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NEWS: Idea Factory Int'l President: 'We Don't Want to Censor Anymore'

It's a hypocrisy to blame other's freedom of expression for driving a choice to curtail your own. Or, if your fear is that your game won't sell unless it's modified, then that's not censorship, that's the reality of the market. Altogether it just sounds like huffed-up complaining that people dislike their content. "If only Westerners didn't want to view women and little girls as human beings!"

Maybe, and I mean just maybe, they should consider not making every one of their games borderline-pornographic. Have they ever considered that? I mean, whatever happened to just making a solid game and marketing it on its own merits, instead of making it all hypersexualized for no real reason? At least be honest about what you're producing - raw fanservice, softcore porn - instead of blaming "the west" and their "puritanical views" for your own laziness.

Does it really stop at mere freedom of expression though? One person's freedom ends where it begins to encroach into another person's freedom. You can smoke all you want, but if your second hand smoke affects me, that's when we have a problem. Freedom comes with responsibility. From what I understand, there are people and groups out there that actively campaign to get things banned and removed. If it stops at "I'm offended", sure. But if it's "I'm offended, get it out of my country even though it doesn't affect me and I'm depriving those who actually do want to play it from playing it." I think we have a problem.

In my opinion, it's not so much "If only Westerners didn't want to view women and little girls as human beings!", but "If only Westerners can learn to live with things that offend them but don't affect them personally and are actually enjoyed by others."

I still don't get why is this happening, in the west women do show a lot of their skin in public, when you go to the beach you get to see women in bikinis and its fine there.

ZaYDgH123 wrote:

I still don't get why is this happening, in the west women do show a lot of their skin in public, when you go to the beach you get to see women in bikinis and its fine there.

It's happening because there is a certain group of people that has taken it upon itself to dictate to others how they should live their lives, down to what people think and feel about things (actions are not enough, they want to control your thoughts, too).

These people are *not* the cute girls in bikinis on the beach. Often, people with this controlling mindset seek out positions where they can impose their ideals on others. They network together to ensure a unified front, to make their numbers seem greater than they actually are. This is to make it appear that their ideals are the majority's ideals, and if they can get enough people to believe that their ideals *are* the majority's ideals, then that actually comes to pass.

This has happened repeatedly throughout history, (the Prohibition Era, when serving alcohol was illegal, is a well-known example) but it is easier to do now because of all the means we have of communicating with one another (things like social media via the Internet). They are able to get their ideas out, to ensure they're all in lock-step, and to quickly change message when events make that necessary.

It took them a while to get around to the games industry (and the anime industry, for that matter), but they're working hard to make up for that, and now they've gotten their claws pretty firmly dug in, to the point that some foreign companies, like Idea Factory, don't want to have to deal with it anymore.

How this will end up I don't know, but I am a pessimist by nature, so I doubt it'll end well for people like me who loathe censorship. But hopefully it'll turn out that I'm wrong. We'll just have to see.

It could release its game full of scantily clad prepubescent girls, and nobody would really care.

BrainBlow wrote:

It could release its game full of scantily clad prepubescent girls, and nobody would really care.

Can they now.

It's lovely how vague you're being, so that you can modify this intangible boogeyman of yours as much as fits you.
A company is simply being gutless(and trying to pass the blame for their games not selling in a market), but then people actually try to pin the blame on a "group of people." Of course, this group of people is never actually defined, because defining it would mean the idea is now open to being torn apart by factual reality. Keeping it vague lets one move the goalpost.

Though what is factually wrong is that "this is happening because someone is controlling how people live." No, it's a company being gutless. It could release its game full of scantily clad prepubescent girls, and nobody would really care.

He's being vague because the most common term to refer to them is banned here. I suppose extreme leftist will suffice.

At the very least, they don't use the same tactics that the extreme right who oppose censorship do. The latter attack head on with courts (like with Jack Thompson) while the former seize positions of power and rely on a huge following and nepotism to execute their goals (like with Anita or the entire mess that is the IGDA).