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 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
"Nothing of value" to YOU. Not everyone, reverend brimstone.

Nothing of value to the publisher was lost. Literally, zero dollars worth of loss. The publisher looked at the results of the decision, concluded that no net profit was lost, and declined to reverse the removal.

I don't think you understand. You see, when people have their little moral panics- and start demanding harsher censorship, it's under threat that the game will get an unwarranted rating or negative publicity. It's because if you raise enough hell about Tiddy Tackle Trollops 2: Electric Jiggloo, there will be stores refusing to carry it. This hurts sales, and in order to actually try and make a profit- they have to comply or not sell (like DOA 3).

IOW, the market for something like DOA3 is so small and irrelevant that people complaining about it is enough to get it taken out of stores.

Don't like it? Don't buy it. Don't like the bikini costume? Last I checked they were an option that any adult with any sense of self-control can refuse to utilize. Unless you believe this is a problem for a significant portion of adults (It isn't), then perhaps you should re-evaluate your aversion to tiddy.

Don't like it? Don't listen to it. Don't like criticism of bikini costumes? Last I checked that was an option that any adult with any sense of self-control can refuse to read. Unless you believe this is a problem for a significant portion of adults (It isn't), then perhaps you should re-evaluate your aversion to feminism.

Let adults be adults, and make their own choices.

Adults are making their own choices. Your problem is not that choice is removed, it's that the adults running video game developers/publishers have concluded that people like you are a market of negligible financial value and are not catering to your desires. Making a choice that you disagree with is not the same as not having the ability to make a choice.

Or, like some have said defending Star Wars: "Maybe you aren't the target audience"

The difference is that Star Wars clearly has a target audience of significant financial value, and is making tons of money. Porn games do not, because even independent publishers (who are free to ignore things like the opinions of retail stores and sell directly to their customers) are not making much money from them.

 Peregrine wrote:
Nothing of value to the publisher was lost. Literally, zero dollars worth of loss. The publisher looked at the results of the decision, concluded that no net profit was lost, and declined to reverse the removal.

[citation needed]

 Peregrine wrote:
IOW, the market for something like DOA3 is so small and irrelevant that people complaining about it is enough to get it taken out of stores.

No, in other words, perpetually-triggered idiots that spread false or exagerrated information and raise hell can threaten negative publicity enough that it can send a company into damage-control mode. Don't play silly with this. You're being deliberately silly.

 Peregrine wrote:
Don't like it? Don't listen to it. Don't like criticism of bikini costumes? Last I checked that was an option that any adult with any sense of self-control can refuse to read. Unless you believe this is a problem for a significant portion of adults (It isn't), then perhaps you should re-evaluate your aversion to feminism.

I assure you, during this conversation, my opinion of it is getting abysmally lower. I'm not really finding much in the way of constructive, mature, and logical arguments in favor of it here, at least.

I'm not sure I can have a productive, reasoned argument with someone as... 'passionate' about protecting the delicate feelings of adults for their own good. I think I may soon be utilizing a little button on the bottom right of your posts that, as I understand, has almost been rubbed smooth by use over time. I'm starting to understand why.

I don't know whether porn games are profitable or not but there is a happy middle ground for you two, which I believe Peregrine has alreay alluded to: if Wal-Mart won't carry your porn game because Christians say it is sinful or Leftists say it is misogynistic, or whatever, why not sell it directly to consumers over the internet? The internet is a great place to trade money for embarassing, socially controversial items and services.

 Manchu wrote:
I don't know whether porn games are profitable or not but there is a happy middle ground for you two, which I believe Peregrine has alreay alluded to: if Wal-Mart won't carry your porn game because Christians say it is sinful or Leftists say it is misogynistic, or whatever, why not sell it directly to consumers over the internet? The internet is a great place to trade money for embarassing, socially controversial items and services.

I think there's some difficulty buying console games directly from a game developer- I don't know, I've never done it. But if Steam, Amazon, etc. tend to be on the same sheet of music it gets harder. I don't know, I've never bought a porn game. I think the most embarrassing video game I've ever bought was 'Too Human'.

Either way, Peregrine has his particular beliefs on what's best for everyone, and there's no 'middle ground'. Usually someone else will come along and deal with his arguments. I'm probably better off discussing this stuff productively with other participants.

Some years back, a little fuss was made about a card game called Tentacle Bento. It was illustrated in anime-style and IIRC inspired by anime tropes. Which certain bloggers identified as misogynistic. I don't think Ms. Sarkeesian was famous at the time so I doubt she weighed in. But as a GenCon Guest of Honor, I wonder what she'd say about Tentacle Bento. If it is sold at GenCon, would she demand it be ... um boycotted? Excluded? I wonder how GenCon would respond.

Tentacle Bento was originally a Kickstarter project that Kickstarter dumped once the relevant bloggers kicked up a kerfuffle. Seems like a morality police example to me.

Sigh guys...

Value is subjective to each individual.

A decision can have an objective value to a company because X decision can make the product to sell more or less.

In the video game industry and comic industry there are several examples in franchises that toned down to accommodate the recent heavy social criticism and made less money as a result, there are some franchises that did not and continue to do well or better.

To counter that, there are a few new franchises that are politically correct and inclusive and do well.

What I would take from that is there is market for both and no approach has any advantage over the other, the main big problem comes in my opinion when established franchises get altered to conform a politically correct view that was never their premise.

Most reaction happens when established franchises get toned down it is seen both as censorship and invasion/ ruin of established and loved franchises, on the other hand new franchises get less reaction mostly from entrenched commentators.

I would say it is safe to assume from that, that the vast majority of the target audience has a mild and average political point of view and react to radical changes in things they have become familiar with.

 Manchu wrote:
Some years back, a little fuss was made about a card game called Tentacle Bento. It was illustrated in anime-style and IIRC inspired by anime tropes. Which certain bloggers identified as misogynistic. I don't think Ms. Sarkeesian was famous at the time so I doubt she weighed in. But as a GenCon Guest of Honor, I wonder what she'd say about Tentacle Bento. If it is sold at GenCon, would she demand it be ... um boycotted? Excluded? I wonder how GenCon would respond.

I get not selling it in stores. That's fine. The shop I part-time at doesn't allow Cards Against Humanity or Kingdom Death to be sold in the store- the rule is, "We don't sell anything in a family store that couldn't be played in front of a family". Yeah, there's a little bit of 'whaddabout muh 40k violence tho' and that's considerably different when the 'violence' is taking models off a table after a dice roll, as opposed to the things that are said and shown for CAH and KD.

I'm pretty sure she'd come along to tell us how these things are influences in real life. Much like a discussion I had on another forum with someone, this individual believed that things like KDM were 'influential' to sexual predators... of course, it seems far more likely that someone who is a sexual predator would be drawn to something sexual, rather than it just turning a perfectly normal adult into a sick twisted pervert.

But my philosophy is that people who get 'corrupted' by some kind of simulated violence or sexual depiction are generally already sick and twisted.

LOL it is always a bit funny to me that you can buy CAH at Target. In the toy department. Next to the Barbies and Hot Wheels.

I believe the argument made against Tentacle Bento at the time was that it "normalized" rape. The Overton Window strikes again!

 Manchu wrote:
I wonder whether transgendered people who want to play an avatar of themselves in D&D would play a transgendered PC or just play the character as already being of the desired gender. There is such a thing as magic in the world of D&D that solves the conundrum of finding oneself embodied as an undesired gender, or I guess maybe not every transgendered person sees this as a conundrum? I dunno, it seems too complex, personalized, and idiosyncratic to be something addressed by a toy company whose main concern is profitability.

Depends. Some might want to play a transgender PC and explore how someone like them would exist in the D&D world (and yes, magic exists, but you have to be obscenely wealthy to afford it), some might just want some escapist fantasy where they can be themselves without their gender ever being a question. It's just like any other question about character motivations. Someone who isn't very athletic might play a scholar-type character as "who would I be in this world", or a STR 25 barbarian as escapist fantasy. And it's certainly not such a complex question that the game can't address it as part of the general subject of how to choose a character that you will enjoy playing.

There is this notion of "representativeness" where the idea is that unless a corporation explicitly depicts "you" (a.k.a., someone like you, defined in the most superficial terms possible) enjoying the product then the product is not for you or may even be designed to explicitly exclude you.

D&D's publisher giving explicit permission to play androgynous, transgendered, or non-heterosexual characters strikes me as presumptuous and conniving. Who needed their permission?

This is apparently hard for people who are not members of under-represented groups to really understand, but yes, it is a problem. If you look at a product that has nobody like you in it, despite the fact that it's a huge world with tons of characters, it's very easy to think that it's a deliberate choice to exclude people like you. I mean, if gay people are 5% of the population and you have a group of 200 straight characters that's a group with a 0.0035% chance of forming by pure chance. IOW, it was almost certainly a case of, consciously or unconsciously, excluding gay characters from that group. The only question is whether the author was oblivious to the subject and didn't consider the possibility of gay characters existing, or actively hostile to gay people and deliberately making a straight-only group. And either way the message is "this isn't for you".

Having those characters explicitly mentioned reverses the message and says "you are a part of this world", even if the percentages don't line up exactly. It shows that the publisher is aware of the real-world issues and is making a statement that they're on the right side of it. Obviously in a game like D&D, where the DM is arguably more important than the rulebook in determining the content of a game, it's not a guarantee of anything. But it's sure a better starting point than the alternative. And it's just a nice bonus that undesirable people will ragequit over the inclusion of LGBT/non-white/etc characters and remove themselves from the pool of people I might have to interact with.

 Manchu wrote:
I believe the argument made against Tentacle Bento at the time was that it "normalized" rape. The Overton Window strikes again!

I'm not sure that a cartoon drawing can really 'normalize' anything. An old saying I heard is that "people judge by their own emotional and mental condition"... so I'm just saying, if you point to a cartoon girl with a tentacle in her butthole and say "That will make people want to rape" it tells me an awful lot about you.

(Not 'You', but hypothetical 'you')

Yeah, I can imagine all sorts of ways that people might want to play D&D. What's harder to imagine is kidding myself that Hasbro gives a gak about me. As someone said ITT earlier, if X is deemed profitable then X will be added ASAP.

This is why the doctrine of representativeness is a thing as far as I can tell. Once you convince someone to identify on an extremely superficial basis, you have qualified them as much easier marketing targets.

 Manchu wrote:
I don't know whether porn games are profitable or not but there is a happy middle ground for you two, which I believe Peregrine has alreay alluded to: if Wal-Mart won't carry your porn game because Christians say it is sinful or Leftists say it is misogynistic, or whatever, why not sell it directly to consumers over the internet? The internet is a great place to trade money for embarassing, socially controversial items and services.

The counter argument is why not those that oppose such things not make their own and compete for consumers money instead of trying to censor the platforms they used to have to sell games?

Erotic or Porn games seem to do well in Steam, there are several and it seems they have a large audience, so those that do not like them banded to pressure steam to take them out, that is a big censorship and a marginalising behaviour, why not just not buy such games and make your own games that are not that instead of hurting companies and consumers by censoring their choices?

Les options are always less options.

 Peregrine wrote:
And it's just a nice bonus that undesirable people will ragequit over the inclusion of LGBT/non-white/etc characters and remove themselves from the pool of people I might have to interact with.

Or, you know, do what people have done for years with elements of fluff and just ignore it.

I'm pretty sure also, that there's never been any rule that says you MUST play a specific race, gender, or sexual orientation... and last I checked, in RPG's you kind of make your own character, not take one from the book.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
But my philosophy is that people who get 'corrupted' by some kind of simulated violence or sexual depiction are generally already sick and twisted.

You're so close to getting it, but you need to make the final step in understanding. It's not a binary choice between inherent vs. corrupted, there's a mix of factors. The most likely path is that some people are inherently potential sexual predators, but what they end up doing depends heavily on the environment they encounter. If they encounter fiction (including games) that endorses predatory behavior and portrays it as something acceptable then they're more likely to act on their impulses, and make up excuses for why it really isn't so bad and everyone's doing it anyway so why are you getting so mad about this. It's like the whole Weinstein thing. Clearly something was wrong with him, but he was enabled by an environment that considered predatory behavior just part of the business and people who knew he was up to something (even if they didn't know the details) and kept it quiet for the sake of their careers or because they didn't care.

 Manchu wrote:
I don't know whether porn games are profitable or not but there is a happy middle ground for you two, which I believe Peregrine has alreay alluded to: if Wal-Mart won't carry your porn game because Christians say it is sinful or Leftists say it is misogynistic, or whatever, why not sell it directly to consumers over the internet? The internet is a great place to trade money for embarassing, socially controversial items and services.

I imagine it is very difficult to convince potential customer that your porn game is not, in fact, gussied-up malware.

"'Play now my lord'? Nope. Fool me once, shame on you."

I guess we all have our limits. For example, I would scoff at the idea of my local gaming store selling F.A.T.A.L. I don't think of myself as a prude but ... maybe I should think of myself as a hypocrite!

 Manchu wrote:
Yeah, I can imagine all sorts of ways that people might want to play D&D. What's harder to imagine is kidding myself that Hasbro gives a gak about me. As someone said ITT earlier, if X is deemed profitable then X will be added ASAP.

And "showing LGBT/non-white/etc characters is profitable" is itself a positive statement for us. Even at its most cynical and capitalist it's still an acknowledgement that we exist and matter. And if it happens to be more than just cynical marketing, which it seems to be in at least some cases, then it's even better.

 Peregrine wrote:
You're so close to getting it, but you need to make the final step in understanding. It's not a binary choice between inherent vs. corrupted, there's a mix of factors. The most likely path is that some people are inherently potential sexual predators, but what they end up doing depends heavily on the environment they encounter. If they encounter fiction (including games) that endorses predatory behavior and portrays it as something acceptable then they're more likely to act on their impulses, and make up excuses for why it really isn't so bad and everyone's doing it anyway so why are you getting so mad about this. It's like the whole Weinstein thing. Clearly something was wrong with him, but he was enabled by an environment that considered predatory behavior just part of the business and people who knew he was up to something (even if they didn't know the details) and kept it quiet for the sake of their careers or because they didn't care.

And this means it should be banned from the remaining 99.99999% of the population? Unless you're not saying that.

Because I'm sorry, we don't take away things from responsible adults just because unhinged psychos in need of mental help see it and get an erection. Sorry, man.

If the guy's going to get perverse, he's going to find his fix somewhere. THE INTERNET IS A THING.

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
And this means it should be banned from the remaining 99.99999% of the population? Unless you're not saying that.

I'm not saying that. No such ban exists, and no such ban has been proposed. Owning KDM is not a crime. Selling KDM to adults is not a crime. Individual adults making a choice, of their own free will, that KDM is morally objectionable and they won't sell it is not a ban. The publishers of KDM are free to make their game and sell it to anyone who wants to buy it (including retail stores who wish to sell it to their customers). Nothing about this situation is going to change in the foreseeable future.

However, we should not bury our heads in the sand and pretend that the media we (as a society) has zero effect on anyone and people are just inherently monsters who are going to do awful things no matter what.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
But my philosophy is that people who get 'corrupted' by some kind of simulated violence or sexual depiction are generally already sick and twisted.

You're so close to getting it, but you need to make the final step in understanding. It's not a binary choice between inherent vs. corrupted, there's a mix of factors. The most likely path is that some people are inherently potential sexual predators, but what they end up doing depends heavily on the environment they encounter. If they encounter fiction (including games) that endorses predatory behavior and portrays it as something acceptable then they're more likely to act on their impulses, and make up excuses for why it really isn't so bad and everyone's doing it anyway so why are you getting so mad about this. It's like the whole Weinstein thing. Clearly something was wrong with him, but he was enabled by an environment that considered predatory behavior just part of the business and people who knew he was up to something (even if they didn't know the details) and kept it quiet for the sake of their careers or because they didn't care.

Did I read what I read? are humans incapable of empathy and critical thinking? or we must penalise the entire human race for the off chance an oddity that has mental issues may be affected? or we take for granted all humans are mentally ill?

I do not get what to make from this.

I enjoyed too much the first mission of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 ("Remember, no russian"), being a beta male that isn't even capable of punching a boxing sack because it just feels wrong, to know that minor things like movies, books, videogames portraying rape, violence, etc... don't make people more violent/rapist/whatever

You know because people where so violent in medieval times? Not because FICTION was violent, but because their REALITY was violent.

 Peregrine wrote:
I'm not saying that. No such ban exists, and no such ban has been proposed. Owning KDM is not a crime. Selling KDM to adults is not a crime. Individual adults making a choice, of their own free will, that KDM is morally objectionable and they won't sell it is not a ban. The publishers of KDM are free to make their game and sell it to anyone who wants to buy it (including retail stores who wish to sell it to their customers). Nothing about this situation is going to change in the foreseeable future.

So then your point is, "Some sicko might find this enjoyable and act on it because he's a sicko or mental case".

OK, solution- don't play with sickos. When sickos do bad things, then arrest them and either institutionalize them, throw them in a cage, or if need be give them the night-night cocktail in a room with a big window.

Problem solved.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
Did I read what I read? are humans incapable of empathy and critical thinking? or we must penalise the entire human race for the off chance an oddity that has mental issues may be affected? or we take for granted all humans are mentally ill?

Again, there is no penalizing going on. Owning KDM is not a crime. Selling KDM to adults is not a crime. Individual adults making a choice, of their own free will, that KDM is morally objectionable and they won't sell it is not a punishment or taking anything away from you. The publishers of KDM are free to make their game and sell it to anyone who wants to buy it (including retail stores who wish to sell it to their customers). Nothing about this situation is going to change in the foreseeable future.

What happens when the doctrine of representativeness fails? i.e., when a product depicting a character superficially similar to you does not succeed in relieving you of your money? This is a non-hypoethtcial outcome. From what I have seen, the notion that representativeness is a successful, much less morally good, tactic is largely the result of sampling bias. I strongly suspect the actual demogrpahic for representativeness is the majority because the majority has already been qualified to feel good about diversity and inclusivity. But of course this assumes we get that "majority" is not about race, gender, or sexual orientation but rather about income.

 Manchu wrote:
What happens when the doctrine of representativeness fails? i.e., when a product depicting a character superficially similar to you does not succeed in relieving you of your money? This is a non-hypoethtcial outcome. From what I have seen, the notion that representativeness is a successful, much less morally good, tactic is largely the result of sampling bias. I strongly suspect the actual demogrpahic for representativeness is the majority because the majority has already been qualified to feel good about diversity and inclusivity. But of course this assumes we get that "majority" is not about race, gender, or sexual orientation but rather about income.

If it fails then it fails. Of course it's not 100%, no amount of representativeness in AoS is going to get me to buy it because it's a trash game that I have zero interest in. The game can be full of characters exactly like me, GW can put a giant "PEOPLE LIKE YOU ARE AWESOME AND VALID AND WE LOVE YOU" sign on the box, and I'm still not going to buy it. But you're making the mistake of analyzing a market strategy based on the success or failure with a single customer instead of market averages. The strategy can (and will) fail with individuals and still be successful as long as it creates a net increase in sales.

And I'm telling you, as a member of at least one of those under-represented groups, that representation matters and is a positive thing for a game (or other fiction). And I have seen countless anecdotes from people in similar positions expressing appreciation for having people like them added and greater interest in buying the product because they feel welcome and not like a barely-tolerated outsider. Your opinion that it's all about the majority and virtue signalling is just not true, I suspect because you are not a member of any of the groups in question and don't have the first-hand experience of what it's like.

 Peregrine wrote:

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
Did I read what I read? are humans incapable of empathy and critical thinking? or we must penalise the entire human race for the off chance an oddity that has mental issues may be affected? or we take for granted all humans are mentally ill?

Again, there is no penalizing going on. Owning KDM is not a crime. Selling KDM to adults is not a crime. Individual adults making a choice, of their own free will, that KDM is morally objectionable and they won't sell it is not a punishment or taking anything away from you. The publishers of KDM are free to make their game and sell it to anyone who wants to buy it (including retail stores who wish to sell it to their customers). Nothing about this situation is going to change in the foreseeable future.

A company sells a porn game at steam the past lets say 10 years, they do well, extremely well and expand update their game make reputation and have a following and suddenly this year Steam because of pressure from the politically correct crowd decides to ban all porn games from their platform, how can you tell me there is no penalty?

Patreon and YouTube has cut off several individuals for political reasons, including several porn creators, over politically correct complains, how are these individuals not penalised for their work out of a sudden they have based their business model for several years on these platforms.

several individuals and businesses are penalised over the latest politically correct crusade that runs the last two years and the consumer base sees only less and less choices and the creators that produce something they like been discriminated.

I think there is a penalty and waiving it away that people could still sell it in the back streets of the internet is not a valid reasoning.

 Peregrine wrote:
I suspect because you are not a member of any of the groups in question and don't have the first-hand experience of what it's like.

And neither are you, so... why don't they speak for themselves? I hear a lot of things this way and that- so, maybe I'd rather hear a trans-person's opinion. (Spoiler: I have. Her statement was: "I played a woman all the time, anyway. I didn't need their validation"- anecdotal).

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
A company sells a porn game at steam the past lets say 10 years, they do well, extremely well and expand update their game make reputation and have a following and suddenly this year Steam because of pressure from the politically correct crowd decides to ban all porn games from their platform, how can you tell me there is no penalty?

A private company exercising its right to decide who they wish to do business with is not a "penalty". You don't have a right to Steam's service as a business partner. Those porn game producers are free to take their business elsewhere, including selling directly to their customers, if they wish to do so.

Patreon and YouTube has cut off several individuals for political reasons, including several porn creators, over politically correct complains, how are these individuals not penalised for their work out of a sudden they have based their business model for several years on these platforms.

Again, not a penalty. If you're dumb enough to base your business model on another company's willingness to cooperate with you and provide you with hosting services, do the networking and connect you with advertisers to give you a revenue stream, etc, with no ability to sell your product otherwise then you have only yourself to blame. Those people are still free to make their content and sell it any way they can, if the market for it exists.

I think there is a penalty and waiving it away that people could still sell it in the back streets of the internet is not a valid reasoning.

Of course it's valid. You are not entitled to have Steam/YouTube/etc do your work for you. Nor is it a "penalty" that their participation in your business requires you to comply with their policies. Plenty of people sell stuff without the participation of those companies, this isn't some illegal back-alley drug deal we're talking about. It's more like Walmart doesn't sell your favorite niche-market game, so you go to your local game store or the publisher's web site and buy it. Or should we complain about "penalties" because your local game store doesn't sell every niche-market miniatures ruleset that anyone has ever created?


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 Adeptus Doritos wrote:
And neither are you, so... why don't they speak for themselves? I hear a lot of things this way and that- so, maybe I'd rather hear a trans-person's opinion. (Spoiler: I have. Her statement was: "I played a woman all the time, anyway. I didn't need their validation"- anecdotal).

HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAH. JFC you're clueless and arrogant. You don't know who I am or what groups I belong to, so don't make assumptions.

 Peregrine wrote:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAH. JFC you're clueless and arrogant. You don't know who I am or what groups I belong to, so don't make assumptions.

Yeah, I figured that's the kind of response I would get from you, Peregrine.

I think I'm about done with you. Whatever it is.

People who argue others can't know because of who they are, do you ever wonder how much you yourself can't know if that line of thinking is true?