Brighton, where all the weirdoes live.
[QUOTE]Originally posted by papillon:
Brighton, where all the weirdoes live. [/QUOTE
Ah, ‘Brighton’, I would suspect then they would have them around there, with it being a popular city. Your lucky indeed.
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Originally posted by papillon:
There's plenty of manga in England, unless the bookstores are really weird where you are - places I go, both the traditional bookstores and the comic shops carry it.(The comic shop also carries some traditional european erotic/pinup art, but generally not hentai.)
I shop at Amazon because it's convenient, not because it's my only option. [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/smile.gif[/img]
Same for Italy, too.
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Originally posted by papillon:
Brighton, where all the weirdoes live. [img]http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubb/smile.gif[/img]
That doesn't sound right. I've never been there in my life ...
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Originally posted by Aithos:
The difference between here and japan is that in japan these types of games are considered normal and every day. I would say that they would consider a dating sim the same way they would consider the next sims game.
Oh, no, that's not quite the case. One think that people tend to assume is that since Japan is the home of ero games that they are considered "okay" by the majority people in Japan. That's not the case. It is part of Japanese culture to keep one's hobbies a secret. People here don't casually invite others to their homes that way that people do in America. Japanese men do tend to love sex and eros, but it's all kept secret. In fact, anime fans keep the fact that they like anime a secret. Even though anime and ero games are extremely popular in sales, by word of mouth nobody likes them. That's how it is. You can't wear an anime shirt in Japan or everyone around you will think you are strange, even if they themselves are fans. Sad, really.
I’ll be perfectly honest, my interest in Japanese Animation and Bishoujo Games, apart from on the internet, I do, infact, keep it a ‘secret’, oddly enough. I always thought I acted too Japanese, even through my child hood, such as taking my shoes off in the home after I come back in, being quite a “quiet” person in alot of respects and now the “keeping the hobby” quite thing really has got me thinking, I do it all the time, I really do dislike people finding out my passions and hobbies.
It is frustrating, I know, to have some of the most famous games not brought over. One of the biggest problems is the success of the games here. I mean, some games sell 100,000 copies at $88 per game. Compared to that, how can any measley offering that a U.S. company could make matter to those guys. Another issue is that Japanese are very risk-averse. We’ve run into this before – we were supposedly able to license a game, until some higher-up decided it would be “dangerous” to release an uncensored game, despite the fact that anime is licensed all the time. There’s no basis for the fear other than that America is an unknown market to the Japanese. Really, this job can be a frustrating one…
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such as taking my shoes off in the home after I come back in
I do that too. It's perfectly normal to me. There are other households that do that too, but most don't.
The idea behind this for me is that wearing shoes in the house makes the place dirty often enough.
When we get visitors, they don't take off their shoes, though, and they never get asked to.
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Originally posted by Benoit:
[quote] such as taking my shoes off in the home after I come back in
I do that too. It's perfectly normal to me. There are other households that do that too, but most don't.
The idea behind this for me is that wearing shoes in the house makes the place dirty often enough.
When we get visitors, they don't take off their shoes, though, and they never get asked to. [/quote]
I feel the same way myself, I mean the last thing I want to do is walk around with shoes inside my own home, it just makes things dirty like you said, even if I forgot something and I already have my shoes on, I'll take them off, fetch what I need and put my shoes back on.
I also usually ask people to take their shoes off inside my house, I make that a rule too. But they do so and it is respected.
Anyway, to Peter Payne, I had no idea the American market was that hard. Europe, I've always figured is a tough nut to crack (Europe being the home of Cossacks players and other strategy games) but America I have always regarded as being "more open" towards trying new things (hey, that is why "The Hamburger" came about, originally a German invention, the Americans liked it and decided to "make their own" version and wha-la, it became an international success) But still, you do learn something new everyday.
Best of luck though with selling the games, I'll always buy a good English version.
EDIT: Sorry for the double post, there was a posting error on my side.
[This message has been edited by Ksim3000 (edited 02-07-2006).]
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Originally posted by Ksim3000:
Anyway, to Peter Payne, I had no idea the American market was that hard. Europe, I've always figured is a tough nut to crack (Europe being the home of Cossacks players and other strategy games) but America I have always regarded as being "more open" towards trying new things (hey, that is why "The Hamburger" came about, originally a German invention, the Americans liked it and decided to "make their own" version and wha-la, it became an international success) But still, you do learn something new everyday.
Sort of. Here in America we tend to be more open about everything, except when we're not. ;D
Many (here and elsewhere) have already commented on the fact that Americans have a number of raw nerves. 'Christian' religious 'fundamental'ism is a real big one. Closely tied into this are taboos on sex, sexuality, and pornography (real, imagined, and otherwise).
The weird thing is that most Americans really do believe in free speech and all that, and if you really push them on it most will say they don't really advocate censorship -- but they're still trying to censor you.
Last year some so-called "family values" advocacy organization released a list of their Top Ten most repulsive games of the year that managed to include multiple games that either did not exist, or had not yet been released. Unfortunately I can't remember the details or track down the story at this time :(
Probably the easiest point to make takes just two words: Hot Coffee. A huge firestorm erupted - prompting serious threats of political meddling, formal investigations, and several lawsuits - when GTA: San Andreas was found to contain sex scenes. They had been deleted from the game; they were inaccessible normally; you had to hack the game to make them available. This, in a game where you can mow down crowds with an UZI, hijack police cars and destroy things with them, and many other violent, depraved acts. (These were controvertial but did not provoke anywhere near the same level of outrage.)
Remember, in America, we will throw out all rights of anyone if its “to protect the children”.
Pornography is the hunted demon of 2 groups in America: Feminists (Extremists for Female Rights) and the Families Protecting Their Children (most often noted amoung the various Christian political movements). Mind you, even they don’t want anyone taking away their own access to pornography, but they do want to take away everyone else’s access to pornography because it is everyone else that would give it to their children. Or not understand be able to understand how they are only studying how all society victimizes women and that its grown to eveen victimize men (commonest excuse when a Femi gets ratted out by former workers/roomates for why they have tons of porn).
Hot Coffee made a lasting storm because Rockstar did write a explicit sex game. Okay, an explicit mini-sex game. And they then released it, knowing it was in there, just not easily accessible. To those not in the know of code, it sounds like any other hidden feature of a game. You know, like cheat codes letting you play a hidden character or access hidden levels/features. That’s why it was such a big deal. Rockstar should have clipped it out of the actual game, rather then block it off. They know it. They knew someone would find it, and then they would cash in on the publicity. They’ve been busted for that by their own leaked email. So that means a game maker made a sex game and then hid it to get it by parents.
Can you see why parents are mad?
Of course, GTA3 was targetted at people that can legally buy sex games. It’s targetted at male gamers that are 20 to 30 years old. Rockstar cut the sex mini-game because they wanted Walmart (and the other big box retailers) to sell the game, and there was no way Walmart would sell if it was known to have a sex part in it.
As for GTA itself— it got protested to heck and back when it first came out. Heck, the US Senate even debated making it a law to make it a crime for a software maker to create a game where players killed cops. But it died a quiet death because it was just more political barnstorming by a few politicians trying to cash in on the “public outrage”. You’ll note that the public outrage was such that Rockstar games had no trouble getting their games carried at all the big box retailers and funding more sequeals.
While there are some frothing-at-the-mouth ‘feminists’ who get all bent out of shape about porn, they don’t really have much power and people generally ignore them. Some people are crazy and will claim that even looking at a woman constitutes rape. They’re nuts. I’d like to keep that sort of behavior far away from the word ‘feminist’ in your mind, please, as I’m in favor of RIGHTS and EQUALITY, not STUPIDITY.
(In fact, I’m very much a feminist. I support a woman’s right to work, work IN porn, look at porn, not look at porn, or be a housewife if that’s what SHE WANTS. Stop telling me what I want, you obnoxious people!)
Anyway, Andrea Dworkin doesn’t really have much power to prevent you from getting your hgames, because for the most part, nobody’s listening to her. Which is part of why she’s so pissed off. (Yes, I do know she’s dead. But she’s the most recognisable name in that sort of wacky radical movement.)
Amusingly, some Sex Worker’s Union has now come out against GTA complaining because of the way prostitutes are treated in the games… they’re kinda behind the times, though, and nobody’s actually taking them seriously.
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Originally posted by Darkstar:
Hot Coffee made a *lasting* storm because Rockstar did write a explicit sex game. Okay, an explicit mini-sex game. And they then released it, knowing it was in there, just not easily accessible. To those not in the know of code, it sounds like any other hidden feature of a game. You know, like cheat codes letting you play a hidden character or access hidden levels/features. That's why it was such a big deal. Rockstar should have clipped it out of the actual game, rather then block it off. They know it. They knew someone would find it, and then they would cash in on the publicity. They've been busted for that by their own leaked email. So that means a game maker made a sex game and then hid it to get it by parents.Can you see why parents are mad?
1) There's a leaked email to the effect of 'we expect people to find this, it'll be tons of free publicity'? Was it official policy? I've not heard of this before and am interested in links to any details.
2) This version of events differs from what I might expect. I actually am a software developer, and in my opinion this sort of thing could easily have been a mistake. They created it; put it into the game; decided to remove it; instead of REMOVING everything it's simpler to just remove all access to it, leaving orphaned material that's totally inaccessible. The scenes are supposed to use much less detailed models, indicating they're not polished, finished product; if it were a marketing stunt I would not expect this to be the case.
As for why they wouldn't go the extra mile and remove the scenes entirely? You're right, they probably should have. If it isn't meant to be there it shouldn't be on the disc. However, given the time pressure they're under, it's often much easier to disable something rather than delete it. Programs are like a house of cards. Anything you change can break stuff even tangentially related. And games are extremely hard work to make.
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by Nandemonai: 2) This version of events differs from what I might expect. I actually am a software developer, and in my opinion this sort of thing could easily have been a mistake. They created it; put it into the game; decided to remove it; instead of REMOVING everything it's simpler to just remove all access to it, leaving orphaned material that's totally inaccessible. The scenes are supposed to use much less detailed models, indicating they're not polished, finished product; if it were a marketing stunt I would not expect this to be the case.
Actually you are leaving out the option of someone programming it in without consent as well. I used to program myself and have seen it several times.
Take the case of Disney. A five part link, which this takes you to, has information on such cases they have run into. Reaction to such can be found several places such as here and others.
[This message has been edited by Mirk (edited 02-16-2006).]
I still don’t get why blocking off access would be easier than just removing the content, and I do program.
You’d have to find out where it’s called, and then block it off in all those places. You could just rip out the programming.
Reading the Disney stuff now, read the linked page so far. Interesting.
It depends on how it’s programmed, really, to know what’s easier.
In some coding systems it’s quite easy to simply pluck an ‘object’ out of an ‘environment’ so that it can no longer be encountered in play - the details of how to create that object still exist in the source code, but the object is never created when the game is executed.
In some setups deleting anything is problematic because it can lead to linking errors that take more time to fix, and it’s simpler to disable than delete.
It’s just not something you can point to and say “It’s OBVIOUSLY this” without having actually seen the code and the tools they use to build it.
Nandemonai, I cannot lay my hands on a copy of the leaked emails, but it wasn’t from the top of the food chain, IIRC.
I can understand them just commenting out the line of code that activated the “coffee” mini-game, with the intention of ripping it out or re-enabling the game and finishing off the graphics and mini-game. Then it gets forgotten in the mess that is always The Crunch until its too late to waste a warm coder on. Someone in the managerial chain makes an excuse and says, "No worries. It will just be a special easter egg that our hardcore can find. Like Flight Sim in Excel. You cannot get to it in normal play so no worries."
Like I have said elsewhere on this subject, I can see it being a normal game shop thing. It’s just unfortunate that it was left in the game and then we got that tempest in a teacup over it. Hidden sex games in popular video game is a great story. Going to get lots of people watching the news on the telie or buying a newspaper.
I had an interesting discussion with a game company yesterday. They’re bringing out a Pinky St. game for Nintendo DS and Playstation, and we were seeing how we might get the game picked up for porting to English. It all comes down to Sony and stupid business decisions, and wanting to only do titles that are guaranteed to sell 100,000 units. We will be trying to get someone interested in the game, but there’s no way to know if it will be possible. It’s the same reason good de-H-ified games for the console never get brought over – just corporate decisions by very silly people.