Martha is Dead Censorship

A few days ago I came across a news story about some horror game I hadn't heard of until that point called Martha is Dead that was apparently being censored on Playstation and left alone on PC and X Box.  I then made an offhand tweet about some silliness I saw in the discourse surrounding the game only to find it getting flooded with likes, retweets and a couple of absolutely brainrotten comments from people who cannot read.  So I thought I'd take a little bit of time to say a few things on the issue here.

First of all the censorship itself seems stupid but at this point it's something I have come to expect from Sony.  The clip that is circling around social media is a scene of the game where the player is holding a severed head of some woman and the player character proceeds to use a razor to make cuts in the side of the head and then pull off the face (complete with button prompts!) and then they wear it or something. Sure, the scene in question is sort of shocking but it's no worse than anything else that comes out of other titles in the genre and even out of the genre of horror.  Severing limbs and DIY eye surgery in Dead Space, Lara Croft getting brutalized in the reboot games, Fatality animations in Mortal Kombat, no one seems to give a shit when this kind of thing is going on from huge studios but a small indie group make a face-ripping scene and suddenly its all "ooooh this is absolutely disgusting how could anyone possibly make this?!"

At least for me in Japan, Sony censoring violence is nothing new.  I have talked at length both on the blog and on stream about how parts of Until Dawn were censored so heavily that if affected the story.  Resident Evil is also very heavily censored when it comes to violence even in it's more expensive "Z-Versions".  The story I have heard (Im not sure how true this is, keep in mind) is that in 1997 is that some 14 year old kid abducted and beheaded a couple of Elementary school children and left their severed heads on the school gate for people to see.  The kid was caught and after all was said and done a politician called Shizuka Kamei put the blame squarely on "violent and cruel movies" and so acts of extreme violence in mutilation in films and games have been censored or not really done since then.  

So while the censorship is stupid and shouldn't be done, it at least makes some degree of sense that one of the biggest companies in the entire country wouldn't want to get on the bad side of those rules.  Nintendo, as far as I know, doesn't really have any games in their library that would require that kind of censorship and Microsoft is an American company that doesn't need to give a shit, which is why you probably don't see this kind of thing happening on those platforms.  

But I'll be honest, I stopped giving a shit about Sony censorship a long time ago, thems just the breaks, what my tweet was actually about was the individual user response about the content itself.  Most people responded with outrage at the censorship and that it should be left alone and if that kind of extreme violence in a piece of media makes you uncomfortable to the point of "literally shaking and crying" then just don't play it, something I agree with quite strongly.  What people need to realize is that while "video games are for everyone" is a nice fluffy statement that lets you pretend to be a good person on social media, the truth is that while games are for everyone, not ALL games are for everyone.  If you don't like violent, grotesque acts in your games, don't play horror.  If you don't like difficult gameplay, don't play Dark Souls or Cuphead.  I don't like endless boring life-sim bullshit like Animal Crossing but instead of moaning about it I can very easily accept its just not for me and then not buy it, it's really that easy.

Where I get my back up is when I was scrolling through the tweets and I saw someone describe the developers as "irresponsible" for "releasing the games without trigger warnings".  What this is doing is attempting to villify the creators of Martha is Dead for hiding the nature of the content in the game and acting as if the violence and adult themes are some kind of surprise.  Except that's not true is it?  The game is rated M and has all the relevent warnings and even if it didn't have that, the literal FIRST THING you see when going to the Steam page is this.

It's RIGHT THERE, before you can ever access the game description or the button to buy, you have to accept this warning.  Do not try and pass off your inability to read or lack of attention span on the developers as if it's their fault.  Just because it's not written with the words "TRIGGER WARNING" at the top of the page and is written as a paragraph full of vapid social media buzzwords doesn't mean it's not there.  

Anyway, I had no idea what the game was before this controversy and now I'm excited to pick it up for myself, possibly to play in some kind of October Horror Playlist on stream later this year.  So while the censorship is bad and the controversy stupid, at least I found an interesting game out of it.

The New YouTube Rules

Oh boy, YouTube have really kicked up a storm here.  Very recently they decided to change some of their rules when it comes to monetizing videos and people are NOT happy.  Let's start with an image of the new rules shall we?

Now from what I've been reading, the reason people are pissed off mainly revolves around that final bullet point.  There are lots of vloggers and youtubers who discuss so called "controversial" topics that are starting to get denied or have lost monetization on their videos since these new rules have been put in place.  It's shitty because it allows YouTube to punish users who hold opinions that may be considered "offensive" or if they don't agree with the status quo.

Some of them are either unimportant or make sense.  For example YouTube has ALWAYS had a problem with sex stuff, I mean it's an American based company and we all know just how prudish Americans can be when it comes to sex stuff.  Also the thing about drugs sort of makes sense to me.  No matter what you're opinion on certain substances are, drugs are at the end of the day, illegal so promoting them is probably not a good idea.

However from my stand point it's the general vagueness of the rules that grinds my gears.  For example am I not allowed to make a dick joke in any of my videos any more?  That point about inappropriate language is also very strange.  If I'm doing a play through and something bullshit happens am I not allowed to curse.  Every death in a game now being followed with "Oh fiddlesticks!" or something equally PG13.  Makes me wonder if the Angry Video Game Nerd has been hit with this bullshit at all?

Granted, YouTube have NOT said that this content isn't allowed on their site, just that you aren't allowed to monetize it.  With that in mind though, without the incentive to get paid for their work, I'm sure there are plenty of uploaders who will not be creating as much content for the site as before.

As much as I'm talking about this though a quick flick through my video manager and none of my stuff has had its advertising taken away and it's not like I'm some kind of saint so maybe it's not all as bad as it seems.  Only time will tell

Steam Censorship: What's The Point?

Before I start this isn't going to be a kind of "OMG CENSORSHIP SO BAD blah blah blah" kind of post.  Censorship of any kind is complete and utter bullshit but I can kind of see why they are doing it here, I just don't see the point.

So for a while new Steam have been providing a few VNs and other games that are a bit more adult in nature.  What I mean by this is that they are flat out selling porn games (known as Eroge in Japan) except they cut out all the porn.  Now I'm not going to get all angry at not being able to see anime characters fucking in my steam games but the whole thing seems completely pointless.

Why bother releasing something which you KNOW going in is an Eroge or some kind of porno game and make it available on Steam with all the tits and fucking cut out?  When people buy these kind of games, about 70% of the time they are buying them FOR the tits and fucking.  After experimenting with the genre a little bit over the years I have found a fairly sizeable number of pornographic games which either have really good plots to follow or have solid game play.  Big famous examples of these porn games with a bit more than meets the eye are things like Yume Miru Kusuri and Sengoku Rance.  The first telling a gut wrenching story about bullying and being true to oneself while the other plays like a Total War title where victory is rewarded with sex scenes.  Both are solid titles that stand up without the porn, but there's porn included for people who need some....release and that's probably why they bought them in the first place.

In some cases I've seen games on Steam where this censorship for all ages has actually affected reviews from users.  One game in particular that I came across (I forget the name, but I'll edit if I find it again) had a bunch of negative reviews from people who had played the non steam version because plot important shit only found in the sex scenes had been cut from the game and the Steam version of this title was therefore incomplete.

Why censor these games at all?  Just have a 18+ section or some shit where you can provide these games in their original, uncensored form for the people that want them and then younger users or people who aren't interested know what those games contain before they even click the games store page.  Otherwise, why bother putting Eroge on Steam at all?  The tits, fucking and cute anime girls are the genres main selling people and you're taking 2/3s of that content out so you're just shooting yourself in the foot.  Why would anyone buy a game like that on Steam when they can get the version with the goodies somewhere else?  The only reason I can think is if they didn't know it was an Eroge before they bought it but then again people who enjoy this genre are fairly well clued in about it so I imagine that number of people is rather small.

Either sell porn games or don't.  There is no point providing them if you're going to censor them other than trying to score a quick buck off ignorant users.  I'm sure if you labelled it probably no one would give a shit.  That said, Steam is too lazy to properly label their early access bullshit on the listings so they would probably be too lazy to do this too.

Removing Hatred is Dumb

A while ago a did a post about the game Hatred, which can be found here.  If you don't want to read it, then it basically says that while I didn't like the look of it, it didn't deserve to be banned or changed just because you are "offended" by it.

So the story is that Hatred was on Steam Greenlight and it had a bunch of thumbs up before Valve came along and pulled the plug.  They said they didn't want that shit on their store and it will not be made available on Steam.  Since then people have been getting all uppity about it and I wanted to address 3 things.

1)  It's not Censorship

This is a word that has been flying around my twitter and other places regarding the topic of the game being pulled and I can't help but feel some people have forgotten what the word censorship means.  Censorship is the SUPPRESSION of speech, public communication or what have you by people in authority.

Steam and Valve are not some major authority figure in gaming that decide what does and does not get released, they are a business.  That business has decided that a game like Hatred is not something they want in their store and have decided not to make it available as a result.  They are well within their rights to do that.  Now, weather or not they are buckling to pressure from a vocal minority of Social Justice retards is another discussion entirely but Hatred isn't being censored.

Just because it's not available on Steam doesn't mean it won't be available somewhere else.  Nobody (that I have seen) at the time writing this article is attempting to stop the production and sale of Hatred, they just want people to ignore it.

Censorship is the outright banning of a game like Rule of Rose in Europe, this is just business people making decisions and whiny idiots on the internet.

2) Removing the game is actually a dumb move

I never gave a flying fuck about Hatred really.  I saw the trailer and saw how 2Edgy4Me it was and how shit  the game play looked and decided just just ignore it and not think about it.  If Steam had let it get released to their store, the interested parties would have bought it and then everyone else would have ignored it or not known about it.

But no, you couldn't leave it alone could you?  Now you've made a big deal about it and given the game a lot of publicity but on top of that you've made it all taboo too.  It's like if someone puts a big fat flashing red button in front of you that says "DO NOT TOUCH" and nothing else.  Of COURSE a little part of you is going to want to touch it and see what the fuck happens, that's just human goddamn nature.

Hell, even I'm now more interested in purchasing hatred because of this event.  In my head it's like "Jesus, if it's too bad for Steam, a platform with games like Postal and Hotline Miami I just gotta see it now".  Thanks to Steam pulling the game off Greenlight I'm now filled with this perverse sense of curiosity and providing that it doesn't cost too much I could totally see myself buying it now.

3)  Hatred is nothing new

Why are people so bothered?  I mentioned Postal in the above section and that is a similar kind of game that got a similar kind of reaction.  But look at Postal now, it's pretty obscure and your average gamer probably won't know anything about it.  It's got infamy, sure, but there is a HUGE group of people who just know it as "that violent game that stirred some shit back in the day" and nothing more.

Let's not forget that a lot of people like to kill lazy afternoons with games like GTA.  But these lazy afternoons are not usually spent doing missions, oh no, they are spent putting in a cheat for all the guns and then murdering every single person in sight.  Man, woman, police officer, faceless tosser behind a car wheel, it doesn't matter, they are going to die for your entertainment.  I've done it, you've probably done it and a lot of people that I know have done it.  Getting pleasure from watching little pixel people die on a TV does not make you a terrible person and if you believe the opposite then you are a fucking idiot.

But I know why people are offended, it's because people WANT to be offended.  They want an excuse to have a nice little rage and get on their high horse about how good a person they are and how shitty a person the creators of Hatred are.  Being offended at a game like Hatred makes people feel good because they don't have to worry about dissenting opinions.  If someone says "well I quite like the look of that", you have an excuse to call them a shitty person, act holier-than-thou and have a majority of people agree with you.  These people are fucking morons and if I could slap you through my internet connection, I would.

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Hatred still looks shit but I guarantee there's a lot more people looking forward to seeing what the fuss is about now that you've hyped it up this much.  Just leave it alone, let it fall into obscurity and go find something that makes you happy.  It's not hard, for fucks sake.

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EDIT 17/12/2014:  I've discovered that Hatred has been brought back to Steam Greenlight.  That's cool and all but people are still moaning about it.  They still don't realise that talking about it so much is what's getting people interested.  Just shut the fuck up already!

Australia, what are you doing?

There are two countries that come to my mind when I think of silly laws when it comes to video games and they are Australia and Germany.

Big news story of the moment is coming out of Australia this time with yet another game being refused classification and therefore being made unavailable within the country.  However this time, people have a reason to be slightly more pissed off than usual.

Ya' see, this isn't the first time games have been censored or banned in Australia.  Things that pop into my head are Manhunt being banned and Left4Dead 2 being censored in the Australian version.  But from January 1st of this year, a new age rating was introduced of R18+ for the purpose of being able to give violent video games a proper classification.  This has worked for certain games like Ninja Gaiden 3, but not for this one.

So what's the problem with Saints Row 4?  Well apparently the classification board doesn't like all the drug use flying around the game.  This, coupled with all the rampant sex and violence means that the classification board have deemed it far too bad for Australian consumption and therefore it can not be sold.

So first of all, what is the point if having the R18+ classification if it doesn't cover this shit?  Why bother going to the trouble of introducing that thing in January if you're just going to ignore it's existence a couple of months down the line.  I'm pretty sure a rating of 18+ covers the games content just fine, it's not so bad that even adults shouldn't be allowed to see it, I'm sure the developers aren't that depraved.

The other thing is that if someone is going to take drugs after playing Saints Row, I'm pretty sure it's because they were on drugs anyway.  It's not like someone is going to come away after a session and think "you know what! I really need to go do some meth!".  I'm pretty sure the Australian people aren't that easily swayed into illegal activities.

I'm not Australian and I don't even like Saints Row all that much, but this is just stupid.  The Australian ratings board needs to sort their life out and they should stop being so sensitive over tongue in cheek open world GTA clones for fucks sake.  It's adults buying these games after all, and if kids do get a hold of it then you have a problem with shit parents, not violent video games, idiots.