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Operation Rainfall has more on that.

TL;DR: They didn't even submit it before taking Photoshop to it. The comments are saying "submit & if it gets an AO rating then we'll be understanding, but as long you insist that you're only censoring to avoid AO ratings & you've never gotten an AO rating we're not going to trust you".

@Drunk Iron Sheik

Oh boy, this is going to be a long story.

First off, #GamerGate in 60 Seconds:

From October 2014 so outdated, but still provides a good overview.

And #GamerGate – If It's Not About Ethics…

Providing a overview of GamerGate's journalistic accomplishments up to Christmas 2014.

If you want to know about why GamerGate has such bad PR, Blame GamerGate’s Bad Rep on Smears and Shoddy Journalism is a good overview.

TL;DR: Remember Rolling Stone & Jackie? Think that turned up to about 9001%.

If you're interested in GamerGate's lessons about what happened to left-wing activism over the past decade Occupy Wall Street has an analysis. Direct Link to the section on GamerGate.

We also have a database of game journos with lists of problems & a wiki. plus a press dossier displaying everything known as of November 12, 2014.

There's much more, but that should be everything you need for a starting point.

If you want full detail the master list of happenings goes back to Day 1 and even before.

Full disclosure, I'm biased as hell.

@HelmslockTheCarnageSeeker

Personally? They have both good (Ollie Barder/Erik Kain) and bad (David Thier/Paul Tassi) writers.

Edit: Fourth new page get!

Interesting theory on everyone's favourite type of people:

Right, but even then Twitch won't let certain Videogames be streamed.

But you run into problems when taking over a media giant:

Outlast with your better product, they have first hype and resources generated from it. Can you make sure your model is sustainable? Can you afford the server space to store and stream all that data? Can you make sure that the companies trying to censor you are not capping your broadcast rate and making out like it's your fault (netflix) so you can pay them more?

And they have to mess up. ROYALLY mess up. Like no one can use their service for weeks mess up. To create a gap and enough negative press about them that it causes a new shift. That or a new media must emerge that makes them seem obsolete.

The other problem is that it's big name companies that are willing to adhere to the censorship in the name of protection. So while other smaller brands that do not enforce those rules can allow for the free speech, it also means their reputation is on the line. And, given that Microsoft is one of those companies that's about 90% of the computer using market there, and a good portion of PC Gamers use Windows… this could potentially be a big issue. Expect more adverts for Doritos and Mt Dew I guess.

TL;DR: They didn’t even submit it before taking Photoshop to it. The comments are saying “submit & if it gets an AO rating then we’ll be understanding, but as long you insist that you’re only censoring to avoid AO ratings & you’ve never gotten an AO rating we’re not going to trust you”.

I think they have a legit point. There's time and money involved. Considering that they're localizing a game rather than developing it, their budget has to be minuscule. I doubt they have the cash to burn necessary to toss the thing at the ESRB multiple times to see what sticks. Not to mention that if it's rejected they now need to pay for more art and writing and such to address the problems. A rejection would also push back their release date, and let's be honest that weebs who are their market start with "When is this coming over here" the moment the original is released in Japan. It's a more-solid business plan to work on the thing once, submit it once, and then release it.

Here is a new comic by Kukuruyo.

It's actually a pretty shitty business plan, ESRB ratings cost either $4,000 or $800 depending on the development costs and until they actually get an AO and have to change it they will continue to alienate customers who quite reasonably conclude that they're just using the ESRB as an excuse to censor the game.

Hell, at this point they've already build up a small core of people who when it happens will just conclude it was a sacrifice game designed to get an AO so they can continue censoring games without losing customers.

Right now the level of people they've alienated completely is small, but half their forums look ready to drop Criminal Girls 2 so they better bite the bullet soon otherwise the numbers of enemies they made will grow dramatically.

I think you're right that at face value it's not a good business model from the revenue / customer side – some people will explicitly not buy it because of the changes, and basically nobody will explicitly decide TO buy it because of the changes. However I think there are two factors missing from that consideration. One is that the customer base consists of "CG2 is coming out, I'll get it" folks but ALSO people who come across it at Gamestop or an Amazon or wherever and see it for the first time there. Every single one of those customers is lost if it gets AO. Lose 200 customers who are devoted enough to read the company blog, gain 2000 customers because 0.1% of random people who see it buy it.

That's how it makes sense on the revenue side. There's also the cost side. Perhaps more important than being cheap is being predictable. You want to be on budget and on time. If you're going to gamble on multiple ESRB runs, you don't know what your budget or schedule is anymore. If you have another project waiting for the art and localization personnel, then your unpredictability in one project becomes unpredictability in the other project as well. I have no idea what the localization budget for CG2 is so I can't say if the $4k you cited is a significant chunk of it, but businesses tend to prize things being reliable and predictable even more than money.

Which is to say I don't think it's reasonable to "conclude that they’re just using the ESRB as an excuse to censor the game" because I don't think they really care whether the game is censored or not. There's a reasonable objection to releasing an AO game from a financial standpoint rather than a moral standpoint, and I don't see any moral arguments being made on their side to indicate it's that one.

They don't need to release it as AO, they can cut out the offending parts and resubmit it. Yes it will cost $4,000 but they've already spent more $250,000 and it's show of good faith that will tell their customers that "if we release uncensored the ESRB will give us a AO rating!" isn't another "if we criticize Anita's hack work that will legitimize the harassers!" or "if we question the cost of the Iraq war the terrorists will be emboldened!".

And this is not a game that's driven by people who stumble across it on Amazon or Gamestop, the market for this game is hardcore weebs. And when you're making a game for a niche audience the most important thing is word of mouth & appealing to the audience you've built up.

Alienate the audience & get a reputation for fucking with the product & hating the people who like it (no matter how ill-founded)? Then your business dies.

Remember that MoeNovel had every possible advantage, big corporate backing, a promise to not change the story with "localization", and massive hype. But they pretty much died after a series of horrible decisions alienated the customer base.

> "For example, we want 12 year old French girls who like anime to know about [our title] as well, and make it so that there is no problem appealing it to these girls."

That was probably the breaking point, it says a) "we don't know who buys our games", b) "we censored stuff far beyond what the ESRB could have possibly asked in order to appeal to people who aren't going to buy our game", & c) "this is just a blatant cash grab".

A massive chunk of bad game industry decisions come back to not understanding who the audience is. All those middle-aged women playing Candy Crush Saga are never going to buy Call of Duty if they haven't already, but butchering Call of Duty to appeal to them will alienate the actual audience.

And that's Call of Duty, when you're releasing niche titles any sort of change to the games is a risk because you can't sell a couple million copies on brand awareness no matter how bad it is.

All in all the best way to break the ESRB stranglehold is to make it more strict, because the day Grand Theft Auto gets an AO rating is the day that the console manufactures & online game sellers & GameStop/Walmart/Amazon/other department stores all drop their "no AO games" policy like they do in Europe.

Because they're not going to give up all that cash to their competitors.

Grand Theft Auto already got an AO rating once and nothing changed, except that Rockstar had to remove an already dummied out feature, why would it change now

Paul Tassi's two cents on the matter

Bookie said:

They didn’t even submit it before taking Photoshop to it. The comments are saying “submit & if it gets an AO rating then we’ll be understanding, but as long you insist that you’re only censoring to avoid AO ratings & you’ve never gotten an AO rating we’re not going to trust you

I'm sorry, but I don't get the outrage here. It says it's for the Vita, and console makers prohibit AO games as part of their licensing agreement. From a cost perspective, it makes little sense to risk months of work (translating, debugging, etc.) on the off chance the ESRB won't get an aneurysm over sexual content (which they almost always have) and not force them to go through more work censoring it.

It's much more practical and cost effective to make the edits first--especially since I'm sure localized waifu simulators are probably very niche and profits are thin as it is.

On the otherhand, removing the one thing that made your waifu simulator unique and interesting is also a great way to kill profits and make your genre really niche. I mean people aren't really into these kinds of games, so how many of them would be into playing the censored edition of that genre?

Archive for people who don't want to take off their ad-blocker and possibly get infected with malware.

Also, sucking TopKek's dick.

The guy who ran hit-piece after hit-piece in defense of Rapp, to the point of harassing the head of an anti-sex trafficking charity.

That's who he thinks "is probably the best outright reporter in the entire business".

He also seems to think that no YouTuber is mocked for incompetence. It's not like Darksydephil is a meme or anything.

in other words, the media is rotten to the core

tell us somethinjg we do not already know

Say guys what is your opinion on #MessageToFeminists?

It's not going to get anywhere as feminists don't listen to any messages sent to them, unless it's hate mail because they can use that for ammo. Which so far is not happening as most of the hashtag posters are just stating the base facts.

Won't get feminists to actually talk unless they are stupid. If they try to talk back they will end up losing the argument and eroding their movement.

If people spread the message and get it seen all over, then even if they don't respond people will see them as cowards for not responding.

It has the potential to be super useful but it needs to go farther than anti-feminist youtube circle.

The question doesn't really have much of anything to do with GG, but I'll take a crack at it.

I don't think there will be much of a response or anything accomplished. Some feminists will probably think the messages are directed at some strawman or a caricature, rather than real feminists. Those feminists who are being targeted by the messages will likely ignore it, or find some way to turn it into a bunch of shit-smearing where nothing constructive is being done and people will end up making idiots of themselves.

Although, I suppose if some feminists do make a ridiculous response to it (like The Triggering), then those anti-feminists have accomplished something. They probably wanted that kind of response because they wanted something to laugh at.

I think it provides a nice amount of ammo for anti-SJWs (anyone asks "why aren't you a feminist?" direct them to the videos), SJWs need to either respond & make themselves look bad or ignore it & also make themselves look bad, and sane feminists have an opportunity to raise their public profile by responding in good faith.

Win-Win-Win.

It's doing things like this repeatedly that slowly makes the world a better place.

One of us, one of us…

It's like choosing between Hitler and Stalin

Nope, she's going for "when GamerGate & others have spent the past 5 years calling out every one Anita's fuck-ups, lies, & scams that was proof they are evil MRA terrorist misogynerds, when I call them out I'm just being a good feminist".

And all her beta orbiters just nod respectfully.

That's why modern feminism is cancer, spends years declaring their leaders beyond all criticism or disagreement and try to destroy everyone who refuses to fall in line (Everyone remember how almost all sites were banning any mention of GamerGate at the beginning? Notice how AVGN got a massive media smear campaign solely for not praising Cisbusters?). Then when times change & leaders fall suddenly all that "misogynistic harassment" is now good criticism that entirely came from other feminists & definitely not shitlords.

It reminds me of how "literary fiction" operates.

1. Go to a genre.
2. Identify famous work in said genre.
3. Write shoddy knock-off of said famous work.
4. Get dick sucked by arrogant cultural critics eager to signal how mature & sophisticated they are.
5. Wonder why genre fiction enjoys mass popularity while literary fiction is dying out inside ever shrinking reservations in university English departments & circulation-hemorrhaging periodicals.

But anyways:

Are they desperate for readership, or something? I guess I'll have to give some of these people credit. Even when their claims are baseless or just flat-out wrong, they still persistently repeat them despite what others think. It's like they don't care about getting their facts straight, just whatever grabs attention and/or what suits the agenda they have.

As the nazis said
if you repeat a lie enough times, it becomes the truth

Speaking of Authoritarian Dystopia

Well, I might as well steal Mark's money and call it "promoting equality". That's how vague these terms are.

They propagate the meme for us for free.

Watchdogs 2 causes nothing but minority hate according to Jim Sterling

A few of those seem to indicate that social justice politics cause minority hate.

Which is true. Before social justice became a public thing I never said anything negative about transgenders, because I did not care about it beyond not being interested in dates with them. But then there were dozens of made up gender identities which made no sense and were insane, and individual life was made politic. Everything was forced down our throats. That made me state things that could be taken as offensive regarding transgenders even though I do not mind what they do with their personal life.

I'm going to say something completely unrelated in order to not get blasted to high heaven. *wink wink*

You know how when the whole brony thing happened there was a sect of militant anti-bronies?
Like the kind of anti-brony that would just make a person shake their head as they threw a fit if they saw anything even remotely related to horses. Good thing the anti-bronies never had a presidential candidate right?
I'm understanding why a critic might choose to deride either side, especially when shit like this gets posted.

I understand there were some bronies who would instantly mark any unicorn as mlp related and throw a tantrum if the show was ever mocked. Howver, I have no reason to believe that Jim Sterling
the posters in this comment thread are those people.

Tinfoil hat on

IMZY, that brain child from an ex-reddit mod rang some bells today. (The pay for safe space SJW hangout website that got a lot of funding that looks like it was designed for 9yr old dragons wearing Kigurumi's)

IMSY (same pronounciation) is a type of signal sent from a cellphone to a cellphone tower requesting a signal. An IMSY catcher is a device that takes this signal and extracts metadata from it. (Triangulation based on relative location to cellphone towers, contact list, call duration, contents of SMS messages…) without even getting into the physical phone.

Just something I noticed. But if IMZY is to be sustainable it could make some more money selling information of the users that are in it's registry for a few more bucks. Making their "Paid for privacy" not so private.

Granted this is betting that the makers of IMZY are stupid enough to put a big "YES WE ARE SCAMMING YOU" on their site.

Tinfoil hat off

@garde; their privacy policy (archived it, just a habit) says that they don't sell info, selling info would be a highly idioting move, being sued to bankruptcy after doing so wouldn't be much of an hyperbole; however their terms of service states that they can change their terms without previous warning. For the moment, take a healthy amount of skepticism.

But with that skepticism i'll have low spectations for the site's future, it was created under the idea that devoted members of a comunity aren't the ones making it toxic, but rather random passers-by are to blame. This denies the possibility (not the right word i want to use, as it has already happened on multiple places) of old members being the guilty ones, creating cliques, setting a certain mentality for themselves and new members, denial of ideas in the process, etc.

amen

these gutys are making neonazis sound reasonable by comparrison

Lenny Guy said:

Are they desperate for readership, or something?

In a word, yes.

Hey, I em currently discussing with an Anti-Gamer who is however willing to listen to arguments

I need to address the following:
Anita Sarkeesian – mostly some solid proof that she is not very good at her job, and is only interested in the money

Proof that Anti-Gamers and SJWs are activelly hurting freedom of speech and are doing more damage than good whether to gaming or in general

Some solid arguments for why the claim that women are being kept out of STEM by force is BS

Good proof and examples of Anti-GG attacking people for being neutral

Examples of mainstream media outright lying

ps.
someone has the link on the twitter post of Sarkeesian demanding Doom to be censored?

Guess where I live.

@anita
http://i.imgur.com/hJaluJ9.jpg (relevance: Argues that a extreme violence shouldn't be considered normal when it already isn't considered normal. Repeats exactly what Jon says)

http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-the-us-bombed-them-back-to-traditional-values-feminism-does-not-exist-in-japan-while-anita-sarkeesian-81-55-75.jpg (relevance, says feminism does not exist in japan when it does, says that US bombing helped japanese culture).

@Hurt free speech
https://blogjob.com/oneangrygamer/2016/02/un-discusses-banning-the-sale-of-japanese-games-containing-sexual-violence/ (relevance, United Nations is in discussion over banning video games, the term used is sexual violence when it is defined as any violence against women)

http://www.unwomen.org/~/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/publications/2015/cyber_violence_gender%20report.pdf (relevance, report to UN that advocated for the direct censorship of games)

Fire Emblem Fate and the many Japanese games that have any remotely "sexual" content removed.

And last but not least the frequent potrayal of gamers as people to be bullied or harassed for being violent gross misogynists. Aka "bring back bullying".

@Women in stem
"Contrary to prevailing assumptions, men and women faculty members from all four fields preferred female applicants 2:1 over identically qualified males with matching lifestyles (single, married, divorced), with the exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference." – http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract

"In 2010-11, there were more female (55%) than male fulltime undergraduates (45%) enrolled at university – a trend which shows no sign of shrinking"
"This meant that last autumn women were a third more likely to start a degree than their male counterparts, despite the fact that there are actually more young men than women in the UK."
"but those most dominated by women include veterinary science and subjects allied to medicine and education. Men outnumber women on computer science and engineering and technology, according the number of students graduating last year."- http://www.theguardian.com/education/datablog/2013/jan/29/how-many-men-and-women-are-studying-at-my-university

Thus we can reliably conclude that women not only make more degrees (and historically they've been doing this for years) and while they don't own engineering and computer science, they completely dominate major STEM fields like medicine. Roll a dice six times, if you don't get a complete even spread of numbers then its either sexism or the realities of how random distribution works.

@attacking people for being neutral
https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/926752-gamergate
Anti-GG member immediately tells journalist that he is lucky that he didn't post his username to enable harassment for being neutral. That counts as mercy for anti-GG

https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/867200-gamergate
The above is how Anti-GG treats charities that have no stake in the scandal.

Their treatment of Notch and total biscuit both of whom have repeatedly made clear they are neutral in this matter. We need only see how Gamerghazi treats TB as a serial harasser because journalism said so
https://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/3dw0ly/totalbiscuit_responds_to_rowan_kaiser_theavclub/

@Examples of mainstream media outright lying
Ah… yeah. You need help with this? TB a serial harasser?
Gamergate sent bomb threats?
Any of the literally who's being actual danger?
Games causing sexism?
You need help here!?

Why is Mafia 3's protagonist a black dude? Black people weren't allowed to join the Mafia because most wiseguys were racist as fuck.

Also, Jim "my wife with an open relationship says white guys are boring" Sterling is still triggered by the word "cuck".

@Garde

If that's Imzy's game plan they're going to fail, between the post-Snowden mass migration to private alternatives, the rush to secure user data in the wake of FBI vs. Apple (say hello to Crypto Wars 2.0), and the sheer amount of user data already available for sale, the user data market is collapsing.

@Glacier

That's the biggest flaw with Imzy, the people screaming the loudest for "safe spaces" are also the most aggressive people imaginable.

It's why SRS hasn't moved over there despite repeatedly announcing they were going to. Because SRS's entire existence is based on outrage that some people disagree them moving to a hugbox site means they have nothing to do but purge each other for increasingly tiny missteps.

When parasites have no host to feed on they cannibalize each other.

@Hrom

> Anita Sarkeesian – mostly some solid proof that she is not very good at her job, and is only interested in the money

The Shark Keesian series by Mister Male Trope is a great resource.

> Proof that Anti-Gamers and SJWs are activelly hurting freedom of speech and are doing more damage than good whether to gaming or in general

That UN cyberviolence report has so many issues, and Anita was shilling it.

Speaking of purging parasites, good news.

Gawker has filed for bankruptcy

Hulkmania brothers!

This is now a dance thread!

Unleash the smug anime girls!

Activate Ron Paul!!!

T̴͈̱̤̳̫̠̬̄̆̄̑ͪ̀́͒H͖̤̟͓̫̣̗̯̍͐̂͛ͧ͂̋́̊͘͜͠Ę̷̤͖̹͇̘͖̩̬͋ͭ̕ ͎̣͍̯̼̜͋̅͋̈́͒͢͝R͚̳̪̮̦̬̗̓̄͊́͐̂̀͟I̴̢͙̩͎̪͙͙ͥ̔͑͘Ḏ̺ͤ̋Ę̸̗͔̱͍̣͇̈̊͗͡ ̢͈̜̲̞̎͒͋ͮ̿ͪ͜͝Ň̷̼̜̳͉̜͎̃̎́Ȩ̠̝̥̮̺̻͚̹͐̆̊͋ͤ́V̡̩̤̖̣̗̦̝͐͆̔͛͛͊ͯE̸̸̜̰̹̞̊̒͟R̢̫̅͌͐ͣͮ̎ͧ̆ ̴̵͙̪͖̳̪̉̋̓E̽̽͗̇̿̚͢͏͓̜̥ͅŅ̗̘̒͑͊ͦͯ̽ͪḒ̹̯̿̊̔͆̾͂̐̓̈ͅS̰̟͚̤ͪ͋̿͒ͪ͑!̴̭̘̭͚͉̖̞̠̓̂́͆ͦ̊̚̕͜

hey everyone read this i think u will want to know about it:http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/editorials/17097-Free-Speech-Politically-Correct-Safe-Space-Trigger

RazorFist gives his thoughts on Gawker's bankruptcy.

An archive version would be nice.