How Much Will the Quake in Japan Affect the Game Industry?

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Originally Posted by Yoshi

My point is that his epiphanies are largely bullshit. People like movies, games, music, etc. because they either let them escape from reality or because it allows them to do things they wouldn't normally be able to do. This has been true since silent movies or even earlier with plays. And war and natural disasters are even older. This isn't some contemporary issue that is shocking.

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That may be true, but just because people have done something for a long time doesn't necessarily make it fine. Plus, games are a different medium. Movies and plays generally have real stories to tell, but games are played for up to hundreds of hours, and if they have a story its secondary to the escapism/fun of playing. Modern Warfare had some interesting narrative stuff for a game, but come on, no one played it for anything other than pure entertainment.

I don't know if it's bad or not, but I feel kind of uncomfortable with it anyway.

It's hard for me to separate your feelings here from those quacks who think that playing violent games breeds real life violence, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Granted, feelings are feelings, and I understand you can't control them, but healthy people can separate fiction from nonfiction, even without Dewey!

Huh? What I'm talking about has nothing to do with games influencing people in real life.

I'm talking about it possibly being shameful to escape from real life into something for fun, when it actually exists in real life somewhere and is terrible. It's not about discerning fact from fiction at all. Extreme example: If there was a game about raping children (waiting for a link to one of these now), no matter how fun the core game is, I'm not interested in that either. And not because I confuse imaginary child raping for fun with real child raping. It's an unpleasant subject.

Carmageddon was fun (in many ways). Certain things I find OK and certain things I don't. Manhunt was a little too disturbing. I think it all comes down to the intimacy of what is displayed. Rape is always intimate IMO, so I doubt I could enjoy any game based on that. But natural disasters? Yeah

I mean, if I lost everything due to one I would probably feel different, but I am pretty sure I wouldn't be thinking about video games.

Thankfully the child raping game wouldn't sell well enough to warrant its development. But the reason I am comparing your shame argument to the real life violence one is that both are slippery slopes to unnecessary censorship. You should be able to make a personal decision that you don't want to play games that may hit certain nerves. But if those same games don't hit nerves for me, don't get in my way of playing them.

Having terrible flashbacks of a recent gun-control debate in Sound Off, so let me say I don't favor any kind of censorship. As for the child raping analogy, to me killing other people or getting killed in a real war seems just about as fun. But yeah, the line can be hard to draw sometimes and YMMV.

And I hope Zettai Zetsumei Toshi 4 eventually comes out (which it unfortunately sounds like it won't), 'cause I was looking forward to it. Original post was just about how it makes sense that they wouldn't release it right now. Most people in Japan probably wouldn't feel like playing it (Irem's market I'm guessing), and most adults capable of empathy in other places might not either.

Dunno about RGG: Of The End. Tokyo has been looking kind of like a zombie movie for the past week with most of the lights turned off.

Yeah but that game (the first, not the second, although it isn't exactly a mega-hit) isn't really that popular to begin with. I don't know how many fans of the series would turn away from the newest installment.

Yeah, I've been under the impression they sell more domestically. The PSP one didn't even get released in English did it?

I really, really wanted a Disaster Report game that didn't look awful, so I am hoping this one pulls through and gets localized. I still have the two PS2 games. They are the minute minority of 3D games I still have for that system because of their uniqueness.

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Originally Posted by Salsashark

Zettai Zetsumei Toshi 4...RGG: Of The End.

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Get out of my face with this bullshit.