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This Week in Games - Laboring LaDS

The thing is, you rarely hear anyone talk about Love and Deepspace.

One other bit of anime-game news this week is that we got the release of the first new Super Robot Wars game in 4 years (apparently the longest gap between titles in the franchise's history).

Unfortunately, there's quite a bit about it that's pretty terrible. The shift to the Unity engine clearly didn't go well, with blurry visuals and funky control inputs. On PC, the resolution is capped at 1200p, while Super Robot Wars 30 was perfectly happy at 4K. The UI loses both clarity and concision compared to the last few games. And then there's the English translation, which is stiff, stilted and unnatural. It's not as bad as the dumpster fire translation they shipped Atelier Ryza 3 with, but it's still pretty bad.

Unfortunately, there's quite a bit about it that's pretty terrible. The shift to the Unity engine clearly didn't go well, with blurry visuals and funky control inputs. On PC, the resolution is capped at 1200p, while Super Robot Wars 30 was perfectly happy at 4K. The UI loses both clarity and concision compared to the last few games. And then there's the English translation, which is stiff, stilted and unnatural. It's not as bad as the dumpster fire translation they shipped Atelier Ryza 3 with, but it's still pretty bad.

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The thing is, you rarely hear anyone talk about Love and Deepspace.

I think that may be because of the no BL rules. They don't allow BL content on official channels, and in the company's mind that includes things like posting BL under hashtags.

Even some fans of the game recognize that this is homophobic, they just think it is that it is incidentally discriminatory to protect the brand of them being available to women and not purposefully trying to exclude gay content. Regardless if I was interested in getting emotinally invested in a group of hot men and the first thing I learned is they aren't allowed to kiss or date men then I would find somewhere else to go for sure.

On the general topic though, I hope otome games get discussed more on ANN! Especially now with how often they're still being referenced and used in so many isekai anime across demographics. More console otome are being localized than ever too. It's a very interesting period of growth in domestic and international regions for the genre.

I guess the recent news (here and elsewhere) regarding Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song is due to the release date being set even though it seems like it's being presented as a new reveal, because it's been available to preorder for quite some time...

Yeah, this feels really wrong. For reference, the Chinese gacha I play (Path to Nowhere) also operates under a lot of the same content laws as LaDS (I've talked before about how my favorite character, Eleven, had her design toned down in China while her default outfit abroad is more liberal with her cleavage). But also, PtN's fanbase really plays up the sapphism between the sinners, and a lot of the fan art reflects that. Obviously, people don't post explicit Rahu/Shalom out in public, but it's pretty open that PtN is about lots and lots of sapphism. Content restrictions for Chinese media, even on a fan-level, are really weirdly sweeping. Japanese media can have those too (like when Trigger and Tsuburaya asked folks to not draw SSSS.Gridman porn for a while after the series released), but the rabbit hole for Chinese media goes deeper.

FinalVentCard wrote:

Yeah, this feels really wrong. For reference, the Chinese gacha I play (Path to Nowhere) also operates under a lot of the same content laws as LaDS (I've talked before about how my favorite character, Eleven, had her design toned down in China while her default outfit abroad is more liberal with her cleavage). But also, PtN's fanbase really plays up the sapphism between the sinners, and a lot of the fan art reflects that. Obviously, people don't post explicit Rahu/Shalom out in public, but it's pretty open that PtN is about lots and lots of sapphism. Content restrictions for Chinese media, even on a fan-level, are really weirdly sweeping. Japanese media can have those too (like when Trigger and Tsuburaya asked folks to not draw SSSS.Gridman porn for a while after the series released), but the rabbit hole for Chinese media goes deeper.

I'm not sure if you meant my statement was wrong or censoring gay content was wrong related to your work and no other kind is wrong.

If it was the former I wasn't trying to imply the fan base itself is unwelcoming to gay people or rejects gay content as a whole, but I do know that the company having weird rules that could get my content deleted if I try to promote it with hashtags would be a massive turn off. The people in the subreddit mentioned under at least one post that even making posts about the rules resulted in autodeletion for including the term "BL."

-Brave Exvius: There's actually some talk about the Japanese gacha scene hitting some rough waters and Exvius is the latest example of that. New hires and mid-range people who can pivot are in a better position than the veterans whose careers have mostly been in mobile game development.

To be fair: it's also a SaGa game, and there's very little coverage of SaGa, like, at all. And I figured this was a good opportunity to talk about a major remake of a major entry in the series. I dunno, I figured, "Hey, folks seem to have turn-based games on their minds after Expedition 33, maybe they could check out this turn-based RPG from Japan from an esteemed director and a long-running series..."

I think that may be because of the no BL rules. They don't allow BL content on official channels, and in the company's mind that includes things like posting BL under hashtags.

Yeah, I meant in terms of the censoring of queer content. That kind of thing is part and parcel to any kind of fandom, really. For crying out loud, half of why Star Trek endured so long was because we had homemakers shipping Kirk and Spock for decades and decades!

FinalVentCard wrote:

Yeah, I meant in terms of the censoring of queer content. That kind of thing is part and parcel to any kind of fandom, really. For crying out loud, half of why Star Trek endured so long was because we had homemakers shipping Kirk and Spock for decades and decades!

For real, I can get some degree of boundaries like wating to inundate the internet with porn until it isn't the promotional period but prohibitions on the gender of who you are allowed to ship with seems like it would limit who is interested more than protect a brand. I have always wondered about those rabbit holes but since I don't do much fandom stuff myself I have never really had to worry that.