It never seemed clear that Dead or Alive Xtreme 3, a brand-new entry in the sexy fantasy spin-off series, would leave Japan. But when publisher Koei Tecmo made one poorly translated comment on Facebook about why it wasn’t happening, the Internet exploded into another heated debate over censorship.
No one would blame you for not remembering Dead or Alive Xtreme. At the height of Dead or Alive‘s popularity — when Tecmo hadn’t merged with Koei, the company had a relationship with Xbox, and designer Tomonobu Itagaki was still around — Tecmo released Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball. The 2003 Xbox exclusive focused on a two-week vacation that women from Dead or Alive took after being tricked into coming to “Zack Island,” a resort founded by one of the male fighters from Dead or Alive. It nabbed an M-rating from the ESRB, a series first, due to the revealing swimsuits the women could wear. Swimsuits like this:
There was a barely a plot, and while the volleyball part of the game was surprisingly well-done, it was an excuse to watch beautiful polygonal women.
The sequel, released in 2006 for the Xbox 360, expanded the number of mini-games, fleshed out the game’s relationship options (i.e. characters giving gifts to one another), and developed Enhanced Breast Physics Technology (TM).
Per an IGN preview from the time:
“With the sequel, the women fighters of DOA now have independent breast physics which create an asynchronous movement while giving a water balloon sensation to each mammary gland. We s*&# you not. Usually, boobs move in tandem. Not these melons. They’re all over the place, bouncing like a juggler throwing water balloons.”
Besides a brief PSP pitstop in 2010, the series was largely silent, with Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 for PlayStation 4 and Vita finally getting announced this past August. This time, however, isn’t wasn’t clear there were plans for a release outside of Japan, though new producer Yosuke Hayashi told Famitsu (via Gematsu) they would consider bringing over a “modified” version if there was enough demand.
It’s unclear what a “modified” version would look like. Different clothing? A mistranslation in the Gematsu piece erroneously suggested the series might feature male characters on the island this time around, but it wasn’t true.
This isn’t the first time the concept has come up in Dead or Alive fandom, either. While researching this story, for example, I spotted a poll from one of the game’s most popular community hubs, Dead or Alive World, showing support:
But as expected, Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 has maintained its preference for showcasing the female form, even when it comes to, uh, bikini malfunctions:
While there haven’t been large, formal campaigns to lobby for Dead or Alive Xtreme 3‘s release — perhaps a sign of Dead or Alive‘s decline in the fighting game community, more than anything — people have continued to ask for a Western release in the expected places, like the official Facebook page for Dead or Alive.
And that brings us to the events of the past week. On November 19, a Facebook user asked Koei Tecmo whether it’d reconsidered a release outside of Japan. The response, as expected, was that nothing had changed and it wasn’t coming over:
That should have been the end of that, but when the same user asked for a more specific reason, the company actually provided an explanation — well, sort of.
“[W]ith regard to how to treat female in video game industry” and “certainly we have gone through in last year or two to come to our decision” is rough English. That’s not to make fun of a developer trying to communicate with English fans, but only to underscore how little we can actually discern from this “statement.”
It’s entirely possible Koei Tecmo is speaking to — and wanting to sidestep — differing cultural values in the west, which has seen a shift in attitudes towards media representation of women since Dead or Alive Xtreme 2 came out in 2006.
Koei Tecmo has not responded to my requests for comment. The text has not been removed from Facebook, however, despite causing waves in recent days.
Another way to interpret it, and the interpretation that’s driven conversation around the game for the past week, is that so-called “social justice warriors” and other media critics are directly responsible for the game not coming out.
(I’ve been called a “social justice warrior” many times, a label I’ve never shied away from. I’m not going to apologise for going to bat for marginalised groups.)
Without context, we don’t know if that’s what Koei Tecmo meant, but that didn’t stop popular import retailer Play Asia from stoking the flames on Twitter, and pointing people towards a spot where they can buy a copy from their site:
#DOAX3 will not be coming to the US due to #SJW nonsense. However, we will have the English Asia version available: https://t.co/u03t7NC3RU
— Play-Asia.com (@playasia) November 25, 2015
Too sexist? I think you mean too sexy. #DOAX3
— Play-Asia.com (@playasia) November 25, 2015
While Play Asia didn’t point to any specific “#SJW nonsense,” and I could find no evidence of an organised protest against the game’s release, there’s an ongoing narrative in these circles that media critics are making companies like Koei Tecmo afraid to release games with sexual content in the West.
This kicked off a day of activity and discussion on Twitter, including but not limited to supporters of GamerGate, who often jump at the chance to point out the alleged censorship of games. (A debatable point.)
(When I tweeted at someone about the game to research this article, I was quickly bombarded with rapid-fire tweets from public GamerGate supporters.)
HuniePot, developers of the erotic match 3 puzzler HuniePop, announced it would pay up to $US1 million for the distribution rights to Dead or Alive Xtreme 3.
.@KoeiTecmoUS I’ll give you $1M for the rights to publish DOAX in the states. Serious offer, for whatever it’s worth.
— HuniePot (@HuniePotDev) November 25, 2015
Probably nothing to them but I’d give Koei Tecmo $1M for the rights to publish DOAX in the US. Let me take the heat.
— HuniePot (@HuniePotDev) November 25, 2015
100% serious. It’s an extra million they otherwise wouldn’t have. Seems like a no brainer to me. Let them know.
— HuniePot (@HuniePotDev) November 25, 2015
(Kotaku‘s Mike Fahey reviewed HuniePop earlier this year and really liked it.)
I was surprised at how well HuniePop must have sold to let HuniePot make such an offer, but when I asked to speak with them, they turned down my request.
Unsurprisingly, the @KoeiTecmoUS account on Twitter has not responded, but the company’s European division did:
@_brandNEWdays @KoeiTecmoUS Kudos to the TN’s CM for being honest. But if you really want it, you can import EN ver. https://t.co/efYcEeGZFo
— KOEI TECMO EUROPE (@koeitecmoeurope) November 24, 2015
(TN stands for Team Ninja, the developer of Dead or Alive Xtreme 3, while CM stands for “community manager,” an employee usually tasked with monitoring and responding to fans on Twitter, Facebook, and other places on the Internet.)
Koei Tecmo Europe did slightly pull back when asked about it, however.
@henkka_art @Boogie2988 We said the CM was honest to confirm that isn’t coming to the west.We don’t approve that he put the blame on anyone.
— KOEI TECMO EUROPE (@koeitecmoeurope) November 25, 2015
If you’ve made it to the end of this story hoping for an easy resolution, it doesn’t exist. So long as Koei Tecmo is silent, a garbled Facebook comment will continue serving as the latest ammunition in a never-ending ideological war.
Comments
91 responses to “Why So Many People Are Yelling About Dead Or Alive Xtreme 3”
Ergh, if nobody fanned the flames this game would never have gotten attention. I wasn’t even aware it was in development until this drama started up.
Let’s be honest, this game series is the franchise every gamer is embarressed about.
To be fair, it’s fairly impressive to have built a fighting game that can be played one-handed.
I see what you did there…
You saw that? *closes blinds*
Nope. I’m certainly not embarrassed to admit I own every DOA, including re-releases. Nor am I embarrassed to admit to owning several pieces of DOA merchandise.
DOA occupies the same space in gaming that Schlocky horror and comedies do in the movie world. But as a gaming community, a majority seem to want games to be pure art, and try to distance themselves from games like DOA, or Duke Nukem. Why? We don’t disregard Citizen Kane just because Bikini Zombie Strippers exists. There’s plenty of room in gaming for Leisure Suit Larry as there is Ico.
This. The fighting games are particularly great. The regressives and SJWs think they speak for everyone and they bully developers into submission. This is a perfect example.
It’s a bit sad when an author of an article dictates what every other consumer should want or like.
No one should have morality preached to them. It was people enforcing their morality onto others which enforced discrimination in the first place.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/508414245406041312/
On the internet the winner is often whoever voices the most outrage. People who think DOA is OK are not going to shout with outrage and write in-depth articles defending the series in the same way that certain people attacking it do. It’s tough for publishers to know which ‘outrage of the week’ could blow up into serious PR damage and which will just turn out to be a damp squib. We certainly live in interesting times.
It is the age of righteous indignation… and may it die a horrible death soon!!
I’ll just point out Slave Leah here… and how for some reason it was “ok” because it’s part of star wars and barely anyone bats an eyelid on that stuff.
But because were here talking about games fan service seems to be a dirty dirty word. And yet every other medium is more than free to have “high art stuff”, B-grade stuff and the downright down and dirty “porn”. All of this is accepted.
It’s an entirely different context though. The whole point of Jabba putting leia in a bikini and chains was because it was degrading.
It’s still fan service.
Jabba could have just had her thrown in a hole in the dark and it would be just as degrading to her in a number of ways. Granted there *was* context to the use of the outfit but it’s still fan service.
That’s true.
A video game with fake women in bikinis gets them going. I guess they are ok with real women in porn then?
Speak for yourself. We used to play the original DOA extreme volleyball for freakin hours back in the day. It was the perfect game for a drunken night in with friends
Straight female here and I friggin’ loved DOA volleyball. I enjoyed matching bikini’s, shoes, nail polish and even volleyballs! One of my favourite thing’s to do was to play as Tina and smash the volleyball into the opponents faces, attempting to knock them over.
Also, every female I know found the boob physics hilarious.
I’m not embarrassed and I’m not even interested in playing this game.
Instead why don’t we be honest that we’re still too uncomfortable with ourselves to enjoy some tits and ass?
Awaits “real women have curves” propaganda.
That cracks me up because almost every woman has curves.
Play minecraft 😉
Not me! *grins*
My kids loved this game on the 360, its a shame its not coming to the xbox one
Revealing swimsuit is revealing…..or, a bikini.
Everyone gets in a great big huff. So many enemies, everyone’s an enemy!
Looking at the twitter discussions about this and the only legit thing that makes me upset is:
a) this game isn’t coming out in the west for whatever reason.
and
b) You can’t just discuss it, you have to make a stand! One person makes a stand, the other makes a stand, now you’re enemies – commence insulting each other.
Stop liking what I don’t like!
You sir have pretty much summed up why gender discussion in video games is a dead end topic.
I love my fanservice. And if that’s not your cup of tea fine. If you have an opinion about it being inappropriate I’m ok with that and heck if you even say that it leans towards one part of the demographic in games far more than others I will even agree with you.
The problem is everyone seems to have to “take a stand!” and take a “down with the establishment!” view. It’s become a massive cesspool of “I don’t like this as it offends my sensibilities and therefore should not be made!” line of arguments and thinking. By all means point out the flaws but don’t be so arrogant to think that because you are majority/minority means you opinions and views are necessarily 100% correct
At the same time it’s also hard to have any opinion/critique because even well worded ones will always be blown out of proportion and people start “digging the trenches” for a war when a good discussion and a healthy agree to disagree can lead to much more positive outcomes.
Can we for once have a proper discussion on whats wrong/what’s right and accept that every culture’s point of view may not mesh w/ your sense of moralities and work towards a solution instead of just flat out saying “this offends me!” and should not be around
Yup yup. I don’t even care if it offends them and they don’t want it. I do care, however, if they initiate the conversation solely to shut it down over the appearance of detractors, or to spend their time making a case for how other strangers are ripe for derision.
I see too many friends who are either for or against in these topics filling up my twitter feed with nothing but snarky remarks about how x people are ‘trash’.
Same with this PlayAsia debacle here. They certainly pretty tactless in this marketing spiel here but then I see people yelling on about how ‘they’ll never buy from PA again’ – Who cares?
Actually what amuses me is how many of those “Will never buy!” actually ever used PA to begin with? Or for that matter actually stick to their principles once they find a product only available on PA =P
All pointless rhetoric in my books
To paraphrase Stephen Fry, people who ‘feel offended’ can just fuck off!
It’s funny how every time one of these games comes out it blows up all sorts of controversy.
It’s girls in bikinis. Don’t we have more important things to get worked up about and offended over?
I own the original on the XBOX and i found the volleyball part to be very well done and enjoyable, female form aside. Teenage me didn’t mind the girls either, though. Stupid hormones.
I feel that this could be made more legitimate by adding males, but looking at other games of similar ilk originating from Japan – fat chance.
These sorts of things are heavily ingrained in their culture, and i think westerners need to understand that their culture is not our culture – we will always be very unlikely to understand it.
Hence their response regarding a western local version.
If people REALLY want it (and some will) they will just import it, as with the rest of these niche Japanese games.
What is most amusing to me, though, is that stuff like this will be trawled over with a fine tooth comb to point out every inequality.
Meanwhile things like Magic Mike exist without an issue…
Yeah I disagree. There is no excuse to hate on this game or to not release it (should sales to be made).
Right now, our culture is not my culture!
I don’t know why these dickheads preach morality regarding a consumer product. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it. If others do, they are free to buy it.
If there was a game called gas chamber simulator 2015, I sure as hell won’t be buying it, nor would I be a fan of its content, but I’m sure as hell not going to repress or censor the product or prevent it from being released let alone whine about it in a blog because it doesn’t align with my beliefs.
And yet when a large part of the consumer base says “I am sick of seeing this same thing that I’m uninterested in again and again. Please make this other thing that I want to spend money on”, the internet shits its collective pants and screams censorship while proving all of the misogyny claims to be guilty as charged.
Nobody (credible) is trying to ban these things. Saying that you disapprove of a thing because you find it culturally damaging is not the same as banning it. Asking the people who produce these products why they do it isn’t censorship. When the inevitable answer comes back as “money”, it is also not censorship to say “Well, howabout instead of making the 5000th version of this one thing that I hate, make a thing I like and I will buy it” is also not censorship.
You’re free to buy Uncanny Valley Balloon Boob Simulator 2015, people are free to call both the game and the people who buy it gross. You are free to ignore them and enjoy your thing that you bought.
As far as morality in consumer products goes, you seem to be getting dangerously close to Rand territory, which is not a good place to go. We have ethics in consumer products. We require them. Without them we’d be in a lot of trouble. Ethics and morality are entirely different, though.
Yes, and we can apply our Ethics in the choices of products we buy.
I’m not saying there should be no ethics, i’m saying we can express those with our purchasing choices.
But there is no standard of ethics for the products on sale?
Regardless, you are changing the topic. Your outrage is false outrage. There’s no driving force behind banning these type of games. They won’t be legislated against. They may not be released, but that’s just a business deciding that they don’t want to risk alienating customers. That’s sound business sense, not the morality police.
Let’s be honest, it was an amazing volleyball game. Incredibly solid, easy controls, quick to pick up hard to master. The rest was really fluff around a good volleyball game.
I mean, people seem to forget Outlaw volleyball exists and I think that looked trashier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaw_Volleyball
I could hug you right now.
Oh mann.. outlaw volleyball… hahahaha
Also, you could knock over the girls if you hit the volleyball in their face hard enough =P
The mini games in DOAX2 were freaking hard. The waterslide especially.
Still need to get x2… not sure if I’d be able to explain that one to the wife.
“The Volleyball is reallly good!”
“Yeah well, i’ve seen enough of her volleballs – take the disc out and burn it”
The butt battles will probably be what tips her over the edge.
I actually quite liked that in the original, that if they didn’t like the bathing suit, they wouldn’t wear it.
Cool – i’m hanging out with you to play all my seedy games from now on
I also have wet =P Which sounds seedy but was actually a really enjoyable game (at least for me)
@scree – you have no idea how hard it is for me to not make a seedy joke about liking girls that have wet.
You think that’s bad – I have rumble roses.
Also Bikini Zombie Slayers.
Besides, I thought wet was meant to actually be a half decent game?
Oh it’s a really good game, I massively enjoyed it. It’s similar to the old style hong kong films.
@ scree
Nice!
I need to pick it up at some point. I do remember seeing it pre-release thinking it looked quite snazzy.
To be honest, the west totally deserve this treatment.
There is enough of the whines and rants from the vocal minority to degrade the western gaming community to the point that Eastern publishers are going fuck all and not bother releasing it in the west in case of attacks from the vocal minority.
With the ridiculous whines, rants, censorship complaints, etc. I am not surprised that publishers have finally break. More publishers will do this and in the end the loss is the west.
Clearly the answer is to make an equal number of fap-worthy games with scantily clad dudes running around brimming with fanservice and not much else, that is specifically designed to appeal to women, and then everyone can be happy they have their fap-material or be outraged, depending on what their jam is.
There is actually quite a fair few otome/reverse harem games being released now in the west. And those male designs definitely count as fan service =P
It just doesn’t get coverage because
1) their visual novels
2) it’s so much easier to point out an existing gender divide issue for controversy than actually pointing out progess and how to expand on said progress
I apologise in advance for the length and that it’s a bit ranty (I’m certainly not having a go at you either!!), this is what you get on a Friday arvo when I’m a bit hangry. So…
Yeah no, I do know that, but where are the games with a bunch of dudes wearing little more than a small hanky playing volleyball with no plot and, I dunno, real dick physics that people have spent years working on to get the bounce just right (maybe independent nut physics*?) just for the sake of it?
Where are all the games where over-sexualised dudes are the wallpaper “just because” and have very little if not nothing to do with the plot, most of the time? Where are the games where the male character’s design is casually sexualised because the designers don’t even think twice about how to dress him or even what his actual characterisation is, the way it happens with female characters, because that’s just how it’s done? This is what I am talking about. Not just a handful of visual novels which yes, they are fanservicey, I will acknowledge.
Just… give me the casual hyper-objectification of the male figure (designed for the female gaze, not the false equivalence male power fantasies claimed to be objectification like dudes like to argue about comic books, for example) in practically every other game you can pick up**. I’m not saying this never happens in the occasional game, but I want it to be the kind of wall-to-wall insidiously prevalent shit that’s there wherever you turn.
And you know what? I say this as someone who doesn’t even like dudes like that.
But Renne, I hear you say, doesn’t that mean you should like the sexualisation of women?
Sometimes I do, this is true. Within context. With the right story and the story it makes sense in. But frankly, there’s not a massive overlap between what male video game designers find hot and what I find hot in terms of what makes it into a video game, more’s the shame.
RE: 2 as per the above, it’s hardly as simple as pointing it out for “controversy”, though, because things don’t exist in a vacuum. If this were the only franchise in a world where women aren’t constantly objectified and commodified for being women, then that would definitely be a point. But it’s not the only franchise, existing in a vacuum.
In an ideal world an argument would be based solely on the item under discussion. As it’s not an ideal world, I think that’s where a lot of this issue comes from. Because the people arguing for it tend to seeing it as only ever being just one thing, just this one thing, rarely seeing it in the context of the greater thing, whereas the arguments against tend to be more like “sure, it’s just one thing, but it’s one thing in a veritable sea of ‘just one thing’s’, so it’s not ‘just one thing’ at all.”
Anyway. That’s my thoughts as a wall of text, and now I’m going to eat my feelings for lunch. 😉
*Actually no, I thought about that and let’s not with the independent nut physics.
** Because yes, I know they’re not all like that.
Here’s the thing… articles like this tend to create their “own” vacuum…
One wherein every “objectification of women” (for a lack of better term.. because I honestly hate using that phrase) gets brought up to the sacrificial pulpit of “everything that is wrong with gamessss!”. Cheese cake and fanservice have a right to exist in games as well. Every media out there has their own brand of cheese cake for both sexes and it’s never singled out – porn mags, B-grade films, adult novels
And you know what I agree. There is a definite lack of pure female aimed cheese cake (at least in the west.. the amount of other stuff in Jp can be staggering which is why I find it amusing when people like to get preachy about Jp being the place of weird sexy for men when they toss out almost the same stuff for females =P) but when you constantly just poke “controversy” instead of a proper discussion at an already grossly unbalanced medium you get into situations I mentioned above – a dead end where there is no willingness to compromise.
And the reverse can be said of your argument in the positive as well. Sure reverse harems VN’s are just “one thing”, but if you keep focusing on that “one thing” and help it succeed it becomes an army of “one things” and hey maybe we will have an actual thriving otome/female cheese cake releases in the west!
My point is basically that by all means feel free to point out the problem but in the process do not forget that your opinion may not reflect everyone or for that matter that the reason such a product exists is that there is a consumer for said product and you are alienating them at the expense of getting people to understand your point of view. Hence the term “constructive criticism”.
Wasn’t there a string of nude dude games recently? like the showering simulator game?
This is the first I’ve heard from it, but at the same time I wouldn’t be surprised, there’s simulators for everything these days.
But given google’s penchant for putting inappropriate google images responses up every time I google something when the boss walks past, I’m not going to risk checking it out at work! 😉
Yeah, that’s wise. I do recall a few articles on ‘Shower with your Dad simulator’ and another game in the same vain over the past few months.
Shower With Your Dad was a pixel art joke game. It’s not even close to being on the same continent as the same thing.
Apologies, I was thinking of Shower simulator: Rinse and Repeat.
http://www.polygon.com/2015/9/24/9394327/shower-simulator-rinse-and-repeat-makes-the-twitch-shortlist-for
Couldn’t reply to your other comment. Too many nested replies.
I hadn’t seen this one. Not clicking that until I get home from work.
That’s wise. Its pretty explicit.
I don’t want to sound like I’m dismissing your position here, because I’m absolutely not, but I’d personally say that the reason we aren’t seeing ‘female gaze’ (and I’m loathe to use the term) versions of these games is because there just isn’t the demand for it. I’m sure that there are people out there who would like to purchase games like this, but I don’t think they’re (currently) in large enough numbers to justify the development of them financially. I’d just as happily be proven wrong, and I’m all for people having more choices when it comes to games, but unless there’s a vocal group of people asking and clamoring for these sorts of games (and I certainly haven’t seen it), I just can’t see them happening.
This is a pretty hard thing to gauge. The whole reason why companies will rewrite entire movies to shoe-horn in a male lead is because the market data suggests that nobody wants to spend money on [insert genre] movies with women in them. So they don’t make them. So they don’t sell, which reinforces the data. On the rare occasion they take a chance on it, they don’t want to commit to a big risk, so you get B-grade movies that people don’t watch (because they are bad, not because they have a woman), also reinforcing the data.
Then something like Mad Max 4 comes along and shows that if you put the time, money, and talent into it, people will buy.
The porn industry is being hurt pretty badly by the internet right now, except in niche areas, like the largely untapped porn-for-women market. The reason nobody buys porn for women is because it’s basically porn for straight men, but with a guy instead of a girl. When someone actually put the time, money, and effort in, all the metrics were blown out of the water.
Trust me w/ the amount of otome/BL stuff released from Jp for their market… there is a definite market for female cheese cake =P
The problem is for the moment *western* devs are playing the “safe” card by just targeting the male demographic because it *is* a safe market they’ve had years to see what works and what doesn’t and how much they can get away with. Starting off a game w/ female cheese cake in mind? That’s another layer of marketing headaches they’d have to sink money into.
I mean heck we can’t even figure out in the west whats a “good” female lead/role model for “gender empowerment”… just look at the drama of Bayonetta’s character. And you’re going to throw in what’s classed as “cheese cake” for a gender group you’ve barely looked up on besides the “rainbows and unicorns” for younger audiences
Second I’m fairly sure there is also vocal group out there for this stuff… the problem is 99.9% of the time they got out-shouted by the more common “outrage brigade”. It’s easier to point out what’s wrong/offensive than screaming out what you love or would like to see.
THIS IS AN OUTRAGE
*VIOLENTLY YIFFS WAIFU PILLOW*
You dont speak for me. I am not embarrassed with the DOA franchise. I am not sure why every game and every franchise needs to be serious and straight down the line
Games are about fun. Lots of people find DOA fun. Goal achieved
Edit Kotaku reply failure
I find this article a bit confounding…
So many paragraphs trying to lead to some speculation/conclusion/context and then swiftly doing a self rebuttal on said speculation by throwing in more “cannot confirm with more speculation”
So exactly what’s the point here? DoAX3 isn’t coming out *check*, Fans are understandably upset *check*
… try and throw controversy by making this either a Japan Culture vs Western Culture thing w/ speculation because KT won’t comment on their stance? *check… maybe* make this a pseudo gender divide argument by saying it’s “SJW” who were responsible but no organised protest was done (a very stupid logical argument flaw btw..) *check… maybe*
wont be surprised if this is released to the australian or north american market in a couple months time, “After Popular Demand, its the game they don’t want you to have”
SJW’s are a faceless group who would be happy to take the blame because they’ve contributed to their ideologies and furthered their cause.
I’m all for letting people play games that they deem appropriate to themselves, perhaps we could have an 18+ outlet were these “offensive” games can’t reach the ‘poor defenseless children’
All I want is a game where I can have Matt Shirvington cock physics.
Rio 2016 Olympics game with genitalia physics.
Coming Up Next – The 400m Hurdels for well endowed men!
Can already see myself mashing X and O. Need to get that slow mo replay when they go over the finish line for extra style.
It would be like a whole bunch of grandfather clocks marching towards you.
Mount Your Friends is pretty close…
http://store.steampowered.com/app/296470/
Thanks to numerous studies, we now know that a normal person who frequently plays violent video games is no more likely to go out into the world and be violent than anyone else. That’s pretty widely accepted these days, especially amongst the gaming community itself. So why do we then think that a normal person who enjoys games with T&A will become a misogynistic asshat after playing something like DOAX? Unless I’m mistaken, the whole crux of the argument against racey content in games seems to built on the same knee-jerk reaction as the (debunked) anti-violent video game argument.
That’s actually a tad bit of a strawman argument a lot of folks tend to use to muddy the waters from both sides. Extreme feminists use it as an additional excuse to postulate misogynistic tendencies of the industry and the other side of camp by claiming that it’s the root cause of the issue w/ cheese cake stuff
At the end of the day the problem is really simple. VG is unfortunately lopsided when it comes to fan service. Especially of the cheese cake variety aimed at men. It’s a very valid argument that there isn’t really any significant cheese cake stuff out there for the ladies.
THAT BEING SAID
I’m not arguing that this is also an excuse to crucify/edit/remove cheese cake/fan service. If it’s not your thing then don’t look and move on. Everyone has the right to enjoy there “proper” games and “cheese cake” stuff. But it wouldn’t hurt to have cheese cake aimed at females either
Pity everyone is jumping in headfirst where there is little solid information.
So much conspiratorial shit being thrown about. It’s absurd.
still can’t play it with one hand though :/
you know, in all honesty, i really enjoyed DOA XBV on the original xbox… very solid volleyball game… i remember friends and i used to stuff around and have mini comps on that pool minigame, where you had to hop across the platforms in the pool… so stupid.
I have a weird thing where I have to remove the shoes before doing the pool hopping game. I can’t stand the thought of them with wet shoes on their feet.
you can remove shoes? lol
mainly played the main volleyball game, the pool thing happened after we got bored…
Select them again to take them off. Just weirded me out
Related note: a handful were angered that PlayAsia a) DARED to sell this game (the Asian release) when it would otherwise be unavailable and b) that PlayAsia used “#SJW” in a tweet, while mentioning that they’d be selling the game.
Kotaku’s own Luke Plunkett made a heavily retweeted tweet, using PlayAsia’s tweet as an example of “How to lose friends and influence nobody”.
He was a little bit wrong though, since PlayAsia gained over 13.5k followers since their initial tweet, more than doubling their previous followercount.
What I’m getting at here is: If a bunch of people did not get their knickers in a knot over PlayAsia saying the dreaded “SJW”, or over PlayAsia selling the game, they probably wouldn’t have had a huge showing of support. It’s basically the Streisand effect.
More importantly: Why does anyone care if some people play stupid titty games? There’s only a billion things more important that what kind of games people like, and as the Gone Home fiasco proves, there’s room for one type of game and every other type of game to exist in the same place. If one of the biggest problems in your life is other people buying DOAX3, you must be privileged as fuck.
The problem isn’t the fact that stupid titty games exist. It’s that with rare exceptions, the sum total of women in the largest entertainment industry in the world can be reduced to either plot device, window dressing, or punchline.
Like I said in a comment further up. Nobody with credibility is trying to stop them existing. People are saying “Why is this all we can get?” Which is a damn good question. A question that is rarely thought about because the people answering are too busy being utterly outraged at the idea that someone might be outraged.
But is this “all we can get”? By saying that, aren’t we ignoring the games with better representation?
It’s not a zero sum game. This is telling the big guns that you’re not spending your money on them, but you would if they actually gave you something you wanted to buy. It doesn’t mean you can’t also buy and talk about the smaller offerings that suit you. It’s just that they are smaller. They have smaller scope, shorter reach, less opportunity for success. More always helps. Especially when some of that more comes from something with a big production and advertising budget.
Besides, better representation doesn’t always mean a better game. Usually, “better” representation of minorities comes at the expense of having decent publisher support. That hurts quality and advertising reach. Which means the game sells badly, the publisher stops making things like that because they don’t sell and then has the mistaken belief that it didn’t sell because it had a particular minority or whatever in it. It’s a weird circular logic that Hollywood has operated on for a long time and the studio system in games has fostered the same thing.
Me & my wife don’t get it ! So many great memories playing DOA xtreme beach volleyball.
Is it sexual…ya ! A bit juvenile…sure ! But that’s what guilty pleasures are for. I don’t ever think I considered any of the girls of this game hotter than my wife. They all just look like plastic dolls to me, and the recent “upgrade” actually adds fuller figures, more realistic waist lines, and variety to the representation of female forms. And I don’t beholden their polygonal bodies as any “standard” of beauty anyway. Besides…who cares what a bunch of so called “nerds” think a woman should look like ?
No, I think this is about control. People don’t want to see things they don’t like, but that life hu ? I love great, well thought movies…but I hate cheap thrasher films. Should I petition them out of existence based on that? Better yet, does that mean I cant look at a film with cheap laughs or thrills, like a Robert Rodriguez flick? Desperado was full of brilliant, brilliant machismo moments !
So long as they use that rating system, warn people of the content, and keep this out of young impressionable young hands, I personally see no problem.
Not everyone can look at a Quentin Tarantino flick; so not everyone can play a DOA game! And yet there are games that have a truly modest female protagonist; the current Tomb Raider comes to mind. Still doesn’t mean the two can’t exist in the same genre or medium. Besides…does it really matter what the public at large thinks of such a niche game, or a niche series, enjoyed by a niche audience anyway?
Atleast, that’s what I think. Nuff said !
You know what’s really fucking sad about this whole debacle? It’s all fucking bullshit based on a stupid lie a stupid PR moron made up.
Tecmo Koei refusing to release DoAX3 in the west has NOTHING to do with the current debate about sexism and representations of women in gaming. NOTHING. AT ALL. That’s all made-up bullshit designed to shift the blame away from them because they don’t want to upset anyone by manning up and admitting “we can’t be bothered localising this game in the west because it won’t sell enough to be worth our while”. Bob Chipman just did an in-depth video about it: http://moviebob.blogspot.com.au/2015/11/game-overthinker-dumber-alive.html Nobody is telling Tecmo Koei they can’t release it in the west. Nor is there anything anyone can do to them if they did decide to release it. They just don’t want to. This is not “censorship”. It’s
While the game is getting a lot of attention in the underground creeper hentai circles, the majority of the gamer community seriously does not give two shits about Dead or Alive Extreme Boob Jiggling (don’t bother responding “well I’d buy it”, come back and talk to me when you get your name legally changed by deed poll to The Majority Of The Gaming Community), it’s been about a decade since the last one, it wouldn’t be a big seller and it’s honestly more effort than it’s worth for them, especially since they’re releasing an English version in Japan that the region-unlocked console owners can import anyway, giving them MORE money for LESS effort. But they don’t want people confronting them with the simple truth when there’s an easy way to redirect the outrage, so they cry “the evil SJWs are locking us out!” and all the screaming morons of the gaming community have taken the bait hook, line and sinker.
Fucking sad that so many people can be so fucking stupid, but I’m used to it by now.
Slight formatting problem there, what I meant to say at the end of the 2nd paragraph was: This is not “censorship”. It’s capitalism.