I’ll say it for him…
the horse is [size=200][color=red]NOT[/color][/size] dead :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
any way, JAST haven’t address the concern of some of the members… is this change the limit or will future title be modified as well?! the answer from other members in the form of “we will cross that bridge when we come to it” is not enough since it will be too late by then.
a simple statement from JAST in the form of “this was an unavoidable change for this title. Our policy have/have not changed for our future titles”, would put a number of members at ease.
should be announced before the product is available for order. I understand that if people want to order a product, they want the product to be intact, as seen on the commercials. In this case, the change should have been mentioned along with KK’s preview on PeaPri site.
Not quite. In my case at least (and probably others as well), what I mean by “we will cross that bridge when we come to it” is that it’s pointless to rave about speculated changes in future games as if they’d already happened / were guaranteed to happen.
Yes. Although, something more concrete like “Demonbane will not be altered for content in any way” would be better.
Looking back at the anime industry for comparison. They started out small with a smaller audiance. Of course initial releases of anime on tv and stuff was censored and cut and this frustrated fans. Fast forward, most of these companies realized that editing and censoring the anime isn’t such a good idea anymore and that hardcore anime fans hated them for it driving profits down.
The connection here is that many of the people that witnessed the rise of anime and struggled with censors and edits are now the age of ero gamers and now see the same thing with games. This is very frustrating for them. The issue though is that the circumstances are quite different than that of the anime industry and that back in the day you were able to get away with more.
But yeah. Censorship is a pretty big deal. Many hardcore eroge gamers play localized eroge not only for the translation but also for the uncensored scenes. Take the latter away and it gives them less of a reason to buy an english release instead of newer more awesome japanese game.
The statement posted at Sankaku Complex says it all - any title they acquire has the potential to be edited. This is the stated policy. JAST USA might strive to pick titles that don’t need changes, but if something slips through (as Family Project just proved), or they change their minds on something, they have to address the issue.
Notifying customers in advance is the important part.
I just like to follow the discussion while slipping my cents in occasionally, but I’m not really making any points here so I’ll probably leave this to everyone else. I’m looking at the same thing though: the sooner this thing dies out, the better. We can move on to the next flame war.
WOW…you just basically destroyed TWO ENTIRE threads with this paragraph since we’re arguing about censorship here. :mrgreen:
And as I’ve said previously, the censoring doesn’t bother me either, as do most small details.
My guess is that they initially intended to hide behind the ‘everyone is 18’ label on the box, but a late project look at the script found that the original intent was to portray her at the time as being underage. There isn’t a whole lot to speculate about, if you could reasonably determine her age (or at least surmise that she was underage), then it creates a legal liability. It might be OK in the US (I’m not completely up to date on the law), but it looks pretty bad if someone gets arrested over their product in Canada or similar. They don’t really have a lot of choice, either they change the script or they change the art, and I think minor changes to the art that don’t really detract from those scenes was the right way to go. They aren’t going to risk their business when minor changes cover their asses. It’s controversial either way but “release the game with the uncensored art” and “don’t release the game if you have to make changes” are not valid options for the company.
I doubt it’ll be an issue to carry over to demonbane and others, because unlike family project, the age of the characters is more or less irrelevant, so they could say whatever they want about it (like they have done on the majority of their other projects.
Yeah, in the Nitro+ titles, the loli’s usually aren’t human and there ages are irrelevant. Some are over 1000 Years old…
Anyway, the fan translators who are working with JAST, said that JAST doesn’t plan on any edits for those games, and that they would warn us ahead of time if such changes happened, if JAST doesn’t…
I mean, in this case, the early site listed ages that were wrong according to the script. The clearly adult characters were listed as 5 years older than the script actually stated…
This should be enough of an explanation for the censoring, don’t you think ? I’d rather save my company by doing what’s necessary than appeal to ALL of our customers coughB173 M3cough.
Well it’s good to know that we’re going to get a heads-up beforehand in the future.
… :? :? But does this REALLY guarantee no censorship issues?
For example, From M’s Ayumi is explicitely described as “18 years old”, and Dea ex Machina’s Fam is merely a robot, but for some strange reason I often receive interesting comments from innocent people when I post links to certain game graphics :lol: …
Well, based on past issues, that actually DOES lower the chance of them being censored. If they say there ages out right, or that they aren’t human, it probably isn’t an issue.
You REALLY can’t judge board reactions to what the actual policy is, can you.
Wasn’t meant like that PNG and I think my post was directed to one person alone, while I was adding my personal view on the matter. Guess I was a tad more morning grumpy then usual which came out in a rather sad way, and I’ll apologize for that, not to mention to B173 M3. I can’t say I was trying to destroy nor end anything… not that I would have such influence considering the short amount of time I’ve been ‘somewhat’ active here… But I’ve been reading here for quite a while and I must admit I’ve grown to like how people discuss matters back and forth… rather then going for verbal abuses they seem to take pride in actually not sounding like 5th graders while they argue, witch clearly ain’t something you find on every forum out there.
I meant everything I said though, but I rarely go to the length of talking down to a person which I clearly did earlier today… I guess my morning grumpiness got the better of me :?
I think you vastly overestimate the scale of the Japanese eroge import market, compared to the English market. Browsers of forums like this already represent a small subset of eroge purchasers (let’s call them hardcore eroge fans). Those who play imports are yet another tiny subset of these hardcore eroge fans. Playing the original games in Japanese is simply not an option for the vast, vast, majority of English eroge purchasers. Hell, even I’m hesitant to tackle pure visual novels, and I have some experience playing eroge in Japanese.
Well I’ve just gotten back from Comic-Con and I was able to talk to the head honcho himself. Figured that while I was at it I might as well ask some questions pertaining to all the stuff going on. So first off, the censorship of Matsuri WAS a legal issue. In his eyes it was either censor those scenes or alter the script to remove any indications that she was underage and with his desire to keep the material faithful he went with the images instead of altering the story. For those claiming that the Handley case shouldn’t be an issue, unfortunately it is and he said that there was no way for him to just ignore it. When I then asked about the Nitro+ games he was confidant that there shouldn’t be any issues, pointing out that the age of several of the loli looking characters is well beyond legal and he has no problem with those images. The only Nitro+ title he seemed a little concerned about was Sumaga (or as he initially put it “the three witches game”). His concern there was the youngest of the witches and he said he would have to go over the game and images to decide what to do.
I’ll be going again tomorrow so if any of you have more questions put 'em up before tonight and I’ll see if I can get some time to ask him, their booth was pretty dang busy so I won’t make promises.
One of the Fantranslaters said that the witches were Robots, not humans. or at least Mira was a robot. There was part of the script I read on /Jp where the other witches calls the protagagnist a “lolicon” for looking at Mira, but Mira gets pissed off, pointing out that she is the same age as everyone else.
I am against any type of censorship, even if it was censoring something I didn’t want to see. That said, this sounds like a credible reason to censor the artwork from a legal standpoint (though they could also just restrict the sale of the box title to the US like they restrict selling these titles to Japan).
The question then becomes, what would you rather be altered: the artwork or the storyline? What do you play the VN more for? If it’s the storyline, then obviously you have no reason to be pissed. If it’s the artwork, you have more of a reason to be.
I totally understand where they are coming from, but I just wish they’d offer a patch later on to put the images back. I doubt they will do it though. Maybe some fan will create a program to add them as some of the older censored titles had since in this case it’s just a simple image swap.
No. They’re based in the US. It doesn’t matter who they’re selling to. In addition, downloads of obscene material are still illegal. It’s just much, much less visible (chances of getting caught are basically 0 unless you’re a convicted pedophile, do it on a public PC, or under police surveillance for another reason).
This is good news, though I’ll have to check out Sumaga later to see what that’s about (on a work PC right now >.>).
Here’s my followup question (an altered version of my questions in the main thread):
The reasons for censoring in Family Project seemed to be more scenario-related (age implied by the story) than graphics related (age implied by character’s physical appearance). Peach Princess previously released Jewel Knights Crusaders, which had an extremely young looking character in it (Hisui iirc). If JAST were to release that game again, would that game be censored considering the current political climate? More generally, are games with very young-looking characters ok, but any scenario references that they’re minors is not ok? For example, if the character is not human (and has lived far longer than a mortal) but looks extremely young, is that ok? What if the character looks AND acts very young, but there’s little or no story references implying they’re underage?
I had actually forgotten about B173 M3 until you mentioned him in that post.
Then I recalled how he was against censorship in the FP thread…sorry for singling you out, but I couldn’t think of anyone else who was so against the censoring.
We’re all mature here people. :mrgreen:
And I happened to leech off of you on B173 M3. :mrgreen:
Yep, I think story references of a character being minor have now become grounds for censoring. The eroge market is going through some tough times here.
First, that point could still be somewhat subjective, although I think most people would agree with you on that point.
As for the Handley case, that did not set legal precedent. Yes it could be labeled obscene, but so could the whole game. And yea, I don’t see an official patch coming out unless PP decides it’ll increase sales without any legal issues.
