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SilverTalon01 wrote:

Absolutely nothing in the definition of censorship suggests that the developer can't also be the person given authority by the organization (monolith, nintendo, etc) and then suppress parts the developer currently deems unacceptable. Also by definition that is censorship. If someone with the authority deemed that content unacceptable due to criticism and suppresses that content, it is by definition censored. Now if the creator just decided they didn't like it, that would be different. However, what you just said was specifically about doing it because of criticism that the content wasn't acceptable which, again, makes it censoring. The definition of censor(ship) doesn't include any limitations as to who must consider the content unacceptable either so a developer deeming the content unacceptable because of receiving criticism from others expressing a view of it being unacceptable still falls in the definition of censor(ship). Like you just got done saying, it isn't all about the final result. It is about the why, and in the example you just gave, the 'why' makes it censorship.

It really doesn't. Look, I'll grant that you're right insofar as that there is a difference between a creator changing their work because they simply independently change their mind about it and a creator changing it because they want to avoid controversy and criticism. Neither of these things are censorship though. You seem to be keying in on the part of the definition wherein the material is deemed somehow "unnacceptable" which is in some sense true in the latter case. However, you're ignoring the fact that in neither case is the creator's work being suppressed which you'll note is also a necessary criteria for censorship in all those definitions. It's being changed, by the author who made it, willingly. They could still just put their work out as is, but they decide not to because they don't want to be criticized/lose sales. To suggest this would constitute censorship is actually to go to the other extreme and deny everyone else their right to buy what they want and/or say what they want.

^
Re-post from earlier that I'd like to see your response to:

Actar wrote:

The thing is not about original intent. It never was. Perhaps censorship was a poor choice of words, but what else should it be called when it is an act of removing (possibly) offensive material? This semantic game is distracting us from the issue at hand.

It is about the removal of features that were originally there. Why would anyone want to support such a decision? Leaving it in won't hurt anyone and removing it only serves to limit the options of those who want to use it. If you want to argue that it can be offensive, well, anything is offensive to someone. Does that mean that we should pander to every sensitive person's whims and fancies? Not at all. If they don't like it, they can ignore it. It's as simple as that.

I hate a ton of stuff. But I recognize that there are people who do like the things I hate and do not wish to take it away from them. Let's say that you're right. Taking the boob slider out doesn't affect gameplay. By the same logic, having it in doesn't affect gameplay either. However, if anything, taking the slider out removes the ability for certain people, male or female, to get the body types that they want - thus affecting gameplay.

Yes, you can put forth the argument that this change is of their own volition and arguing against it would be to deny their freedom of expression. However, what I'm putting forth is that they shouldn't need to want to make that change to begin with.

Actar wrote:

Re-post from earlier that I'd like to see your response to:

Sure!

Quote:

It is about the removal of features that were originally there. Why would anyone want to support such a decision? Leaving it in won't hurt anyone and removing it only serves to limit the options of those who want to use it. [...] If they don't like it, they can ignore it. It's as simple as that.

If you're just talking about this feature specifically then yeah, I think that's a fair point. That's why I'm relatively ambivalent to them removing this feature in the end. I don't really see it as much of a loss but you're not wrong that having such a feature probably isn't going to particularly diminish anyone's enjoyment of the game. That said, that only applies to this specific feature. More isn't automatically better. Some features and content can actually hurt people's enjoyment of a game. And where that is the case, you really can't just dismiss it in this way. It's hardly as simple as just "ignore it if you don't like it".

Quote:

If you want to argue that it can be offensive, well, anything is offensive to someone. Does that mean that we should pander to every sensitive person's whims and fancies?

I'm afraid this is just a fallacious argument. Anything can be offensive to someone but not all cases of people taking offense are equally reasonable. Hence, there's no reason we can't judge it on a case by case basis. If somebody says they do find this feature offensive they can be asked to explain why. And if you disagree with their reasoning then by all means explain why and/or disregard their complain. But what you're trying to do here is to use the fact that people disagree about what is offensive to support the conclusion that we've either got to excuse everything or nothing. That simply doesn't follow.

Actar wrote:

Did you read the linked related articles? http://www.livescience.com/2231-humans-crave-violence-sex.html

Why do we want sex? Because it is pleasurable. Similarly, we get pleasure from fighting, winning and eating. It is still base human emotions that all games pander to and while we might not actively seek all of them out, it still affords us with instinctual pleasure regardless. These games provide a sense of euphoria by pandering to them as opposed to "standing on its own".

Why does society still exist? Because we've been conditioned to suppress our desires. Be it for violence or sex. Humans are hedonistic. To deny this is to deny human nature.

The first article you mentioned explained that "aggression in few animals goes beyond protecting one's territory", while the second article basically amounts to "male mice were trained to press a button after fighting that would initiate more male mice to enter their area, maybe that means mice like fighting, and maybe that means humans also like fighting". Even going by your second article, the thrust of it wasn't that violence was instinctively sought out, but more that an addiction to a dopamine rush from having experienced violence could be formed. In any case, I'm not going to parse through scientific controversy about the base nature of human aggression when my point is that very clearly sexual desire is a certain definite thing, whereas the human desire for violence is something that occurs situationally and isn't instinctively sought out. Dancing around the point and using inconclusive studies about mice to try and split hairs all just belabors moot points in the conversation.

Kikaioh wrote:

Let's draw the boundaries. Is this about you or society? Because I thought we were talking about you.

I played by your rules. If you want to consider breasts as "inherently sexual", which is a term that you have yet to define, so is everything female in form or vaguely resembling a female. Once can argue that having an attractive female character in-game is already an attempt at attracting a male audience by "pandering to their libido". (Interestingly enough, the only female character that is approved by Anita Sarkeesian has no identifiable female traits.)

You know that your stance in this regard is non-defensible and have completely ignored this point over and over and over again.

Obviously the important point in this conversation is Nintendo's view on society as a whole, not any particular individuals. But more broadly speaking, I think you're just taking my original "inherently sexual" comment completely out of context.

The first time I even said "inherently sexual" was in the following sentence: "that doesn't mean I'm against sexual games, though --- it's the motivation to include it in games that aren't inherently sexual in nature that bothers me".

My point in that sentence was to say that it bothers me when sexuality is shoehorned into games that aren't on the whole designed with sex in mind. Puzzle games, Mario games, Sports games etc., aren't chiefly about sexual attraction. Now on the opposite end of the spectrum, hentai visual novels, strip poker, dating simulators, etc., are games whose primary focus is on sexuality. Now if you want to argue with me that Madden 2015 is an inherently sexual game, and counter the idea that Rapelay doesn't necessarily have to be viewed as inherently sexual, then you're just being a contrarian and it's not worth wasting time discussing with you.

Actar wrote:

Yes, because the groin is the only thing sexual about males. Rippling muscles, tall height, deep voice, topless characters, no one ever gets aroused by those things. You're just deliberately choosing not to see it.

So no examples, huh? And in any case, my point about what I find to be a nuisance isn't whether a character can be viewed as sexually attractive, but whether features are specifically designed to play to people's libidos despite the non-sexual nature of a game. You can try to argue that a slew of male protagonists in games could be viewed as attractive by women, but the intention behind their designs was more likely to craft an everyman character that male gamers could easily identify with as a player avatar. What ruins immersion for me is when an out-of-place feature is included that quite clearly appeals to people's libidos, because it makes me aware of the design teams intentions to use sex to sell their game (more so if the fanservice is placed on children, since I find that disgusting).

Kikaioh wrote:

What ruins immersion for me is when an out-of-place feature is included that quite clearly appeals to people's libidos, because it makes me aware of the design teams intentions to use sex to sell their game (more so if the fanservice is placed on children, since I find that disgusting).

Character creation systems that let you make female characters and by extension Bust, Waist, & Hip sliders are't out of place features though. And if those things themselves are easily capable of somehow shattering the illusion of a game for you, maybe you shouldn't play them. And just stick to games with built in playable or npc characters sporting designs or attire you'll complain about anyway.

BadNewsBlues wrote:

Character creation systems that let you make female characters and by extension Bust, Waist, & Hip sliders are't out of place features. And if those things themselves are easily capable of somehow shattering the illusion of a game for you, maybe you shouldn't play them and just stick to games with built in playable characters.

Please read all of my posts before replying, I prefer not to revisit things that I've already talked about previously in the thread. To summarize though, bust sliders have their place in games with in-depth character customization; however, the sole inclusion of a bust slider in Xenoblade Chronicles X at the exclusion of any other notable body part sliders, together with the already controversial fanservice content in the game regarding Lin and Nintendo's said removal of both forms of content, all point to the slider existing more for titillation than legitimate character creation, which I find to be a distraction.

livinew wrote:

Pathetic. Why is the West so afraid/offended of boobs?

Corporate entities out there along with parent groups put this in for cultural reasons. Not general player public. It's plain censorship in general due to worry because character is a underage female or could be even male. There degree of laws that punish users for having something exploits "children" in some fashion. Its creepy when some adult person is playing sexy dress up with underage character? It would be on "yes" side for me, but not everyone see's it that way.

Unfortunately there are laws that are absolute no tolerance. Especially if even suggests it.

Who wants to go jail for stupid game? That's what it comes down to.

Kikaioh, you're starting to conflate everything. Let me just lay all the cards on the table to get both of us on the same page.

You said: You don't like sex shoehorned into games that are not "inherently sexual" because it panders to base human desires. Because of this, the game can't stand on its own and it's distracting. You didn't say anything about Nintendo or society. This is your opinion.

Right? Okay.

I say: All games pander to base human desires and therefore there is no game that can truly "stand on its own" - something which you refuse to accept.

Fine by me. The thing is, even if we accept your premise that only sex panders to base human desires, we can't truly separate it from games unless we remove all female characters, because the mere existence of (attractive) females is inherently sexy to men and therefore already serve the purpose of pandering to their libidos. Something that you cannot stand for. You never addressed this point. You're just fixating all the attention on what you consider to be distracting with your arbitrary boundaries. It is a double standard unless you advocate all characters in games to be replaced by robots.

Speaking of which, on your point on it being a distraction, just how is the breast slider distracting to you? You've never explained it. If you don't want to play as a female, you won't even encounter it at all. Even when you are customizing your female avatar, you can choose not to use it. At all. It's not forced. It's there for people who want to use it and not for people who don't. Why do you advocate its removal?

Next, I say that the intentions behind the inclusion of features that can be viewed as sexual doesn't matter in the slightest because whether something can be viewed as sexual or not is up to the individual. Even if something has the capacity of being viewed as sexual, doesn't mean we should remove it because it can serve other functions and taking it away is a lose-lose for everyone. Yes, some male players will not be able to get his jollies out of tweaking a character's breast size (?), but females can no longer use the option to customize characters to their liking that they can identify with. You make the assumption that "the intention behind their (male) designs was more likely to craft an everyman character that male gamers could easily identify with as a player avatar" you conveniently ignore the sex appeal to women. Essentially, you're seeing what you want to see and are refusing to consider other perspectives.

If you still cannot understand or address any of my points or your own inconsistencies, please feel free to stop.

Some people are so ashamed of their hobbies that they need an approval of others to feel better and when others refuse to call their hobbies normal these people lose their mind.

Why the hell removal of half-baked feature even caused so much fuss is beyond me. It's not like Nintendo touched something important for gameplay or story. Plus all these posts which ignore the long history of character customization in western games and blame everything on "Puritan" values. Jeez, companies remove so much content out of their games to receive appropriate rating from Cero, yet nobody bash "confucian" or "shinto" values.

Last edited by BadNewsBlues on Thu Nov 19, 2015 12:38 pm; edited 1 time in total

Kikaioh wrote:

Please read all of my posts before replying, I prefer not to revisit things that I've already talked about previously in the thread. To summarize though, bust sliders have their place in games with in-depth character customization; however, the sole inclusion of a bust slider in Xenoblade Chronicles X at the exclusion of any other notable body part sliders, together with the already controversial fanservice content in the game regarding Lin and Nintendo's said removal of both forms of content, all point to the slider existing more for titillation than legitimate character creation, which I find to be a distraction.

Disagreeing with your perceptions of what you consider sexually improper and distracting in certain video games and your somewhat unfounded beliefs as to why something you don't like was included in a game doesn't mean I haven't read any of your comments. And seems kind of hypocritical in light of certain people repeatedly insisting that people in this thread are only outraged about this because they can't get their kicks off of making female PC breast as big as they want (which if they did wouldn't be wrong any way) even after people opposed to this have made it clear repeatedly why they've taken issue with this.

MajorZero wrote:

Plus all these posts which ignore the long history of character customization in western games and blame everything on "Puritan" values. Jeez, companies remove so much content out of their games to receive appropriate rating from Cero, yet nobody bash "confucian" or "shinto" values.

No one bashes Confucian or Shinto values around here presumably because many of us don't live in countries that care about all that much about such values.

Oh, Nintendo... who will save us from ourselves if you don't save us instead? Thank you for making sure our moral correctness would not be endangered by the availability of a breast-size slider! Just think of all of the horrible moral degeneracy you've prevented! Your bold censorship has saved us from ourselves! Thank you, Nintendo! Thank you!

Actar wrote:

the mere existence of (attractive) females is inherently sexy to men and therefore already serve the purpose of pandering to their libidos

That's ridiculous. Your reasoning presumes that men are solely capable of viewing women in a sexual context. I mean really, are you saying that if someone thinks panty shots, jiggle physics and the absolute zone are fan-pandering injections into a work, by proxy the very existence of women in a work itself is an attempt at fanservice as well? You're twisting reasonability to an entirely other plane of existence that's bordering on the incredulous, where the concept of "fanservice" simply can't exist because "it's relative to personal standards".

I often select female characters in games because I think it's cool playing as women that kick ass. Seeing the slider in the game is a distraction in the sense that it would make me roll my eyes at its inclusion for the sake of titillating their audience.

I don't advocate for the slider's removal in the game. At most for me it's a distracting, immersion-breaking mechanic that I dislike due to its titillating motivations, but it's not something that would stop me from playing the game, and not something I would lobby to be taken out. My entire point in this conversation from the very get-go is that I understand Nintendo wanting to remove the slider from the game because of the motivations behind its inclusion, and the reality of the largely differing sensibilities of the Western target-demographic. You continue wanting to argue some pseudo-philosophy about how "sexiness is relative", but at the end of the day Nintendo is selling a product to attract as broad a base of users as possible, and from their vantage point the Western market largely doesn't view breasts asexually --- making the removal of said content an understandable move for increasing the product's viability and/or strengthening their brand in the market. Really, if you want to change Nintendo's mind, you'll have to try and convince them that the breast slider doesn't have any controversial, sexual implications for their target market, and to that I can only say good luck.

Also to clarify, I found the Lin costume to be disturbing, and that's actually something that would drive me to not play the game. Although I wouldn't demand Nintendo remove it from the game (I think content creators should always feel free to express whatever they want), that doesn't mean that I'm going to financially support that kind of sick content, which I think is a perspective Nintendo is mindful of when it comes to these sorts of releases.

BadNewsBlues wrote:

Disagreeing with your perceptions of what you consider sexually improper and distracting in certain video games and your somewhat unfounded beliefs as to why something you don't like was included in a game doesn't mean I haven't read any of your comments. And seems kind of hypocritical in light of certain people repeatedly insisting that people in this thread are only outraged about this because they can't get their kicks off of making female PC breast as big as they want (which if they did wouldn't be wrong any way) even after people opposed to this have made it clear repeatedly why they've taken issue with this.

I didn't imply you hadn't read my posts because you disagree with my perceptions on what's considered "sexually improper". I implied that you hadn't read my posts because your previous post specifically stated "Character creation systems that let you make female characters and by extension Bust, Waist, & Hip sliders are't out of place features [...] if those things themselves are easily capable of somehow shattering the illusion of a game for you, maybe you shouldn't play them". That statement flies in the face of my position in the thread thus far, as I had not only mentioned in a previous post that "a bust slider has its place in a full-fledged avatar editor", but that the immersion-breaking nature of the slider was due to its sole inclusion as motivated by fanservice. Either you hadn't been reading the thread or you weren't synthesizing what I'd written thus far, and I preferred to assume the former over the latter.

ikillchicken wrote:

You know, to anyone who actually gives even the tiniest of shits about the issue of censorship and why it is dangerous and harmful...this is a laughably reductionist position. There's all the difference in the world between someone freely choosing to alter their own work versus being forced to by the government. In fact that's the very issue with censorship. It's not about the results at all. It's about content creators being free to choose themselves what they put out there. But actually, this kinda makes perfect sense when you say it. Because that's not you is it? You don't actually give a shit about censorship. I mean that's what you're as good as admitting here. You care about one thing and one thing only: The end results. Your position is that you want your goddamn animated boobies and you're gonna complain if you don't get them. Is it because the government is interfering with free expression? Outrageous! Is it because the actual creator decided of their own free will that this was a bad idea? Equally outrageous! It doesn't matter really. You're just outraged that someone took away your boobies. So thanks. Thanks for cutting through the BS and making that clear. Rolling Eyes

Yes, now we know what you really think.

One of the reasons I love anime is because it is not made with western morality and sensibilities. I get enough of that already. So I am against censorship or even the creators making changes because they are told to or asked to by their production committees.

I get it. This is Nintendo. They are going to make changes to games they export to the West.

But that doesn't mean we have to like it, or have to be quiet about it. And if some fans want to boycott or pretend to boycott, so be it. No big deal.

Kikaioh wrote:

but that the immersion-breaking nature of the slider was due to its sole inclusion as motivated by fanservice.

Which as I stated before is an assumption based off of nothing but seemingly personal bias.

Kikaioh wrote:

Either you hadn't been reading the thread or you weren't synthesizing what I'd written thus far, and I preferred to assume the former over the latter.

No that's pretty much what your opinion on the subject reads like.

i.e. You taking issue with something being in a game because you think it's inclusion exists only to sate people's "libidos" and publisher's and developer's wanting to play the sex sells card. Eventhough this ignores the fact that many games with PC creation systems have bust sliders and these games don't sell for that reason at all. If that's not what you're trying to say my bad on that but it's pretty damning to me.

BadNewsBlues wrote:

Which as I stated before is an assumption based off of nothing but seemingly personal bias.

Sure, Nintendo obviously decided to remove the slider from the game because I was the only person in the West who felt that way about it. Clearly my own personal perceptions held that much sway over the company, I mean, there's no way that some sort of broad Western social value system shared by millions of people might in some way have altered their localization plans. Apparently, I'm that important.

BadNewsBlues wrote:

i.e. You taking issue with something being in a game because you think it's inclusion exists only to sate people's "libidos" and publisher's and developer's wanting to play the sex sells card. Eventhough this ignores the fact that many games with PC creation systems have bust sliders and these games don't sell for that reason at all. If that's not what you're trying to say my bad on that but it's pretty damning to me.

I've already repeated before that the exclusion of other body part modification features, combined with existing fanservice in the game as well as the publisher's own decision to remove the slider alongside other controversial sexualized content in the game, collectively point to that conclusion. If you think it doesn't, then why do you think Nintendo removed it?

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