Saturday, April 20, 2019

Sony's censorship policy in games (Part 2)

Last year, there had been news regarding Sony's controversial censorship policy in video games but this time, there's a confirmation on where did the reason come from. Someone from the radicalized MeToo movement had manipulated Sony into censoring stuffs in mature games, mostly the mature Japanese games like Senran Kagura series, various visual novels, Omega Labyrinth-Z, etc. Those kinds of games are famous for the large amount of fanservice stuffs as well as the fact that there are some mini-games or modes where you can interact with the characters in anyway you want including things that are distasteful to certain people. Seriously, if you find this kind of stuff distasteful, why do you want to take a look at those games or even buy/try and play them in the first place? It's not like video games may cause negative influence on grown adults. Grown adults already know the difference between reality and fantasy.
To put a blame in movies, video games, dramas, cartoons and other media contents over 'negative influence' is already bullshit enough. Plus, to take actions of false justice like censoring those things in those Japanese-made games is going to anger the fans and it's already wrong. And don't even be stupid enough to play the same games on the laptop computer, PS Vita or even the Switch elsewhere as if your home is probably the safe way although there's still no guarantee in my opinion.
Even some of the AAA games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Devil May Cry 5 are affected by this situation as well like some even parts are censored for the same reason but this is mature atmosphere for a mature game, mind you. I don't know if this is okay like that for those AAA games or not but it seems that it's not as Sony has gone too far in the censorship policy, ranging from censoring things in those niche Japanese games to even some AAA mature games. I also don't know if even the Playstation Vita is affected by the same policy as well.
For Cyberpunk 2077, there's one part where the main character goes to the scavenger base to stumble upon a bunch of naked bodies there, both male and female. That's something to do with the trans-human concept stuff like it's some kind of an experiment. Again, I don't know if people may find real evil experiments distasteful or not if there are ones in existence in the future. The story seems to be dark like it's taking place in a dark future. As this is one of the AAA games that's going to be affected by the on-going censorship policy, the alternatives will be to buy the same game on the other platforms which have everything intact.
Overall, the policy Sony came up with is more controversial than before and it's not a good idea to begin with. For a strictness like this, you can't tell if it is real or not. And for protection of children stuff, this policy is going in a wrong direction. You can come up with a house policy against your children playing those kinds of games even when they're fully grown but to get a company like Sony to come up with a policy like that is already causing outrage among the players. To the west, there are people who may find that sort of fanservice kind of weird or distasteful but that's cultural difference for you.
And because of that policy, there might be delays for the release of such games on Playstation 4 in the west or even worse, cancellation and people got pissed as a result. The ESRB rating had been there for review of the games to see if they are mature or not ever since the time the controversy went on about the past games like Mortal Kombat and Night Trap for instance although Night Trap seemed to be rated T for some reason.
Then, there are additional questions below.
  1. How did Nintendo allow a bunch of mature games on the Switch?
  2. Isn't Nintendo supposed to be a family-friendly game company to begin with?
Those questions are what I cannot answer but at least, people had found and talked about the outside culprits who manipulated Sony into coming up with that policy.