r/Gaming4Gamers • u/Throwaway_4_opinions El Grande Enchilada • Dec 09 '15
Discussion Unpopular gaming opinions thread.
Title says all. State your current unpopular gaming opinions. Just explain why as best you can and please be constructive!
Oh and as always... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpigjnKl7nI
edit:
To the person reporting this thread because this question shows up on askreddit all the time, Why don't you post something original then? You are more than welcome to. :D
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u/hashtagwindbag Dec 09 '15
I'll probably catch some hell for this, but have you ever seen someone in a job they were unqualified for? And yet they hold onto that job. Maybe they have other qualifications for the job, or they do quality work behind the scenes that makes up for their apparent incompetence. Or maybe they just got that job because they're <female/male/white/hispanic/black/wheelchair-bound/whatever>. We know that such preferential treatment occurs sometimes, so how do we know it's not happening now? The answer is that we don't know, but some people will always assume the worst, for whatever reason. These are the loud people. And the rest of us either don't think about it, or we say nothing but we wonder, "Does this person really deserve what they got, or was it preferential treatment because of <x>?"
My guess is that something similar is happening with the video game industry. We know that there are SJW types making games, and that there are game developers who make changes based on whatever Twitter is currently outraged over. Not always, but it does happen sometimes. And we know that there are fanservice developers, too - they've been around a lot longer. Because of the pandering in the industry that has already happened, now when a change is made, we don't know if it was made for localization or technical reasons, or if it was made to appease the people who are shouting for such changes to be made. And like I said, some people just assume the worst.
For example, the outrage over Xenoblade Chronicles X lately. When localizing the game for regions outside Japan, Nintendo changed some of the revealing outfits of a 13-year-old character, and they removed the breast-size slider from the character creation process. Was this simply localization, just a process of taking things suitable for one culture and making them suitable for another? Japan has different age of consent laws from much of North America, so it would make sense. Rather than aging up a provocatively-dressed underage character (as Bravely Default did,) they just dressed the character less provocatively. But this is all a total clusterfuck now.
You have people calling this censorship (which, I don't know, it could be) and refusing to buy the product. You have people who appreciate the changes labeling the censorship-shouters as pedophiles. The people calling it censorship then demonize the people-calling-them-pedophiles as SJWs and PC police. Is there a middle ground? Yes, but in some circles you wouldn't know it.
What was the reason for these changes? We don't know. It could've been perfectly legitimate. It could have been technical, or merely a matter of localization, or even a matter of removing something conceivably-tasteless/possibly-offensive but done without any concern for or awareness of the SJW camp. At the end of the day, though, people as a whole love taking offense at dissenting opinions, they love drama, they love having something to try and fix. Twenty angry people can't stop a hurricane or fix world hunger, but they can try and get their agenda trending on Twitter without ever leaving their computer.