Like I said in another thread, people with money will get things done. While many gov’t will ignore UN mandates, that’s because they effect their country’s powerful industries. If EN can really get UN to mandate a ban on eroge, I think the Japanese gov’t will appease them and enforce this one.
…And as Narg said in that discussion, porn (including eroge) is A LOT more profitable in Japan than whaling, so ya know…
And I doubt they could get an agreement on that…
Yea, budget problems are a good way to put things into perspective.
Without condoning Sankaku’s actions, you realize that’s basically that other groups use similar propoganda to motivate their base. I can’t say what EN does, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they used similar items to rile their supporters, except probably condoning the violence. IE, showing various titles that Japan has made that they find offensive and who is making them.
The only kind of UN mandate that has any kind of effect is a Security Council mandate because those actually have real-world impact like enforcing sanctions.
I’m no lover of EN, but there’s constructive ways to retaliate, and counter constructive ones. Take Mass Effect for example. The feminist named Cooper Lawrence declared it a degrading game to women, because it featured sex… although she made that assertion despite never playing it. Rather than send her death threats, Mass Effect supporters attacked her ideology and books. They even made a campaign that rated her books as terrible on Amazon and what not (look at all those 1-star ratings… lol). However they did so intelligently… the reviews sound authentic; not crackpot nutjobs looking for revenge.
End result? She publicly apologize to the Mass Effect community, because it was generating negative news and hurting her book sales. Had they just sent death threats and hate mail, she’d probably be making a best seller, how Mass Effect turns people into social deviants.
Now I’m not saying that same tactic would work on EN… but sending them nasty emails is not one either. 
There are definitely feminist communities that will cry for brutal tortures to be carried out on anyone they don’t like. But I get to claim the moral high ground, because the community that I actually hang out in gets really upset at that sort of thing and will tell people off or ban them for it, even if they’re supposedly supporters of their side of an argument. 
It’s very tiring being in a community thoroughly dedicated to equality, there’s a heck of a lot of -isms you’ve got to police amongst your own!
Never played Mass Effect, but I bet the sex in it is consensual. That makes it a lot easier to defend. All those negative reviews, I bet most of them are written by people hired by EA and Microsoft Gaming Studios (ie. people with deep pockets). Just like Kevin Trudeau would hire people to boost the ratings of his books.
What is it with your obsession that money is needed to do something effective? The review campaign were written - for free - by the Mass Effect community. Not the producers or programmers, not some Microsoft payroll personnel, not rich people with too much free time - everyday gamers who love the game.
Furthermore, sex in mainstream video games has always been under attack, since day one. Ultra conservatives don’t like it one bit - consensual or not. They’ve got this agenda, to make it seem like games are only for kids, and thus believe violence and sex should be omitted from them. They do the same with books and movies in public libraries, so it shouldn’t be a surprise. And you know what? The people campaigning for the removal (and retention) of the books in that community - as well as hundreds of communities across America - are also grass root and WITHOUT rich people providing money. Unless you consider outback neighborhood civic leagues wealthy.
CNN recently put an article up, about porn and women. It originally came from Oprah Magazine. Quite surprising to me, it generally paints a positive image: I never imagined Oprah to be a porn lover. 
Now all we need to do is find an eroge that Oprah would like
Somehow I doubt that Oprah herself wrote the article. 
That being said, however, it might be worth contacting the author of the article about eroge. Suggestions from the ladies here on the forum about a title to suggest would be useful in regards to this.
Apparently the mangagamer booth at AX told female hentai fans to get lost, the games were only for guys and they weren’t allowed to play?
(This is third-hand at best, I wasn’t there and don’t personally know anyone who was, it’s just what I’m hearing.)
I usually say Heart De Roommate is a good game to give to girls… but that’s IF they’re already anime fans. It feels very familiar and non-threatening to anyone who watches a lot of anime. That’s not necessarily the way to go for someone who’s a porn fan and not an anime fan, though.
YMK has, hands down, the best sex scenes of any eroge I’ve played. Most of these games are, in my opinon, extremely bad porn. I don’t play them for arousal purposes, because they’d FAIL UTTERLY. (Of course, I say the same thing about a lot of live-action porn. Funny yes, arousing no.)
However, YMK is also a bit heavy emotionally to throw at someone as an introduction, and it could raise some questions about age, both because of the “high school like” setting and because of Aya (who is naked far too often for my tastes.)
Maaaaaybe Little My Maid. It has a cute setting, and it has a lot of sex (reasonable if you’re trying to interest someone who’s already into porn). But I don’t recall if it gets into any heavy fetish that might scare people.
Errrr… baaaaaaad idea!
Very bad actually - if I think about how the Aya-routes are to be opened!
Besides that, there are the dark routes for every girl that contain SM and (optional) anal sex…
Overall, not really what we want Oprah to comment on either, do we? :shock:
Nah, better give her “Kana - imouto” or “Crescendo” if really not “YMK” at all!
It all depends on what you think people are likely to be upset by! And the kind of “porn-friendly girl” I’m envisioning clearly differs a lot from your mental image.
I wouldn’t expect anyone who is already into porn to be traumatised by the idea of anal sex. They might not be INTO it, but I wouldn’t expect them to go “OH MY GOD BUGGERY THESE HENTAI FREAKS ARE PERVERTS”. Nor are they likely to freak at a bit of S&M. It depends on exactly how heavy the SM gets and how optional it is - and I’m not really sure of that. But I don’t think it’s likely to come up out of nowhere and hit you over the head with it, it’s just there as an option!
LMM is a porno. There’s a lot of sex. The setting is cutesy and fantasy-based and fantasy is often popular with girls. There’s no really obvious age-of-consent issue AFAIK, because there’s no “this is obviously a high school” going on, and I don’t think any of the girls are even that flat-chested.
If you’re trying to interest someone who’s specifically looking for PORN rather than for a “romance novel”, I don’t think you want the super-slow crying fest of Kana or Crescendo which will probably bore them. (disclaimer, I haven’t played them.)
Obviously, a good h-otome or yaoi game might be a preferred option but we don’t really have one available in English - the two yaoi games that have been translated are both probably too rape-oriented for a beginner. Maaaaaaybe Absolute Obedience if you knew who you were offering it to because the boys are pretty. But probably not.
I’ll defer to a real female, but it is also against my sensibilities to offer Little My Maid as the paragon of female-friendly bishoujo games. I too would think Cresendo or maybe Family Project would be a better fit, especially if you want to show that many of these games are more like Danielle Steele novels than hardcore porn.
That article is talking about women buying hardcore porn!That’s not the audience that you want to be telling that your games are “more like Danielle Steele novels”. That message should be presented to people who like Danielle Steel novels. It’s a bit weird to see multiple people shying away from the whole concept of presenting porn to women when the thing that prompted the discussion was an article about women liking porn.
Of course, if you want to give someone an overview of the market, present them with several titles and talk about each of them and how they represent different aspects of bishoujo games.
Out of curiosity, I wonder what would happen if Peter Payne made a concerted effort to try to get story-based romance visual novels out and heavily advertised towards the romance (dead-tree) novel reading crowd…
A miracle?
Fewer dead trees? I can see the advertisement now…Play Eroge! Save The Environment! :lol:
I believe this song by Tom Lehrer (funny singer BTW) pretty sums up what we think:
My options at this point:
- Ignore it and hope everything works out for the best.
- Write letters in a vain attempt to gain support and change opinions.
- Unknown answer that will solve everything.
- Shoot self, transcend petty concerns.