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Why women criticise sexualised character designs (READ OP)
- Thread starter Persephone
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Oh wow, haha, I definitely didn't expect that when this showed up on my feed and I dismissed it instantly.
Top tier franchises of (and for) Square Enix are Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Kingdom hearts and Tomb Raider. Also, Square Enix co don't manage the western franchises (just the jp ones), that's the job of Square Enix Europe which is essentialy Eidos and if they fuck up in managing it, SE holdings will obviously pick up on this. If this happens with a japanese studio, they'll do the same but not to a internal division like BD.
And I don't know where Square loses million and million of dollars due to FF when the game was a success and the company is doing very well for years and years in different areas of gaming (MMO, mobile, console) and of course, outside of it in publishing manga magazines and volumes, Amusement and other areas..
Square loses millions upon millions of dollars when they essentially cancel game release timelines in order to start over because the creative management and the business management don't see eye to eye, causing them essentially restart years of work, see FF14, FF15, FF7r, the handling of Dissida (keeping that game in exclusively in japanese arcades for years rather than making any actual sales money off of it), likely swarths of KH3 and whatever the hell is going on with DQ11 causing it STILL not be out. If anything, it's the revitalization of their mobile holdings that have kept them afloat when creative differences cause incredibly unrealistic development timelines to spin wildly out of control multiple times in a single generation. I would be extremely curious to know whether if, even after FF15's sales and all of it's subsidiary sales, that project broke even.
And you better believe that Eidos money was keeping the Japanese arm afloat. Those games sold millions and were considered failures in the eyes of the Square brass while the Japanese side was taking road trips trying to figure out which Japanese campsite they wanted to model.
The only people who were fucking up more consistantly than the japanese arm of Square was the japanse arm of Capcom, who continues to fuck up royally and now has a big nose because they've had ONE major success in a god damn decade.
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That's curious because their financials reports says otherwise than what you're saying. The japanese side is the one who's been for years the one getting more money, they don't lose money for years except for what happened with IO and they've been the second most successful third party of Japan only behind Bandai Namco. Besides, the problems on the games themselves don't affect them as a company, otherwise they would lose a huge chunk of it but they don't. At the same time, the only problem with DQ11 is the Switch port so idk why you're mentioning it when it launched last year and KH3 has been developed for 5 years with it coming this year.
Production of FFXV actually started around 2012 or 2013, before that everything you saw were pre-rendered CGI trailers. Versus never existed, it never left pre-production. The project kept being delayed and the employees that were supposed to work on it kept shuffling between studios and stuff.
So FFXV actually has a rather sensible development cycle, all things considered.
With that said, I find incredibly sad how Namco Bandai localized Tales of Berseria in like 6 months (July release in Japan, January in the West, with a PC port and an EFIGS localization), while Square Enix needed like 14 months to release a much bigger JRPG without having to port the game to a different platform.
Shows the difference in commitment between both publishers more than anything.
Fire Emblem Heroes has a new banner called 'Bridal Bloom', let's have a look shall we...
Oh. Sanaki (girl on the right of the thumbnail). That looks like her Path of Radiance incarnation. Where she's 10. But it's OK, apparently, because in the western localisation they are claiming it's Radiant Dawn (where she's, er, 13) and that she's 'only a bridesmaid, stop getting ideas!'. Right. It's only the player's mind hinting at this shit. On the Bridal banner. For the festival of Brides. 'Back in their wedding attire!'. Called 'Apostle in white'. Wearing a dress that looks suspiciously similar to wedding dresses worn by brides in the last banner. Because FEH totally deserves the benefit of the doubt regarding the sexualisation of children.
This is the first time I've actually used the feedback option in the customer services section of the settings.
Oh. Sanaki (girl on the right of the thumbnail). That looks like her Path of Radiance incarnation. Where she's 10. But it's OK, apparently, because in the western localisation they are claiming it's Radiant Dawn (where she's, er, 13) and that she's 'only a bridesmaid, stop getting ideas!'. Right. It's only the player's mind hinting at this shit. On the Bridal banner. For the festival of Brides. 'Back in their wedding attire!'. Called 'Apostle in white'. Wearing a dress that looks suspiciously similar to wedding dresses worn by brides in the last banner. Because FEH totally deserves the benefit of the doubt regarding the sexualisation of children.
This is the first time I've actually used the feedback option in the customer services section of the settings.
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What do you think of Ninian's costume? More or less beautiful "shrine maiden" outfit (with flower theme?), or is it "overdesigned"?
I like the way it works in elements of her previous design. There's a lot going on but the detail doesn't overwhelm the sweeping lines and the colour palette is fitting. Yeah, I'm ok with that one.
I can't see the video, but I assume from the thumbnail that it's the girl on the right.
I mean, my initial reaction was that I could see it as a well intentioned but flawed idea, but looking at the outfit really doesn't look like a bridesmaid to me.
Sorry, yes, it's the girl on the right for those unfamiliar with FE characters- I'll add that to my initial post.
*blinks*
Why...why are any of them in bridal attire. Why is this even a theme
Bride was a character class in FE Awakening, I think it's come from there.
I actually like Ninian's design. It does fit her.
Sanaki, though. Delete this banner, IS.
Tharja is just Tharja at this point. I can't work up the energy anymore. A 'I'm not mad, just disappointed' type of thing.
Awakening ruined everything and made the Bride class a thing through DLC.
And, uh, gotta sell those waifus.
Sanaki, though. Delete this banner, IS.
Tharja is just Tharja at this point. I can't work up the energy anymore. A 'I'm not mad, just disappointed' type of thing.
Awakening ruined everything and made the Bride class a thing through DLC.
And, uh, gotta sell those waifus.
I guess they're taking the "waifu" thing to it's logical endpoint by literally making them brides.
Easy to ignore if you didn't download it or played the campaign before it was released. I played through Awakening at launch and only found out about it years afterwards.
Well that Valve thread earlier was a bit of a shitshow. Apparently no one thinks that sexual content isn't some kind of monolith, devoid of context and tone. Nope, if you're against certain sexualised depictions you're a sex-negative puritan. You heard it here first, get your capotains here.
It was Valve's fault in the first place for allowing such games on the platform and monetizing off them. Cant blame entirely the players, the developers and the publishers.
Frankly there was a lot going on in that thread that made me question my decision to even be on this site but that's besides the point.
I was just surprised by the reaction some people had. "[Borderline pornographic game] is getting removed? Why aren't they removing [Game with a single, restrained sex scene]?". I thought more people understood that context, tone and overall depiction of, well, anything can dramatically change one's reaction. In a brief aside they recognised that for violent content (e.g. Hatred is more reviled than other, gorier games because of the context), but didn't seem to apply the same thinking to sexual content.
I'm surprised you're surprised, considering some of the discussions in this thread :-) You're expecting people to consider the wider context of an issue and the current catalyst that sparked the thread, rather than to immediately reach for tired arguments and start scoring points in console wars, or in defence of/against the individual games and genres they like or despise. We see plenty of that where any criticism of ridiculous sexualisation or objectification in one aspect of a game is argued against by some posters as if someone's right to their dose of anime tits in everything is going to be taken away because someone asked why part of the cast is in lingerie while engaged in constant battle on a snowy mountainside alongside their fellows in fur and plate armour. Either that or the act of idle criticism itself is seen as an affront to the creatives making the decisions, no matter how many other discussions on design decisions from combat to storytelling to monetisation exist on a, er, games discussion forum.
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Whatever the narrative transformed into, the original point of that thread was valid and Valve was 100% in the wrong there. You don't have developers come into your office so they can spend tens of hours showing you their game while reassuring them multiple times "Yes, this is okay to have on our platform" and then turn around and say "actually, it isn't okay" a few weeks later when the game is on the platform. I mean yeah, it's within their right to do it, but it's terrible form and makes them look like dinguses.
Apparently in Japanese, she's straight up "Bridal Apostle". Yuck.
It's disappointing that they created this version of her, and I really hope they respond to the criticism. I'm not sure if I'm more disappointed by the fans though, considering how many people are happy about it or do the "who cares" bit. We get a 5th Lyn, and people write multiple paragraphs of "this is unacceptable!" but when we get shit like this or Nowi, they say that those of us criticizing it are overreacting.
Yeah, it's part of the myriad of DLC packs in Fire Emblem Awakening. It's so, so stupid.
You do the corresponding DLC map, get a special version of the promotion item called a Wedding Bouquet, then give it any of your female characters at/above level 10, and they can change to the Bride class. If you really wanted to, you can farm the Bouquets and field an army of brides, which is at least vaguely amusing.
Combining it with the gacha mechanics of Heroes and underage characters like Sanaki is where it gets pretty darn uncomfortable imo. Also super annoying because of who Sanaki is in the GCN and Wii Fire Emblem games, but, it's not like most of their audience played those.
They also did the obligatory beach and onsen dlc, which, at least they weren't one-sided with it, I guess?
Can some of the more level headed residents here please summarize what's going on with Valve in way that doesn't come off as *Alex Jones voice* "The puritanical SJW globalists are wining the war of the titties! Doom, death, despair!"?
I would read this from a publisher actually involved.
Long story short is there was an abrupt policy shift and zero communication on Valve's part over it, leaving plenty of indie developers alongside known entities hanging high and dry.
Several games with sexual content (universally anime styled) were told they had a month to remove sexual content or be removed. The reason behind this is unclear with no statement from Valve so far. This is widely agreed to be a bit of dick move on their part, especially since these games have existed on the market place for up to years.
There has been some question as to the nature of the sexual content in these games, and the only common threads so far are either:
- These games had their most explicit content removed but could be added in with a patch or
- The characters were of a questionable age, though the content in these cases was apparently not explicit (I don't know for sure).
From what I can gather their crackdown on sexually explicit content is lopsided, inconsistent, and LGBT-friendly games are getting caught in the crossfire.
Thanks for the replies. So far it seems like Valve's actions are on par for what an unfeeling, profit first, company might perceive as "socially conscious" decision that also happens to promote their stable existence as a money making enterprise. Pretty ham fisted. Problem is what a mess this causes for what semblance of nuance there is to the broader public conversation about sexualization... like what happened in that thread.
Lmao, so even the voice actress thought that Pyra's outfit is outlandish and unpractical.
They'd apparently been warning them since October last year, why they delivered this ultimatum now of all times is anyone's guess. I'd assumed it was something to do with the iOS Steam Link thing forcing them to adopt Apple's stricter (if more well defined) content guidelines, but there were some doubts about whether they would actually be obliged to do so.
Over in the visual novel thread, some are also saying a Terf group may be involved.
https://twitter.com/ncose/status/997484630273032192
(2nd tweet is the writer for one of the flagged games)
But yeah, it's just a mess all around that could be remedied with just a bit of communication from Valve. This could be anything from jerks mass flagging to a rogue employee to a legit policy shift.
It's worth mentioning that a thread about it was locked because the OP claimed they were behind it with no indication that was at all true. A group praising a decision and claiming victory for their cause isn't necessarily responsible.
Unfortunately by the time it was locked half the site now thinks Valve are in the pocket of this group.
yeah, this is a complete mess and the only valve comments I've seen was some vague post about having adult content as part of the download through Steam is against the rules
I honestly don't think the group is involved, just saying it's a possibility and even if they aren't, them taking credit is only going to further the shitshow because that's what happens in situations like these when there's a complete lack of communication; people look for someone to blame.
I'm leaning toward mass flagging more than other stuff, but I wouldn't be surprised at an official policy change either that hasn't been advertised yet.
I doubt Valve will ever specifically mention that they were behind it. But this is the same group that earlier this year bragged that they were the ones behind getting Wal-Mart to pull Cosmopolitan Magazine from the checkout line. And Wal-Mart did release a statement saying that while it was primarily a business decision, the concerns brought up about the magazine were heard. This same group is now targeting Teen Vogue.
They're definitely right wing. A few years ago they changed their name to what it is now because that name screamed conservative Christian group. It was "Morality in Media".
I would assume any woman (and most men) with working eyesight would immediately think the same. Otakus having developed standards entirely out of touch with anything resemblng reality doesn't mean the vast majority of the world has. :)
Also since I haven't played the game, until that video pointed it out I hadn't realized her outfit is so skin tight that it has its own bellybutton. That this doesn't even ping one's bullshit radar because of all the other ridiculous stuff going on with that outfit is really telling. :D
I doubt Valve releasing a statement will stop people from formulating conspiracy theories, they'll just go "well obviously Valve wouldn't admit they were pressured by outside groups" etc. AKA the witch trial flowchart.
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Watch doggin should be illegal
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/...isual-novel-huniepop?utm_campaign=sharebutton
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/...isual-novel-huniepop?utm_campaign=sharebutton
Companies dont wake up 1 day and say: Let stir up some of our policies, this type of things happen when there is a change in the company (leadership or financial) or some external factor pushing em. As we dont have any report for the prior, the external factor is more likely the cause here
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The greater irony is that the defenders will loudly shout, uncritically, "this is anime!" For them, that's the beginning and end of the conversation.
Is that like "This is Sparta!" but with a small army of scantily-clad cartoon girls instead
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