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What are controversial gaming opinions you have?

Ford Prefect said:
If you've ever found yourself saying 'I respect Yoko Taro for being honest about it' ask yourself this: would you extend the same latitude to Takaki Kenichiro, the creator of Senran Kagura? :V
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I admit I don't know a whole lot about that. But from what I can gather it seems like fairly run off the mill ecchi, horny anime style stuff. Sooo... eh? Besides, I'm pretty much of the opinion that, unless I can show something is harming real people, it's none of my business and me finding it sleazy is irrelevant.

Edit: Checking, it seems that several Senran Kagura games are available over Steam in Germany and rated "16" so really they can't be that bad, as Steam has been in a row with Germany for ages over age verification, meaning any like... actual porn stuff is just kinda straight up blocked here.
 
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Ford Prefect said:
frankly the Yoko Taro corollary is only ever applied to Yoko Taro
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Because he's the only one who ever comes up. I don't even know what Senran Kagura is and I've certainly never heard the name of its creator. Frankly, not much of a gotcha.

Really, though, anyone who says "I make horny games because I am a horny person and I keep it out of stuff where it doesn't belong" is someone to who I would respond "alright, I am okay with that, you go have fun."
 
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Ford Prefect said:
If you've ever found yourself saying 'I respect Yoko Taro for being honest about it' ask yourself this: would you extend the same latitude to Takaki Kenichiro, the creator of Senran Kagura? :V
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As far as I know, this is a good series of games in itself. But I'm a person who defends DoA - I don't think my opinion is valuable (although the degree of horny this franchise is overrated).
 
Morganite said:
I'm not 100% certain they don't, kind of... it's not really clear even looking at the ESRB's own website what it takes to get tags like "Sexual Content" or "Suggestive Themes". The explanations for all the sexuality tags (except maaaaybe Sexual Violence) seem pretty vague compared to the rest.
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That falls under "do more research". Games don't hide skimpy outfits, it's pretty easy to find out if a game has a very sexualized design. We used Quiet as an example but that situation demonstrates how much of a problem this isn't. I specifically remember hearing about her long before I even knew anything about the game itself, controversies are not hard to find and if there's anything actually egregious it will be talked about.

My point stands, people's particular sensibilities are not a sufficiently good reason to make society worse. Nothing is gained by stigmatizing sexuality like this.
 
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Fourthspartan56 said:
That falls under "do more research". Games don't hide skimpy outfits, it's pretty easy to find out if a game has a very sexualized design. We used Quiet as an example but that situation demonstrates how much of a problem this isn't. I specifically remember hearing about her long before I even knew anything about the game itself, controversies are not hard to find and if there's anything actually egregious it will be talked about.

My point stands, people's particular sensibilities are not a sufficiently good reason to make society worse. Nothing is gained by stigmatizing sexuality like this.
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Yeah, it's not even hard to research. If you know you're particularly bothered by it, there are lots of websites that review movies and games to allow parents to make more informed decisions about what their kids watch or play. You have to be a bit careful because some of them are extremely homophobic run by the sort of evangelical that thinks Harry Potter is a plot by the devil, but there are definitely reasonable ones as well. I haven't personally looked for them, but I imagine there are a good number of sites that do the same thing from the direction of providing trigger warnings that would probably also cover most sexual or sexualized content as well.

There's nothing wrong with personally being bothered by sexual content, even if it's at a level that has been generally accepted by society at large. However, at that point it becomes your responsibility to address your specific needs. If I'm deathly allergic to something and don't tell the waiter at a restaurant that fact, then order something that has whatever I'm allergic to in it, whatever happens isn't the fault of the cook or the waiter.
 
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Comrade Future said:
As far as I know, this is a good series of games in itself. But I'm a person who defends DoA - I don't think my opinion is valuable (although the degree of horny this franchise is overrated).
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Isn't most of the issue with Kagura due to chunks of the cast being minors? Least from what I've picked up, a good bit of the flak chucked its way seemed to have less to do with the horniness and more to do with the characters being (the equivalent of) high schoolers. Throw in a good bit of dubious consent and you got stuff that a fair amount of folks side-eye.
 
Frumple said:
Isn't most of the issue with Kagura due to chunks of the cast being minors? Least from what I've picked up, a good bit of the flak chucked its way seemed to have less to do with the horniness and more to do with the characters being (the equivalent of) high schoolers. Throw in a good bit of dubious consent and you got stuff that a fair amount of folks side-eye.
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I'm going to take the controversial position that it doesn't really matter. Sure they're high schoolers, but they're ridiculously exaggerated Ninja high schoolers who don't look like 99.9% of adult women much less teenagers. Absolutely no one is looking at Senran Kaguran characters and deciding to go commit statutory rape, the real world harm is nonsexist. It's no different from how Jotaro Kujo is technically underage but realistically if a woman or gay man lusts after him they're not being sus.

There's nothing wrong with being uncomfortable with it but personal discomfort isn't the same thing as meaningful harm.
 
Arden said:
That's some "it's ephebophilia, not pedophilia" grade foot-in-mouth.
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I like how instead of responding to my argument you just did a stupid strawman.

"it's ephebophilia, not pedophilia" is a horrid argument because puberty doesn't make someone less underaged. Statutory rape doesn't become less bad just because the person isn't prepubescent. But that's an argument that only applies to real people. If a fictional character is canonically 17 but the author erases that and writes in "18" the actual characteristics haven't changed. Hell, if we treated age as the only thing that matters then the 1000 year old dragon loli would be fine, after all she's a thousand right? The answer is that what matters is presentation. If someone is presented as child then it doesn't matter how old they're said to be. But logically the opposite must also be true, it doesn't matter if someone chose to say a character is a highschooler if they look nothing like one.
 
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I think it's, like, in general when high schoolers are presented as romantic and sexual interest, there's an unspoken line that you're a high schooler as well. Maybe I'm getting that impression from the absolute glut of early 2000s VNs in which the obligatory sex scene features a high school guy and a high school girl (with a note that everyone in the game is 18+) but I assume part of the fantasy was that you're back in your high school days as well where you don't need to worry about your next paycheck and hence could dedicate all your time chatting up that cute guy/girl.

So people who are enjoying all these high school romance and horniness don't perceive there being the age issue, because when they're busy fantasising about high schoolers they don't think of themselves as adults. I mean, except for Blue Archive, but I don't know anything about BA besides it exists.
 
adaer said:
but I imagine there are a good number of sites that do the same thing from the direction of providing trigger warnings that would probably also cover most sexual or sexualized content as well.
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There is Common Sense - there are detailed warnings and reviews (from "parents" and "children").
 
For the record, I don't think games are horny enough. Like any game. I normally mod my games a ton to get them where I need them, and to be honest, I think the people who are like, anti-sex, should probably find ways to work around everyone else rather than the billions of sex-enjoying folks having to try and make sure that they never see a titty.
 
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Ryang said:
I think it's, like, in general when high schoolers are presented as romantic and sexual interest, there's an unspoken line that you're a high schooler as well. Maybe I'm getting that impression from the absolute glut of early 2000s VNs in which the obligatory sex scene features a high school guy and a high school girl (with a note that everyone in the game is 18+) but I assume part of the fantasy was that you're back in your high school days as well where you don't need to worry about your next paycheck and hence could dedicate all your time chatting up that cute guy/girl.

So people who are enjoying all these high school romance and horniness don't perceive there being the age issue, because when they're busy fantasising about high schoolers they don't think of themselves as adults. I mean, except for Blue Archive, but I don't know anything about BA besides it exists.
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I've got some bad news that begins with the first letter of the alphabet and ends with the second prime number.

Being less pithy / snide, and somehow being on topic, my Controversial Gaming Opinion is that a lot of works could really - really - do with not giving content creators the benefit of the doubt and going "Yeah that person is actively sexualizing minors because they know that sexualizing minors sells / has a reliable market base". Goes for games, shows, writings, etc.

We also need less people defending this kind of shit just because "Well I like [x] so if there's anything wrong with [x] that infers there's something wrong with me" because stopping people there no it does not, it means that they found something about the overall work compelling which is absolutely fine but hopefully is entirely unrelated to that whole aspect and if "No actually this is 100% the thing that has me sold" they should probably take a long moment of introspection to be very sure / maybe talk to a shrink next time they find themselves flush with cash.

Controversial Hot Take #8742 it's easy to have standards, people can like problematic media without arguing "Actually there's nothing wrong about a game rife with sexual gaze aimed towards 1st through 4th year High Schoolers", and every time I see somebody retort "Oh so killing bots in a FPS makes people mass murderers?" I feel a part of my soul leave my body and wither to dust trying to astrally project across the planet to slap.
 
People get off to some weird shit. Including, sometimes, the fantasy of having said weird shit done *to* them. Of being the victim. And that is reflected in some types of fiction. A lot of it freaks me the fuck out. Some of it pretty much makes me want to throw up. That doesn't mean I go around arguing that it's a bad thing that shouldn't exist, or that it needs to be taken off the internet. So long as they do not act those things out in real life, I do not believe I have the moral right to try and force them to conform to my preferences. Especially as it very often seems to be the case that the people in question have zero actual interest in living out those fantasies anyway. Hell, there's studies suggesting it *helps* people not do shit in real life.

Show me how it harms someone, or it's a nonissue to me.
 
Bro it's the first one that isn't a creepshot or didn't say "Intimacy" I was trying to be like, less shitty about the whole thing.








Tell me which one of these would have been the best choice, out of the first four, out of the first hit on a google search.
 
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Rhel said:
People get off to some weird shit. Including, sometimes, the fantasy of having said weird shit done *to* them. Of being the victim. And that is reflected in some types of fiction. A lot of it freaks me the fuck out. Some of it pretty much makes me want to throw up. That doesn't mean I go around arguing that it's a bad thing that shouldn't exist, or that it needs to be taken off the internet. So long as they do not act those things out in real life, I do not believe I have the moral right to try and force them to conform to my preferences. Especially as it very often seems to be the case that the people in question have zero actual interest in living out those fantasies anyway. Hell, there's studies suggesting it *helps* people not do shit in real life.
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The highlighted part gets ignored very often in this conversation, and it's extremely frustrating.
 
Fourthspartan56 said:
I like how you cherry picked one of the few characters who actually looks like a child. Very cool and good faith.

Yes, sexualizing this character would be bad and worth criticizing!
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And senran do, heh. Not as intensely as others, at least, but eh.

More seriously, while the age thing seems to get a lot of the immediate side eye, the arguably bigger issue is like half the series's punchline is "sexual assault" and molestation comprises significant portions of multiple characters behavioral patterns. There's more folks take issue with than the improbably expansive high school cleavage, ha.
 
Rhel said:
Show me how it harms someone, or it's a nonissue to me.
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I mean, the amount of people who'll go out of their way to go one [or five] step further in justifying why it's Totally Fine definitely sets off a number of alarm bells to me. In the same sort of way people going "Nurgle is different from the other Chaos Gods and actually cares about his followers" sets off "Oh dear gods this person will stare a textbook abusive relationship deadass in the face and call it love" sense.

I'm rather comfortable in saying "Perhaps the proliferation of defenses of such content has done a fucky on a chunk of the internet / media consumers' psyche" as, for one example, when somebody says it's okay to thirst after one High Schooler because they're clearly fictional and non-exist in an aether but it's sketchy to go after another High Schooler because they look younger there's a helluva bunch of questions that become very pertinent. Especially when, as mentioned above, it's also paired with a bunch of other stuff too.
 
Though to be fair, you are correct, I should have just posted the creepshot of the child character. That's the first thing you see when you open the page and that's what Senran Kengura seems to be purporting itself as.

But also like...? I don't care, it's clearly meant for people who want to touch highschool / college girls non-consensually and that's... Also fine in fiction if that's what you want from it? The idea that the media hurts you dates back to the 90s when we said Doom caused the Columbine shooting, it's not backed up by any scientific evidence, and to be honest it's rather nonsensical from a logical standpoint.

The pictures on the internet can only hurt you if you look at them.
 
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Drachyench said:
I mean, the amount of people who'll go out of their way to go one [or five] step further in justifying why it's Totally Fine definitely sets off a number of alarm bells to me. In the same sort of way people going "Nurgle is different from the other Chaos Gods and actually cares about his followers" sets off "Oh dear gods this person will stare a textbook abusive relationship deadass in the face and call it love" sense.

I'm rather comfortable in saying "Perhaps the proliferation of defenses of such content has done a fucky on a chunk of the internet / media consumers' psyche" as, for one example, when somebody says it's okay to thirst after one High Schooler because they're clearly fictional and non-exist in an aether but it's sketchy to go after another High Schooler because they look younger there's a helluva bunch of questions that become very pertinent. Especially when, as mentioned above, it's also paired with a bunch of other stuff too.
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I'm... Sorry, can you clarify on this a bit I'm reading this as "Well if they keep defending themselves, obviously they're guilty." That would be the dumbest thing I've ever read, so that can't be what you're saying.
 
Ryang said:
Which ends up that femdom stuff is either aimed at lesbians (on account that if you want any kind of dom/sub relationship you have to pick one of the girls) and at works aimed at men (I'm less sure why on this but there clearly is a market)
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Considering some things I've read by people who have, shall we say, direct experience in the field, I think there are probably roughly similar numbers of dominant women and submissive men, but there's a lot more media targeted at the latter, for the same reasons as with a whole bunch of other stuff.

Fourthspartan56 said:
My point stands, people's particular sensibilities are not a sufficiently good reason to make society worse. Nothing is gained by stigmatizing sexuality like this.
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Well I'm certainly not arguing for stimatization. I'm just saying that (assuming I'm not completely lost on what you were arguing) some of the things you are saying shouldn't be stigmatized by having ESRB warnings for them are... already being stigmatized by having ESRB warnings for them.

Rhel said:
Hell, there's studies suggesting it *helps* people not do shit in real life.
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Got any links? The closest I've ever been able to find is some interviews with psychologists saying "doesn't make much difference either way", so if there's something more solid available now I'm really interested.

Drachyench said:
I mean, the amount of people who'll go out of their way to go one [or five] step further in justifying why it's Totally Fine definitely sets off a number of alarm bells to me.
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I think a lot of this just comes down to "when people feel they are being attacked, they become defensive". Like, when you get twitter swarms saying people who like certain characters belong on watchlists or should just straight up be killed*, what sort of feelings do you expect that to engender in people who are fans of those characters? Not everyone has years of retail experience teaching them to ignore morons with a smile.

*Though the last time I saw examples of this kind of message, they were in reply to a character who could not possibly be confused for a child. She's at least 7 heads tall and has huge boobs FFS.

-Morgan.
 
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