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Costume changes. Wheee (I know it's a bit more than that.) but if you want to feel better, look at the post just above the one you put.

Since when is a slider a piece of content that's confusing for western audiences. Bloodborne, Fallout 4, and Saints Row had them, and nobody was baffled by the cultural differences found there.

Joy to the world.
and "will change the twitterverse"? no. nothing's changing. that's the point. the plaintiff wanted to make it illegal to disagree on feminism. that won't happen thanks to this decision. gregory is still rightly free and you can not go to jail for what you say. the twitterverse is safe.

For some reason I am not allowed to embed this video, but it mentions GG and the 3 LWs. It's not meant to be taken seriously.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DWMAdmQt3g

you find the "embed button" if you click the share button, which is right under the subscribe button. just copy the code from youtube

I think the real reason was they were just being overly cautious with the ESRB and PEGI ratings boards. Notice that the three games you just brought up are all Mature rated games? XCX is rated T and already retains the skimpy outfits for everyone besides Lin (who has her outfits altered because she's a minor who's only 13), the localization team probably just got worried the game wouldn't get a Teen or 13+ rating in some regions if they seemed like they were "pushing" the suggestive content.

And yes I know Senran Kagura got away with a T rating for the first game, but ONLY the first one, every Senran Kagura after the first has been rated M, and as far as I know the overall suggestive content is about the same.

I know how it works, it just wasn't letting me do it earlier today. Now I can do that, but I just don't get why that was at first. Thank you, though.

Being able to create more then 1 generic body type in a video game, ranging from flat to gigantic / realistic proportion to ridiculous to all physics, shouldn't be grounds for getting a more mature rating.

What I find funny is how completely counter this goes for a lot of people who push for these sorts of changes. Like, in recent years body positivey has been a major issue a lot of critics have been demanding be addressed. But when a game gives an option to create a more varied body type t doesn't conform to a damaging societal ideal of one-size-fits al projection of physical forn, these people raise a stink and get it removed, thus reinforcing the stereotype that all woman must have a single body type or they're wrong.

It just blws my minnd that from every angle outside of that of extreme fringe or extreme apathy angle, this was a bad call.

Didn't the religious themes get removed as well? Honestly, that's one of the reasons people played the Xeno series to begin with.

You are right about how hypocritical some people can really be regarding the topic of body positivity. There was a good image I saw a while back that that illustrated the hypocrisy where there's a group of women in the middle of the image that are all actually pretty reasonably attractive (even the plump woman is only "pleasantly plump," not obese), but off to the sides of the women in the middle are people who aren't exactly "conventionally attractive," like a black man whose skin shows signs of vitiligo (it's the thing Michael Jackson had that changed his skin color over time), a morbidly obese woman, and even Vivian James is pushed off to the side for only looking "average" to the women in the middle. Unfortunately I forgot the name of the artist who did the image.

But anyway I've already mentioned a few times over how really you can be disappointed in the removal of a non-gameplay essential feature but still enjoy the game itself, and how I've said that people honestly calling for boycotts of stuff like Fatal Frame 5, XCX, and FE Fates are only going to be sending the wrong message to Nintendo (the message they'll only end up sending is "well I guess American gamers don't want survival horror, RPGs, or Fire Emblem games anymore").

Everybody* Is Beautiful by kevinbolk on DeviantArt

Twitch has banned Yandere Simulator. What's interesting is that Twitch hasn't stated why it's done so. They didn't even bother telling it's creator, he was told by a friend.

Two Censor watch dog groups have appeared on Steam. Called Censorship Watch and The Cut-Content Police, they work as Steam Curators (Like Total Biscuit's Framerate Police) and as put by the Cut Content Police…

"This Curator is made with the sole intention of warning users of games that have been in some way censored due to cut, edited, changed, or overall modified content that is not simply a change in vision"

So far, there're 23 games on their list.

I'm still confused on what counts as "censorship". Because cuts, changes, and revisions before a release are pretty common in the video game development cycle. Dragon Age Inquisition for example had numerous changes during it's initial showing off at E3 and actual release, including altering of the demo-level and sequence shown. Does this sort of thing count as censorship? Because they're done internally, for both budget and how people feel about the flow of the game.

I don't personally like it if there's a ton of noticeable changes to a game before release, but tweaks can happen and do happen in every video game. And I wouldn't call it censorship, either, because I can't help but feel that censorship comes post-release, and pre-release falls into it's own realm of development.

Cut because the developer thought it wasn't good enough, or wasn't well planned is not censorship. This includes political messages that they believed would not be well received or express properly (i.e If I make a game and decide to have an out of place pro-nazi message in it and then at last minute decide 'hmmm maybe I don't want to have that message' because I don't believe in it and it doesn't help my game)

Cut because the material was intended and only removed due to fear from political backlash or actual political backlash is censorship. For example, the removal of a boob slider that no one who actually plays xenoblade chronicles X would have wanted removed. Another example would be the removal of bathing mini-games in english Mugen Souls for pc which coincidentally the playerbase did not want removed and it also makes the bathing system nearly pointless.

In other words, its censorship when something is removed from a game when it was clearly intended to be in the game. If that something was removed because the dev found it had no purpose in the game (i.e scrappy mechanic or poorly worded political message) then its not censorship. If that something was removed and it clearly had a purpose in the game and there's no developer explanation other than political backlash; then its censorship.

But couldn't you make the argument that a political message being removed is much more significant to the games structure then a minigame or game mechanic? Like, if the game is being used as a means of telling a message to an audience, then doesn't that make a removal of a message originally intended to be in the game a censoring of political speech? And thus even more of a censorship issue then character customization options?

And additionally, where is the line between a creator deciding that something doesn't help a game from a purely gameplay standpoint, and deciding content doesn't help a game from an outside reception standpoint.

To use an example, let me use Force Awakens due to how it will help to demonstrate my point. The movie creators, that is the director, writer, producers, and other voices in the creative process, could have gone into a ton more depth about the first order, new republic, life on jakku, life as a stormtrooper, outer rim, etc. In fact, I'm willing to bet that there were many significant changes done throughout production of the film, all done with an express reason in mind, because they didn't want to give the audience something they wouldn't like. Just look at the initial concept art and comments about kylo ren vs the finished product, the guy was supposed to be some old ass cyborg with no connection to the original outside of service to the empire. It wouldn't do the film any good to have material that an audience wouldn't like, so things were changed, even if the audience might have liked the unchanged material before.

This is why I'm hesitant to put all the weight of what it means to be censored behind purely what people think the authors intent was. That's getting into head canon territory, and it tends to be a cancer on a lot of fandoms, where you have a lot of purist who claim to be experts but then pull shit out of their ass to beat on anyone who can't recite a characters entire backstory and arc development verbatim.

If a change is made by a creator because they feel including the cut content wouldn't benefit the game upon its release and reception to the public, then how is it any different then content changed in order to avoid controversy. The example you cite, removing an unpopular political stance because it doesn't benefit the game, is a direct parallel to the current situation.

It's why I don't think this is censorship, but simply unpopular developmental changes. In the same vein as a balances changes that get hailed as either nerfing or buffing of characters, items, etc. You could even argue balance changes are censorship under your definition because they desire to avoid a backlash of a character being "broken", and so changed the material to avoid such backlash.

It needs a new term, otherwise censorship is going to lose any meaning it has, and when actual censorship does happen, such as removing contnet or say a message from a game because its unfavorable with some people, nobody will take it seriously, because balance changes and pre-beta animations were all anyone talked about being censored.

In truth I feel some people are using "censored" more as a buzzword than anything, and as much as people mock the "it's not censorship, it's localization" thing, truth is sometimes a change really is just localization and not censorship. Like I mentioned to Krak-On in the topic specifically dedicated to the Soleil change, what he called "good censorship" (changing a cultural aspect that would make no sense to other cultures to one that will make sense to another cultures) really is just straight up localization.

For example it's localization when you change something like removing honorifics like "san" and "sama" into something like "Mr" or "Miss," because in English you use stuff like "Mr" and "Miss," while "san" and "sama" are honorifics exclusive to the Japanese language (and often people online are mocked for "being weaboos" when they're so insistent on still keeping Japanese honorifics, or using them when not speaking Japanese). Changing "janken" to "rock paper scissors" is also localization because your average American/Canadian/whatever won't know that "janken" is literally just the Japanese name for "rock, paper, scissors."

One video game I've brought up to mention a change in localization that changes a very Japanese aspect to one Americans would understand is Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door. The Pianta Syndicate in the original Japanese version is based on the yakuza, Japan's biggest organized crime syndicate. In the American localization, however, they were changed into being based on the Italian mafia, because many Americans do know about the mafia thanks to pop culture like The Godfather or The Sopranos. Now of course this works in PM:TTYD's case because it's a completely fictional world with no Japan, Italy, America, etc, so the Pianta Syndicate can be localized to any specific organized crime group. This wouldn't work in the cases of games like Yakuza or Mafia since those games outright rely on being depictions of the lifestyle and culture surrounding those very specific crime syndicates.

Even in the case of the infamous 4Kids some of their infamous edits were really just attempts at localization rather than censorship. Like it is censorship that they edited guns or removed blood and character death in an attempt to be more "kid friendly," but things like changing a giant rice ball into a submarine sandwich, as goofy as it may look, wasn't censorship, but rather an attempt to change a Japan-specific food to one an American audience would instantly recognize.

Just my two cents, but It might be only a matter of time before someone gets the bright idea of making the other "Localized" content be Pay-for-DLC.

"Want the true costume? That'll be 6$"

Rule 1, never assume these people have consistent beliefs or demands. They don't have some end goal or ideals or long-term plan, their ideology is build on a foundation of self-contradiction.

Basically they just want to whine & throw a tantrum in perpetuity.

@MrKillultra

Mark Kern & RoninWorks been working on something to do about those problems with localizers.

@Black Graphic T

Remember that it's not just the devs that are involved in making the game, the publishers are involved too. And they have the ability to order things changed.

Now that's not inevitably bad, George Lucas & Tim Schafer are just two people who benefit from someone keeping their egos in check for example. But it can cause serious damage to art when the suits decide to make a bunch of changes for "marketability" when they have no clue what the customers want (like what Lorraine Williams did to TSR).

And of course there's the "you aren't allowed to sell the game" kind of censorship, with the rise of digital distribution & PC gaming leapfrogging consoles (which require permission to sell games for) that's getting far, far harder to enforce (look at Hotline Miami 2 for example).

@Ms Fortune

While localizations that aren't just shoddy attempts at censorship exist, the problem is that localizers change entire questlines to be "progressive" while destroying the mythological allusions said questline is based on and insist it's "just localization".

Then there is that "jelly donut, not rice ball" retardation that is just plain dumb. Changing "san" & "sama" to "Ms." & "Sir" or whatever is one thing, but "no one's allowed to die because we're marketing this to a different audience" results in a lot of story issues.

And that's not getting into the whole "not releasing titles because of cultural clash" problem, which is why the West didn't get Megami Tensei until Nocturne and you have to specify which Final Fantasy II you mean when talking about it.

A massive chunk of what makes Japanese games so popular is that they're from a different culture and thus are different. In Japan American shit is as popular as Japanese shit is in America, how many people here would choose to get takeout from a different culture's cuisine for the novelty factor alone?

Trying to change that and water it all down into some bland & inoffensive pap just ruins the biggest advantage.

How many people first wanted to try sushi after seeing it in an anime after all?

XSEED is the only localizer that can be counted on to not remove things your grandmother might be offended by or replace translations of the dialogue with stale memes. And that means things that players would let slip if they had a good reputation will instead be viewed with suspicion.

If they say "oh, it's just a tiny bit of localization" and in the past they've kept the changes to the bare minimum they'll be trusted, if on the other hand they say "oh, it's just a tiny bit of localization" and in the past they've got full 4kids then they'll be met with resistance & put under a microscope every step of the way.

And those localization companies will also try to change as much as they can because everything they change they can bill for.

French Politicians Tried Preventing Tax Credits For Sexist Games. You're going to love this one..

"Some of the other examples included Ubisoft’s Imagine line of games that were aimed at girls because they saw how popular things like Cooking Mama, Diner Dash, The Sims and Nintendogs were with female gamers and tried to cash in on the craze. Somehow the Imagine game series was labeled as reinforcing gender stereotypes, despite the aforementioned games being popular with female gamers."

The creator of Yandere Simulator talks about how Twitch basically refuses to talk to him about why they've banned his game.

A platforming demo has been released for the upcoming Vivian James game, Project SOCJUS

@ Bookie

Jelly donuts.

Idea guy presents Undertale (and it's backlash) as a basis of determining games and their advancement:

Okay, y'all, I'm hearing rumors that the English version of FE: Fates is taking out the entire face-petting thing. A Google search only brought up Kotaku, and I ain't clicking that garbage. Can anyone confirm or deny? Any other sources?

Not Kotaku

I don't rightfully know but what I do know is the game is split into 3 versions. 2 being physical copies and the 3rd being DLC. So without further ado:

Techraptor and Niche Gamer are both running stories on it.

"Nintendo confirmed that petting is “100 percent out,” while also somewhat defending the original Japanese release."

"Yes, that is the case. You might have heard somewhat misinterpreted or exaggerated information about the Japanese original game, but even in the Japanese original version, we have not included any features which are considered inappropriate in Japan."

They're taking a hatchet to this one, aren't they?

Man, I already pre-ordered the special edition, too. If they mess with it anymore, I might have to cancel.

So, The Witness received critical acclaim, are GamerGaters mad since the game is made by Jonathan Blow?

I could care less, I've never played any of Blow's games. This looked at first glance to be one of those flowery emotional experience games, so I stayed away from it.

I know Blow is misinforming himself about GG, but I never really paid enough attention to him to begin with, so it's not really a big deal, at least to me.

The problem lies in the reasons for high reviews. Is Blow getting high scores because the reviewers genuinely thought the game was excellent? Or are they doing it because they are buddies with him and want it to stay that way? There isn't enough evidence to suggest anything right now, but we'll see.

You know, I'm starting to wonder if this recent push against Nintendo and "sexism" is a way to try and water down the impact of Japanese gaming on the world market, well not just Nintendo, but the Japanese market in general.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying its a massive conspiracy, but I wouldn't be surprised if some politician that was pushing against "sexist" content was being funded by big American AAA…

That actually sounds pretty believable

Could be. Time will tell more.

There has only been the usual corrupted journalism crowd doing the 'Japan is sexist' schtick, but we need more evidence before assuming anything. It just sucks that the ones doing that are the loudest journalists out there.

But hey, I guess that's why GG started, right? To get rid of these assholes.

how is Gawker doing?

If Gaming is Art: Here’s the base problem with SJW critiques.

So Feminist Frequency released it's annual report. There's a lot to pick through, but I immediately noticed that her own stats show interest in her is way down, with the decline beginning about August.

Also, if you divide the number of hours spent watching videos on YouTube divided by the number of YouTube views, it averages 4.8 minutes. That doesn't seem very long considering the majority of her videos are over 5 minutes.

I'm with him. Lets have a game made that's as if Pablo Picasso directed the whole thing.

He's one of the founding partners of Indie Fund, that's the one that gave awards with cash prizes to games they invested in.

That's corruption, and not the "FTC gives a slap on the wrist" kind of corruption, the "up to 20 years in federal prison" kind of corruption.

But anyway his little threats aside the market has changed rather dramatically, and I wonder if The Witness is going to turn into a second Sunset (that also got great reviews from the usual suspects).

@A Concerned Rifleman

That might benefit them in the short run, but in the long run it would prove disastrous. And so far AAA has generally been smart enough to not openly support SOCJUS ever since EA's "the only reason gamers didn't like the ending to Mass Effect 3 is because they are homophobic manchildren" PR idea blew up in their face.

I'm skeptical that it's happening, if it is it will be limited to a few rogue elements that don't have company support.

@Hrom

Gawker is doing… rather poorly.

@Colonel Sandor

Looks like the scam is running out for Josh & Anita.

Also there's no mention of Katherine Cross, I wonder if the prominent support of Nyberg & the Valis77 incident meant FemFreq is purging any acquaintances/minions that are too tainted?

So Gawker is now owned by the mob

oh how fitting
let us just hope their back-up will not be more than just financial

A once beloved form of escapism, cannibalised into a social justice mouthpiece.
This is why gamergate needs to exist.
This is what games will become if we "just stop giving the sjws attention".

Like I said before:

What the hell is up with that second-to-last panel? Was that black-box-white-text censorship in the original print?

Just stick to the Rick & Morty and Invader ZIM comics

The soon mainstream comics dies, the better

Due to Outside Criticism, Capcom Censored Street Fighter V to Avoid Offending People

In an Gamespot interview with Capcom producer Yoshinori Ono…

"We want everyone to be able to enjoy playing this game. We don't want anything offensive in there; we want everyone to be able to enjoy the game as much as possible. So we're working to be able to provide a friendly environment for everyone."

Because beating the shit out of each other is just aces, but we can't afford to expose the young ones to dat ass. And yes, I know we've all heard this already, but this is the first time Capcom has talked about the reason why.

Also, am I the only one who feels complete dread when ever someone says "the industry's attempts to be more inclusive."?

"We don’t want anything offensive in there"

Sorry, Capcom. By removing "offensive content", you just offend those who weren't offended before.

I'm sorry, but I forgot to mention something in regards to the Gamestop interview I posted above. It turns out a Mod has been censoring comments if any of them blame SJWs for what happened with Street Fighter 5.

Well, let us just not buy the censored version then

I'm sorry but you're just straight up a retard.

This does not represent the comic industry as a whole. There is still plenty of content that for the most part avoids this kind of shit.

But I bet you wouldn't know that, because I doubt you read comics, and instead are looking for more evidence to justify an irrational fear of some social justice boogeyman.

Unless you don't think those pages should be allowed and those opinions shouldn't be shared which would be censorship, the thing GamerGaters bitch about constantly? Don't give me any shit about that comics shouldn't be a writers mouthpiece because it always has been, it's just that now it's something you might disagree with.

I hate these terrible pages as much as the next guy but if you say comics/Marvel/DC are dead, then you are generally as spastic as the people who agree with these cringey panels.

I just wish more Blacksad books were coming out. Anyone else read those? It's good stuff.

I find it really sad that they're turned into tumblr esque self-insert fan fics…. oh wait it's not tumblr esque… it is pretty a tumblr self-insert fan fic.

@ethics in hammer wielding
Yay let's use memes that were so stupid, so far up their own ass (yes it was about ethics you stupid idiots, but if you so dumb you confuse darth vader/loki/female thor for gamergate aka strawmanning… maybe its because you suck. Perhaps you should have titled the meme it's about lying and mispainting people to please an unsustainable culture). A meme so stupid and unfunny, it was pretty much dead on arrival. You could have picked so many memes that would still be relevant. Oh and it turned out that female thor ended stupidly too. That's just the icing on the cake.

@young woman comic
Oh wow…. "an adult human female"-definition of woman. He didn't call you a girl, he called you a young woman. What the hell was there to dispute? What is it mansplaining to call you by the appropriate noun? Are you telling me you're not a young adult? Is age classifications and adjectives a tool of the patriarchy? What are you kids at marvel doing up there?

@spiderman with the baby
Yeah screw trying to catalogue and understand natural phenomena. Heck if there's gender specific medical emergency that baby will probably be dead because you're refusal to attempt to understand anything. Science is apparently the patriarchy trying to keep alien babies from making their own genders… wait is marvel trying to make me hate every female character they've ever made? I already hate all the male ones…

@that wonderwoman comic
Yeah it makes perfect sense and we're supposed to cheer when you hit someone who is literally defenceless. If this is a female power fantasy then it's safe to say that male power fantasies are objectively better. At least it shows men overcoming dangerous odds beyond beating up a defenceless person because they said things you didn't like and they had a penis.

@the gory picture with the stapler that is NSFW (That I'm pretty sure got you down-voted)
I heard that picture actually makes sense in context. Apparently that guy is a rapist so I guess he has it coming? maybe? I mean he's still on the ground and defenceless… Call the cops? And really? Does being afraid of being censored and treated poorly because you have a penis something that makes you a rapists? Because I'm pretty sure it egotism and a desire for power that does that. What's with marvel's odd streak of making villainous characters shout anti-social-justice when they're about to lose? Social justice in its proper form is about the debate of proper distribution of social services and power dynamics between the people, organizations and the state. The social justice everyone makes fun of is the use of information and media services to falsely shame and harass individuals as well as cripple industries all in the name of a broken unsustainable cronyist agenda. It's pretty obvious that the villains aren't talking about distribution of health care… so what's so funny about not wanting to be harassed because Leigh Alexander decided to publish that you were a pedophile without evidence? Is marvel pro-harassment? Because they seem to be pro-killing people while they're defenceless.

Uhhh…. he didn't say anything about marvel being dead…. he merely implied that social justice (it's perverted form) ruins writing and directly stated that is why gamergate needs to exist. You might want to take a look at that strawman you have there. If anything what you wrote agreed with what he said.

In all honesty, if people gave up on marvel altogether, no one would care that they've dropped to this new low. I mean we've already had one more day and a bazillion other unpopular retcons. This is really just the new hurdle for people to find and enjoy new comics that don't suck and don't devolve into childish ramblings. Sure its sucks that some beloved characters are getting sullied by this, but we still have the funny ones and word of mouth is as strong as ever.

Comics need to go back to doing what they do well (writing and drawing excellent superhero stories), and cut out all the garbage political inserts. It's getting a little ridiculous.

That said, roberthaha's post was a little overreacting. Marvel and its staff are not all bad, but a couple assholes here and there, and they can make it look like they are.

@Spyder-Byte: That thing GamerGaters 'bitch' about called censorship? The reason we attack it is because it constricts artists and developers, and the extremist social justice crowd uses it as a tool to enforce their beliefs on everyone else. Something needs to be done, and wether you like it or not, we're not going to quit trying.

Also it would be nice if for once people would stop slinging the word 'SJW' around like nothing. Anti-GG uses the word 'mysoginy' so much that it's lost its meaning, now pro-GG uses 'SJW' to the same extent. It's getting ridiculous. It also has the added disadvantage of making us look like a bunch of idiots from /pol. Not to mention a lot of the social justice crowd has repurposed that word to be a term of pride, kind of like what they did to the word 'queer' years ago.

Social justice is something that can always be salvaged, but extremism in any form is the biggest evil there is.

Making Thor a terrible ongoing doesn't enforce their beliefs on anyone, in the same way that the X-Men don't enforce you to be tolerant to those different to you, they just preach it. GamerGaters who say this stuff shouldn't exist are being hypocritical, especially if they post Pro-GamerGate images. Like I said, for as wrong as I believe these people are, I don't think they should be forbidden from producing this content.

And again, comics do already still make good superhero comics, but these few examples have been cherry picked. If you actually read comics you know this is true. (And also there are plenty of great non-superhero comics).

MrKillultra wrote:

Uhhh…. he didn’t say anything about marvel being dead…. he merely implied that social justice (it’s perverted form) ruins writing and directly stated that is why gamergate needs to exist. You might want to take a look at that strawman you have there. If anything what you wrote agreed with what he said.

First I apologise if the implication wasn't that comics are dead/bad, but "A once beloved form of escapism, cannibalised into a social justice mouthpiece." seemed to come off that way to me.

And bad writing is something that comics have had plenty of since their creation. There's been far worse times for writing in the industries history (Late 90s – early 2000s). GamerGate or anything of the sort isn't going to stop that. You can argue that it's ruined a certain superhero but they all have phases of bad writing. Female Thor will go away soon enough and good Thor writers. (which to be fair, Jason Aaron who writes femThor had a brilliant series about that called Thor: God of Thunder). Comics will be fine.

In all honesty, if people gave up on marvel altogether, no one would care that they’ve dropped to this new low. I mean we’ve already had one more day and a bazillion other unpopular retcons. This is really just the new hurdle for people to find and enjoy new comics that don’t suck and don’t devolve into childish ramblings. Sure its sucks that some beloved characters are getting sullied by this, but we still have the funny ones and word of mouth is as strong as ever.

This exactly the kind of thing that annoys me. Correct me if im wrong but im guessing you aren't a big comic book fan. If you aren't, I don't think you can really comment on it. Marvel has done plenty of shitty retcons, but true fans have never given up on them. After One More Day, we had a much better string of Spider-Man comics. Some people love JMS's run but when he was bad he made shit like OMD and Sins Past.

Like that's what get's me the most, it's when GamerGaters see a few pages from a comics that is terrible and full of SJW nonsense, they make these blanket assumptions about this thing they never were into and use it as their propaganda. People who support GamerGate are mostly convinced they are in the right, you don't have to put them and yourselves off from a whole industry because you googled how Female Thor is going.