Culture Wars General - KiA Diet Coke Edition

[Marissa Moira]

https://ricedigital.co.uk/strong-switch-sales/

So what do you say in Sony's defense Moira, the fact they abandoned a niche market and lost the support of Japanese devs who now use the Switch.

Also Rice is looking to replace OAG as the boner culture news site, with less nazism links

That article is borderline clickbait because they got a few things wrong.

Limited Run's Scott Pilgrim campaign featured both systems with neither being the dominant one.

The only two main differences between collecting for the Switch compared to the PS4 though are that since launch, Switch numbers for most game production runs are lower than the PS4. And that when you're dealing with small production run game sites, there's always a group that will buy on the Nintendo brand alone because of the NES and SNES being the base line for game collecting. I can speak from personal experience over decades of collecting myself, but you can even look at recent games like either of the Dragon Quest Builders where the PS4 version will run you 20 bucks max, while the Switch version can command 50-80 dollars. For DQ builders the switch version is the inferior performing version of the game so you're not even paying extra to have the best version on physical, you're just paying the money for the less produced port and a brand name.

Second every game he's championing is absolute ass. If you're talking nitche Japanese games and you run directly to things like Omega labyrinth Z, you're not really interested in Japanese games. How about Giraffe and Annika, or either of the Psiko Shooting Stars collections, The Liar Princess and the Blind prince, or hell they just released Ikaruga for the switch on a very nice remaster. Stop championing garbage piles of games just because it's from a country that you're not personally familiar with.

Thirdly he goes off into a tangent about how LGBT friendly Nintendo is, what the fuck that's what caused this mess to begin with.

Fourth, Visual Novels are not games and there's no getting around this. You're just as bad as movie fags if you want your talking picture books. I mean when the highest praise for VNs is that they can be used as reading aid for learning disabled children, there's quite a few issues that need to be resolved.

Still, it's funny to see some karma hitting back in various ways such as how there is literally nothing for the japanese PS5 users in the entirety of Q1 2021 (as everything is either a multiplat available on PC/PS4/Switch or cancelled) and the console will face another very long supply shortage due of AMD's issues with their chips.

When a Japanese company sells out 100% of it's stock that's considered good japanese business no matter how much stock you had on hand. It's retarded logic for the rest of the west and only seems to work there.

AMD being run at max capacity is not a bad thing, they're being made to expand and build more facilities and hire more workers. This is mostly due to greater than expected demand.

There's no Karma at play, just corona and how it fucked with supply chains.

The PS5 had a much stronger lineup than the PS4. Like it didn't matter the territory, the launch line up was far stronger than what the PS4 or PS3 had. I can personally attest to this because I've got about 4 collector's editions of games and no PS5 system yet. It took a long time before PS4 had things like Tales of Zestiria and RPGs started to trickle in.

 

[KokoroKoroki]

Second every game he's championing is absolute ass. If you're talking nitche Japanese games and you run directly to things like Omega labyrinth Z, you're not really interested in Japanese games. How about Giraffe and Annika, or either of the Psiko Shooting Stars collections, The Liar Princess and the Blind prince, or hell they just released Ikaruga for the switch on a very nice remaster. Stop championing garbage piles of games just because it's from a country that you're not personally familiar with.

See this is the problem I have with your reasoning when it comes to this topic:
"I think these games are garbage piles therefore it is irrelevant whether or not they get censored because I don't think they are very good."

The quality of the games isn't what's important, if a game is getting censored or cancelled because of it's content then it needs to be addressed.

The whole "You're not really interested in Japanese games because you're not interested in THESE SPECIFIC Japanese games" rhetoric also comes off as extremely condescending, like you believe people adhering to your taste is somehow going to fix things.

The main point is that there is still a market for these kinds of games overseas, whether or not you personally consider them garbage piles doesn't really matter within the grand scheme of things, censorship is censorship, regardless of quality.

 

[Marissa Moira]

See this is the problem I have with your reasoning when it comes to this topic:
"I think these games are garbage piles therefore it is irrelevant whether or not they get censored because I don't think they are very good."

The quality of the games isn't what's important, if a game is getting censored or cancelled because of it's content then it needs to be addressed.

The whole "You're not really interested in Japanese games because you're not interested in THESE SPECIFIC Japanese games" rhetoric also comes off as extremely condescending, like you believe people adhering to your taste is somehow going to fix things.

The main point is that there is still a market for these kinds of games overseas, whether or not you personally consider them garbage piles doesn't really matter within the grand scheme of things, censorship is censorship, regardless of quality.

And I disagree with that logic, the game's quality comes above all else. It being censored or uncensored makes no difference if the game is crap. Because it's the same logic on why we need or should care about Black/Gay/trans/lesbian main characters in games, but they put all effort into having representation and not on the gameplay quality.

Nothing came come before the gameplay and establishing solid systems. If you're using the gameplay as a vehicle for something else the game will always suffer.

Also I'm fairy certain Rice Digital is run by these types:



They went all in on having physical stuff for the Exclusive Switch Gal Gun edition. I mean it's coming with a bra. It's no wonder they would be promoting the switch. Physical edition shit is expensive to make in most instances.

I never understood the appeal of also including Pins, but everything seems to include pins for fucking everything now. I have like a billion anime pins or pins that feature corgis. I don't know why but every anime dog pin is a fucking corgi even when it's not part of the series.

 

[BananaSplit]

The only two main differences between collecting for the Switch compared to the PS4 though are that since launch, Switch numbers for most game production runs are lower than the PS4. And that when you're dealing with small production run game sites, there's always a group that will buy on the Nintendo brand alone because of the NES and SNES being the base line for game collecting. I can speak from personal experience over decades of collecting myself, but you can even look at recent games like either of the Dragon Quest Builders where the PS4 version will run you 20 bucks max, while the Switch version can command 50-80 dollars. For DQ builders the switch version is the inferior performing version of the game so you're not even paying extra to have the best version on physical, you're just paying the money for the less produced port and a brand name.

Second every game he's championing is absolute ass. If you're talking nitche Japanese games and you run directly to things like Omega labyrinth Z, you're not really interested in Japanese games. How about Giraffe and Annika, or either of the Psiko Shooting Stars collections, The Liar Princess and the Blind prince, or hell they just released Ikaruga for the switch on a very nice remaster. Stop championing garbage piles of games just because it's from a country that you're not personally familiar with.

Thirdly he goes off into a tangent about how LGBT friendly Nintendo is, what the fuck that's what caused this mess to begin with.

Fourth, Visual Novels are not games and there's no getting around this. You're just as bad as movie fags if you want your talking picture books. I mean when the highest praise for VNs is that they can be used as reading aid for learning disabled children, there's quite a few issues that need to be resolved.

-The article explains there is a digital marketplace on Switch that allows players to buy games with regular sales events while there is still the possibility to buy physicals too. I dunno why you're obsessing over the physical formats though. Personally, I think physicals are "outdated" because most games have patches & updates these days, and it's kind of cumbersome to have many physicals for a portable system. But your average person is just gonna juggle what are the cheaper options between physical or digital for games.
People who buy Switch versions of games are generally aware they have to make a few concessions in terms of graphics/framerate on a console that runs at sub-20W in consumption usage with a portability option (versus a base PS4 that will draw out over 100W). And DQ Builders is really a poor example to use against the Nintendo platform considering it's not exactly a well optimized game on any gaming system in the first place, even the PS4 struggles a lot at rendering the player islands that are ambitiously creative.

-Like @KokoroKoroki more or less said, your reasoning is pretty much "how dare those people like things I don't like" in a nutshell.

-What the article labels as "LGBT-friendly" are in fact yuri visual novels. I don't know why people on the western front keep labeling the tag as such, considering the approach yuri makes is largely different from what the West do in regard of lesbians. Those things focus more on the plot and characters (cute girls working at a hospital which isn't portrayed as the happy-go workplace or supernatural/mysteries being the main topic) rather than making a big deal out of their sexual orientations.

-Visual novels are pretty much rooted in Japan and come in all forms (sound novels, romantic simulators, etc), the format even appear in actual games since it is quite a simple and cheap way of narration. For a shitposter who goes with a condescending attitude that people are not familar to a country's history of vidya, that's quite the treat honestly. And liking VNs doesn't exclude anyone from liking other kinds of videogames, variety is the spice of life.

And I disagree with that logic, my own tastes in videogames come above all else. It being censored or uncensored makes no difference if I believe the game is crap.

ftfy

Gal*Gun is a dumb fun rail shooter even if it doesn't compare to the superb House of the Dead. I disliked the Gal*Gun 2 on the other hand because it threw away the rail shooter gameplay and instead was definitively more VR-focused but it also removed all the possible story branches

 

[Marissa Moira]

-The article explains there is a digital marketplace that allows players to buy games with regular sales events while there is still the possibility to buy physicals too. I dunno why you're obsessing over the physical formats though. Personally, I think physicals are "outdated" because most games have patches & updates these days, and it's kind of cumbersome to have many physicals for a portable system. But your average person is just gonna juggle what are the cheaper options between physical or digital for games.
People who buy Switch versions of games are generally aware they have to make a few concessions in terms of graphics/framerate on a console that runs at sub-20W in consumption usage with a portability option (versus a base PS4 that will draw out over 100W). And DQ Builders is really a poor example to use against the Nintendo platform considering it's not exactly a well optimized game on any gaming system in the first place, even the PS4 struggles a lot at rendering the player islands that are ambitiously creative.

-Like @KokoroKoroki more or less said, your reasoning is pretty much "how dare those people like things I don't like" in a nutshell.

-What the article labels as "LGBT-friendly" are in fact yuri visual novels. I don't know why people on the western front keep labeling the tag as such, considering the approach yuri makes is largely different from what the West do in regard of lesbians. Those things focus more on the plot and characters (cute girls working at a hospital which isn't portrayed as the happy-go workplace or supernatural/mysteries being the main topic) rather than making a big drama out of their sexual orientations.

-Visual novels are pretty much rooted in Japan and come in all forms (sound novels, romantic simulators, etc), the format even appear in actual games since it is quite a simple and cheap way of narration. For a shitposter who goes with a condescending attitude that people are not familar to a country's history of vidya, that's quite the treat honestly. And liking VNs doesn't exclude anyone from liking other kinds of videogames, variety is the spice of life.


ftfy

Gal*Gun is a dumb fun rail shooter even if it doesn't compare to the superb House of the Dead. I disliked the Gal*Gun 2 on the other hand because it threw away the rail shooter gameplay and instead was definitively more VR-focused but it also removed all the possible story branches

Visual novels are not rooted in Japan. Visual Novels are a dumbed down version of Text Adventures which were all made in the west and dating back to Zork which didn't even have graphics when they first began. Text Adventures later on used to have various combat systems and more situational outcomes, these later spread to an offshoot of what was considered the point and click genre of games.

These were not some Japanese creation specifically, games have always functioned as a push and pull between east and west.

There's literally no difference mechanically between the "adult" FMV games of the late 80's to early 90's and the Japanese counterparts that used anime characters. They're functionally the same thing. Some may have used poker to slide under regulations while others used Mahjong.

Later on they just skipped to removing any aspect of gameplay and just became reading text boxes. In games story should just be embellished context, not the focus, or else you defeat the purpose of having the game.

As long as visual novels exist, trannies shall always exist. You lower the bar for entry on what's considered a game and these people will walk right through.

there's a ton of stuff on why Sierra included deaths and things that would fuck you over in their games, because they didn't want the story to take over and have it become something other than a game.

 

[BananaSplit]

As long as visual novels exist, trannies shall always exist.

 

[Marissa Moira]

View attachment 1890924

Hey man I'm not joking you want these libtards gone, you have to have a game be something other than a movie you can watch or a game be a clip show.

Lazy devs tend to latch on to those genres. Light a fire under their ass like what happened with Cyberpunk and you'll see things change real quick. Idea Factory games are just as buggy and crash prone as any AAA western dev churns out.

 

[ZMOT]

It being censored or uncensored makes no difference if the game is crap.

so, why censor it in the first place then?

 

[Marissa Moira]

so, why censor it in the first place then?

Honestly I was hoping for a chance for the series themselves to stop relying on the lowest common denominator for sales and improve what gameplay systems they had. The policies themselves are less strict than what Cero has.

The only one that wound up doing that was Atelier and was all related to the last 3-4 games before Ryza not doing well.

Yet like I said before the developers who complained initially didn't follow through, because every single one released a game under a playstaion within the last month or so. In general nothing major has changed. Xseed may be going down the action game route after SoRAR was a hit though. They made the same mistake that ADV did by thinking anything Japanese automatically sells, but it appears now they're being more discriminating on what they publish, which is good.

 

[Judge Dredd]

I'll bite.

it's the same logic on why we need or should care about Black/Gay/trans/lesbian main characters in games, but they put all effort into having representation and not on the gameplay quality.

No it isn't. By your logic, all games should have no art, no style, just raw mechanics with nothing around it. The only character available is a hitbox.

They went all in on having physical stuff for the Exclusive Switch Gal Gun edition. I mean it's coming with a bra. It's no wonder they would be promoting the switch. Physical edition shit is expensive to make in most instances.

For someone who claims to know the ins and outs of the business side of things, not knowing the basics of price discrimination is strange.

In short, ALL "collectors editions" are stuff that's cheaper to make than they sell it for. The idea is simple. A customer will pay as little possible. Some customers are willing to spend more than others. By including overpriced tat, be that DLC costumes, pins, or post cards, they can get the maximum amount of money from customers without giving them the feeling they are being ripped off, and without the regular owners feeling like they're missing out.

Lazy devs tend to latch on to those genres.

So? Lazy devs latch on to all sorts of things. I remember when Game Maker had a reputation as "not a real game engine", until Hotline Miami and Undertale changed that. Unity and Unreal had a reputation for being nothing but asset flips until Harthstone and Cities Skylines. I remember when FPS games were called "Doom clones", when every shooter was trying to be Call of Duty, the glut of pixel art hipster platformers, I could go on but you get the idea.

 

[Marissa Moira]

I'll bite.

No it isn't. By your logic, all games should have no art, no style, just raw mechanics with nothing around it. The only character available is a hitbox.


For someone who claims to know the ins and outs of the business side of things, not knowing the basics of price discrimination is strange.

In short, ALL "collectors editions" are stuff that's cheaper to make than they sell it for. The idea is simple. A customer will pay as little possible. Some customers are willing to spend more than others. By including overpriced tat, be that DLC costumes, pins, or post cards, they can get the maximum amount of money from customers without giving them the feeling they are being ripped off, and without the regular owners feeling like they're missing out.


So? Lazy devs latch on to all sorts of things. I remember when Game Maker had a reputation as "not a real game engine", until Hotline Miami and Undertale changed that. Unity and Unreal had a reputation for being nothing but asset flips until Harthstone and Cities Skylines. I remember when FPS games were called "Doom clones", when every shooter was trying to be Call of Duty, the glut of pixel art hipster platformers, I could go on but you get the idea.

That's kind of what games are, they're all mechanics underneath. That's how you establish a solid foundation for a series, hell that's how table top games were made and that's why their rules got imported into video games. There's a bunch of things you can read about Gettysburg(the war game) and how Gygax transferred things from that into the original version of D&D and how the rule set came to be. The game needs to function at the bare bones levels and still be playable.

Also you're misunderstand what I said about the collector's edition. I'm saying they wrote the article as a form of promotion/advertisement because they bought into being a distributor for a special edition for the switch. The physical items included meant that it wasn't exactly cheap to manufacture, so they're on the hook if it doesn't move.

I mean honestly something a bit more particle than would be nicer than pins though, the switch still takes SD memory cards. Having a themed one with a sticker on it would probably have been better and actually used by players.

 

[KokoroKoroki]

And I disagree with that logic, the game's quality comes above all else. It being censored or uncensored makes no difference if the game is crap. Because it's the same logic on why we need or should care about Black/Gay/trans/lesbian main characters in games, but they put all effort into having representation and not on the gameplay quality.

Nothing came come before the gameplay and establishing solid systems. If you're using the gameplay as a vehicle for something else the game will always suffer.

Also I'm fairy certain Rice Digital is run by these types:
View attachment 1890581


They went all in on having physical stuff for the Exclusive Switch Gal Gun edition. I mean it's coming with a bra. It's no wonder they would be promoting the switch. Physical edition shit is expensive to make in most instances.

I never understood the appeal of also including Pins, but everything seems to include pins for fucking everything now. I have like a billion anime pins or pins that feature corgis. I don't know why but every anime dog pin is a fucking corgi even when it's not part of the series.

You realize that quality control was even worse back in the early and mid 2000s when the PS1 and 2 were still popular right? Most publishers tended to localize anything for the sake of making a quick buck yet despite all that, it didn't make it any harder to discern what was good or bad and they didn't even need to censor most of the time to do it.

I have to reiterate that these games DO have a market, they obviously aren't very popular but if a market exists for them there's money to be made, whether or not you personally believe the games aren't very good doesn't really matter, if someone out there likes what they're seeing, they'll pay for it.

The bottom line is that localizing what you consider to be a bad game isn't going to take the attention away from the potential good games that get localized, there's more than one localization company out there.

I also don't even know why you decided to bring up if Rice Digital is run by troons or not since that's frankly irrelevant to the topic at hand.

 

[Marissa Moira]

I also don't even know why you decided to bring up if Rice Digital is run by troons or not since that's frankly irrelevant to the topic at hand.

I say from experience, there have been many games that included female undergarments as an added extra.

More often than not the buyers of such wares eventually decided to wear them often to horrifying results. The Troon Stairs graph is very accurate.

 

[BrokenWokenBespoken]

But Moira, Rice Digital is run by Pete Davidson who got ousted by the USGamer fans because he was willing to be passionate about his weeb games no matter how creepy they were.

This is the face of the man that runs Rice Digital.

https://moegamer.net/about-pete/

 

[Marissa Moira]

But Moira, Rice Digital is run by Pete Davidson who got ousted by the USGamer fans because he was willing to be passionate about his weeb games no matter how creepy they were.

This is the face of the man that runs Rice Digital.

https://moegamer.net/about-pete/

Yep i can see him in a blue wig and a dress within 3 years.

 

[BrokenWokenBespoken]

Yep i can see him in a blue wig and a dress within 3 years.

The man spent his whole career being put down by troons and surrounded by a following of devoted weebs who sees these troons as the fucking hellspawn sent to castrate them in every way possible. He spent his whole career lapping up what boner culture shit exist with more success than Billy and his band of white supremacists weebs could do. He is a force of autistic will to promote boner culture and professional enough not to inject a traitors list to America that killed his career and online presence

 

[AMHOLIO]

Always looking for a half-decent games news site that isn't click bait/outrage bait.


Sorry for changing topic, but what happened to Christine Love?

On Discord someone mentioned Ladykiller in a Bind, seemingly unaware of the controversy and nepotism that got that game on Steam and kept it there through various porn purges. Curious, I looked up what the dev (I assume it's a she) has been doing the last 4 years. The answer seems to be fuck all. She tweets a million times a day, but there's nothing of substance there. Her website has screenshots of some pixel art that looks like typical Tumblr trash, but that's from 2019. I don't know if her connections that got her games so much preferential treatment would still work in 2021.

Oh, Love? She's a troon.

I don't usually call trans game devs troons, but I do with Love since he wrote hardcore erotic lesbian/bi wank for straight men and gets asspatted for it. The game's alternate title is pure weeb light novel trash and sums it up best: "My Twin Brother Made Me Crossdress as Him and Now I Have to Deal with a Geeky Stalker and a Domme Beauty Who Want Me in a Bind". It just screams generic troon fantasy.

Anyway, he's still working on the Get in the Car, Loser game that I pray is better just because it doesn't seem to be 18+ and its an rpg with actual gameplay in it. The itch page says the game will be out summer 2021, but game dev times are always malleable. Its likely the game will get a fair bit of praise if just for the pixel art (which has a lot of effort put into it) and lesbians (no effort), and I'm sure that even without connections everyone would be all over this game on itch because it's itch.

 

[Marissa Moira]

The man spent his whole career being put down by troons and surrounded by a following of devoted weebs who sees these troons as the fucking hellspawn sent to castrate them in every way possible. He spent his whole career lapping up what boner culture shit exist with more success than Billy and his band of white supremacists weebs could do. He is a force of autistic will to promote boner culture and professional enough not to inject a traitors list to America that killed his career and online presence

Joking aside, going through what Rice Digital is offering and that Moegamer exists to promote, he's back quite a few strange horses. He's got a ton of Evercade stuff which never really took off. They're apparently have some exclusivity deal for Root Film (Root Letter was pretty bad in itself and the sequel doesn't seem to be any better),, and many of his books just seem to heap praise upon something just because it's Japanese like Final Fantasy 15.

You can contrast it with other smaller established sellers like Limited Run games and how they began and while they were specialized, they also picked their exclusive game runs a bit better to make a name for themselves. LRG also does many Japanese games as well and have done runs of Tokyo Chronos, House in Fata Morgana, Ys Origin and many others.

It's certainly something to watch to see if it gets better, but personally I can see it going either way. Nothing on there is particularly strong at the moment to generate enough buzz IMO.

 

[Vapewizard]

he wrote hardcore erotic lesbian/bi wank for straight men and gets asspatted for it. The game's alternate title is pure weeb light novel trash and sums it up best: "My Twin Brother Made Me Crossdress as Him and Now I Have to Deal with a Geeky Stalker and a Domme Beauty Who Want Me in a Bind". It just screams generic troon fantasy.

Oh yeah, I think it's funny that the first place where I heard criticism of this game was on 4chan of all places, on an old english VN general. From what I remember there is a scene where the lesbian character gets raped by a man and the 'honest' answer is to say that she enjoyed it, which is definitely something that a dang dirty cismale would get crucified over but that Love would probably get a pass for cause of the troon card.

 

[Marissa Moira]

I'm going to be honest it's looking like the narrative that Sony is abandoning anything Japanese related is growing deader by the day.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Media-Entertainment/Sony-sees-10bn-profit-high-as-COVID-ups-home-entertainment-demand

So all those unnamed PS5 Japan Studio projects may be tie-in games it seems. Bandai is also listed to be giving a few Tales of Remasters to the PS5 if/when Arise comes out.