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Gearbox Artist trashes Dragon’s Crown art style

Uthred said:
If only people would just agree with you eh? I genuinely love how youve painted the discussion as one well reasoned side just trying to educate the other, but those poor dumb fuckers on the other side just wont accept the objective truth of your message. Bravo. I suppose bonus points should be awarded for simply ignorning any of the reasoned arguments put forward by the "opposing side". But really, when thats part for the course does it deserve an additional award? Maybe some kind of "Poster best encapsulating their username" liftime achievement thing instead?
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I've settled on his posts on this issue just being part of a character based on his name.

A bit like Summary Man or something.
 
Uthred said:
If only people would just agree with you eh? I genuinely love how youve painted the discussion as one well reasoned side just trying to educate the other, but those poor dumb fuckers on the other side just wont accept the objective truth of your message. Bravo. I suppose bonus points should be awarded for simply ignorning any of the reasoned arguments put forward by the "opposing side". But really, when thats part for the course does it deserve an additional award? Maybe some kind of "Poster best encapsulating their username" liftime achievement thing instead?
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Why so salty son?
 
It is a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing. Such a little thing.
 
It seems people really want to fling stones at each other. Like, there isn't really much of a point to make out of that "find the hypocrisy" game you can see going on the first page. "You call his art bad, so now I'm going to call your art bad". It hardly matters. The person quoted in the OP is even more of an asshole than Jason, but also relatively less noisy and not exactly on a soapbox. Not really worth commenting on in particular.

What does bother me (and what comes up constantly) is the idea that "sexy" art (or even porn) is "juvenile". It is ancient backwards puritanical shit leaking into everyday thought. It is a waste of time of bringing up whether you think it is "childish" or not, when there are clearly many adults in the discussion who feel no shame in their tastes. Are you going insult one side until they concede? Maybe shame them until they fall in line with your poisonous definition of maturity? "YOU'RE 14 YEARS OLD!" is not very compelling.
 
Riposte said:
It seems people really want to fling stones at each other. Like, there isn't really much of a point to make out of that "find the hypocrisy" game you can see going on the first page. "You call his art bad, so now I'm going to call your art bad". It hardly matters. The person quoted in the OP is even more of an asshole than Jason, but also relatively less noisy and not exactly on a soapbox. Not really worth commenting on in particular.

What does bother me (and what comes up constantly) is the idea that "sexy" art (or even porn) is "juvenile". It is ancient backwards puritanical shit leaking into everyday thought. It is a waste of time of bringing up whether you think it is "childish" or not, when there are clearly many adults in the discussion who feel no shame in their tastes. Are you going insult one side until they concede? Maybe shame them until they fall in line with your poisonous definition of maturity? "YOU'RE 14 YEARS OLD!" is not very compelling.
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It makes the conversation unbearable because there are some seriously pandering gross characters but people latched on to this one? I just don't get it.
 
Moral Panic said:
It's not even as if anyone set out to attack Kamitani, he put himself out there with his ill thought retort to a Kotaku article that was shitty. Did anyone here even read that Kotaku article when it was posted? Let's be honest here because I know I sure ass hell didn't. Kamitani's incredibly stupid retort was then blown up by GAF. I highly doubt anyone would have seen it otherwise. [/B]So Kotaku had to reply, of course. Then we get to where we are today when it is a big subject and naturally people have something to say. Why exactly is that a big deal that people have opinions about this game?
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Oh boy. Such claims based on baseless assumptions then.
 
Moral Panic said:
Everyone is allowed the right to their expression and I haven't seen a single, not one single solitary snowflake of a post asking for a ban, or even for a boycott. So why do people KEEP saying or implying that there is a want to censure Kamitani?
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Ok.

Then wtf do you want?

People say that this design is harmful or sexist or whatever...



ok. so what do you want done?
 
pizzaroll said:
I've settled on his posts on this issue just being part of a character based on his name.

A bit like Summary Man or something.
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They just keep getting more and more ridiculous.

Karkador said:
People posting a picture of this artist and judging her opinion based on her looks is worse than anything I've seen about Dragon's Crown.
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Again, one guy. (Who was banned within 20 minutes) There is no "People" here.
 
Devolution said:
It makes the conversation unbearable because there are some seriously pandering gross characters but people latched on to this one? I just don't get it.
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People posting a picture of this artist and judging her opinion based on her looks is worse than anything I've seen about Dragon's Crown.
 
User33 said:
I'm 99.9% sure that the people in this topic saying variants of "This is going to sell so much more! I'm buying this Day 1 now!" were planning on buying this for a great deal of time before the controversy.

They come across as reassurance posts.
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Of course they were, but this game is getting so much more press than any other Vanillaware game.
 
Devolution said:
That's disgusting as well but what does that have to do with what I'm talking about Kark?
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Nothing much, I was just following the more reasonable sub.thread of posts going here

Sblargh said:
One single user did this and he was banned. The end.
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Really? I'm pretty sure it was at least more than one person here. But anyway, the point still stands that the stuff in Dragon's Crown is that small of a deal.
 
This... this.. this thread has shown me things.

My eyes are wide open. I watch the point fly over many poster's heads. Let's talk about this logically... a few points actually

Is the Sorceress sexualized? Yes. Without a doubt she is.

Does her sexualization have context? Seemingly enough.. why yes it does.

JDSN said:
reposting this:
HxAkmsf.jpg
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Actually a pretty decent explanation to Kamitani's artstyle and why his women are designed this way.

You know why arguing against it is a failing point? Because his women designs span through multiple previous games. MULTIPLE

What you see in Dragon's Crown is nothing new regarding his work. He just turned the dial to 10 because everything else as well is exagerrated in DCrown.

Males and Females.


Second point:

Arguably, The Sorceress is the ONLY female character being sexualized. The Amazon is represented as a brazen and sculpted women. She's not oozing sex, She's oozing power. The Elf is a lean and speedy archer.

I read in another post someone explaining that ALL these characters are exaggerated caricatures of popular fantasy tropes. If Kamitani was this big bad sexist pig... wouldn't all 3 of the women characters be used as sexual imagery??


Third point:

People are assuming that we're all in defense of this game just simply for tits. Let's just get real for a sec.

The problem is that Kotaku has ignited a pure firestorm over what is percieved as a japanese sidescrolling beatemup created by Vanillaware, a niche studio. Why should this game be singled out of the many that came before it that did this very same thing??

Why does every AAA game developed in the west guilty of this same practice get this "Get Out of Jail" card, while we are expected to light the pitchforks for this game?

If you've seen my posts in this thread, Ive been asking this question over and over and I have yet to see a response.

Someone said that this can't be compared to Moxxi and other examples of sexualization, Which is totally arguable. (And I disagree heavily with)

This game seems like its being punished for all of the sins of sexualized video games for just for 1 character out 6 (er 7?)


This is a pure joke. JSchrier's OP starting this shitfest was absoltuely dreadful and moronic. The mere fact that it was typed and published as a "professional opinion" enrages me. It was full of personal attacks and little to no facts at all. That's not professionalism, That's opinionated slander. Professionalism will get all sides of the story.


The problem is that maybe we shouldn't be focusing on the actual controversies our gaming publications promote. But maybe we need to look at how they start them and how much actual ground they can stand on.

The personal slander just needs to stop. It solves Nothing
 
User33 said:
I'm 99.9% sure that the people in this topic saying variants of "This is going to sell so much more! I'm buying this Day 1 now!" were planning on buying this for a great deal of time before the controversy.

They come across as reassurance posts.
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I knew about the game but I wasn't actually that interested in it, now I am buying it day 1. They won a sell and I'm sure they've won way more from what I've seen in several forums, I've seen tons of "I didn't know of this but now I know thanks to Kotaku"
 
Moral Panic said:
I want people to feel free to discuss, criticise and critique art they don't like.
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People are.

What some of us don't like is the angle that she is emblematic of the sexism in the gaming industry. The issue of sexualized characters in gaming is much more nuanced than some big tittied sorceress in a game where all of the characters are exaggerated, there is one artist and that's pretty much his schtick.
 
Moral Panic said:
Everyone is allowed the right to their expression and I haven't seen a single, not one single solitary snowflake of a post asking for a ban, or even for a boycott. So why do people KEEP saying or implying that there is a want to censure Kamitani?
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I said this earlier: because it's a distinction without much difference. Sure, everyone's been very careful to say they don't want to explicitly censor anyone, but when they're also simultaneously saying that this is distasteful, they wish it didn't exist and even consider it harmful, the practical effect is a chilling one.
 
Moral Panic said:
Everyone is allowed the right to their expression and I haven't seen a single, not one single solitary snowflake of a post asking for a ban, or even for a boycott. So why do people KEEP saying or implying that there is a want to censure Kamitani?
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I can't speak for everyone but in my case: part of it is the fear of criticism growing or morphing into something where Kamitani feels pressure to adjust or modify his work, when modifications are unnecessary. e.g., criticism of Resident Evil 5 turning remote areas of Africa into a surprisingly multiethnic place.
 
Moral Panic said:
I want people to feel free to discuss, criticise and critique art they don't like.
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isn't that what we are fucking doing?

We are saying that calling out this art is wrong...there has been a back and forth. Of course it has been tainted by name calling and writing off the otherside as white knights or justifying.

But we are discussing it....

although I question if calling something sexist or harmful is the same as simply not liking it.
 
Moral Panic said:
Everyone is allowed the right to their expression and I haven't seen a single, not one single solitary snowflake of a post asking for a ban, or even for a boycott. So why do people KEEP saying or implying that there is a want to censure Kamitani?
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Best response to this line of disingenuous bullshit popped up in one of the other (multitude of) threads about DC

ixix said:
De facto censorship is still censorship, peeps.

Elaborate shaming rituals such as calling an artist juvenile, that his art is appealing to pedophiles, calling those who consume it manchildren, misogynistic, and whatever other pejoratives were brought to bear in this whole ridiculous affair, are calls for censorship through social stigmatization. Acting aggrieved when this is pointed out and saying that you obviously aren't calling for censorship because you aren't proposing any laws is conflating the de facto censorship you are engaging in with de jure censorship, which is a whole 'nother ballgame. Normative statements such as "This video game is harmful" are aggressive positions with inherently censorious connotations, and it's disingenuous to pretend otherwise.

More to the point, social inequity is systemic. The paucity of worthwhile minority representations in media is something that needs to be addressed at its root causes. The dissuasion of young girls from engaging with mathematics, the lack of funding for public schools in heavily-minority neighborhoods resulting in a lack of access to computers from a young age, and the highly inflexible, family-unfriendly working hours demanded by the technology industry as a whole are far more likely culprits in perpetuating a system wherein all minority characters are inevitably depicted through the lens of the majority than is a character design in a Japanese game.

I'm a feminist. I'm fully in favor of minority groups having a broad range of media representation, and of not requiring them to have these representations first filtered by the majority. But this practice of digging trenches then firing off pejorative broadsides against artists and consumers making and engaging in media that you find icky is counter-productive. Poor media representation isn't a thing you can solve through shaming; it's a product of decades of systematic disenfranchisement. It's the root inequities of the system that need to be addressed, not the bitter fruit it sometimes drops. Attacking the media, its creators, and its consumers is nothing but atavistic self-indulgence.

We really oughtta be better than this.
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ShockingAlberto said:
I don't understand why everyone is going nerd-defensive over her post? Does everyone have to like it?
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Did you read the post? It's more than not liking it, she's equating Kamitani to a 5-year old "artist". It's the same shit Schreier tried to pull. I don't think anyone would care if she didn't like it, but it's tiresome for people to claim that drawing big boobs (or liking them) makes you a child. It's just moronic.

Of course, a bunch of sewage from the other threads has been dragged in, and people are talking about feminism and what not.
 
Mauricio_Magus said:
KEEP THE AMAZING DRAGON'S CROWN THREADS COMING


this is going to be the most successful Vanillaware game of all time
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This. Also, I've seen some of the Amazon's animations that haven't been shown in videos yet, and believe me when I say people are going to lose their minds again when the Amazon trailer comes out.
 
Uthred said:
Best response to this line of disingenuous bullshit popped up in one of the other (multitude of) threads about DC
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But that's also a bunch of BS. Criticism is not the same thing as censorship. Public shaming is not the same thing as censorship. this is a case where people are crying censorship because they do not like the criticism in question.

You see the same thing in politics. When someone says something stupid, and someone calls them out on it, they cry censorship, free speech, etc.
 
ShockingAlberto said:
I don't understand why everyone is going nerd-defensive over her post? Does everyone have to like it?
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You don't, but she's allowed have that opinion without resorting to a NeoGAF witch hunt because people don't like her opinions and having her blog and name smeared across a thread because of that. Common sense has just flown out the window because people think it's acceptable to go apeshit over someone's opinion and go to such extremes as to dig up info to shame them publicly and over videogames at that.

It's gross and sets a bad precedent. That's the problem with it and it's incredible how people have now brought in the excuse of "Oh, only a few people did that now it's censorship talk now". Start a new thread, if you want to discuss that. Don't let this shitpile fester any longer.
 
Mr_Antimatter said:
But that's also a bunch of BS. Criticism is not the same thing as censorship. Public shaming is not the same thing as censorship. this is a case where people are crying censorship because they do not like the criticism in question.

You see the same thing in politics. When someone says something stupid, and someone calls them out on it, they cry censorship, free speech, etc.
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Public shaming this game is equally as problematic. Maybe even worse because it assumes some kind of moral superiority over the artwork.
 
Metrotab said:
Public shaming this game is equally as problematic. Maybe even worse because it assumes some kind of moral superiority over the artwork.
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No, i'm fairly sure actually censorship is far more problematic. An artist could care less if you claim moral superiority so long as they can still sell their wares.
 
User33 said:
I'm 99.9% sure that the people in this topic saying variants of "This is going to sell so much more! I'm buying this Day 1 now!" were planning on buying this for a great deal of time before the controversy.

They come across as reassurance posts.
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It's more about the more people talk about something, the more likely someone who hasn't heard of it before to learn of it's existence, and some of those people will end up buying the game now that they know about it now.
 
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