This is an editorial piece. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of, and should not be attributed to, Niche Gamer as an organization.
If you’ve been following the entire debacle surrounding Koei Tecmo and Team Ninja’s Dead or Alive Xtreme 3, you’re probably confused, upset, and hopefully concerned regarding the current state of the video games industry (if you read our website, at least).
The TL;DR version of what happened involves the community manager for Koei Tecmo responding to a fan asking whether or not Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 would be coming west. Their response was shockingly honest, and one that said the developer was fearful of western reception for the game, hence it’s staying in Japan/Asia.
Retailer Play-Asia responded to this with a campaign to support the game, in spite of social justice warriors campaigning against the game (or games like it). Finally, Koei Tecmo issued an official statement that essentially pushed the community manager’s remarks aside (and said they belong only to them as an individual, and not the entire company).
Here’s the biggest issue with this entire scenario: no one is actually talking about the real issue at hand – the culture of fear within the gaming industry. Everyone is scared to talk about the actual regressives who are campaigning against games media simply because their feelings are hurt or they don’t like digital breasts.
I have some words of advice for Koei Tecmo proper:
Stop caring about what these insular, censor-happy, cultural-marxist tumblrinas have to say about your games. They weren’t going to buy your games anyway. I cannot stress this more – red-haired intersectional feminists knee-deep in gender politics studies are not your audience.
The entire thing becomes fascinating on another level when you consider the response of Dead or Alive creator Tomonobu Itagaki, who sounded off regarding the Koei Tecmo community manager’s remarks. In chasing a niche market even further than Itagaki ever dreamed of, you’ve created what he coined as the Galapagosian Lolita Complexed Chicken.
If you read that previous phrase and are scratching your head, let me explain.
Itagaki compared Koei Tecmo’s chasing after the niche market to that of the evolutionary biology of the creatures on the isolated Galapagos islands. Both are parallel in their relative seclusion from the outside world (or market), and both have progressed to wildly different extremes in their respective niches because of this.
The point of contention here is that Koei Tecmo wants to have their cake and eat it too. They are at a point now where they have to ultimately choose to further embrace the niche market, or abandon it to appease insane, sociopathic regressives who clearly (and have publicly admitted to) will not buy their games.
Obviously, I am rooting for Koei Tecmo listening to reason and simply pursuing what works for them: violence and sex. However, as their community manager originally stated, the gaming industry is rapidly changing and sadly, developers are more keen these days to listen to people who don’t even buy their games.
We all know that violence and sex typically sell media quicker than an Oscar-winning story does, but it seems like some game developers are just scared of embracing that. To be honest, the entire thing was somewhat of a letdown for me, as Koei Tecmo has been consistently a bastion of “zero fucks given” regarding their games.
We’re in a weird bizarro world upon which creators who simply enjoy the female form are apologizing for it, and games which can appeal to gamers worldwide are left in Japan because publishers are scared of the potential backlash. We have been getting some nice localization surprises, and yet there are cases like this happening.
The irony behind faux-outrage regarding Dead or Alive’s breasts physics, scantily clad women, and more, is that so-called progressives are conveniently ignoring very interesting and progressive games by the publisher, like Yoru no Nai Kuni’s story revolving around a lesbian romance (which is being localized as Nights of Azure).
What do you guys think? Should Koei Tecmo be kowtowing to social media-bound armchair warriors seeking to protect the eyes of the innocent from polygonal breasts? Sound off in the comments below!
