Boycott Atlus

[Satan's Onion]

Originally Posted by Pip Boy

I have to say that the degree of sensationalism I'm seeing in this effort makes me take it with a grain of salt. There isn't a whole lot in all this that makes me feel I have any reason to dislike Atlus except to take your word for it that they're dicks. Maybe you could post more of the actual offending content rather than just describing it while showing other, unrelated content? I'm also curious about the two drawings of the girl on the cover, since one of them really is a lot more revealing even outside of the parts covered by the title lettering. Could you perhaps demonstrate where in the game that second image appears?

Liz has mentioned--just a few posts before yours in fact--that she's doing exactly that.

Originally Posted by Liz

I made the tumblr a few days ago and am spacing out updates so that 1. It keeps showing up again and again and again in the Atlus tag on Tumblr and 2. It takes a bit to gather shit.

Originally Posted by Pip Boy

You might also take more care to be respectful in your responses, Liz. If someone isn't quite convinced of your point, you'll get a lot farther by providing them with more evidence and building your case rather than shouting about derailing and entitlement. Such accusations make you seem immature and damage any case you're making accordingly.

I for one think she's actually been fairly patient in this thread--particularly compared to some of her past problems. I'm certainly not seeing any "shouting about entitlement". She has pointed out some derailment, but pointing out "hey, that argument has been trotted out a thousand times before and it's not germane to the argument/nitpicking/nonsense" is not the same as shouting.

Originally Posted by Pip Boy

I also share some in the sentiment that I don't think Atlus is an appropriate target for this campaign. If you're really so mad about this and want to put a stop to it, wouldn't it make a lot more sense to go after the developers of the offending content instead of the publishers. I feel like attacking Atlus just sends the wrong message.

Again, Liz has detailed in this very thread her several reasons why she chose to target Atlus in particular. To wit:

Originally Posted by Liz

@Bells: Because boycotts work best when they are focused on individual companies, and because making an example of a company helps show other companies that they can't keep doing a thing for long before they're the next target. ...

Originally Posted by Krylo

Also, I'd assume, because, to the best of my knowledge, Capcom/Squeenix/Other Examples have never claimed to be tackling matters of sexuality and whatnot maturely while Atlus has. Which makes them a good example.

Originally Posted by Liz

Yeah. Atlus also gets a lot of cred from allies for being progressive, but it fucks up a LOT.

Originally Posted by Pip Boy

... There is another side to this argument, however, which is that these games are developed in another culture where this kind of thing is not looked upon as seriously as it is here. While Im not saying that this makes the issue completely dismissable, it is worth considering that there are much worse offenders out there compared to whom Atlus doesn't look all that bad. ...

That it came from another culture where people are generally more dismissive of the rights of trans folks doesn't make it less dismissive of trans folks, and it certainly doesn't make it any more acceptable to let it continue without comment or consequences.

To summarize: Pip Boy, in this post you come off an awful lot like you didn't actually bother to read the thread before opining at some length about what Liz should or shouldn't do. Next time you want to debate someone's argument, it would be best for you if you read that argument much more closely.

[Bells]

Originally Posted by Liz

@Bells: Because boycotts work best when they are focused on individual companies, and because making an example of a company helps show other companies that they can't keep doing a thing for long before they're the next target.

Yeaaaaaaaaaaah... no. Everything i posted before still pretty much stands firmly against this reasoning.

Again... why Atlus? If you're just gonna pick one at random (and completely gloss over the other points i made before) than it's not "making an example" it's just unfair bashing and warrants no merits to be taken seriously... at all. It works best when focused on a single company, ok. Why this one deserves it more than the others?

[CABAL49]

Atlus isn't being picked at random. Liz has stated rather clearly why Atlus and not others. I am not going to link her comments like SO did, cause if I can read all the posts here, so can you.

[POS Industries]

Originally Posted by Bells

Again... why Atlus?

Because, while the other companies you mentioned are fucking up in their own ways, Atlus is currently in the habit of fucking up in more ways than all of them. They are basically at the forefront of offensive decisions involving sexism, homophobia, and transphobia in the American video game market.

"But POS," I'm sure you ask, "Why only focus on boycotting an American company?"

Because we live in America. This directly impacts numerous segments of American culture. We can't bloody well have any impact on game sales or social issues in Japan because we don't live there. We have no power to do anything about that except glare judgmentally across the Pacific. But we can make our voices heard on what's being marketed to us here in the States, so we're gonna.

[Aerozord]

Originally Posted by POS Industries

Because we live in America. This directly impacts numerous segments of American culture. We can't bloody well have any impact on game sales or social issues in Japan because we don't live there. We have no power to do anything about that except glare judgmentally across the Pacific. But we can make our voices heard on what's being marketed to us here in the States, so we're gonna.

sure we can. America is a huge chunk of the gaming market and Japanese developers are trying to appeal to American consumer for this reason. Now this isn't true for all games. If its games that sell well enough in Japan alone they wont really care they just wont localize. But you could also consider offensive games never making it over a victory as well.

[Bells]

Originally Posted by CABAL49

Atlus isn't being picked at random. Liz has stated rather clearly why Atlus and not others. I am not going to link her comments like SO did, cause if I can read all the posts here, so can you.

I Have and it doesn't! Which actually related to what i posted earlier...

@POS

You're telling me "they are bad because of reasons" i'm not being impervious here , i'm honestly opening up to be explained at as to why you guys view this the way you do, cause i can't honestly see it like that... at all. Just like i said earlier.

And Atlus is not an American company, it's a Japanese company. It just has an American subsidiary, and even that is not 100% true nowadays because Atlus is under direct control of it's father company Index Corporation.

And even if it was focused on USA Based Atlus, the games being used as examples are Japanese made and designed games, which reels right back to what i said earlier.

And BTW if you wanna a Boycott that has effect, by Boycotting Index Coporation (which is who pays the bills) you are also going to have to Boycott Madhouse's animes because it belongs to the same company and if you take a quick look at their portfolio you're gonna see more examples of the exact same things you guys are complaining about here... wierd enough you'll still be able to Watch the Persona 4 anime, cause that's not by Madhouse (go figure...)

[Satan's Onion]

Just wanted to touch on this a bit here:

Originally Posted by Bells

I think you are over inflating your views with buzzwords, spin and Blind Fire Outrage.

Sorry, but i just don't see it.

Not saying you don't might have a point, just saying that it doesn't really come across to me... why single out Atlus? Have you taken in account Japanese culture? Gaming habits? Sensibilities and themes that matter for those who develop games over there?

Shouldn't you be targeting predatory marketing instead?

Why does Atlus deserves to be a special target in this particular subject matter? So much so that it deserves to be singled out into an specific campaign against the company as a WHOLE?

Are you going to Boycott Bandai for Queen's Blade? Sure, the Queen's blade games didn't leave Japan... but that surely is not a problem for you since you are targeting Atlus who is from the same country... or are you just bothered about equality on your own backyard?

Nothing to say about Rockstar? Square Enix got some flak for Nier and it's Intersex character Kainé... is this just about Badly portrail of Sexuality in games? Hyper Sexualization?

...have you seen Code Of Princess's gameplay? I did... it has Boob Jiggle physics... is that also a issue for you? Are you going to Boycott Tecmo and Team Ninja?

The artist who actually created the visual of the characters in that game that you are displeased with is Kinu Nishimura, a Woman, Artist, who works at capcom and worked on such games like Street Fighter 4, Snk vs Capcom, Marvel vs Capcom, Darkstalkers.... she is directly responsible fpr the artwork you're using as a flag for your Boycott. Do you plan to Boycott her Work as well?

I mean, you pointed at Atlus for just Publishing the game and are creating a Boycott extended to the whole company for it, should the Artist directly responsible for the art get a pass? Atlus made, makes and is still making a ton of other games that are nothing like your main issues, but your Boycott envelops them too...

Wouldn't you be supporting her paychecks by giving credit to her work in other forms? On the other company who employs her ? So, does your Boycott extends to Capcom? Morrigan, Chun Li, Cammy, Rose, Felicia, Sakura, Ibuki, Elena... all featured in length with the same Male targeted sexually charged passive-agressive marketing ploys to sell video games... and actually a few art pieces are probably made by the exact same artist that made the art for code of princess that causes you such rage that you have to Boycott the entire company... !!

Again, i'm not trying to piss on your head from the upper floor, but if you can elaborate on your thoguhts a bit further that would be best... cause right now, all i see is babble. Your problem is with marketing. Not publishing, not developing... and if you want to pick a whole company for just those 2 examples you gave as being "enough" and "justified" you're gonna come out as shallow, hypocrite and lazy at your attempt with any analyzes beyond the cracked surface of the arguments your posted here. If you gonna single out Atlus and think your reasons are enough, than i can ask you why you draw the line there? What does that company do that is so much worst than the others who done similar and the same? In the end of that spiral, you just might as well Boycott japan... and then i would have to ask if that doesn't make you a Xenophobe... because, Buzzwords and Blind Rage are just that easy to make.

This is all rage machine. And again, if you have a better point to make, if you have something more to share on your thoughts and i can see your point, i sure as hell don't mind supporting it.

As for persona, i just gonna leave this Extra Credits video, because it's about that and also the very first thing that came to mind... they make a better point than i could possibly do

http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/sexual-diversity

The fact that Liz has picked this issue in particular, and not any of the many other problems with contemporary characterization in videogaming, is no grounds for dismissing her argument because she's not taking care of everything else at the same time. It's not her job--simple as that.

I'm not accusing you of deliberately derailing the conversation because you're a jerky jerkface who jerks it up everywhere he goes, because that would be stupid. But you should know that the way in which you brought these issues up--asking her "well, why aren't you also addressing [issue], [problem], [nitpick], [mistake] and all these other things, huh?"--comes off exactly like the gambit that practiced assholes use to try and get activists to give up on a problem without actually addressing the merit of that activist's argument.

I hasten to repeat that I'm not accusing you, Bells, of doing that. I would, however, point out that if all the other issues you've brought up in that post are as important to you as you've indicated, there's absolutely nothing stopping you from speaking out about it yourself.

edit: Bells, do you seriously need to be told why games that make "loltranny" jokes, or games that include a transgender character only to insist that "nuh-uh, she's not really trans, she's only confused and stuff" are problematic for trans folks? Seriously?

[Krylo]

Originally Posted by Bells

i'm not being impervious here , i'm honestly opening up to be explained at as to why you guys view this the way you do

Really because:

Originally Posted by Liz

@Bells: Because boycotts work best when they are focused on individual companies, and because making an example of a company helps show other companies that they can't keep doing a thing for long before they're the next target.

Originally Posted by Krylo

Also, I'd assume, because, to the best of my knowledge, Capcom/Squeenix/Other Examples have never claimed to be tackling matters of sexuality and whatnot maturely while Atlus has. Which makes them a good example.

Originally Posted by Liz

Yeah. Atlus also gets a lot of cred from allies for being progressive, but it fucks up a LOT.

Originally Posted by POS Industries

In fact, for a company that claims to be tackling these issues, they seem to be fucking up with them a lot more than the other companies as a result of their efforts.

Originally Posted by Liz

@Aero: Blatantly sexist developers are already being called out by other people with more effective tools of doing so.

Originally Posted by Liz

Yeah, nobody's going to praise Capcom's handling of Poison but Capcom also isn't calling Poison "Eric" in a manual, saying sex with trans women is weird, and using a game's underlying themes to argue that trans women are still really men.

Capcom also doesn't have a game that says a trans man is just a woman trying to avoid sexism and then dress that trans man in female, objectifying clothing.

Originally Posted by Terex4

While the social stigma of a strong woman may somewhat apply, the line-up with transphobia is extremely obvious.

Transwomen specifically are stereotyped as tricksters and sexual predators. Its not an uncommon for people to believe that we go through what we do for the sole purpose of sleeping with as many men as we can without our "victims" knowing anything about it. At least not until we're done with them.

We are also widely considered to be disgusting. "Tranny" is used very often to make something sound more gross than it already is. A specific example I can offer is from an episode of My Name is Earl in which Earl and his brother are licking the window of a police car that separates detainees from the officer. The officer warns them not to do that as he had a "hep C tranny hooker" do that earlier. Because, you know, our hep C is worse than your hep C.

So the message sent in that scene of the game is that innocent guys combing the beach for babes were approached by a disgusting, predatory woman-who's-not-really-a-woman.

That alone is enough for me to boycott ATLUS specifically.

If you still don't get why Atlus after all of this you never will, and it's incredibly hard to believe you aren't 'just being impervious'.

[Arcanum]

Pretty sure some of the big issues Liz pointed out stem from the Persona games, which are developed by Atlus. In addition to that, Atlus, through publishing, supports sexism and trans/homophobia. Liz's campaign is targeting Atlus for those reasons. Are there other companies that should also be targeted for similar reasons? Yes, but that's not the issue Liz is bringing to the table. Also, I believe one of Liz's posts mentions there are campaigns already targeting sexist developers (though no links were provided it's not hard to believe that these campaigns do exist).

Bells, your posts seem to be asking a lot of "why aren't you targeting this, or this, or this?" Well Liz has said why she's targeting Atlus. Why Atlus instead of others? Maybe because Atlus is one of the few companies that addresses homo/transsexual issues in their games. Maybe because Liz really enjoyed the SMT games but can't deal with these problems not being addressed.

Some of the problems are present in other companies. But if another company was targeted what's to stop you from asking why Atlus isn't being targeted in that case?

If you try to target every company where these problems are prevalent, then you spread yourself too thin and risk getting nothing accomplished.

So instead Liz is focusing on Atlus, for reasons clearly given, in order to try and deliver a message not only to Atlus, but to other companies that suffer from these problems.

[greed]

I'm in, but probably still gonna get SMTs second hand. Which is a thing for me as I almost always buy new. So it's less hollow than it would be fore someone who usually picks up used.

Edit: Also it still works as a boycott they don't see anything if you get them used especially if you go for private sellers or independent stores not stuff like Gamestop (which might report used sales? I think I heard that somewhere).