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VG247: Valkyria Chronicles 4’s sexual harassment problem is unacceptable in 2018 (READ OP)
- Thread starter Bundy
- Start date
There goes any lingering, long lost dream I had of working as a game dev in Japan. I guess it's an indie's life for me. :)
User Banned (Permanent): Nonsensical grandstanding and inflammatory false equivalencies surrounding censorship; junior phase account downplaying diversity and inclusivity efforts
Even considering the actions portrayed in this game, the scariest part of this thread is the blatant censorship of any account that puts forth any sentiment that doesn't completely agree with the OP, even if they don't promote sexism.
I understand that this may be a private organization but it also holds itself out as a place of discussion. You walk a dangerous path.
Let me just put these here as food for thought.
Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.
Alfred Whitney Griswold
All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.
George Bernard Shaw
Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance.
Laurie Halse Anderson
Thought that is silenced is always rebellious. Majorities, of course, are often mistaken. This is why the silencing of minorities is necessarily dangerous. Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions.
Alan Barth
Without free speech no search for truth is possible... no discovery of truth is useful... Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people, and entombs the hope of the race.
Charles Bradlaugh
"Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime."
–Potter Stewart
I detest sexual harassment. Women should certainly be treated better than they are in society. However, be aware that by walking this censorship path you are only creating the very thing you intend to destroy. Those voices will go elsewhere where people think the same way and they will be ever ingrained further into their way of thinking rather than being challenged and having to engage with differing views. It is especially stupid when it is a few mod's doing the censoring since it imposes such a limited scope of ideas upon this discussion.
I'm sure I will myself be banned for pointing this out.
I understand that this may be a private organization but it also holds itself out as a place of discussion. You walk a dangerous path.
Let me just put these here as food for thought.
Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.
Alfred Whitney Griswold
All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.
George Bernard Shaw
Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance.
Laurie Halse Anderson
Thought that is silenced is always rebellious. Majorities, of course, are often mistaken. This is why the silencing of minorities is necessarily dangerous. Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions.
Alan Barth
Without free speech no search for truth is possible... no discovery of truth is useful... Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people, and entombs the hope of the race.
Charles Bradlaugh
"Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime."
–Potter Stewart
I detest sexual harassment. Women should certainly be treated better than they are in society. However, be aware that by walking this censorship path you are only creating the very thing you intend to destroy. Those voices will go elsewhere where people think the same way and they will be ever ingrained further into their way of thinking rather than being challenged and having to engage with differing views. It is especially stupid when it is a few mod's doing the censoring since it imposes such a limited scope of ideas upon this discussion.
I'm sure I will myself be banned for pointing this out.
User Banned (1 Month): Endorsing inflammatory false equivalencies surrounding censorship and downplaying diversity and inclusivity efforts
My only point is perspective. Real women suffer from sexual assault on a daily basis. This is of course an issue that absolutely needs to improve in our society. If we use this scene to discuss it, then that is fantastic. It should be constantly addressed.
Id rather they not put the scene in there. Its not my thing. But just one meh, scene, I can get over. Others, they can't and thats fine. Everyone gets to choose what's important and what isn't to them.
I hope you don't. I liked your quotes. There are way too many on here quick to want to censor instead of actually addressing the underlying issues of what lead to the act they want to censor in the first place. Its just a game of whack-a-mole. Its happening everywhere too, but especially the political conversation.
Edit: I took out references to violence. I don't want it to be misconstrued as equating violence and sexual assault issues versus the influence of video games on the player. Two very different issues.
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Japan seems to be in dire need of an aggressive feminist movement but I don't know enough about the area or how you could even rally enough people to make a difference. The impression I'm getting is there's a lot of apathy from the people who give a damn in Japan.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Jesus fucking Christ.
I look out my window, I'm not seeing a warzone. I don't need to snap four necks on my way to my favorite lunch place, or do any gruesome stab finishers to save my own life.
Sexual harassment permeates every facet of our culture. And this game (and media such as this) normalizes it by treating it as a fun joke.
The fuck are you talking about? The article makes that plenty clear. Hell, you don't even need to click the link, the OP itself makes it crystal clear too:
Have you even read past the thread's title?
It never fails to crack me up how people downplaying shitty messages in fictional media never fail to point out this crucial bit of information about themselves; as if it was some kind of superpower. :D
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I do not think much about it because it gives me a will to punch the person who says hahahaha
Not liking something, not wanting to buy or support something, and disagreeing with other people is not censorship. Nor is banning people who don't read OP, constantly whine about people being angry about sexual assault, and can't follow forum rules.
I've been thinking about those paragraphs (and others not quoted) for a while. It is clear that the writer of the article has made some generalizations and sweeping statements that would extend to more of the game, but within the text they are mostly left as stated conclusions or implications and not examined at all. Which is why I am quite curious about whether someone else wants to confirm and elaborate on them or, on the contrary, dismiss them as overstated.
Why the fuck should I care about what any of these people think? Dropping a bunch of worthless quotes out of the context they were said means absolutely nothing.
I hate this. I loved VC1 for, among its many other merits, avoiding all the shonen/ "dumb anime tropes," yet this game brings them all back with swimsuit DLCs and the stuff mentioned in this article. Just...why did you have to do this, SEGA? Why? And why is this still a thing in Japan? I know they've always been like this, but...how is this still "the norm" over there?
You wish it was an anime trope. :P Watch some japanese drama and you'll see how many things that happens on anime happens there as well. (which in the case of anime, it's just a amount of things from manga and many other japanese media being adapted)
Shonen is just a demography and word for boy. Sorry, I can't leave this pass like always.
I never said or suggested your first sentence.
My message is directed at the mods but banning accounts under the assumption they did not read the OP and because you "think" they are whining about sexual assault is still censorship. The fact that you agree with it is irrelevant to its nature as censorship.
This kind of thing is always disappointing, though I'm not sure what can be done, as even skipping the game doesn't really communicate why you skipped it to the developer/publisher, so it's a tough one
I'm still going to get the game but I'll happily support anything that gets this kind of thing out of video games
I'm still going to get the game but I'll happily support anything that gets this kind of thing out of video games
These sometimes creepy porn and disturbing view of women is sneaking in all kinds of japanese games lately even the more high profile ones.
Even Xenoblade 2 was just hilarious bad and sometimes even creepy in the depiction of women, including sex robots, sexualized child-like women and the japanese porn cliche of the shy-young-girl with melon boobs and stripper outfit. It was unbearable at times. There was not even a hint of irony in this just pure pandering to a specific audience.
I really hope the new Fire Emblem will get rid of this mess...
Even Xenoblade 2 was just hilarious bad and sometimes even creepy in the depiction of women, including sex robots, sexualized child-like women and the japanese porn cliche of the shy-young-girl with melon boobs and stripper outfit. It was unbearable at times. There was not even a hint of irony in this just pure pandering to a specific audience.
I really hope the new Fire Emblem will get rid of this mess...
I gotta say, I'm impressed by the versatility of the "historical accuracy" excuse when it comes to excluding and demeaning women in games. Right now we have people using it to explain why women shouldn't be in Battlefield 5 at all and to explain why women being harassed in VC4 is appropriate for its fictional WW2-adjacent setting.
Shame about Valkyria Chronicles, though. I liked the first game but gave up on the series a long time ago. Hearing about this sort of thing in a VC game post VC1 is about the least surprising thing ever.
Moderation is not censorship, my dude. Having fewer sexist idiots to deal with (not none, but fewer) is a major reason why this community is more thoughtful and nuanced than most gaming sites. Allowing people to post the same tired shit about how sexism is over and people need to accept retrograde attitudes in media would make the discussion worse, not better.
Shame about Valkyria Chronicles, though. I liked the first game but gave up on the series a long time ago. Hearing about this sort of thing in a VC game post VC1 is about the least surprising thing ever.
Moderation is not censorship, my dude. Having fewer sexist idiots to deal with (not none, but fewer) is a major reason why this community is more thoughtful and nuanced than most gaming sites. Allowing people to post the same tired shit about how sexism is over and people need to accept retrograde attitudes in media would make the discussion worse, not better.
Does the game provide Berserk like nuance in which Casca despite being sexually abused, harassed, etc is given the chance to talk about these challenges from her perspective and how hard it is to be a female soldier ?
Im assuming no, and that its just played off as jokes and fanservice without narrative justification for why its allowed unchallenged
Im assuming no, and that its just played off as jokes and fanservice without narrative justification for why its allowed unchallenged
Again, don't know what the fuck you're talking about. The article is plenty specific on multiple examples of shitty sexism throughout the game, but even if it wasn't (or if for some reason you decided you don't want to believe it), there have been plenty of people here confirming the general tone of the game. Just from a quick scan of the previous page:
Are you purposely ignoring all of these posts or what?
"I'm sure I will get banned for defending sexist speech and shitting on the mod team of a message board as my seventh post altogether."
You are surely psychic, sir!
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What the fuck is this post even. Anytime someone catches a warning or ban, their post is flagged with red text explaining the decision to take action. They broke specific site rules, established when they signed up. It's pretty fucking simple.
You're acting like people are shouting in the middle of Times Square and being dragged off by police and thrown in jail. There are plenty of other platforms to go which are more lenient toward accepting said behaviors and viewpoints. Banned users are more than welcome to go elsewhere to discuss "both sides"ing progressive values.
This site makes the rules that must be adhered to, and if they're broken, they're well within their rights to action accounts. Users agree to those conditions before they sign up.
Your take, if not trolling, reeks of ignorance.
I'll put it in spoiler tags just in case anyone is sensitive to this, but I'm not revealing plot info:
No, Raz doesn't get redeemed per se. He comes to people's aid and individual characters tolerate him more, but in terms of an actual redemption or behavioral change, not really. Read: if this stuff is almost enough to not make you buy the game, you probably don't want to buy the game.
Well shit, guess ill be fine with that wiki knowledge then, thanks.
Look, I'm all for pedantry (I love to engage in it myself), but correcting someone for not specifying "shonen manga", when they can't possibly mean anything else in this context (especially since English, you know, already has a word for "boy") goes beyond pedantry and straight into intentional misunderstanding. It's as absurd as going into one of gaming side's RPG threads to explain that the term refers to pen and paper variants and they should use "videogame RPGs".
Jesus Christ the post at the top. Can you imagine being so far up your own ass that you're comparing burning books to editing boobs?
There was a preview thread a while back that had one of the cutscenes posted earlier in the thread. It turned into a shitshow.
No, I've responded to Syrenne and had also read Saucycarpdo's post. I didn't see the third one, though it lacks details about what's going on with Crimeria. Nothing I've said involves claiming that those posters are lying or denying the sexism present in the game. In fact, I want to hear more rather than less. I am taking that into account as part of the problem, but the article goes beyond even the contents of those quoted posts or what has been discussed over the last few pages. I guess it's better to go ahead and see things for myself instead of asking though.
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That's super fucked.
Some people try to argue that "artistic freedom" (considered an inalienable right when it's about pervy stuff and sjw bullshitery when it's about inclusion) is always why these games are coming out as they are, rather than the end result of a cynical, profit-based corporation thinking the audience won't tolerate a 60 hour rpg without gross bits being added in.
This really rusts my pan. I'll mark it as spoilers as well since otherwise it would waste your effort:
I could see if it was in service to an arc where the dude grows and changes and comes to respect his female peers for more than their bodies, and maybe even fesses up and apologizes for previous behavior. I'm really tired of characters acting like pervy asshats but never being expected to grow or change and demonstrate that they've done so just because they're useful in other (usually combat-oriented) ways.
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If it's a well known company that localized it, it probably wouldn't be hard to guess what exactly it was. We only get so many games over here that are so filled with sexual content that they have to be edited to see a release.
Honestly I had no idea. Interesting that besides this issue, this game is considered to be the best follow up in the series since the original in 2008, too bad it carries on tropes and attitudes that are also from 10 years ago
I'm honestly less surprised about the groping and comments than I am about the lack of punishment and consequence. A butt pinch or lewd comment usually got a slap in return or at least the perpetrator would be made a fool of. Neither should be accepted in this day and age, but not at least having some sort of rebuke robs the women characters of all agency.
I'm honestly less surprised about the groping and comments than I am about the lack of punishment and consequence. A butt pinch or lewd comment usually got a slap in return or at least the perpetrator would be made a fool of. Neither should be accepted in this day and age, but not at least having some sort of rebuke robs the women characters of all agency.
So Crimeria, the Valkyria in the game resists another another male character, but he continues his advances anyways. I can't remember the exact language used, but it's portrayed as in a "no matter how she resists, she actually needs him" way. The game seems to think it's romantic or something and makes him a strong character.
It's real fucking bad.
It's real fucking bad.
It's super disappointing to read about this because I've been interested in getting into this series. It seems like the first one is the only one that manages to avoid most of the pervy anime garbage.
I hated this kind of thing in Fire Emblem:Fates so I hope the new one that's coming has toned down the waifu bs.
Oh man. I got the first 3 Persona games on PSP after enjoying SMTIV on 3DS. I know that this is slightly OT, but what can I expect from those?
I hated this kind of thing in Fire Emblem:Fates so I hope the new one that's coming has toned down the waifu bs.
Oh man. I got the first 3 Persona games on PSP after enjoying SMTIV on 3DS. I know that this is slightly OT, but what can I expect from those?
Yeah, that sounds bad. I am not a fan of those sorts of developments either, so this is disappointing.
That is, simply put, not true:
There were already plenty of "someone elses" confirming what the article said when you posted this; you decided to pretend there weren't. Then, when they are pointed out to you, your reaction is "well, I guess I'll have to see for myself" rather than accepting them. This is annoyingly ungrateful at best, highly disrespectful at worst.
Persona 1 and 2 are completely free of Otaku trash to an awe inspiring degree. Like in the latter case the protagonist of the two titles (Persona 2 is split into Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment), the protagonists are a canonically bisexual man and a reporter woman in her twenties.
Persona 3... eeeeehhh kinda. It has its moment, like how you literally cannot refuse to date a girl if you max out her social link.
It also has a really, really gross moment of transphobia but I think it was removed in the PSP version. Don't quote me on that, though.
The "character who acts lecherous and gets slapped in response (sometimes)" is a fairly common perverted trope in Japanese media, including video games. It's so prevalent that Persona 5 tried to deconstruct this trope in one of its earliest dungeons while later falling into some of the same traps Valkyria Chronicles 4 did with how it treats its women characters.
Assuming you're talking about the remakes of Revelations up to Eternal Punishment, they're relatively trope-free in the pervert anime trash department. They're by no means perfect in other areas (Innocent Sin has, to my recollection, one of the earliest examples of transphobia in an ATLUS game via an NPC who they joke about their gender and the way they dress as it pertains to the gender they were assigned at birth, well before Persona 3 came to be) but the worst they get is "three women jokingly flirt with demons and one of them is uncomfortable while doing so ", and even then the discomfort is framed moreso with their actions being unlike how they would normally act when interacting with demons since the rest of their conversation choices tend to be a lot more in your face and aggressive. As for the other content...let's just say you're going to see why Persona 1 isn't as widely praised as the other entries, be it for its gameplay (Persona 5) or story (Persona 2: Both of them).
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Or the needless transphobic part of "Operation Babe Hunt" (already a sucky event) where you walk up to a woman and your characters freak out because there's a facial hair on a woman. Pretty much every Hashino-san directed game (P3, P4, P5, Catherine, Catherine Full Body) has needless and random homophobia and transphobia just randomly placed in it seemingly out of context. It's what makes me have zero trust in Full Body's portrayal of a presumed trans woman romance option.
I appreciate that, but I will say I was careful enough with my wording that it could apply to a few games
To answer your questions honestly:
1) If the fight was depicted as one of those rolling clouds with fists, feet, and stars popping out coupled with goofy sound effects I wouldn't care. If it were depicted with broken teeth, blood, and intestines spilling out I'd be shocked.
2) With the cloud, not odd at all. With the blood, very odd.
3) The framing of the action.
3b) I would explain, as you have, that it wasn't the action as much as the framing/severity.
I can see your point, and through this dialogue I can see that maybe it comes down to people comparing a pat on the butt with rape and thinking that a pat is "not a big deal" when both are technically sexual assault. For me, I'd be angry if he got away with it, but seeing a man get floored by a woman with a hook and not a stereotypical slap was satisfying for me. On the other hand, the tinge of disgust I felt when he touched her butt in the first place didn't feel good either. It could have been presented differently but (for me) I like the response she gave when groped, especially seeing as more people need to be punched for groping here in Japan. I may be violent but I hope it encourages more women to punch guys in the face. :/
Yeah, same. I honestly hate it when people prop up Lala Escargot and Erica Anderson as good Trans characters when the intent from the author is that they exist to be mocked.
I'm not convinced Full Body fixes anything, but apparently MegaTen has gotten better when it comes to queer representation with the mobile game Liberation Dx2, which features two openly gay party members, so maybe there's hope yet.
.....
.....
This is the hill people want to die for? Anime titties and stupid sexist tropes? People criticism of the overuse of sexist narrative tecniques is what you conside a "hallmark of an authoritarian regime"? Is not even censorship, this type of media in gaming is the vast majority of it, those games aren't being burned out, they are being fucking released everyday? People are constantly being challenged on this type of content!! This is being challenged, people pointing up why is wrong and you and them are pulling the "censorship" card!!!
What's with the smartass quotes of people talking about actual fucking censorship of ideas not of artistic works of portraying men groping women asses!! And they are not being even censored, we can't censor shit!! they are on the stores!!!
I can't.....I'm going to sleep.
Holy shit.
Bookmarking this post for the next time someone tries to argue about "creative freedom" and "censoring and sanitizing the artist's true vision" whenever there's a controversy about reducing boob sliders or whatnot.