Thoughts on the Censorship by Sony USA, and What That Means for my Reviews Going Forward.
I have, since the PS1 era, been a big fan of Sony's gaming systems, despite starting my gaming life on the SNES. As much as I loved my N64, the PS1 had the library of RPG's, which remained my favorite Genre. But recently we have been seeing more and more games get censored by Sony since they moved their headquarters to the USA.
If you want the most recent example, we have the PS4 version of Devil May Cry 5 adding in really bad lights to cover up someone's butt. The Japanese release on PS4, as well as Xbox and PC releases stateside, leave the scene uncensored. (Source: https://gamerant.com/devil-may-cry-5-censored/)
This is not something new, we can look back to last year with Pqube games canceling the western releases of Omegal Labyrynth Z considering how much they would be required to alter from the original source material. https://twitter.com/PQubeGames/status/1011240217813057536
This is something that has been getting worse and worse as time has gone on, I could give you more examples of this past year including things like Criminal Girls 2.
I have always been of the opinion the purpose behind Localizing games is to bring the game to a new audience who speaks a different language while preserving as much fo the original game as possible, something these censorship policies are strongly working against. And it doesn't end there, it's a policy that has started to affect even developers over in Japan, as developers now have to answer to Sony USA's standards. These are policies that are limiting what a creator is allowed to do on the platform. (Source: https://nichegamer.com/2018/10/27/new-sony-censorship-policy-is-forcing-even-japanese-developers-to-censor-themselves-in-japan/)
This past bit with Devil May Cry, even though it's not a game I am particularly interested in, is the last straw for me, and this will be what to expect out of me going forward.
Firstly, the only PS4 games I am getting are the ones I am already planning on getting that cannot be switched to another Platform. Right now that includes Gohst of Tsushima, Nioh 2, Sekiro, and Arc of Alchemist. Whereas Code Vein and Zanki I will be doing the PC release for (Unless it turns out my PC can't run it, in which case I will suck it up and do the PS4 version until I can get an upgrade. I believe I should be able to handle it though, we'll see when details are out.)
From here forward, the only games I will get on PS4 are ones that are both exclusive, and absolute must buys for me. Games that are exclusive and only mildly catch my interest I will not be touching so long as it remains exclusive on PS4.
Sony themselves have become incredibly untrustworthy in regards to keeping artistic creativity intact, so for me this is the time to start pulling back my support of them. If you are a person who had no issue with what they are doing, it's fine, I don't begrudge you for it.
Even when reviewing the games I still plan to pick up, they will come with a disclaimer of my discontent with Sony. This is just to let anyone know that while I will be looking at those games still, and I plan to give my most honest review, it's a pretty notable bias I have that I feel anyone reading my review should be made aware of up front.
If Sony ever reverses these policies this will all change, but I have no idea if or when that will happen. To end this article, I leave you with the immortal words of Tom Lehrer:
I'm not a fan of censorship but I imagine they are doing this for business reasons. They believe, rightly or wrongly, that they will ultimately have a better brand image and make more profit by censoring stuff like this. Sony is only going to support "artistic creativity" when they feel it is in their business interest to do so.
I find it harder and harder to accept it's purely done for business reasons.
Their main competition right now is the Nintendo Switch, who is getting praised for cutting back on their past censorship shenanigans and succeeding immenslely as a family friendly console as well, plus the same issues aren't hitting western releases nearly as much as games coming over from Japan.
I think the decision is a lot more idealogical in nature. I didn't really talk about in the article proper as this is mostly speculation, but I don't think the headquarters moving to San Fransisco and the sudden crack down on censorship is at all a coincidence.
What would San Francisco have to do with it? I wouldn't expect censorship, at least of that kind, out of San Francisco. But I don't know enough about the ideology of those running things to say whether that's the issue or not. Was what they have been censoring likely to have changed the ESRB rating of the game? If it brings a game from Adults only to Mature or from Mature to Teen then I would think that could be a big motivation. If not, then yeah, I don't really see the point and maybe it is just ideological...
I'm not sure how familiar you are with the American ideological/Political stuff, but the majority of the tech industry here is located in California, specifically a place called Silicon Valley in San Fransisco.
California as a largely left leaning state, and is also home to a lot or your more extreme ideologies. You see similar trends to what you see Sony now doing as you see with other platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. You end up in this weird echo chamber, which regardless of your beliefs is always a dangerous thing to happen.
When Sony moves headquarters to San Fransisco, and their policies begin to fall in line with all other San Fransisco based companies, it's hard to say the ideology isn't a factor.
And considering DmC V is a Mature rating across all platforms, it's hard to believe it's because they wanted a lower rating, as that doesn't change.
Oh, I'm quite familiar with the political stuff and I don't think any amount of money would be enough to get me to move to California. I just don't see how it applies in this case. I would expect this particular sort of censorship from the far right, not the far left, at least for reasons of ideology. I mean the far right might censor it on religious and/or moral grounds by why would the far left?
Being a big anime fan myself, it's easy to see this kind of thing coming from the left side of politics. It's something they have been doing with anime for a while now, as well as various games that have been censored by companies with a far left Bias (Nintendo Treehouse was absolutely horrible about this, the politics of one of it's localizers was very far left, and she was one of the ones involved in the Fire Emblem nonsense where an entire minigame was cut out of the game because they felt it inappropriate). Not the general left leaning populace, but the really far left have been going after scantily clad women in games and anime for some time, demanding less lewd characters.
It's that very uncomfortable crossroads where the far left and the far right seem to meet at common ground, anime titties are bad and need covered up.
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