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[RaduN]

It's painfully obvious where Kojima's political views lie and the intention of Death Stranding, whether it was effective at it or not, was to influence the player into the same viewpoint.

Which is exactly what a genuine auteúr does, and wether or not they are succesfull, depends on how well they express themselfes.
In Kojima's case, each of his own points of view are fully supported by the narrative. There's even a passage where a character gives an example of leadership stupidity, reffering to a certain ex-president, which, as explained, has bearing on the fragmented, fictional world of the game.

 

[theclaw135]

This is a BS strawman and not at all what I'm talking about.

The propaganda consists more of:

• the complete eradication of any semblance of attractive male or female characters to be more inclusive (because excluding pretty people is somehow more inclusive),
• the absurd and relentless dogpiling of anything even resembling female sexualization (because all female sexualization is bad, even though the proponents of this doctrine identify as sex-positive feminists),
• the proliferation of "strong female leads" who are virtually unanimously poorly written, poorly developed cardboard cutouts, with not even a semblance of character development or a character arc,
• the tokenization of minority characters in the name of "diversity & inclusion" (which totally ignores the fact that games have included diverse casts forever, but legacy characters---unlike the garbage peddled in today's games---were actually properly developed characters with relatable, flawed, humanized struggles),
• the labeling of everything that doesn't align with the religion's dogma as "problematic" and in need of boycotting, e.g. see Hogwart's Legacy (i.e. the inability to separate the artist from the art),
• the absurd fragility of creators leading to an inability to respect even legacy games as products of their time, e.g. the "updating of the content of legacy games to fit modern sensibilities" which really just means bastardizing the titles to inject in modern radical leftist propaganda,
• the use of game characters and story to literally preach at gamers, beating them over the head with the creator's perceived morally superior views, instead of leveraging a clever use of metaphor and subliminal themes to convey an underlying message,
• the absurd lambasting of game creators for not including an adequate (the definition of which is always arbitrary) amount of diversity in their games, e.g. TW3, CyberPunk, FFXVI etc etc.

I could go on and on and on and on.

I don't think I've actually encountered games of the sort you're describing. Though I'll give that excluding pretty people isn't fair to them either. And I'm trying to have female sexualization better written, rather than removed.

Legacy games need to be understood, learned from, presented in their proper context, they may have done things they wouldn't have done today. Just cutting stuff out isn't informative. Tell me what was altered, at the very least!

 

[Killer8]

Which is exactly what a genuine auteúr does, and wether or not they are succesfull, depends on how well they express themselfes.
In Kojima's case, each of his own points of view are fully supported by the narrative. There's even a passage where a character gives an example of leadership stupidity, reffering to a certain ex-president, which, as explained, has bearing on the fragmented, fictional world of the game.

Yep:

But hey, Norman Reedus is a straight white male, so I guess we can just pretend all of the above isn't in the game and Japan can stay refreshingly apolitical. Totally the "cultural escapism from current day shit" we were looking for.

 

[Regginator]

Because politics are everywhere around us, whether we like to admit it or not. The taxes we pay are political, our rent is political, prices of groceries, our employment, etc. etc. Everything is distilled from politics, or rather, by political choices. To know that and to think that somehow politics miraculously stop at the doors of gaming is to be very naive. Gaming is (or can be) a form of art, of expression, and it's not unheard of if you want to see and feel yourself expressed.

Also,

Why can't I play Harry Potter with excitement or Starfield without someone popping a vein? I could care less what people do with

The expression is "I couldn't care less", not could care less, because that implies you do care at least a little. Now that's something that might've popped a vein or two.

 

[Fatbody]

I don't disagree with what you say here about how heated and ridiculous the Western political climate is. I condemn the often sadistic treatment of people who go against the grain as much as anyone, and that is why i'm on Neogaf and not Resetera.

But I think you are turning a blind eye to a lot of things present in Japanese gaming and what their creators think.



Yes, and Death Stranding, in Kojima's own words:

"The attacks and violence seen online these days are out of control. So I designed this for people to take a step back and by connecting, relearn how to be kind to others. I don't think anyone in the world is opposed to that. Trump is building a wall, and the UK is leaving the EU. In this game, we use bridges to connect things. But destroying those bridges can instantly turn them into walls. So bridges and walls are almost synonymous. That's one of the things i'd like the players to think about in the game."

"This is about an era of individualism. Everyone is fragmented, in America or Europe, but at the same time we’re connected by the internet. This magical technology should have made people happy, but we’re battling each other."

It's painfully obvious where Kojima's political views lie and the intention of Death Stranding, whether it was effective at it or not, was to influence the player into the same viewpoint. I'll repeat again that focusing on the race of the character (which was only that way because it was modeled on his buddy Norman Reedus) is surface level stuff. You could say literally skin deep. It misses the forest (ie. we need a more communal, less individualistic world unlike what the right wing is creating) for the trees (the character is white, gaming is saved!!!).

Kojima is not chummy with Hollywood liberals like Guillermo del Toro for no reason.



If you are referring to Resident Evil 4, there is a whole range of things which people (*not me personally for some of these points) complained about being woke:

Hunnigan, and i'm surprised no one mentions the merchant too, were race-swapped to black. Really didn't detract from anything.

Ashley no longer wears a skirt and the game prevents you from creeping on her (personally this was mega sad for me). The VR port of the original RE4 to Quest 2 also cut this.

The playful flirtation of Leon with Hunnigan was removed (Leon in general is really de-nutted in the remake). The Hunnigan conversations are now just very dry mission talk. The VR port of the original RE4 to Quest 2 also cut this in a really ham-fisted way by flat out removing lines of dialogue.

Ending dialogue was changed to be more yass queen:

Spoiler

Removed:

It's one of the more egregious examples of a game that has been thoroughly sanitized to avoid accusations of sexism. But also not surprising considering the leaked internal Capcom documents showing they are moving in a more politically correct direction:

Capcom Leaks: Resident Evil Battle Royale, Monster Hunter Rise for PC, Politically Correct Strategies, More

The contents of the Capcom ransomware hack has begun leaking online, featuring news on Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, and other games; along with politically correct business strategies.

nichegamer.com

I'm glad you brought up Yakuza. Yakuza may have been a “story about men, written by men, primarily for an audience of men.”, and to a large extent that remains true (although the audience for Yakuza now encompasses a broader range than who it was originally aimed at). However, Yakuza: Like a Dragon was one of the most on-the-nose political games i've ever played. A fair warning as there will be some spoilers here. A villain in the game is a group called Bleach Japan, a puritanical NIMBY group which is very reminiscent of socially conservative interest groups, who want to purge Japan of its 'gray zones' where illegal activities like prostitution are more permissible. The leader, Sota Kume, is essentially a Japanese Ben Shapiro, and the group is an arm of the Citizens' Liberal Party, whose leader Ryo Aoki is the major antagonist in the game. People might think 'Liberal' in the name would suggest a left wing nature of the party but anyone who takes even a cursory glance at Japanese politics will see that the long ruling political party in Japan is the "Liberal Democratic Party" - which has a nationalist conservative platform. The CLP is portrayed in the same vein as the LDP and can be viewed as a fictional stand-in. The game doesn't just stop at the ragtag group of outcasts fighting with Bleach Japan in the streets either - you literally run against the CLP in an election. I don't know how all of this can be viewed as anything other than a direct critique of status quo Japanese political conservatism, or at the very least trying to contextualize the experiences of the people it's against.

The game might be about masculinity but it touches on numerous aspects that could be considered left wing particularly in its sub-stories:

Spoiler

Also if it was Tosh Nagosh that the original quote about it being a “story about men, written by men, primarily for an audience of men.” belonged to - well, he left the company years ago to grab the Chinese NetEase money.

SEGA have also tried to sanitize the image of some aspects which could be considered transphobic in the West, such as the sub-quest in Yakuza 3 where Kiryu is forced to flee a crossdressing NPC and refers to it as, well, "it". This was removed not just in the West but in all regions of the remastered game to comply with, to quote the producer, a change in moral values.

This is not surprising considering the following:



RGG Studio changes its Twitter icon like every other company during pride month:

Spoiler

Western gay people love Yakuza, and i've hung around plenty of Discords that lean right who absolutely loathe the series, for the exact same reasons.


As for Nintendo, it doesn't really have any examples in its games, I agree. It's purposefully ambiguous in part to get mass appeal. Nintendo's stances as a company though would surely piss off a lot of Shapiro conservatives:

Nintendo Japan Recognizes Same-Sex Marriages, in Defiance of Country’s Laws​

Nintendo Japan Recognizes Same-Sex Marriages, in Defiance of Country’s Laws

Nintendo Japan is extending benefits to employees in same-sex partnerships even though Japan outlaws gay marriage.

variety.com

Let me reiterate, I never said that Japan was some kind of total 100 percent based world utopia for games. But I’m sorry, given how ridiculous it’s gotten in the west, it’s near night and day despite whatever you can kind find here and there.

As far as Norman and the straight white males go, I don’t even necessarily seek out a game for muh main protagonist representation. But in about the past decade here in the west, devs obviously go out of their way to never again feature a main character that is representative of at the very least the plurality of the gamer base, and probably a majority if we’re just talking “core” gamers. They’re absolutely making a statement. Again, if these things are not that important and missing the forest and all that, then why did they go out of their way to change it? This is where I agree with the left. It does matter, it is political. And it’s perfectly fine for black woman or whatever demographic to “exist” as they like to say. But existing at these wildly disproportionate rates? I can smell the white man hating, resentful purple haired through the monitor.

And the themes of hyper individualism and technology isolating all of us has been a major topic of discussion of the online dissident right for many years now. Now I’m sure Kojima has different views on how the west should resolve that given him referencing brexit and Trump, but I highly highly doubt he would apply the left’s proposed solutions to his home country (hey let’s have unrestricted mass immigration from the third world and then do a communism)

Yes, the edits made to the RE4 stink and were probably done at the request of their western counterparts or localizers (I’m only speculating but I doubt the devs cared one way or another) but my main point is that a remake like that would not have happened here. They would have race swapped Ashley, made her gay, made her a girl boss that verbally berates Leon through the game. They would have diversified the zombies because it’s too much killing of Spaniards, stuff like that. I’m sorry but shit like that adds up over time. We don’t live in a vacuum.

I’ve played the entire Yakuza series and spin-offs, so you don’t gotta tell me about that. There are literally 100s of stories told in that game, and honestly I’m completely down with alternate points of view. But again, my point is that Yakuza, a game that the creators have explicitly stated is a masculine game for primarily men, would not exist as western made game. Oh, and Akiyama is based as shit lol

And finally all of those corporate press statements are the cost of being a global company. I think they have to do all that stuff in order to not risk lawsuits with their employees here, regardless of what Japanese law says. We’ll see where all that leads in the long run.

 

[Andrew Evenstar]

Western culture is toxic as hell - I'm completely abandoned most media and entertainment as most of it is annoying, disgusting and not worth my time.

 

[EverydayBeast]

War benefits consoles look at Nintendo’s success in the 90s, sega dying worked in their favor because they made the snes, n64, game cube well oiled machines.

 

[DareDaniel]

I don't disagree with what you say here about how heated and ridiculous the Western political climate is. I condemn the often sadistic treatment of people who go against the grain as much as anyone, and that is why i'm on Neogaf and not Resetera.

But I think you are turning a blind eye to a lot of things present in Japanese gaming and what their creators think.



Yes, and Death Stranding, in Kojima's own words:

"The attacks and violence seen online these days are out of control. So I designed this for people to take a step back and by connecting, relearn how to be kind to others. I don't think anyone in the world is opposed to that. Trump is building a wall, and the UK is leaving the EU. In this game, we use bridges to connect things. But destroying those bridges can instantly turn them into walls. So bridges and walls are almost synonymous. That's one of the things i'd like the players to think about in the game."

"This is about an era of individualism. Everyone is fragmented, in America or Europe, but at the same time we’re connected by the internet. This magical technology should have made people happy, but we’re battling each other."

It's painfully obvious where Kojima's political views lie and the intention of Death Stranding, whether it was effective at it or not, was to influence the player into the same viewpoint. I'll repeat again that focusing on the race of the character (which was only that way because it was modeled on his buddy Norman Reedus) is surface level stuff. You could say literally skin deep. It misses the forest (ie. we need a more communal, less individualistic world unlike what the right wing is creating) for the trees (the character is white, gaming is saved!!!).

Kojima is not chummy with Hollywood liberals like Guillermo del Toro for no reason.



If you are referring to Resident Evil 4, there is a whole range of things which people (*not me personally for some of these points) complained about being woke:

Hunnigan, and i'm surprised no one mentions the merchant too, were race-swapped to black. Really didn't detract from anything.

Ashley no longer wears a skirt and the game prevents you from creeping on her (personally this was mega sad for me). The VR port of the original RE4 to Quest 2 also cut this.

The playful flirtation of Leon with Hunnigan was removed (Leon in general is really de-nutted in the remake). The Hunnigan conversations are now just very dry mission talk. The VR port of the original RE4 to Quest 2 also cut this in a really ham-fisted way by flat out removing lines of dialogue.

Ending dialogue was changed to be more yass queen:

Spoiler

Removed:

It's one of the more egregious examples of a game that has been thoroughly sanitized to avoid accusations of sexism. But also not surprising considering the leaked internal Capcom documents showing they are moving in a more politically correct direction:

Capcom Leaks: Resident Evil Battle Royale, Monster Hunter Rise for PC, Politically Correct Strategies, More

The contents of the Capcom ransomware hack has begun leaking online, featuring news on Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, and other games; along with politically correct business strategies.

nichegamer.com

I'm glad you brought up Yakuza. Yakuza may have been a “story about men, written by men, primarily for an audience of men.”, and to a large extent that remains true (although the audience for Yakuza now encompasses a broader range than who it was originally aimed at). However, Yakuza: Like a Dragon was one of the most on-the-nose political games i've ever played. A fair warning as there will be some spoilers here. A villain in the game is a group called Bleach Japan, a puritanical NIMBY group which is very reminiscent of socially conservative interest groups, who want to purge Japan of its 'gray zones' where illegal activities like prostitution are more permissible. The leader, Sota Kume, is essentially a Japanese Ben Shapiro, and the group is an arm of the Citizens' Liberal Party, whose leader Ryo Aoki is the major antagonist in the game. People might think 'Liberal' in the name would suggest a left wing nature of the party but anyone who takes even a cursory glance at Japanese politics will see that the long ruling political party in Japan is the "Liberal Democratic Party" - which has a nationalist conservative platform. The CLP is portrayed in the same vein as the LDP and can be viewed as a fictional stand-in. The game doesn't just stop at the ragtag group of outcasts fighting with Bleach Japan in the streets either - you literally run against the CLP in an election. I don't know how all of this can be viewed as anything other than a direct critique of status quo Japanese political conservatism, or at the very least trying to contextualize the experiences of the people it's against.

The game might be about masculinity but it touches on numerous aspects that could be considered left wing particularly in its sub-stories:

Spoiler

Also if it was Tosh Nagosh that the original quote about it being a “story about men, written by men, primarily for an audience of men.” belonged to - well, he left the company years ago to grab the Chinese NetEase money.

SEGA have also tried to sanitize the image of some aspects which could be considered transphobic in the West, such as the sub-quest in Yakuza 3 where Kiryu is forced to flee a crossdressing NPC and refers to it as, well, "it". This was removed not just in the West but in all regions of the remastered game to comply with, to quote the producer, a change in moral values.

This is not surprising considering the following:



RGG Studio changes its Twitter icon like every other company during pride month:

Spoiler

Western gay people love Yakuza, and i've hung around plenty of Discords that lean right who absolutely loathe the series, for the exact same reasons.


As for Nintendo, it doesn't really have any examples in its games, I agree. It's purposefully ambiguous in part to get mass appeal. Nintendo's stances as a company though would surely piss off a lot of Shapiro conservatives:

Nintendo Japan Recognizes Same-Sex Marriages, in Defiance of Country’s Laws​

Nintendo Japan Recognizes Same-Sex Marriages, in Defiance of Country’s Laws

Nintendo Japan is extending benefits to employees in same-sex partnerships even though Japan outlaws gay marriage.

variety.com

I played all those games and nothing you said makes them woke.
Twitter icons are meaningless when many companies don't change them in their middle east accounts.
Nintendo is looking for talented people regardless of their sexual preference, that's great for gamers. Wokeism is when a company hires someone based on their sex/race/hair color even if they suck at their job.

 

[Clear]

Yep:

But hey, Norman Reedus is a straight white male, so I guess we can just pretend all of the above isn't in the game and Japan can stay refreshingly apolitical. Totally the "cultural escapism from current day shit" we were looking for.

There's a world of difference between utopian/dystopian fantasy and being a partisan hack!

Yes, the world living in peace as one unified humanity would be a great thing. But that's entirely different from making an explicitly political argument over the minutia of border control policy.

Passports are a relatively recent invention for example, it was that well known champion of peace (lol) Napoleon Bonaparte that really formularized them in the 19th century. But conflict between nations, and indeed the idea of nation states are way older than that..

 

[Faust]

The thread has served its point. Closing.

Go play games, folks.