Remember that Famitsu poll of overseas players and their opinions about recent games?
Some replies that made it to
the printed version of Famitsu included:
- sexy girls, beatiful girls, cute girls, revealing clothes, handsome men.
- Japanese voice actors are THE BEST in the world. Once you pick up some of the language or just listen enough, the voices really affect me far more than local dubbings. Good job, voice actors!
- The anime style, duh. Having cute girls in your games really makes a difference.
- Japanese developers enjoy much more creative freedom than we have in the West. As a result, your games are consistently enjoyable and inspiring in a way that many Western games are not. Please do not change what you do! Western gamers love your amazing games the way you make them!
- Fanservice, of course! I like games that make me feel good.
- Moe. I love moe.
- Director. Unlike a lot of 'Western' game, Japanese games are strongly influence by the vision of their directors. This add a 'unique' feel to the game depended on who direct them.People such as Yoko Taro, Hideo Kojima, Shigeru Miyamoto and so on.These are visionary that will drive video game into its own unique media. They are people who dare to venture into the unknown like a real man. Not to mention that Japanese game don't care about petty thing like political correctness in their game.And Japanese game don't care about Feminazi.
That was one such influential event.
It made resetera livid with anger, and game localizers on twitter of a certain political affinity wrote lots of bile.
How the poll was 95% male participants, and Famitsu should have discarded en masse user submissions until it got a "representative" ratio that "makes it at least look like female gamers overseas exist" (as for why is it Famitsu's job to rig the poll for that end, how is the poll at odds with the existence of female gamers, and whether female gamers universally share resetera's opinions about gaming, those are questions left unadressed)
They were really at a loss about what to say, sometimes blaming gamers for speaking their mind, or Famitsu for selecting those particular quotes and featuring them. The one about feminazis triggered them the most as that one went for the jugular, but even those defending fanservice annoyed them.
Localization companies and community managers often had activist agendas of their own they wanted to pass
by filtering out player feedback to the creatives as much as possible. Any creatives wrestling that control back and bypassing the middle man was a disaster.
The earliest instances of this was with none other than
Hideo Kojima (and his falling out with Agnes Kaku and Jeremy Blaustein) who became much more hands on with the localization process after it became clear the localization editors were taking too much liberties editing his script, "plugging plot holes" behind his back, "toning down" lines that sound too much like "conspiracy theories" (especially ludicrous considering one of the main reasons the MGS is so revered is its political commentary about concepts still relevant today)...
and lately
Nintendo of Japan to some degree and
Atlus became more hands on with localization cuts, and not so coincidentally,
Japanese dubs are now starting to be included in games more often (some localizers basically admitted they were previously omitted in part because the written line would be too different from what's spoken, and "weaboos would complain". 8-4/Comcept justified gutting Gunvolt's initial localization -so bad it had to be redone- from most of its audio because of "cultural differences".)
Remember Primerose in
Octopath Traveler?
Nintendo/Square Enix decided to keep her backstory as a girl who assumes the role of a prostitute to avenge her father instead of "toning down" the localization like they used to previously, for far lesser stuff ("A murder suicide of two recurring side characters! How uncomfortable! Cut this whole ending.") the Bravely Second, and other games.
Kotaku, Polygon and others tried to stir a controversy how offensive this character was but... Square did their own poll for both Japanese and overseas audiences, and her character ranked the highest.
Game journalists, and now websites such as resetera, are well aware of this, and starting things like "player polls" and "petitions" of their own rewording those censorship demands as part of what the "fanbase" really wants. We have seen a failed attempt with Persona 5 so far, even though Sony San Mateo is now trying to force Atlus' hand on some of those points now that they won't cooperate.
It's probably good to do some outreach to Japanese creatives, and get ahead of censorship controversies by supporting the developers in general and not let them be drowned by hostility. Defending creative freedom is important, even for things we don't like, such as YIIK which is attacked for "plagiarizing" a Japanese author as if that's a copyright violation that warrants taking it down. You never know when the thing YOU like is coming next.
We're coming to a point where "tropes", or ways to write characters, now have specific taboos or have strictly enforced "only allowed variants" to write someone. Ubisoft is attacked for not making their conflict-themed alternate history games strictly
in the service of political proselyting of a very specific political ideology., some such critics whine loudly about the "wasted potential" of the absence of said proselyting, while others are more openly hostile to Ubisoft because they were "irresponsible" with the "ghost politics" already in the game (following their "everything is politics" gospel, even Tetris) and that's "dangerous" because the concept of escapism is dangerous and irresponsible, or some political enemies might get by in life and play games without being exposed to those specific politics and that's bad because providing entertainment that could entertain them is as bad as endorsing all of the enemy's political opinions.
This is no time to ignore the continuous erosion of what artists are allowed to say, and the continuous Pavlovian conditioning to a lifestyle where everything is offensive and the only way to survive that (survive since the alternative is a death sentence by unemployment, homelessness, poverty and sickness) is to continuously compete who can produce the best propaganda.
