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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Nintendo Removes Infamous Drugging Scene From Western Localisation Of Fire Emblem Fates

FragilE^ on 23 January 2016
spemanig said:
FragilE^ said:
Its a fictional story, with fictional characters in a fictional world. Why does anything matter at all?

Even if they all expressed disgust for homosexuals and made a drug to *save* a character, who cares?! It reflects on the people in the game, the fictional characters, not anyone else. I just don't understand what they're thinking when they do things like this.

Because, and this may be hard to believe, fiction does not exist inside a bubble. It exists within culture and business, and most of modern western culture sees giving a player the agency to borderline date-rape someone out of their natural born sexual orientaion to be extremely creepy. Condoning that kind of gameplay is bad for PR and it's bad for sales. You know what's bad for neither. Localizing it out.

I will always see the business side, because I understand that companies are scared, always, by everything. No idea why though.

Its still pathetic. Surely, you can see that. SURELY. "Condoning that kind of gameplay" what? Ever read a book where people did scary things? Did someone condone that reading? "Ohhh but its interactive" but you still HAVE to do it, its super linear. Movies do some messed up shit too. Somehow we can very easily separete reality and fiction there. Interactive media? But it happens in cutscenes? Bla bla. Companies are so freakin' scared for no reason...

And again, if this is the big thing that is deemed "too much" then lets look at everything that goes through. There's a lot of shitty things in games. Like, A LOT. In the same game no less. What about GTA V torture scenes? Interactive torture scenes! Who condoned that?! Whoaaa sooo scaaaarryyyyyyy

 

Yeah. /angry rant I guess.



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Valdath on 23 January 2016

Is it wrong to not care about this? i play videogames to have fun not to fap.



the_dengle on 23 January 2016

Unless some new info has come out in the past couple days that hasn't been added to the OP, this seems like non-information to me. I'm pretty sure if anyone asked IS or NCL about "the drugging / gay conversion scene" in the Japanese version of the game, they'd give the same response.

You'd think the whole support was cut out of the game from the way people react. All they had to do is make very minor changes. The whole 'magic powder' thing was stupid to begin with -- just have Corrin dress like a woman. It's less contrived and funnier, and does no harm to the scene or the characters.

Or we can all continue jumping to conclusions or whatever.



Valdath on 24 January 2016
RolStoppable said:
Valdath said:
Is it wrong to not care about this? i play videogames to have fun not to fap.

Sounds like you are messed up in the head. But okay, enjoy the game.

Oh no they censored my anime scenes!!!

 

Who the hell cares

 

birthright/conquest is going to outsell Awakening



zorg1000 on 24 January 2016
FragilE^ said:

And again, if this is the big thing that is deemed "too much" then lets look at everything that goes through. There's a lot of shitty things in games. Like, A LOT. In the same game no less. What about GTA V torture scenes? Interactive torture scenes! Who condoned that?! Whoaaa sooo scaaaarryyyyyyy

 

The difference is that GTA is an M-rated franchise meaning legally it can't be sold to minors and isn't intended to be played by anyone other than adults.

Fire Emblem is a T-rated franchise so the amount of adult themes has to be kept to a minimum and this type of scene could have potentially caused the game to become M-rated.



When the herd loses its way, the shepard must kill the bull that leads them astray.

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teigaga on 24 January 2016
TheLegendaryWolf said:
teigaga said:

Or Japanese devs could have a backbone... When conservative media launched an attack on video game violence, western devs didn't budge.

Western Developers vs Conservative Western Media is somewhat different from Japanese Developers vs Conservative Western Media. Western Devs won't budge because they can "fight" on home turf while Japanese devs don't get that liberty. 

It goes back to the whole "what's acceptable in the East isn't always acceptable in the West" situation so they have to make some precautionary edits, which may or may not be executed properly. Not only that but don't forget the ESRB ratings and CERO ratings are significantly different, which could possibly hinder sales to a degree.

 


Thats a fair point but its entirely down to Nintendo. The point I'm  making isn't that Nintendo is right or wrong for altering this but more that  people shouldn't be pointing the finger at anything other then Nintendo. 

Regarding the western devs, often they don't "fight". They literally do nothing to respond to a lot of the media criticism.  Take Mortal Kombat and GTA for example. Recent fiasco's like Bravery Default + Dead or Alive Xtreme, did not need to be altered/cancelled and if people find issue they  should take it up with the publishers, instead of blaiming Liberals for being "OFFENDED BY EVERYTHING" lol



outlawauron on 25 January 2016
JWeinCom said:
Eh... It's not really censorship. Far as I can see, noone is forcing Nintendo to change anything. They're just adjusting the game to a different market. I'd rather the final product be as close to the original vision as possible but meh.

I'm sorry, but editing your content out of fear for backlash is exactly what censorship is.

spemanig said:
FragilE^ said:
Its a fictional story, with fictional characters in a fictional world. Why does anything matter at all?

Even if they all expressed disgust for homosexuals and made a drug to *save* a character, who cares?! It reflects on the people in the game, the fictional characters, not anyone else. I just don't understand what they're thinking when they do things like this.

Because, and this may be hard to believe, fiction does not exist inside a bubble. It exists within culture and business, and most of modern western culture sees giving a player the agency to borderline date-rape someone out of their natural born sexual orientaion to be extremely creepy. Condoning that kind of gameplay is bad for PR and it's bad for sales. You know what's bad for neither. Localizing it out.

But this isn't what happens. I agree that this would have been bad PR because of how people like to post articles and react without actually playing. Localizing it out was always what Nintendo was going to do.

TheLegendaryWolf said:
teigaga said:

Or Japanese devs could have a backbone... When conservative media launched an attack on video game violence, western devs didn't budge.

Western Developers vs Conservative Western Media is somewhat different from Japanese Developers vs Conservative Western Media. Western Devs won't budge because they can "fight" on home turf while Japanese devs don't get that liberty. 

It goes back to the whole "what's acceptable in the East isn't always acceptable in the West" situation so they have to make some precautionary edits, which may or may not be executed properly. Not only that but don't forget the ESRB ratings and CERO ratings are significantly different, which could possibly hinder sales to a degree.

JP Developers vs Western Liberal Media is lose/lose (yeah, none of the sites criticizing this are conservative), because the only people covering it are going to do so in a negative light and there's not a very good way to respond due to cultural and language barriers. It's like the Dragon's Crown/Kotaku thing where his response just got more backlash.



"We'll toss the dice however they fall,
And snuggle the girls be they short or tall,
Then follow young Mat whenever he calls,
To dance with Jak o' the Shadows."

Check out MyAnimeList and my Game Collection. Owner of the 5 millionth post.

JWeinCom on 25 January 2016
outlawauron said:
JWeinCom said:
Eh... It's not really censorship. Far as I can see, noone is forcing Nintendo to change anything. They're just adjusting the game to a different market. I'd rather the final product be as close to the original vision as possible but meh.

I'm sorry, but editing your content out of fear for backlash is exactly what censorship is.


 

No, censorship when you are actually forced to change content.

Nintendo is a company whose objective is to sell games.  If they feel like they could sell more games by changing the content, that's just a marketing decision.  

Unless Nintendo is actually being compelled to change the content, as in they literally are not allowed to publish it as they wish, it's not censorship.



outlawauron on 25 January 2016
JWeinCom said:
outlawauron said:

I'm sorry, but editing your content out of fear for backlash is exactly what censorship is.

No, censorship when you are actually forced to change content.

Nintendo is a company whose objective is to sell games.  If they feel like they could sell more games by changing the content, that's just a marketing decision.  

Unless Nintendo is actually being compelled to change the content, as in they literally are not allowed to publish it as they wish, it's not censorship.

In this case, NOA members are dictated that content made by a IS team is unsuitable for the market out of fear of backlash. They're censoring IS's game by removing content that was apart of the game. You don't need a government banning something for it to be censorship. You can find several definitions of self-censorship and this fits the bill.

I'm not even saying that NOA was particularly wrong in this case, but it's still censorship.



"We'll toss the dice however they fall,
And snuggle the girls be they short or tall,
Then follow young Mat whenever he calls,
To dance with Jak o' the Shadows."

Check out MyAnimeList and my Game Collection. Owner of the 5 millionth post.

JWeinCom on 25 January 2016
outlawauron said:
JWeinCom said:
outlawauron said:

I'm sorry, but editing your content out of fear for backlash is exactly what censorship is.

No, censorship when you are actually forced to change content.

Nintendo is a company whose objective is to sell games.  If they feel like they could sell more games by changing the content, that's just a marketing decision.  

Unless Nintendo is actually being compelled to change the content, as in they literally are not allowed to publish it as they wish, it's not censorship.

In this case, NOA members are dictated that content made by a IS team is unsuitable for the market out of fear of backlash. They're censoring IS's game by removing content that was apart of the game. You don't need a government banning something for it to be censorship. You can find several definitions of self-censorship and this fits the bill.

I'm not even saying that NOA was particularly wrong in this case, but it's still censorship.

I get what you're saying.  I still say it wouldn't be right to consider it censorship in this case.  If so, then what is the difference between censorship and localization?  Is any change made to the original work censorship?