Youtube Video

Azur Lane... Since I'm spending lots of hours in this fun and f2p friendly ship-waifu collector:

Bought the "First Anniversary Art Collection Book" (336 pages of pure awesomeness in a fancy collectors slipcase)

Thinking about preordering some of the upcoming collector figures...

A few....

• Red Dead Redemption 2 because I hope for a PC release
• Yakuza 6 because I hope for a PC release similar to Yakuza Zero
• Monster Hunter World because I didn't find the time (and patience) for it

Speaking of Azur Lane... Just found "Azur Lane: Making a Better Gacha" on Crunchyroll's Youtubechannel.
The developer explains here his philosophy for the game (of course intended as marketing for the game).

Youtube Video

@luka said in Censorship topic (out of the news thread):

@guthwulf

The point I was trying to make is that the characters in games like HoneySelect or VR Kanojo can easily be seen as adults. Those games (especially HoneySelect) are sandboxes that allow for a wide variety of fetishes to be shown/used/explored, this includes younger looking characters as there are adults who are into the teenage look, or are attracted to petite adult woman. The idea that the people who do the latter two are pedophiles (which is what I had thought you were referring to with your last paragraph) is a bit presumptuous. My mistake if that isn't what you had meant, I had just woken up when I posted that.

No problem. My english is not the best and that might also be a factor for misunderstandings.

To your point: Sure everything "can" be seen as adults, tousand years old fantasy beings or adult npc actors in a roleplay. But as always it is not black & white. There is a grey zone between extremes which is worth discussing. Some cases within there (see my examples) disturb me personally. Others (like a Loli race in a fantasy rpg or young looking characters in something like a waifu collector) I find totally fine. The difference for me is the received "message" (of the game) and the "intention" (of the player). Both points are somewhat subjective (therefore grey zone). And i wanted to show examples in the western market with allow or at least strongly suggest the interpretation that - for example - sex with a child is positive and even desirable.

For me VR Kanojo depicts fairly obvious sex with a child (in this case young school girl). In porn movies there is at least still the difference between character vs. actor and also the explicit stated intention that the depicted character is at least 18 and therefore "barely legal" ("teen porn" usually explicit states that for exactly these legal reasons in the title, description or dialogue). VR Kanojo leaves the intention for the characters open and all the signs point for me to the the opposite of an "maybe just 18 but at least legal age".

Something similar with Honey Select whose editor allows (without mods) characters who look like 6 year old girls. Here the "intention" of the player who creates and shares a character is more important than the games "message" (sex with my characters is positive and desirable). Sure, many of these "young looking" characters might be intended as young looking "barely legal" adult characters or as magical beings with an even longer lifespan. But the game also allows the other intention (creating and sharing a young looking character as underaged kid for the purpose of having sex with it).

So both games for me are examples of officially in the western market released games who depict or at least strongly suggest exactly the kind of acts, who you claimed would never be allowed in the west. That was all...

Still playing Azur Lane... gotta catch'em all...

And the newly released global version for Destiny Child... another hero collector...

While Azur Lane is a pure waifu collector (with ship girls and bullethell shooter fights), Destiny Child (with Demon Girls and a more traditional combat system) has not only waifus but also enough male or other character designs to collect, grow, equip and perfect. Lucky, both mobile games belong to the most f2p friendly mobile games, I know. So paying real money is optional (or for cosmetic items like skins). Everything else can also be obtained with enough patience to grind for them. Of course, real money can make progress faster, but even without money, there is enough progress in a reasonable amount of time possible. Both games have a unusually helpful and welcoming communities on their very active discord servers and both games are fairly new. Updates including new content or events happen often and regularly. There is always more than enough to do and aim for. And the artstyle and presentation in both games are just phenomenal with solid but grindy game systems underneath all of it.

@luka said in Censorship topic (out of the news thread):

@Guthwulf I was referring to the west, not Japan. Apologies if that was not clear. Different countries have different laws and while I find it disturbing that such content is allowed in Japan, it is thankfully lesser and lesser each year

No need for apologies... I don't see where we have big differences in opinion. My only point with these examples was: law in western countries is also "behind the curve". The two titles I mentioned are officially released in the western market and neither forbidden nor bannend. And they were only 2 examples of many games. As always... written law needs practiced law to interprete where the red line in games really is. And when nobody starts an actual case at court there is no chance to test the law.

@luka said in Censorship topic (out of the news thread):

1.) There are fetishists who enjoy that... disturbing content. Whether it is grown men acting like infants wearing diapers, or adult women who feel the need to act like little girls.

Nothing wrong with fetishists or all kinds of different fetishes including "teen", "bdsm" and other stuff... you do you and I myself enjoy some of these as well. But there is a difference in a "fetish" and an act which the law explicit defines as criminal (sex with minors for example). So the depiction of these acts as something positive (not criminal) in media including games is something worth discussing and for me somewhat disturbing. The message (this is a good thing) and possible consequences (the actual transfer to sexual abuse of minors) is what disturbs me. And yes I know it still is "just a fantasy" and we all know from killer games discussions... a healthy adult should be able to distinguish between fantasy and real life.

@luka said in Censorship topic (out of the news thread):

2.) There are plenty of adult women who look like kids and kids who look like adult women. I would suggest you look up Cheedon0904, who is 29 but looks no older than 15-16, Marina Nagasawa who is 23 but looks like an elementary schooler, or 十早z who is a 35 y/o woman who looks like a middle schooler (just to name a few). There are hundreds of thousands like them (and the same goes for men). Whether you are attracted to that or not, I don't particularly care. However, immediately assuming/stating that it is "pedophilic" is a bit inane.

I didn't do that (assuming / stating...). And nothing against adults "looking like kids". They are still adults and there is nothing wrong with being attracted to them. So yes... you are completely right.

@luka said in Censorship topic (out of the news thread):

3.) Artstyle/Makeup can vastly change one's perception of the age of a character. In most cases, there is very little difference in the aesthetics of drawn/animated girls from age 13 to 30. Most of the ways characters are easily differentiated is either due to changing bust size or the character's clothes.

agreed...

@Luka, you wrote:

@SabotageTheTruth If a game involved pedophilic content the game would never be released due to the content being inherently illegal and those behind it would be placed behind bars as they rightfully should be.

I wish that where true but it isn't. For example some japanese adult / eroge games explicitly are depicting sex with minors, rape fanatasies or incest. Illusion comes to mind (RapeLay, BattleRaper, SchoolMate and more).

Yeah these titles never got officially released in a western market, but even their newer and officially (in digital stores) international released titles like VR Kanojo or Honey Select fulfill some of these fantasies or at least strongly suggest them.

In VR Kanojo you can have sex with a young schoolgirl and the game is on steam (with an uncensor patch on their official website for the steam version or an uncensored version in other digital stores). Yeah... you could argue that she might be over 18 and a university / college girl (decide for yourself on their steam website) ... but c'mon... the fantasy here is clear.

And even Honey Select: Honey Select has the best, most detailed and flexible character editor in any game, outshining every single RPG or Sims Title ever released... Better yet, you can easily share your custom characters with other users who then can import them into their game and can do all sorts of sexual, rough and fetish activities with them. Even in Virtual Reality (btw... big uncanny valley, when your character suddenly stands in front of you lifesize, breathing and moving.)

Here one of my characters (personally i only care for the character editor, since creating chars is fun):

My character is (hopefully) clearly adult, but everybody can also easily create characters looking like young children (down to something like 6+ years of age) and "play" with these or share them with the community. If you search for Honey Select Characters, you will find plenty of these. And in these cases nobody claims that they only look young but are in truth over 1000 years old dragons or some other magical bs... I will not link anything of these characters here since I find their existense in such a game disgusting but it is there and in an official internationally released digital game.

Does anybody here remember "Def Jam: Fight for NY"?

Youtube Video

Man I loved that game back in the day on my xbox, playing with my brother. While I find Mortal Combats violent finishers to over the top and rather comical, I enjoyed the "gritty" and "down to earth" violence in Def Jam besides it silly and dumb premise But you could literally feel the pain with every punch, kick and grab. Also many amazing options to use the stage itself for special moves.

Otherwise my experience with fighting games is a bit limited. I enjoyed Soul Calibur back in the day and also the Dead Or Alive series for all their "assets" cough. Never got into Street Fighter, Tekken or Mortal Combat to much. Tried and liked some of the Blaz Blue titles later and I'm now playing Smash Bros. Ultimate on my switch and loving it.

@hanabi said in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Switch):

It's not true, I don't believe it at all. S-E's been way too stingy regarding Smash, there isn't even a single spirit in the game aside from the two for Cloud (that just use his Smash render instead of art from his original game like everyone else) and arguably the SMRPG characters.

In fact I'm willing to take a bet right now that there will be literally zero S-E represntation in the entire first Fighters Pass for smash. It's a long-term bet, but I'm that confident right now.

You might be right. Still a shame... there would so many great characters, i would love to see in Smash... Where is the goddess Lightning for example?