WHAT ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT RIGHT NOW?

I don't find the Ace Attorney game to be a good argument because it translates to me that people are too dumb to get other pop cultures, and they should remain ignorant. Companies shouldn't try to tell people they're dumb because their audience is not, this is not the 20th century, things have changed for better or worse.

I get that editing is one of those slippery slopes that can be both good or bad, but I don't believe things have to be changed just so another country's people can understand it, that is just wrong to me. People are not stupid, and should not be treated like they're stupid.

For your example you're taking away a pop-culture that could be introduced to another country, but only to use their pop culture, people should embrace what other country's humor is like.

For me I would get tired of a Jennifer Aniston joke pretty quickly if it was in every damn game for my country.

author=SgtMettool
Kaliesto, I don't know why you're so aggravated by the idea that developers and localizers want to reach as wide of an audience as possible "for the sake of money". That is exactly what a business is designed to do.

Game cost money to make. Developers need to be paid. There has to be a return on the investment. Because the simple fact of the matter is that if a game bombs because it didn't sell, then that company isn't going to able to make any more games (or they'll just stop localizing games in foreign markets. i.e. Dragon Quest for the longest time.) There is absolutely no conceivable business reason why a company would decide "Let's make it so that this multi-million dollar game is only understood by 10,000 hardcore fans instead of the 500,000 who would potentially buy this."

Economics go into games, whether you want them to or not. And unless you're a self-made hobbyist making games on the weekends, there's not going to be any other way.

Because that is the reason game quality has gone down the tubes ever since the "wider audience" became a thing. I know at the end of the day this is what all companies wanted, but you clearly tell the quality has gone down dramatically or I should say dumbing it down, most gamers are noticing that, and the gamers are quite frankly getting tired of that.

author=kentona
...games have never been of higher quality. And with the explosion of indie and hobby devs, you can literally find a game or community devoted to a niche within a niche.


...he posts on a site largely dedicated to the hobbyist creation retro 2D RPGs

For that I'm thankful like places like RMN/STEAM/etc is not under anyone's thumb telling them what to do, but I think it is shameful our bigger cousins have to take a different route.

author=Kaliesto

author=kentona
...games have never been of higher quality. And with the explosion of indie and hobby devs, you can literally find a game or community devoted to a niche within a niche.


...he posts on a site largely dedicated to the hobbyist creation retro 2D RPGs

For that I'm thankful like places like RMN/STEAM/etc is not under anyone's thumb telling them what to do, but I think it is shameful our bigger cousins have to take a different route.

Did you just say Steam doesn't force changes to games on its storefront?

http://kotaku.com/the-sex-games-that-steam-censors-1680718912

First result on a Google search of "Steam Censorship"

Also, NSFW, for obvious reasons. Just to stop anyone from clicking the link without reading it first.

Yeah, you can't apply the censorship logic to one type of game over another. I'm with you that I stay as far away from those games as possible, but that's not the point I'm making.

Here's the second result from that same search

http://store.steampowered.com/curator/11112108-Censorship-Watch/


...This probably would have been a better first pick than the one I went with. My bad.

Also, we don't allow games with content that's blatantly explicit, racist, homophobic, etc. on RMN, either. Creators of those kinds of games could be writing geniuses and making a real (in their minds) "artistic" statement for all we care. Those kinds of games won't make it past the queue.

bahleted

I will admit there is games I wouldn't want to see that go to extremes, and aims for controversy, and there has been games like that in the past (rightfully banned too), I don't respect developers that take that route because they knew what they were doing.

What I don't like is when outside influences try to interfere with game development, and if game developers have a moronic bias, it reminds me of that stupidity of that long dead Hitler that was in Persona 2 that he had to be given sun glasses as not to offend...(Sunglasses..that is moronic, but did make his character somewhat more interesting), but the point still stands nonetheless.

There was also that recent controversy of changing the emotional impact of one the characters in Tales of Berseria, I don't blame Namco Bandai for this change because this time it was CERO/ESRB's doing. I'm getting kind of afraid that some people can't handle fantasy vs. reality, and maybe it is because games are getting more detailed than ever before, and now we're paying the price for it.

I will say this, I definitely don't want Xenogears remade for today's audience because their wussy asses wouldn't be able to handle the story too well, Xenosaga unfortunately took a huge hit when the three games came out since well.."those games were more detailed", see where I'm going with this?

I don't like the sacrifices being made just for a wider audience because the wider audience deserve better, and not less. There seriously needs to be international laws made to protect this entertainment medium because is always under attack compared to movies & music.

Edit:

I forgot to mention, but you all should see what the Unreal Game Developers think of all this, they would disagree with what some of you are saying. They only reason why they edit anything at all is because some of the gamers they call "brats" caused the developer to change something just so they can get something released, and the Unreal Developers DO NOT LIKE CENSORSHIP. They're only still doing this for some kind of a market release, but unfortunately these brats decided to screw with them for the lulz.

There is also the case of PlayAsia that really gone on the defensive because what has been going on.

Also someone brought this interesting point -


Vote with your dollars.

But I think voting for less or more censorship is the wrong way to go about considering the matter.

Vote for what seems the best produced, smoothest playing game that has the most compelling story. Things like "how was it altered for my particular localization that I end up playing" should be secondary concerns to is this a good game or not?

Localization is something that a game publisher has control over; they are responsible for what they put out and where, and they aren't thinking "Will this be as true to the developer's vision as I can possibly make it," they are in fact thinking, "In what way can I maximize the audience of the game? How can I get the most people possible to want to play it/tell their friends to play it?"

Unfortunately, this often results in the developer making the logical argument to themselves that "The more people play it, the better, so be really really careful what you allow to be put into the localization," when in fact, I believe the proper way to go about it is this:

Find a balance point between the script being what the writer of the story intended, and maximizing the script's accessibility to a mass audience. You find that balance point, and voila, that's what you should put out.

But this industry is supremely high-pressure. It's almost like working for a banking concern; they run it that tightly, and turnover is, I would imagine, the accepted nature of the business at hand, and has been for a long time, I'll additionally wager (turnover means "Nobody stays long in this industry unless they are kind of personally obsessed with doing so; i.e. people are hired and fired quickly and a lot," just in case yer not up on my jargon).

So, the focus becomes on protecting one's phoney-baloney job, as it were.

To make my case even further -


Trunk's sword was censored, that is some idiocy I ever seen, what a betrayal of a character over a damn sword.

author=LockeZ
...Did they actually censor Hitler's presence by giving him sunglasses

I'm not even mad, that's incredible

Yeah it was silly censorship over something about him, but it ended up making his character kind of hilarious, it actually worked hahaha.

Oh and they changed his name to Fuhrer..which is a odd choice, this was all due to CERO, and not by the developers in this situation.

I have a special visitor this friday and i can't control my coughing. For the past week i've tried drinking dry cough medicine but i've almost downed the bottle and it did noooothiiiiiing.

Worse thing is that she smokes a ton so it's not like i'll give my throat any rest soon.