This is 100% a failure on Atlus West's part, and I hope at the very least they make an apology about this. Like others have said, whether they did the vetting themselves or a third party did, they still let it pass.
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Atlus West invites known racist and sexual abuser RelaxAlax to Persona 5 Royal preview event
- Thread starter Biestmann
- Start date
They flew him out to put him in cosplay to fight and get beat up by people dressed as the Phantom Thieves.
As someone who thinks Atlus deserves all the shit they get and more, I find it hard to believe people think that much effort is put into these things. If you work in marketing, you should realize how negligent these companies are especially in terms of celebrity/internet personalities are because the internet isn't some prestigious entity. They likely didn't know and/or didn't care to know and just saw who was popular and invited them as evidenced by:
To be fair, I am not in marketing and if it was my job to find and and create content creators for partnerships with YouTubers I'd do considerably more research of who people are and if they're known for anything in particular.
I didn't know/remember as an ordinary Youtube browser but if it was my job to know I would hopefully know better. It's unfortunate that somebody didn't do their research.
This isn't a playtest, it's a marketing preview event. Is that what you meant?
He's being invited to promote the game on his channel which, in turn, promotes him to fans of Persona. It's an attempt at a mutual power boost to all parties involved.
Atlus is saying something like "we support these people" and I think it's fair to look into what kind of people they support and choose to amplify.
To me, it's because they only care about Japan foremost. The rest of the world just simply inconsequential to them.
Atlus is a company run by older, conservative people that accidentally fell into success with a much younger generation whose values are basically the exact opposite of what they believe and they don't really care about trying to appeal to this audience beyond a superficial level.
When the goal is just to get as many eyes on your product and care little on what people think of your company (because it honestly seems like Atlus doesn't) because your product gives everything else a free pass, I can see why someone with this job would give little time and effort to a vetting process.
The sad reality is most things go under the radar or are purposely overlooked to get results. And if the game is good, it becomes that much easier to ignore or brush things under the rug.
This is a negative side effect of Japan having a self-sustaining video game industry. Atlus doesn't really have to listen to us. Sure, more profit is better, but they don't need us to be profitable.
I already followed up on my initial post after other users pointed out that this instance wasn't comedy, with that said there's still the initial homophobic scene with sexual assault that's played for comedy. Not excusing my jumping to conclusions, just giving context to those who went "Where did your post come from?!".
Yeah I already edited the initial post with a message after seeing 5 more notifications.
This is purely on Atlus West & Evolve PR. For once, it doesn't seem like Atlus Japan had much to do with this fuck-up.
Yeah, marketing preview event is what I meant. I don't agree with Atlus saying that they support these people at all though.
It's more akin to "this random list of unaffiliated people gave us the best reach with the least effort on our part to promote our product."
They didn't invite those people because of who they are or because they want to promote them specifically, but for their potential viewers, free advertising, and maybe convenience (close proximity, etc.).
They're still giving these content creators a platform, so Atlus West should generally be more careful of who they approve.
Right, I am so tired now. Persona holds a very special place in my heart and the character of Kanji actually helped with my own coming out process. Obviously we can acknowledge there is still a lot of work to be done and push Atlus for even better representation, inclusion, and writing without calling the series alt-right. Absolutely ridiculous takes.
Yeah, the thing a lot of posters on ResetEra often forget in their righteous fury at Atlus is just how popular their games are with the LGBTQ community, and just how many positive and progressive messages there are in them.
Do I mean to say this to absolve Atlus of where they very clearly and obviously fuck up, like with the gay men in Persona 5? I do not, those are shitty and regressive mistakes and Atlus should be raked over the coals for them. But the way people talk about Persona and Atlus on here, you'd think they were a propaganda arm for Rush Limbaugh or something.
Looking at some posters views on Persona 5, I fully believed your original post was most certainly not sarcasm.
I used to watch him until his ex talked about all of the awful things he did. It's fucking wild that he still has a following, just like Projared, and it's even more wild that these people still get things like this offered to them.
If it was a casual invite I'd kinda get not vetting as much, but when you're actively paying for someone's flight? That's a huge expense, regardless of where they're from.
It's not like there aren't countless other YouTubers who, y'know, haven't been accused of such things, who would love the opportunity to have such exclusive content.
Bad form, Atlus. They really are the most clueless company about social media, both in Japan and elsewhere.
It's not like there aren't countless other YouTubers who, y'know, haven't been accused of such things, who would love the opportunity to have such exclusive content.
Bad form, Atlus. They really are the most clueless company about social media, both in Japan and elsewhere.
I just personally have a hard time calling a series where one of the main characters blackmails a woman into stripping and another main character's whole character arc is convincing themself that they're not gay "progressive".
If other people don't then that's perfectly fine and they're absolutely not wrong for doing so. Media is not always black and white like that.
Media isn't black or white. Persona fails on a lot of fronts - like, yes, the repeated sexualization of Ann (after showing her to be a victim of sexual abuse at that).
But it also succeeds on a lot of other fronts. I'm not begrudging anyone who feels the failures are too much to be able to appreciate what the games do well, I feel that way myself with Catherine; but to pretend that the games don't do anything right at all is nonsense, and that's the attitude that is prevalent on Era far too much.
My issue is less "Persona doesn't do anything right" and more "Most of the things it does do right are immediately undermined for the sake of bad comedy or fanservice".
But again, not everyone feels this way and I respect that.
That's totally fair, and I absolutely get what you mean and where you are coming from.
I do hope Atlus continues to improve their games on this front.
An apology would be appreciated, but I feel like the most we'd get is Atlus West quietly avoiding RelaxAlax going forward if they see this (hopefully Atlus West ends up seeing this).
"Continues to improve" would imply they have been improving up until this point...
While Pro Jared is still weird and was wrong on many things, he was able to prove that the worst accusations against him (Pedophilia) was not true.
Lol no. Well, it is for five seconds, but then it goes back to joke territory.
just so i understand this correctly, for this press event thing they decorated the ballroom to look like this dungeon?
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I took the phrasing from this article. I don't spot any giant statues, but the venue certainly was inspired.
I would hope Atlus West are scrambling behind the scenes to correct this and is why they haven't spoken up yet.
That seems a bit of a pull. It's a nice looking venue with red as the main color theme due to red being the main color theme of the game.
I actually wasn't intending it even though I knew while typing it. :P
Doesn't the game add a girl to the fight who was abused by the teacher and her weakness is physical attacks?
Because....yikes.
Atlus West has very little power in terms of what it is allowed to say. Unless they can get some sort of clearance from Atlus JP to issue an apology, chances are we won't see any response from them at all.
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It's not of importance either way. The comparison simply was a nice way of highlighting the absurdity of inviting a sexual abuser to the press event of a game condemning the behavior.
User banned (3 days): off-topic derail in a sensitive thread
So we just spoiling new boss mechanics now?