I am wondering if Peter ‘cleaned things up a bit’ because he thought KK might just find a wider audience, that players new to ero-games might give it a try based on reputation and notice alone. Such folks might not look too askew at adult characters making love as part of a deeper relationship, but might take bad notice of an underage girl’s exposed genitals.
KK is arguably the most prominent title JAST has ever taken on. The only things that come close are the buzz around Little My Maid when that was initially announced and Princess Waltz. Look at the VA’s and that one of the most prominent (in the states) JPOP stars did the music vocals. I could see a fan of Yuka Imai’s work or Kotoko taking a chance on their names alone, and if putting pink pantsu on Mats is enough to keep them from getting too shocked and perhaps trying a YMK or Crescendo, that’s not such a bad thing.
I think that’s a bit too optimistic. Modifying those images would do nothing to convince detractors that Kazoku Keikaku is a ‘wholesome’ title, especially in light of the ero-scenes that follow. Furthermore, X-Change 3 saw a few modifications too.
Rush or not, it takes time to execute these changes since they have to work with the original publisher (who has been increasingly slow to cooperate)…I would suspect that this contributed to the delay prior to release. As the upcoming text patch suggests, you can’t pull this off in just a few days.
A question to ponder: what’s less damaging? A screwed launch (due to pre-release hysteria, followed by pre-order cancellations) that sharply affects short-term income or a loss of goodwill that affects trust (but with less risk of impending monetary loss)? Many dev houses certainly bet on the latter - if the market is akin to walking along a tightrope, they need all the money they can get to stay in business. Since sales are ridiculously front-loaded, loss of launch revenue might sink the company.
Thanks for everyone’s comments. I especially appreciate the ones defending us on this.
I’d like to point out something amusing: I invited people to email me comments personally, and despite the large number of comments here only three people did so. I also am at the San Diego Comic Con (booth 129) and was happy to talk about these changes (small, small changes) with any fan who came by, but just one person brought up the situation among hundreds, and he walked away with a copy of the game. We had a panel where I expected someone to bring this issue up, not one did during the question and answer period.
I know serious fans are rightfully angry that we didn’t disclose as we should have (for which I am deeply sorry). I wonder, though, could some of the anger being expressed here not be some kind of weird online phenomenon of anger feeding on other anger? I’m honestly intrigued as to why there’d be such a different reaction in the online vs offlin world.
Probably because most of us didn’t go to this Con and maybe also because we have already reached the state when everything has been said (Goodwin
's rule → Someone here already mentioned the third reich).
That’s because EVERYONE tries keep a good image of themselves in RL, and no one would try to start a flame war over this issue at the convention because it would be quelled almost instantly. Plus, the instigator(s) who’ll be blaming JAST would be given quite a vicious mental beat down from the appreciative fans there. No, I think it’s better that we keep all the fighting and (excuse my use of profanity this once) bitching online.
People are more willing to express negative opinions anonymously online, rather than face to face. It’s quite possible that a number of visitors to the booth did possess anger about the issue, but chose not to express it because they didn’t want to ruin the mood or start an argument.
People heavily invested in off-line, real world events might not spend as much time as the internet, thus have never heard of the censorship issue.
Comic-con, as a general interest and more mainstream convention, possibly has less “hard core” fans who’d take issue with censorship (as opposed to say, Otakon).
If it’s about the game, probably the same color she wears in the JP version
Is Saya human? No, therefore I seriously doubt she’s going to be censored in the hypothetical US version. Matsuri IS somewhat stated to be underage, and she’s obviously human…
Your a troll anyway, so I don’t know why I’m replying to you.
A broken promise doesn’t mean much if you weren’t aware of it in the first place. I am kind of surprised no one brought the issue up in the Q&A though (it could be done without sounding like a troll). That shows a serious lack of awareness, either because 1) no one cares or 2) there weren’t many hardcore fans there. I think it’s a little of 1, but mostly 2. From what I gather, most people that go to eroge panels at anime conventions are just curious fans of general anime. The more serious among them might’ve played a couple of games, but nothing like the type of person you find on this BBS who could write a Wikipedia article on the subject and recommend 5-10 games off the top of their head. In other words, this whole incident is completely below their radar, so much so that they wouldn’t care about a minor incident like this simply because they don’t really care about eroge. You have to actually care about the hobby to get pissed off. The real issue here is: does the average eroge customer care about the censoring? Unless they know about it, the answer’s no by default (in this case at least). Even if they do know about it, I’d venture that most don’t care, simply because they’re not invested enough in the hobby to care.
The reason this is an Internet phenomenon is simple. It’s where hardcore fans of eroge tend to assemble. Eroge localizations are such an incredibly niche industry that even anime conventions don’t manage to draw eroge fans to any appreciable extent. If we could gather together all the people that visit this BBS in one place, you bet there’d be discussion of this issue.
Also, there is no reason to e-mail you. I’ve done so before in the past, when I found out the X-Change 3 tuturing session was censored as well. You never responded.
Frankly, from everything I’ve been told by some of the admins, you and I are not exactly on the best of terms, and I’d rather you not have my personal e-mail.
The only people that have EVER responded to my e-mails were Shingo and Lamuness. Besides, you’ve already made it clear that you have your opinion set, and nothing will change the outcome, so why bother wasting time contacting you when I can be writign eroge fan clubs with this information, and contacting local politicians about free speech laws?
Your last comment seems like you’re trying to shift the blame, saying we are simply massive ragers. Nice.
Peter, I’ve offered you redemption multiple times. Explain to me why you made posts promising this would not happen, then went back on your word. Why didn’t you tell us about the changes?
I’ve already brought it up in another thread but I’ll post it here too, I’ll be at Comic-Con again tomorrow and odds are I’ll be able to talk to Peter in person again. If you’ve got any questions you’d like me to ask post them before tomorrow and I’ll try and ask him. Do make sure to read the post in the other thread as I asked him a couple today that I’d rather not ask again.
I get the feeling that you are taking all of this as a joke. “I especially appreciate the ones defending us on this.”? So, you only are glad to receive comments that support you? What was the point of creating a thread to discuss this situation if you only wanted to receive positive comments? I wonder what you would have done if all of the comments you have been receiving were negative.
Because of reasons other people have already pointed out, the feedback you got at the con can’t be entirely true. I wouldn’t be surprised if many of the people at anime conventions haven’t heard of your games until they see your booth. Many people probably didn’t even know about the censorship when they purchased it.
“Okay, back to the con with me”
In other words, ‘I think all of the controversy over this whole thing is ridiculous. As long as people still buy my games, I don’t care about your opinions. Excuse me while I go to another convention to try to sell stuff.’
I used to really respect your company, but after this, my opinion has changed. ‘Forgetting’ to inform customers about a change in your products and then basically brushing them off in your responses is not a smart way to help your business. (and yes, I realise you are offering refunds, but I still don’t approve of the responses you have been giving us)
I have a few questions that I would be very thankful if you could answer (edit: or vardest asking at comic con):
Do you plan on censoring any of the upcoming Nitro+ releases?
Why is it that some of your other releases such as Casual Romance Club and Virgin Roster (which is a graphic rape sim) retain underage references to underage characters but Kazoku Keikaku ended up getting censored? The characters in those games are much younger than Matsuri. (Amanda is a middle school student and Kengo makes a comment about Ren looking like she is an elementary school student)
How long before a release do you intend to inform customers that it is edited? If it is only a week or two before release, many people won’t even get a notice in time.
Look on the other thread, they DON’T splan on censoring the Nitro+ titles, because the lolis in those are well beyond the legal age and/or simply not human. The other games you mentioned were handled by different companies. Also, saying someone LOOKS young is quite different than implying that they ARE underage. Ren clearly ISN’T an elementary student.
CRC is a Japanese re release of an older game with added English localization. The original came out sometime in the '90s, before the EOCS code changed to not allow underage characters. The English script probably left the references in because it wasn’t examined by the EOCS for the re release.
We can’t be sure here, because they probably decide just how they’re going to handle things pretty late in the process.
Well, I’m glad to hear that. That’s a little hypocritical to not censor something because it supposedly isn’t human though.
JAST still sells the games on J-List and states that every character is “over 18” on each page. If they say they won’t sell products with underage anime characters, why do they sell titles like CRC?
And while Ren probably isn’t an elementary school student, she still is most likely underage. The game obviously takes place in a highschool and (if I remember correctly), Ren isn’t a senior. And how do we know Ren isn’t just really smart and skipped multiple grades? She looks REALLY young and I remember her character was supposed to be really smart. Just about all of the non-teacher characters in VR could be underage.
They should know before they release a game. If they license something, they should know what’s in it.
In regards to CRC: As has already been mentioned, CRC is a remake of an older game. However, what hasn’t been adequately explained is that CRC is not a JAST/GC/PP release. The game was localized in-house by the original developer. In other words, JAST/GC/PP has nothing to do with the game being in English, and have nothing to do with the content. If CRC is being sold on the JAST, GC, or PP websites (I don’t know, I shop through the J-List site), then they are simply acting as a vendor. Just wanted to make that clear, and that is all I’m going to say as I am done trying to argue with people in this thread.
Scary. Remind me to never watch Howard the Duck… :shock:
I understand that CRC wasn’t produced by JAST, but they still state on their site that "Important note: all characters in this game, as in all the hentai/bishoujo games we sell, are aged 18 or older. " It’s even on the CRC page. Regardless of what they say, they actually do sell games that have underage characters.
