A JRPG About BOOBS!

[Dincrest]

But for every door that closes, a new one opens.  So the girl I was crushing on turned me down when I asked her out because she's into someone else.  Yeah, I'll be heartbroken for a little bit, but I'll buck up and find new love.  There's a good chance the new love I find will be way better than the one I was crushing on. 

If some game I really really want doesn't get localized (and it has happened, particularly during the 1990s and 2000s), I cryass about it for a day or two, then shrug it off, move on, and seek out other games to tickle my fancy.  I pick and choose my battles.  I could bitch about the game I didn't get or enjoy the games I CAN get, especially if the stuff available to me is likely better.  The fool concerns himself with the 99 who say no.  The wise man had a great time with the one who says yes.  I'm blessed that I can do that with reckless abandon nowadays because we're living in an era of feast rather than famine; wholly unlike the 16-bit era when we were lucky to get a scant handful of JRPGs a year from, like, 1 or 2 developers.  Competition among games in most any genre is pretty ferocious so they all have to do something to garner someone's attention.  The gaming scene being so resplendent that there are MANY offerings from all kinds of developers big and small to cater to my desires.  So I don't need to put all my hopes on one pony.

And I'm also of the mentality that if I want my fix and my usual place to get that fix is unavailable, I sure as hell will find a way to get a fix because there are always several ways to get a fix that be better than what was.  I still think that one fanservicey JRPG not getting localized isn't going to hurt fanservicey JRPGs as a whole.  There are/were/and will be plenty out there because there is a market for it.  Omega Z may have been halted by the Decency Police, but the Criminal Girls games snuck by them (and the Criminal Girls are arguably even MORE offensive.)  With so many games out there plying that particular cringe-fanservice trade (and doing cringe-fanservice much better than Omega Z), the decency police can't keep up.     

No one likes being told "you can't have it."  Mom says, "you can't have X."  So instead of me trying to get X (because that's what Mom's so hyperfocused on me not getting and she's resolute about me not having it), I'll look for something like X that Mom doesn't know about.  That way, I win and get my "not X but just as good if not better," and Mom thinks she won because I succumbed to her demand and did not get X.  I guess I'm just a subversive snake.  Hey, The Great Wall of China did not keep out the Mongolians. 

At this point, though, I feel like I'm saturating any semblance of a decent point with gobbledygook and am willing to just "agree to disagree" and call it a night. 

[bigdeath]

What? lol

I just prefer the game I want to be translated because its a product and I'm a customer. But often niche Japanese games are not marketed for overseas markets. Which sucks.

[Dincrest]

But part of my point is that though Omega Z wasn't localized, plenty of its competitors were and/or will be.  And those competitors likely do the do way better.  Also, niche Japanese games are getting localized more and more these days.  It's not like the 8, 16 or 32-bit era when games were declined or "whitewashed" if they were too Japanese. 

I remember when I was lucky to get a scant handful of Japanese VNs a year, and they were usually poorly translated by indie publishers.  Nowadays, more mainstream companies are localizing more Japanese VNs and doing so really well.  Aksys and Spike Chunsoft have totally upped their game there.  Heck, Idea Factory's made a cottage industry through their Otomate-labeled otome games where you play as a girl experiencing storylines with dudes.  Otome is pretty niche as far as VNs go, and that niche is now being catered to outside of Japan.  That's a win in my book. 

Also, there are plenty of non-Japanese developers creating "Japanese niche" style games.  It's that mentality of, "If I can't buy this thing I want, I'll make it!" 

[Grainofariver]

But for every door that closes, a new one opens.  So the girl I was crushing on turned me down when I asked her out because she's into someone else.  Yeah, I'll be heartbroken for a little bit, but I'll buck up and find new love.  There's a good chance the new love I find will be way better than the one I was crushing on. 

If some game I really really want doesn't get localized (and it has happened, particularly during the 1990s and 2000s), I cryass about it for a day or two, then shrug it off, move on, and seek out other games to tickle my fancy.  I pick and choose my battles.  I could bitch about the game I didn't get or enjoy the games I CAN get, especially if the stuff available to me is likely better.  The fool concerns himself with the 99 who say no.  The wise man had a great time with the one who says yes.  I'm blessed that I can do that with reckless abandon nowadays because we're living in an era of feast rather than famine; wholly unlike the 16-bit era when we were lucky to get a scant handful of JRPGs a year from, like, 1 or 2 developers.  Competition among games in most any genre is pretty ferocious so they all have to do something to garner someone's attention.  The gaming scene being so resplendent that there are MANY offerings from all kinds of developers big and small to cater to my desires.  So I don't need to put all my hopes on one pony.

And I'm also of the mentality that if I want my fix and my usual place to get that fix is unavailable, I sure as hell will find a way to get a fix because there are always several ways to get a fix that be better than what was.  I still think that one fanservicey JRPG not getting localized isn't going to hurt fanservicey JRPGs as a whole.  There are/were/and will be plenty out there because there is a market for it.  Omega Z may have been halted by the Decency Police, but the Criminal Girls games snuck by them (and the Criminal Girls are arguably even MORE offensive.)  With so many games out there plying that particular cringe-fanservice trade (and doing cringe-fanservice much better than Omega Z), the decency police can't keep up.     

No one likes being told "you can't have it."  Mom says, "you can't have X."  So instead of me trying to get X (because that's what Mom's so hyperfocused on me not getting and she's resolute about me not having it), I'll look for something like X that Mom doesn't know about.  That way, I win and get my "not X but just as good if not better," and Mom thinks she won because I succumbed to her demand and did not get X.  I guess I'm just a subversive snake.  Hey, The Great Wall of China did not keep out the Mongolians. 

At this point, though, I feel like I'm saturating any semblance of a decent point with gobbledygook and am willing to just "agree to disagree" and call it a night.

I'd have no problem with 'agreeing to disagree' -- I never figured I'd change any minds anyway -- but you said "The fool concerns himself with the 99 who say no.  The wise man had a great time with the one who says yes.". The way you use it places your stance in the position of the wise-man and my stance in the position of the fool. Don't you think it's a bit unfair to make a claim like that, then attempt to close the discussion before any rebuttal can be offered?

If it weren't for people, as you say, 'bitching' about not getting certain games, how would publishers know what to release? It's not like you can vote with your wallet when the game isn't even available for purchase. Shining Resonance got a western release because people badgered SEGA for years. The Tales series was nearly dead in the west, but fans kept 'bitching' and eventually managed to revitalise the entire franchise. We only HAVE so many JRPGs today because people cared enough to prove there's a market. I can think of several more examples where fan demand lead to localisation (Xenoblade Chronicles, anyone?). If you want to just take what's given and ignore the rest, that's your prerogative, but personally I want to explore the entire field.

Also you frequently use phrases like 'decency police' and 'better', but art is a subjective field. Are you deriding the quality of the game, the content of the game, or simply that the game is irrelevant in a saturated market? These are all very different arguments.

If you chose not to respond, that's fine: we can agree to disagree. However I think, given your phrasing, I'm at least entitled to this brief counter.

[Dincrest]

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.   

[Grainofariver]

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...

You said a lot of things, so please don't think I just TLDR'd straight to this: I read your whole post. I just want to hone in on this because I think it might be the source for a lot of confusion.

Maybe you have said that competition is healthy many times elsewhere, but being that I only occasionally pop-up on these boards, I haven't seen those discussions. All I really had to go off of is what you said in the earlier posts, none which brought up creativity, competition, or "If I can't get what I want, I'll create it" until the second-most recent post (which was made while I was typing). I just went off of what you said at the time, and if that wasn't reflective of or was only a part of how you actually felt... sorry, I just don't know you well enough to fill in the blanks.

I said earlier that I don't care about Omega Z on a personal level: only the broader issues of censorship. I believe you should vote with your wallet (which is why I think MonCapitan is right to stop supporting the publisher, even if I don't personally agree with the reasoning), but how can you do so when there's nothing to purchase? Personally I do just that: if a publisher does a good, I make an effort to buy their game (I bought Shining Resonance in-part to support the future release of Shining games in the west). If the game is censored, I buy it used or borrow it from a friend to deny the publisher a sale. That said, with the massive rise in digital distribution, I wonder how much longer that will be a viable solution. When there is no used copy and borrowing from a friend involves taking the whole console, it becomes pretty dang hard to legally play the game while still refusing the purchase.

But that's a conversation for another day, yeah?

[Dincrest]

Back in bygone gaming eras, losing out on a particular game felt like a slap in the face, because how could I take my business elsewhere when elsewhere didn't exist?  The game industry, particularly the console industry, was more tightly controlled and smaller indie/art-house developers didn't have as many outlets (pretty much PC only.)  The idea of "how do you speak with your wallet if there's nothing to purchase" was absolutely true during earlier gaming generations, but nowadays it's a wide open market.  Or perhaps it's more difficult to speak with your wallet because there's too much out there available for purchase with more options emerging every day? 

I think this:

Why bother localising Zero/Ao no Kiseki? We already have plenty of JRPGS.
Why bother making that Anthem game? We already have plenty of shooters.
Remember PT? Don't worry about it friend: you know how many horror games there are?
(Heck, why even bother making any video games when there's so dang many that most people have a backlog of things that they will never get to?)

is a straw man argument.  Was there anything said about apathy towards localizing anything?  Nope.  No nihilism here.  Merely that just because one game didn't get localized doesn't mean ALL games in its cohort won't.  Several are already available and more are in the works, from companies of all shapes and sizes.  Just because one game got a hack job doesn't mean ALL games in its cohort will too.  There are plenty available now that are still in-tact and plenty more in-tact ones in the works from companies of all shapes and sizes. 

I still don't think Omega Z's denial by the censors amounts to much in the greater scheme of things, nowadays because the marketplace is so vast and wide open.  Tis nary a drop in the bucket.  Why cry over the cup of spilled skunky keg beer that is Omega Z when there is whiskey, vodka and other hard liquor flowing over yonder (in the form of dozens of unadulterated X-rated dungeon crawl JRPGs).  Or if spirits are too strong for you, there are/were/will be several beer, wine, etc. options in the cavalcade of titillating R-rated JRPGs (past, present, and future.)  Companies of all shapes and sizes proffer offerings aplenty to fill that empty cup.  Even if the more prominent companies don't have what you're hankering for, plenty of indie/art-house/doujin creators are/were/will be totally cooking up something to your liking.   

But, again, that's my mentality.  If A doesn't give me what I want the way I want it, then B, C, D, E, F, G, and H will be right there to proffer their competing wares that promise to give me what I want and/or more.  A doesn't get my business, F does (because F's offering is really good; the demo totally resonated with me so I bought it), I get my fix and live happily ever after.

[Grainofariver]

I think this:

Why bother localising Zero/Ao no Kiseki? We already have plenty of JRPGS.
Why bother making that Anthem game? We already have plenty of shooters.
Remember PT? Don't worry about it friend: you know how many horror games there are?
(Heck, why even bother making any video games when there's so dang many that most people have a backlog of things that they will never get to?)

is a straw man argument.  Was there anything said about apathy towards localizing anything?  Nope.  No nihilism here. 

As I said earlier, gratuitous sex and violence in video games will always be there.  So we get gaming news every so often that a few naughty games were toned down or denied localization.  Big deal.  There is plenty of unadulterated stuff out there to scratch whatever bizarre fetish itch you may have. 

Seems pretty apathetic to me friend.

In fact, looking at it now, I shouldn't have said, 'why bother localising/releasing', but 'who cares that X didn't get localised/released'.

[Dincrest]

Were it an earlier gaming era, then I would shout righteous indignation at Obscure-Japanese-Game-V getting denied or butchered because it's setting a bad precedent and could bode poorly for the future of games like Game-V.  But we're beyond that now.  The market is wide open and still growing.  I feel that we don't have to worry about such things as much because for every Omega Z that gets shafted, dozens more just like it (or even more "extreme" for lack of a better word) still get in/get made, have gotten in/gotten made, and will get in/get made.  So the consumer is never without options because creators are freer to give us more options.   

What you perceive as "who cares apathy" I see more like this analogy: I'm crushing on a girl.  I go to the school dance.  I ask her to dance.  She turns me down.  I'm not feeling so great.  What do I do?  Do I sorrowfully obsess over her turning me down? Or do I go wash my face, dust myself off and ask another girl to dance?   I choose the latter.  Yeah, it hurts that I was turned down, but I'm not worried because there are plenty of pretty girls out there for me. 

"Who cares apathy" would be me not even going to the school dance and sitting on the couch watching reruns because I convinced myself that school dances were pointless and girls were waste of time. 

I think now it's just going into circular arguments.  I'm laughing at myself because I went off the rails in a thread about a silly JRPG themed around big boobs. 

Is it safe to say "we slugged it out, now let's hug it out"?

[Grainofariver]

"Who cares apathy" would be me not even going to the school dance and sitting on the couch watching reruns because I convinced myself that school dances were pointless and girls were waste of time. 

But I absolutely convinced myself that school dances were pointless and girls (more like, relationships) were a waste of time. I spent my school dance hanging out with friends, playing video-games and having a blast. I've also never gone on a date in my life despite being 26. Myself and every one of my friends has divorced parents, and those members of my family who are still married are either miserable or have a relationship where one half utterly dominates the other. Not a single one of my friends has been able to hold a steady relationship, though attempts result in such madness that one attempted suicide (and was shortly after diagnosed as bipolar, so at least something good came out of it). They say you can't be happy with someone else until you're happy with yourself, but after years of depression I'm actually pretty gosh-darn happy with who and where I am, so why risk it?

Why you gotta keep bringing up these landmines, man?

(I'm kidding.)
(About being offended: everything else is true. I think relationships are fine, but I've seen it go horribly wrong too many times to even remotely touch it myself.)
(<3)

[Dincrest]

I think I can explain everything in song:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sydKXNq6mWk

If that doesn't explain it all, I don't know what will.  (I'd say, "and don't say Clarissa" but I'm not sure if that reference is before your time.) 

[The Legendary Zoltan]

Your welcome for starting a conversation. ;)