that censorship is not that bad. The spirit of the original design is still there, they have just added an element to it that honestly improves it. A hammerblow of censorship would be to completely cut the design and put them in a new one, which in itself could be a fine design, but would not be the original spirit intended for good or ill.

 

 

I'm sorry, but I disagree. Using DERQ2 as an example again, when I see the PS4 version, all I'm seeing is characters that were forced to be changed against the wishes of the designers. And, believe it or not, just because some of us do happen to appreciate a little titillation in games now and then, many of us who dislike these censorship policies are in fact upset that it's restricting creative freedom. From this point forward, any game that has that "PS#" logo on it, immediately raises a red flag in my head and I can't play the game without constantly wondering if the game truly is exactly how the creators envisioned it, or if they had to reign in their designs because of Sony.

 

On 3/16/2021 at 3:07 AM, Rozalia1 said:

it does give an opportunity to those devs to try and appeal more to a new audience who in the Japanese form of their product are not into it.

 

If they wanted these games to appeal to a broader audience, they would have already done so. They didn't care to, and they specifically created the games and series that are getting hit by this to target that niche audience. It's also worth mentioning that many of these devs also have other, tamer series that play extremely similarly to the risque games they make with the intent of reaching that broader audience without compromising the content of the other games, a good example of that being Compile Heart's Fairy Fencer.

 

On 3/16/2021 at 5:57 AM, Darling Baphomet said:

All the words.

My response to pretty much everything you said is, just don't play the games then. If you don't like the content within, you obviously have the choice to not partake of it. But why should the people who do like them have to suffer? You're correct about the underage depictions, I will say that much. That is something that is not nearly as acceptable over here as opposed to Japan. I believe the reason high school years are usually the focus of...well...a lot of things over there is because for them, high school is a lot like college is for us. They often are living on their own during it, and where we have "crazy college stories", those types of things happen in high school there. Maybe. I won't lie and say that I know that for sure, that's mostly what I've gathered from internet discussions. I'm not saying I agree that it should be censored mind you, it isn't illegal and it isn't depicting any actual sexual intercourse, but I will acknowledge that it is less acceptable in the US and many other regions, and I will say that if games like Gal*Gun disappeared, they would amount to about an, "oh well" from me. But the problem is that it extends beyond just underage characters.

 

You mentioned that in the west this is less acceptable and...I have to say that I don't recall any big push from anyone to eliminate fan service. In fact, that's why it came as such a shock when I first heard of what Sony was doing. There was just no apparent need for it. There wouldn't have been any "PR disasters", Steam serving as proof of that seeing as you can get content that includes pretty much everything you mentioned, and worse, and they haven't seen any negative effects from it. The only time there was any controversy was when they mistakenly sent out take down notices to a group of adult game and vn devs, but that was just a single group praising what they thought was a willfully made decision from Valve. Less than a month after that was resolved they started selling AO titles and they haven't had any PR issues as far as I can tell.
 

 

What it comes down to for me, is two things. One, I don't like some company trying to tell me they know better than I do what I like and what content I should be consuming, particularly when the game is rated mature. Games that are rated teen fine, but honestly, most games that have characters that have risque designs are rated M. The people who are playing these games are adults, and we have the ability to know that what is in the game is not a reflection of reality. If the content still isn't up your alley, that's fine! It's not for you, and if you still wanted to see what these companies have to offer without all the fan service aspects, as mentioned earlier, a lot of them have other series that play very similarly to their risque counterparts. If you have children, be a responsible parent is all I can really say. Every game console I own that has parental controls (and that's every single one that has been made since the PS3/360), has them on and my kids all have their own accounts on them. Any purchase made has to be completed by me, and I make sure I know what I'm buying for them ahead of time. I don't need Sony to do my parenting for me, and I firmly believe that if you do, then you perhaps should have thought a bit more about whether or not you were ready to have children.

 

And the other thing, is that it limits creativity. Just because you don't like these designs, or feel one way about them, doesn't mean everyone should be forced to consume content that is to your personal tastes, or Sony's tastes. I feel Nintendo, as others have mentioned, handles this best. They outright said that they feel that third party ratings boards are all that are needed to ensure a game meets the region's standards and that parental controls are available if you require more stringent regulation for your children. And while third party developers are allowed to put out whatever they want so long as it gets an M rating from the ESRB, Nintendo's first and second party titles are still regulated more from Nintendo. In my opinion, that's the best way to approach this. If Sony wants to send a message, they can do so with their exclusives, just as Nintendo does. If they're concerned about kids, make setting up parental controls more of a focus, again, like Nintendo does. Forcing developers to tone down their creativity and taking away the users choice is not the right way to deal with this.

[Shiiinjitsu]

People seriously need to quit worrying about every single small thing. If things get censored, who gives a f****. As long as the gameplay and story and soundtrack are good, things are fine. If you want to see naked ladies go watch Hentai. 

[Rozalia1]

On 16/03/2021 at 9:57 AM, Darling Baphomet said:

I've yet to be negatively impacted by Sony's censorship, and I highly doubt I will be in the future. Games like the Witcher 3 & TLoU2 which have respectful depictions of nudity do just fine; the games targeted are most often tasteless or outright pedo-bait. If anything, I think the standards are too lax - I remember quitting Tales of Berseria - a relatively big name JRPG series, which I expected to be safe from the low brow pandering of niche titles - because they kept having 'skits' where an adult party member couldn't shut up about wanting to show her bits to the little boy party member. Obviously, censorship isn't going to fix what is without a doubt a cultural problem, but it's a start.

 

I've spoken about it at length before, but a lot of Japanese media seems to have this Madonna / whore complex with its female characters; they want to sexualize their women, but at the same time they fetishize this idea of the pure, innocent woman, and the only way to reconcile these two is to have fan service be at the expense of the characters. Evidently, this is much less acceptable in the west, and as such Sony makes entirely reasonable moves to avoid PR disasters. I most certainly don't trust corporations to be arbiters of morality, but I'll keep my complaints to things that actually matter.

 

Side note, apparently a lot of scenes with actual nudity (e.g. the TLoU2 sex scene) get censored in Japan - Japan seems to care primarily about the degree of nudity, while the west is more concerned with the tastefulness and ethics of nudity presented.

 

Fun note on that. One of the costume texts notes that she is actually wearing... shorts? They very much look like underwear though so it looks like she flashes him yes. The character doing it is a "troll" character personality wise though I assume all this won't cut it with you which is fine.

 

I'd say be careful with your comments. You are likely unaware you are doing it but there is quite the aspect of cultural imperialism to your words. "Why can't the Japanese be more like our culture which is so much more advanced than theirs", that sort of thing. As for the Madonna/whore complex you mention. Traditionally Japanese culture very much is for "pure innocent women" as far as I understand. The fetishisings and lewd stuff as far as I know is not a mainstream thing there. Games do it as they're appealing to people seen in Japan as weirdos. It ain't even the worst thing in Japan as the idol stuff is far worse as it deals with real people. All in all, it would be good if there were less cringe designs yeah and if a woman is dressed in a certain, lets say style, then let them act like it.

 

On 22/03/2021 at 11:34 PM, ccrocker58 said:

Your comments in regards to my post

 

I think you have largely disregarded what I've said but I will go over it quickly.

 

First off, as I said, the spirit of the design is still there. This is a rare case where I saw a lot of people note that they had no issue with the "censored" designs and actually preferred them. 

 

As for appealing... a lot of these companies are making games for Japan. Any place else is a happy extra. Changing certain details to better appeal is something that has gone on for forever. Now yes, if they wanted to appeal they could launch the game in that state... but they're Japan centric companies and can't count on the game even getting a western release in some cases... so they appeal to that particular niche Japanese audience that exists out there. Bigger companies with more safety, say Capcom, are able to lead their games with the stuff to appeal to the west.

[ccrocker58]

On 3/22/2021 at 7:45 PM, Shinjiitsu said:

If things get censored, who gives a f****. As long as the gameplay and story and soundtrack are good, things are fine. If you want to see naked ladies go watch Hentai.

 

A lot of people give a f**** obviously, which is why this topic keeps coming up. No one is saying all the other aspects of a game are less important, in fact, most of us would agree that in the grand scheme of things, they're more important. I have yet to see anyone who is anti-censorship say that fan service is more important than gameplay and production value. Our argument is that despite that, there is no reason why game content needs to regress back to the mid 90's.

 

The hentai thing...dude, please. We are playing these games specifically because we don't want hardcore porn. If that was what we were after, yes, we'd just go watch some actual porn, of course. But believe it or not, not everyone likes actual porn. And for those of us who don't, these games give us a good alternative while doing something we love, play games.

 

On 3/24/2021 at 10:19 AM, Rozalia1 said:

First off, as I said, the spirit of the design is still there. This is a rare case where I saw a lot of people note that they had no issue with the "censored" designs and actually preferred them. 

 

As for appealing... a lot of these companies are making games for Japan. Any place else is a happy extra. Changing certain details to better appeal is something that has gone on for forever. Now yes, if they wanted to appeal they could launch the game in that state... but they're Japan centric companies and can't count on the game even getting a western release in some cases... so they appeal to that particular niche Japanese audience that exists out there. Bigger companies with more safety, say Capcom, are able to lead their games with the stuff to appeal to the west.

 

I haven't disregarded what you're saying. I get your point, but I don't agree with it. The fact that the "spirit" is there doesn't matter to me because of the forced censorship. A lot of people agreed with that, because when CH/IF made a poll asking if players would prefer the new versions or the original versions for the PC release of DERQ2, keeping the original designs won by a large margin.

 

I will admit that I'm a bit confused on your discussion on the appeal. These devs haven't had a Japanese exclusive release on a major platform for any of their games in...well...have they actually ever? The only one I can think of off the top of my head would be the original Gal*Gun, which is now out worldwide as of last month. You are right about them sometimes changing content for western release, but again, this is something that stopped quite some time ago. Nintendo is still doing it as evidenced by Tokyo Mirage Sessions, but as stated, Nintendo is still regulating anything that their own IPs are involved with.

 

I guess I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. You said that it gives them an opportunity to appeal to a different audience, to which I said they never intended to appeal to them, and now you're confirming that they cater towards Japan and the western audience that enjoys the same content.

 

I think. Again, I'm a bit confused here.

Edited March 26, 2021 by ccrocker58

[TheAbyssWalker61]

Yeah ps5 will be my last console, in this generation i'm not buying  so much games this generation,  to become retro gamer, for all the people that agree with censorship are sicks who love 1984 life, but they are not going to win. 

Edited October 6, 2021 by TheAbyssWalker61

[Blood-Stalker1]

Not really mostly the games I played where always censored to begin with 

having the Dutch German version of the game 

 

and now that am older I care less about censoring 

 

 

if the games core is still the same when it comes to 

gameplay, story and central looks the same 

 

I don’t care 

 

and with how everything is nowadays everything is 

being censored 

because someone complained about it  and they remove it via a update 

[Dangisuckatgamin]

I don’t really care about censorship, to some degree I think it’s good for kids to not see suicides etc. The problem is the internet makes the stuff so easy to find, so there’s like two routes to answer this to.

Regardless how much you try to censor there will always be a forum or of the like out there that has a discussion (or full on visuals) about it.

 

I do think switching consoles over it is a bit extreme though. Xbox will follow the same path because the censorship in the end will win. Therefore rendering switching pointless. And trust me.. achievement points are boring as fuck. I switched during the ps3 era and quickly came back lol.

[Greg]

Nah, if anything it makes me like Sony more. 

[Dangisuckatgamin]

19 minutes ago, TheAbyssWalker61 said:

Yeah ps5 will be my last console, in this generation i'm not buying  so much games this generation,  to become retro gamer, for all the people that agree with censorship are sicks who love 1984 life, but they are not going to win. 

I’m so confused. Can you explain?

[cubiCampla]

1 minute ago, Greg said:

Nah, if anything it makes me like Sony more. 

Why?

[TheAbyssWalker61]

Just now, Dangisuckatgamin said:

I’m so confused. Can you explain?

can you by  private message? 

[Lance_87]

I wonder if anyone that keeps mentioning "1984" actually read it. I keep seeing it everywhere, even in novax discussions lmao.

 

It's like it makes you "cooler" by simply naming it.

Edited October 6, 2021 by Lance_87

[cubiCampla]

The only censorship I've even noticed recently is in Super Neptunia RPG with two CGI images changed. Otherwise it's been a while since I heard anything. Even the new Neptunia and Senran Kagura crossover is going to be uncensored supposedly and Mary Skelter Finale was uncensored and that has near-nude anime characters in it.

 

Diablo 2 Resurrected was changed a little bit with character models but you can just revert back to the old game anytime anyway so I don't think it's that big of a deal.

 

The only censorship I really care about is when they remove content. If it's changed a little bit then that's okay because I can just look at the original on YouTube or something but if they remove it entirely then I can't even experience it myself.

 

Edit: I will also say that I wish nothing was ever censored but I can always play the Japanese version of the games if I really wanted to. It's not impossible.

Edited October 6, 2021 by FrostyMcNugs