The real problem stems from exposure to the PSO2 in JP.

Any changes locally would be a non-issue (so long as it did not go against the previous installments NA had official launched for) for anyone that did not follow or play the JP version of PSO2.

Someone who hasn't played since PSO wouldn't even be aware of the suggested "censorship issues" that we can't confirm or deny actually exist at this point.

@GamerKillance yes, theres culture differences and legal differences between the east and west. rather distinct ones and ones that could cause various problems. with that stated, foreign games are /foreign/, ergo 'should' be held to the standards of their home country not the country they are porting to. localization teams arent supposed to sanitize the game, but adapt cultural references in a way that can be understood. that has been a /very/ long standing argument among the fans.

yes, there are two sides to that particular argument, people who are in favor of censoring and sanitizing the media that gets transferred over, but my personal point on the topic is no matter what you do your going to have people get pissed off. take the easier route and just leave it the hell alone.

in terms of conflation with reality (which is the only justification i can figure for trying to block it)... first off, fictional characters. they have no actual age or actual presence. theres been similar arguments for example trying to link violence, sexism or whatever behavioural pattern to interactions with a fictional setting. none of them have actually proven any such thing however. hell, the violence one was researched to hell and back thanks to jack thompson and the /most/ they found was that video games increased peoples competitiveness /while playing the game/. that includes aspects of aggression mind you, but those according to the studies i've seen go away when the game gets turned off.

second off, assume that people think somehow that this is a reality or equivalent. well, ignoring the fact that person is mentally ill and /that/ should be addressed instead... the characters are all adults ingame. they are members of a militia / army / exploration team which is officially mandated and structured. they are of legal majority in lore regardless of appearance. and with that stated, there are such things as midgets, including midgets that look very young either intentionally or not. would you count them as "visually minors" therefore illegal for anything even remotely sexual?

third as i believe you stated, there is a strict set of restrictions on outright lewd content which nominally could and would be applied to character aesthetic as well. meaning that /if/ someone decided to lewd the loli, that is a bannable offense. why not just leave it in and leave it that way? not that i agree with that particular thing, but it would cut a lot of the censorship argument off at the knees which to me is a good thing. unless you want to make the argument that the loli is lewd because it exists...?

and someone mentioned how they were shifting the heights based on cultural norms perhaps... unless i misread it. in which case has anyone tested if they allow you to make /taller/ characters than in the japanese version?

anyway, my personal point is censorship is stupid, its not going to cause /less/ fighting among the community and has never notably altered the sales/playtime except perhaps in the negative. as to legal standards in the US, the relevant standards are obscenity laws IE completely subjective with no fixed standard involved. meaning you can get caught with them /anyway/. there is no legal definition of obscene content that i have ever seen, in fact the only times i've seen it defined it is as "I'll know it when I see it" which means 100% subjective definition.

@John-Paul-RAGE welcome to the internet >.< anything remotely like this is going to get direct comparisons between the versions and any such alterations /will/ be pointed out. thoroughly and usually with a fair bit of anger or mockery. the world is a whole lot closer now... which can cause lots and lots of problems.

@greykyanos An important thing to note about "Video games cause violence" thing is that you're sort of misinterpreting the truth of the matter there. While a lot of right-wing dudes like ya boy Jack were absolutely incorrect when stating VIDEO GAMES MAKE YOU VIOLENT, what media does constantly do is reinforce values and desensitize people to certain acts.

This is mostly gonna be off topic but I just wanna put it out there for the record.

Video games don't make you violent, but playing a lot of violent war-shooters can desensitize you to war imagery and how serious that kind of conflict is. Media has been used to influence social values and norms for over a century and its silly to say that what happens in fiction has zero bearing on real life in any small way.

So no, seeing a bunch of creeps running around in their glorified loli-getups and roleplaying won't turn anyone into a pedophile, but consuming and witnessing media that reinforces that kind of behavior as "normal" or allowed only disillusions people involved into normalizing it to the point of them being ok with said activity or prompting said activity.

A more mainstream example is in the west, a lot of conservative/traditional folks have this idea of the Nuclear Family where you have an AFAB wife who takes care of the kids and is submissive to an AMAB father who makes the bread and is the one who wears the pants in the relationship. Things like traditional western values were reinforced so commonly and effectively by various pieces of media that there are people in the world who think that this type of family and household has been the default way of living for centuries despite only being a norm for a hundred years or so.

Further reading: https://gap.hks.harvard.edu/how-does-media-influence-social-norms-field-experiment-role-common-knowledge https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK493719/ https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/political-science-research-and-methods/article/how-does-media-influence-social-norms-experimental-evidence-on-the-role-of-common-knowledge/23D65E06CAB2876B08F12E23CD5C0539 https://www.fsg.org/blog/power-companies-influence-social-norms

@greykyanos I have been on the internet for quite some time, however the point is that this game has a clearly defined target audience, and players on the JP servers aren't necessarily it.

@John-Paul-RAGE players on the japanese servers? including those that speak english and would (or have long since) been banned for such? and i wasnt implying your new to the internet, just pointing out in a very offhand way that its the normal; the 'welcome to the internet' was meant as mild sarcasm, not a jab.

@Lena-Brey sure, seeing images a lot desensitizes you to "it". what is "it" in this case? small cartoon characters that are by the rules not allowed to be lewded. even assuming a conflation between reality and fiction, you presumably see children all the time - i do. im pretty desensitized to them even without media portrayals. then you add in all the various cartoons and the like on TV and anime which have children (or midgets) in them and hoo boy... furthermore, going back to my violence analogy, desensitizing the population to violence does not make people more likely to be violent. empirically proven via various studies at this point. what it /does/ is makes people less likely to directly freak out when that violence takes the same form as they have been desensitized to... which in this case would be normal small adult people who may or may not look like children.

@Lena-Brey while it is off-topic, those are very good points that are the focus of study in one of my interdisciplinary classes. Actually just turned in an assignment about how mass media reinforces stereotypes. Stereotypical reinforcement varies based on the culture the media is produced in, just as you stated, and the reception is intended for that particular culture.

This media, PSO2 NA release, is intended for the western audience, and will conform to those cultural standards to a certain degree.

@John-Paul-RAGE western audience which is a fan of the franchise and has absolute records thanks to the internet of the /actual/ game that is being ported over. no, the size alterations are not in and of themselves a bad thing; just a stupid one. note that i have not once argued against the rules about say overly/outright pornographic material ingame. its not catered specifically towards adults and therefore that sort of thing is removed. i am simply pointing out that the flaws in trying to justify censoring other aspects of the game, for example making it impossible to play "small characters" because they 'look too much like children'.

going back on topic instead of ending it on a personal side track... this argument would be null and void from /me/ personally if the japanese version which they are porting did not allow small characters. the game has much the same market in the east and west, the only real difference is the cultural norms. none of which say you cannot play as children in violent circumstances, only that you cannot lewd the loli.

@John-Paul-RAGE said in Censoring in game ?:

The real problem stems from exposure to the PSO2 in JP.

Any changes locally would be a non-issue (so long as it did not go against the previous installments NA had official launched for) for anyone that did not follow or play the JP version of PSO2.

Someone who hasn't played since PSO wouldn't even be aware of the suggested "censorship issues" that we can't confirm or deny actually exist at this point.

Facts.

I guarantee a vast majority of those that followed pso over the years really do not care that a short character is in the game. The games been no secret since pso. Nor what's in it.

@greykyanos said in Censoring in game ?:

@John-Paul-RAGE western audience which is a fan of the franchise and has absolute records thanks to the internet of the /actual/ game that is being ported over. no, the size alterations are not in and of themselves a bad thing; just a stupid one. note that i have not once argued against the rules about say overly/outright pornographic material ingame. its not catered specifically towards adults and therefore that sort of thing is removed. i am simply pointing out that the flaws in trying to justify censoring other aspects of the game, for example making it impossible to play "small characters" because they 'look too much like children'.

going back on topic instead of ending it on a personal side track... this argument would be null and void from /me/ personally if the japanese version which they are porting did not allow small characters. the game has much the same market in the east and west, the only real difference is the cultural norms. none of which say you cannot play as children in violent circumstances, only that you cannot lewd the loli.

People don't care about the characters being portrayed as minors in a universal war that threatens to kill them all. Americans have to much sex on their minds when they think about games and anime apparently. (Just a personal observation) The thought of people making their smaller characters then people seeing them as lewd even if they aren't being portrayed as such by the player or even being portrayed as a minor. (Another observation) I think a majority of people who would take offense to a smaller character in game would be those who don't play the game in a RP/Lore sense or those who have never met other adults under 150 cm's.

On a side note, I really do enjoy the discussion parts that have remained civil. Exposure to different and well articulated view points only strengthen our individual cognitive abilities, so let me say this:

Thank you all who have contributed in a positive manner, and I hope you have a superb weekend!

@Rantious no you dont. but the point im making is kids still play them regaurdless. And will find a way. Therefor responsibility lies with the adult. So it falls on the adult in the household. So my question is why should we be punished and restricted in content. When promised the same content as japan has?

@John-Paul-RAGE said in Censoring in game ?:

On a side note, I really do enjoy the discussion parts that have remained civil. Exposure to different and well articulated view points only strengthen our individual cognitive abilities, so let me say this:

Thank you all who have contributed in a positive manner, and I hope you have a superb weekend!

Well I'm 30 and a mod for game informer. You learn to keep your cool lol

@Rantious said in Censoring in game ?:

@John-Paul-RAGE said in Censoring in game ?:

The real problem stems from exposure to the PSO2 in JP.

Any changes locally would be a non-issue (so long as it did not go against the previous installments NA had official launched for) for anyone that did not follow or play the JP version of PSO2.

Someone who hasn't played since PSO wouldn't even be aware of the suggested "censorship issues" that we can't confirm or deny actually exist at this point.

Facts.

And most never played POS2 cause of the loop holes you need to jump through to play it.

@GamerKillance said in Censoring in game ?:

@Rantious said in Censoring in game ?:

@John-Paul-RAGE said in Censoring in game ?:

The real problem stems from exposure to the PSO2 in JP.

Any changes locally would be a non-issue (so long as it did not go against the previous installments NA had official launched for) for anyone that did not follow or play the JP version of PSO2.

Someone who hasn't played since PSO wouldn't even be aware of the suggested "censorship issues" that we can't confirm or deny actually exist at this point.

Facts.

And most never played POS2 cause of the loop holes you need to jump through to play it.

I never could afford a PC because a house bills that's my excuse LOL