But all the fan badgering doesn't do much good if we don't speak with our wallets at the end of the day. Yeah, we could raise a big stink online about wanting certain kinds of games, but unless we buy them and show the companies there is money to be made then we won't see any more. The gaming business is just that- a business.
And I never said I'm happy in a box with only 3 channels to choose from. I'm just saying that if the 3 channel box isn't giving me what I want, I'll look for my satisfaction somewhere else. When I was a kid and they were showing reruns of cartoons we already saw, my friends and I would gather up our action figures and other toys and just let our imaginations run wild creating our own adventures, like some random object teleports Optimus Prime to Jabba the Hutt's palace in Tatooine and he fights the Star Wars Rancor. (Hey, we were around 7 at the time!)
I'm also saying that the gaming biz is at a point where we're no longer in that 3 channel box. The box has been blown to smithereens and we're now living free in a plentiful land of feast instead of a box of famine. If one game doesn't make it, there are still dozens like it that will. I don't have to put all my eggs in one basket. This even goes for genres that are niche, because the industry knows that the niche markets are loyal buyers. Plus, thanks to the evolution of the Internet, those niche markets are easier to get to and many smaller devs can bypass the middlemen and just sell direct to consumers. That's wonderful, because then I can give more of my money to the creators. I love that there are so many smaller developers out there creating neat stuff. I've played and reviewed a ton of stuff that flies under the radar.
With music, I think what mainstream radio and big record labels put out is drivel. So, I would go to all kinds of local shows and trawl sites like Bandcamp to see what's out there. I've discovered (and even befriended) some really killer bands by exploring the paths less traveled. I also played in local bands and we created music we believed in; seeing our musical voice (including songs I had written) resonate with people was profound. Competition was fierce, though. We often competed with bands like ours to get gigs. Sometimes we'd get them, sometimes we wouldn't, but we still kept making our music because we liked doing it. And the gigs we did get, we played like our asses were on fire. It's easy for someone to say all punk bands sound the same, but every punk fan has those that they resonate with more than others.
I feel like there's a LOT being lost in translation in this conversation and everything's getting cloudy with tons of points and arguments that tangent off from the main point. I kinda forgot what the main point was. Are we talking about censorship? Hentai games? Creating games? Niche game marketing? The state of the industry? My overuse and/or inappropriate use of analogies and idioms to the point where they sometimes become malapropisms?
I feel like I'm being made to sound like I'm anti-creativity or anti-competition or something. I've said repeatedly that competition is healthy, because it makes developers strive to create quality products to gain market share. I've also been saying that I value the mentality of "If I can't get what I want, I'll create it." If the creator wants it, chances are someone else does too. As a musician, I gladly encourage people to pick up a bass, form a band and write songs/create music. I say do it, but do it with heart, passion, and sincerity. I can't ignore the creator-driven trends that have shaped gaming. Back in the day, companies were content to do bare-bones translations, but Working Designs carved out a niche for themselves by painstakingly crafting high quality localizations (including good voice acting) and players responded to WD's gambit by speaking with their wallets like crazy. Lunar: SSSC for Playstation (an otherwise standard fare JRPG) made a huge enough splash with its Western release that other companies realized they had to step up their localization game to be relevant in the evolving JRPG consumer market (a very loyal consumer market of consistent buyers.) And now even the worst localizations today are gold compared to what they were generations ago. And even little indie games seek out legit voiceover talent rather than just having their drinking buddies read lines. (I'm an aspiring voiceover artist myself, and the amount of unknown talent out there is staggering.)
Buuuuuut...
I think my main point, relevant to the thread, is that I don't think Omega Z being denied by the censors (or whatever) is going to hurt the gaming industry or that style of gaming it represents. Anime porn dungeon crawling JRPGs are a very marketable thing, sites like MangaGamer and JastUSA have several English-language offerings (unadulterated to boot), and they will continue to hawk more of those kinds of games in the future, because there is a lucrative market out there. I foresee more doujin (fan-made) games being hawked in the future.