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This Week in Games - The Sudden Rise of Fanservice Games

I think Sakura Trick (the anime at least) was a financial failure so it seems like it didn't have much of any support, be it gay or straight fans.

I find it absolutely hysterical that you seem to think that only gay people want to see gay characters in fiction, especially on an anime board. Do you think that Sakura Trick was made for lesbian audiences?

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Not sure I'm understanding you here. Have you ever looked at Harlequin romance book covers? Cause I'm pretty sure if you did then the dude was shirtless, with the intent of being sexy in appearance to appeal to the purchasers of such novels.

Isn't that because men just don't care? Men see Harlequin romance novels as fantasy and don't care if nearly all of them feature buff dudes in some manner of undress on the cover. Men don't bother to complain about someone else's fantasy. That's why there's nowhere near the amount of flak.

Anyway, I've gotten off track here. I don't know where this "rise of fanservice" is coming from, because I'm not seeing it. I do understand that companies often care for nothing but profit, and so are trying to make their games more profitable by trying to appeal to a more "mainstream" audience. I doubt that most "mainstream" people care all that much about video games, or will spend money on them routinely over time. They may dabble in them now and then, and have a system for when the urge strikes, but they're not very committed to video games and probably never will be. In other words, there's a diminishing returns thing that kicks in once you aim for a "mainstream" audience, and if you push too hard in an attempt to appeal to it, you're going to lose your serious gamer audience: either they'll become mainstream, too, or they'll find something else to do with their time, and in either case they'll be spending less money and have less interest in buying games. That would lead to a decline in the number of serious gamers, but maybe that's what some people want.

It sounds like you want media to provide an escapism from real life for you, because in reality, less than 2% of the population is gay. Expecting companies to pander to 2% of the market instead of 98% of the market is illogical, and no sane company would ever do such a thing.

Star Wars didn't bomb, but then again you can do anything with Star Wars and it'll still sell. Usually companies do the bait-and-switch with male-to-minorities because it has a higher chance of not eating dirt as an original IP would. See: comic books replacing heroes with minority versions rather than making new characters.

They DO complain about other people's fantasies, which is why there is so much anger and resentment with this topic to begin with. Or at least, I see a kind of resentment some guys have when girls fawn over some famous/fictional attractive man. Notice how media popular with teenage girls that feature attractive men are typically the ones most often mocked and ridiculed by guys? If it isn't N*Sync or Twilight, it's Titanic or Justin Bieber.

But are they demanding the complete cessation of such titles? No. Mocking isn't the best reaction, but it's nowhere near as bad as the people who are forcibly attempting to censor creative talent solely to serve their own sense of morality or justice.

But at the same time, I've spent enough time playing games to know that DOA Extreme 2 was a joke: there wasn't an outrage over it, and there didn't have to be because the moment people saw the jiggle physics they just shrugged and muttered, "Japan...". So when people who like GalGul complain that they're being targetted or that their rights are at stake, I roll my eyes. There's no other way to respond to such childishness.

I think you should read about a very real occurrence where an artist's work was censored due to an outrage over a female character's design on the box cover art.

But don’t get me wrong, it’s undeniable true that the gaming environment has been a boys club for a long time and I see no reason at all not to invite women to game either. I think this is an admirable goal. Seeing that media is infinite and developers can expand on it infinitely I’m convinced the tactics by which game diversity is achieved are very wrong. I say this because giving women the games they like should not result in taking away or moderating the games the boys like. I think it’s cheap and weak to attack existing franchises, shame them in what they are doing and force through guilt to change their content. Feminism has shown what women can do, that they are strong and no less than men, so why don’t they prove it by coming up with their own franchises? We’ve seen this happen in television and it worked, Sex and the City has proven this.

There's an interview where it states that it was only a tiny minority that complained and that the artwork had been extensively used to promote the game a year before the Kickstarter even launched.

#GamerGate has been slandered in the media and defamed by Wikipedia.

Well, if other media can go mainstream, video games can too. I'd say they already have, with stuff like the NES, the Wii, and mobile gaming, but it's that the industry itself either has trouble understand how to stay in the mainstream or are not too interested in being in the mainstream to begin with.

This is exactly right. We see it now in the current anime market where for a long, long time late-night anime was almost 100% targeting men. And how about now? Yuri on Ice, Uta no Prince-sama, and Touken Ranbu, all series that primarily targeted women will be some of the top selling series from all of 2016. Women went out and supported material that was made for them. They didn't go out and shout how sexist To Love Ru Darkness is and demand that the women all be properly dressed. The same can be done with video games.

I'm glad you brought up the Wii. The Wii was the beneficiary of a wide-spread fad. But when the fad was over, did those who picked up the Wii keep playing it? Feel free to check out Nintendo's finances since the Wii and you'll have your answer.

@leafyseadragon You may have, but without any sort of source to back up what you claim to have seen it doesn't really help much.