Japan

My Girlfriend is the President

November 5, 2009

A trailer for a rather bizarre erotic Japanese game imagines an alien ship accidentally taking out the Prime Minister of Japan, aliens then substituting a girl for the PM and brainwashing all mankind in order to enable the ruse.

My Girlfriend is the President (thanks? Kotaku) is an entry in the eroge category of games, and appears to be on sale already in Japan, as a 10/30/2009 date is listed at the end of the trailer.

Perhaps even better than the trailer for the game is a mashup video that combines music from the game and interjects current heads of state. Click here to go to YouTube for that one.

Both videos are rather tame and should be safe for work viewing.

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Capcom’s Inafune: Japanese Game Industry is Finished

September 28, 2009

Capcom’s Keiji Inafune, the creator of Mega Man, sounded off on the current state of Japan’s videogame business at last week’s Tokyo Game Show.

When asked what he thought of this year’s TGS, Inafune gave a thumb’s down before responding:

Japan is over. We’re done. Our game industry is finished.

Destructoid has the video of Inafune’s remarks. He did attempt a little damage control by noting that Capcom’s games on display at TGS were “kick ass.”

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Video Games Are Evil, Says Guy Who Made a Lot of Money Creating Video Games

September 6, 2009

We’ve heard video games blamed for a lot of crazy things over the years but the “death of our planet”? 

Well, that’s a new one.

Yoshiyuki Tomino (left), creator of the long-running Mobile Suit Gundam series, delivered the keynote at Japan’s CEDEC 2009 game developers’ conference and offered a rather strong negative opinion on the subject of video games and how they affect our lives.

I think that video games are evil.  [Gaming] is not a type of activity that provides any support to our daily lives, and all these consoles are just consuming electricity! Let's say we have about three billion people on this planet wasting their time, bringing no productivity at all. Add 10 billion more people, and what would happen to our planet? Video games are assisting the death of our planet!

Those are some pretty surprising comments coming from a man whose franchise has spawned more than 100 video games over the last couple decades. Tomino, who thinks nothing’s bested Tetris since it came out over 20 years ago, offered the attending developers advice on how to proceed from here on out.

You have to find the median -- that games are not evil, perhaps not necessarily good either, but something that can be considered a pastime…

 

This is what I want to tell you: I want you to create a game that does not negatively affect our daily lives and is something that is considered more productive.

AE:  I can’t help but imagine a slack-jawed look of disbelief from the game developers in attendance.

Via: Gamasutra

-Reporting from San Diego, GamePolitics Senior Correspondent Andrew Eisen

U.N. Steps Into RapeLay Controversy, Urges Ban

August 28, 2009

The debate over graphic Japanese sex games such as the disgusting and controversial RapeLay continues with word that the United Nations is stepping in.

At a meeting earlier this month, the U.N.'s Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women called for a ban on explicit video games and anime. As reported by Anime News Network, the committee urged Japan to ban "the sale of video games or cartoons involving rape and sexual violence against women which normalize and promote sexual violence against women and girls."

The committee also expressed concern "at the normalization of sexual violence in the State party as reflected by the prevalence of pornographic video games and cartoons featuring rape, gang rape, stalking and the sexual molestation of woman and girls."

Via: Kotaku

Shrink: DS, PSP Making Young People Lonely

August 11, 2009

Is your handheld game system making you lonely?

Rika Kayama, a Japanese psychiatrist, thinks that it may be.

In an op-ed penned for a Japanese newspaper, Kayama claims that Nintendo's DS and Sony's PSP are partially to blame for a sense of isolation experienced by some of her youthful patients. On that score, Kayama writes:

Today’s youth immerse themselves in worlds of their own right before our eyes, where they can live secluded from the rest of us. Feeding into these one person worlds, personal devices such as mobile phones and handheld game systems like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS come on to the market one after another.

The ‘make your own world anywhere’ idea has gone too far, to the point that even on the train one sees people shamelessly putting on makeup or eating cups of instant noodles as though the train carriage was their own room. …

I feel that an increasing number of people are coming to my office saying, ‘Even when I’m in a crowd I’m lonely.’ Even when they are at a popular singer’s concert or when reading a best-selling novel, these patients can’t feel any solidarity for those next to them or those reading the same book.

GP: Is Kayama onto something, or is she simply rehashing the old school notion that games are inherently isolating?

Via: What They Play

In Japan, GTA Chinatown Wars is First DS Game to Receive Adults Only Rating

July 7, 2009

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars has been tagged with a "Z" rating (adults only) for the Japanese market, reports Siliconera:

All of the Grand Theft Auto games have been rated CERO Z so this isn’t really a shocker. However, Chinatown Wars will be the first Nintendo DS game with the rating and the second CERO Z game on a Nintendo platform. Killer 7 from Capcom is the other CERO Z rated game on Nintendo hardware.

CERO is the Japanese equivalent of the ESRB.

Via: Kotaku

Researcher Disputes Study Equating Violent Games w/Aggression & Prosocial Games w/Helpfulness

June 18, 2009

Yesterday GamePolitics reported on a study detailed in the current issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin which found that violent game players displayed aggressive behavior while those who player more prosocial games exhibited helpful behavior. The study actually encompasses three seperate research projects which took place in Japan, Singapore and the United States.

But a researcher from Texas A&M disputes those findings. Prof. Chris Ferguson, who has frequently studied video game issues, commented on yesterday's report which was authored by, among others, University of Michigan's Brad Bushman and Douglas Gentile of Iowa State.

Of the Bushman-Gentile study Ferguson told GamePolitics:

You know trouble is brewing right in the beginning as they start with the false premise that there is an established relationship between video games and aggression. The authors engage in what's called citation bias, which means they only cover research they like and ignore anything they don't like. This is just not good science. Since this literature review is so slanted, that worries me about how they collected and analyzed their data.  

In [one study] they note that there is a high correlation between prosocial exposure and violent game exposure. This suggests that these may be some of the same games that have both kinds of content! They then suggest that there wasn't a problem with multicollinearity (basically means if you include 2 predictors that are too similar it can screw up your results), yet they only say they had no VIF less than 10...yet even something as low as 4 or 5 is pretty high. So multicollinearity may have been a bigger problem than the authors try to suggest.  Therefore, there may be some serious problems with their analyses here.  

[Also] the authors say that prosocial exposure and violence exposure were very highly correlated and then claim they have completely opposite effects. That is just highly unlikely.

In [another study] the standardized coefficient between playing prosocial games and prosocial behavior... suggests that playing prosocial games had almost no overlap with prosocial behavior one year later. Here we have yet another example of a "significant" finding being touted even though it's so small you'd never notice it in the real world. They also assert causality from correlational data which they can't do no matter how they analyze it.

The final study is probably the best of the three, but it's also the most artificial. Indeed, a fair number of their participants express suspicion about what went on. These kinds of studies have a high risk of "demand characteristics" In other words, students will give you the results they think you want and they won't admit to it afterward. Also the resultant effect sizes are all pretty small.

So, at best, a mountain is being made out of a molehill here, and at worst there are some pretty serious flaws in all analyses. I do worry about the "tone" from this research group. They do not comprehensively cover the literature honestly, and appear to have a hypothesis that they favor from the get-go. That tone would lead me to question their objectivity and, as such, the quality of their analyses.

Bottom line  - I doubt you'd see prosocial games solve the world's ills anymore than violent games have caused any outbreak of youth violence. 

Research: Violent Games Correlate with Hurting Others, Prosocial Games Correlate with Helping

June 17, 2009

A report published in the current issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin maintains that playing pro-social games increases helping behavior by participants while playing violent games increases hurtful behavior.

GamePolitics has previously reported on the research, which combines the results from three separate studies conducted in the U.S., Japan and Singapore. But a press release issued today by the University of Michigan offers new insight about the methodologies used by the researchers involved. These include UM's own Brad Bushman (left) and Roland Huesmann as well as Douglas Gentile of Iowa State. Said Bushman:

These studies show the same kind of impact on three different age groups from three very different cultures. In addition, the studies use different analytic approaches---correlational, longitudinal and experimental. The resulting triangulation of evidence provides the strongest possible proof that the findings are both valid and generalizable...

 

[The research] suggests there is an upward spiral of prosocial gaming and helpful behavior, in contrast to the downward spiral that occurs with violent video gaming and aggressive behavior...

 

Taken together, these findings make it clear that playing video games is not in itself good or bad for children. The type of content in the game has a bigger impact than the overall amount of time spent playing.

Perhaps the most interesting experiment involved 161 U.S. college students. From the press release: 

After playing either a prosocial, violent, or neutral game, participants were asked to assign puzzles to a randomly selected partner. They could choose from puzzles that were easy, medium or hard to complete. Their partner could win $10 if they solved all the puzzles. Those who played a prosocial game were considerably more helpful than others, assigning more easy puzzles to their partners.  And those who had played violent games were significantly more likely to assign the hardest puzzles.

Bushman discusses the study in this brief video.

VG Researcher has additional info...

UPDATE: Here is the UM press release.

Japanese Industry Group Cracks Down on RapeLay, Similar Games

June 5, 2009

A Japanese industry standards group has issued a ban on the controversial RapeLay and games of its ilk, according to Bloomberg.

While reports last week that the Ethics Organization of Computer Software had taken such a step were premature, the ban, which carries no legal authority, has now been confirmed. 233 Japanese software firms belong to EOCS, including 90% of the country's makers of adult software. In issuing the ban EOCS made reference to a February motion in the British Parliament which condemned RapeLay.

Such games are a thriving business in Japan, Bloomberg reports:

The adult software games industry had sales of 34.1 billion yen ($353 million) in 2007...

Computer games containing rape scenes are readily available in Japanese stores. Yodobashi Camera Co., an electronics retailer, sells ‘Rape!Rape!Rape!’... at its store in Akihabara, a shopping area of Tokyo famous for stores popular with fans of the Japanese cartoons known as manga.

With RapeLay requiring players to assault a 12-year-old girl character, Bloomberg notes that possession of real child pornography, much less the virtual kind, is not illegal in Japan. Former U.S. Ambassador Thomas Schieffer criticized Japan over the issue in January of this year:

Only Japan allows people to possess these hideous images without penalty...  Is it not time for Japan to find a way to punish the guilty?

Although the EOCS ban lacks the force of law, Singapore's Straits Times reports that most Japanese retailers will follow the edict.

Why Fret Over Japanese Ban? RapeLay Is Already Banned in the U.S.

May 29, 2009

The embers of the RapeLay controversy were stirred a bit yesterday with a report that the game - and others of its ilk - had been banned in Japan. Not by the government, mind you, but by an industry standards organization.

As it turned out, the report was false, but it prompted a great deal of hand-wringing about Japanese censorship. And yet, RapeLay is already banned - in advance - in the United States by an industry standards organization: the ESRB. Again, it's not a government ban, but it is a de facto ban.

Think about it. Video game retailers won't carry unrated games, which would require RapeLay's publisher to submit the software to the ESRB for a rating. Given its digusting subject matter, RapeLay would certainly be tagged with the quickest AO (adults only) rating ever issued by the ESRB. If you think back to the 2007 Manhunt 2 situation, you'll recall that major retailers won't carry AO-rated games and console manufacturers won't license them. That last bit wouldn't be a problem for RapeLay, of course, since it's a PC game.

Yes, the game could still be sold online by independents. Even governments have a hard time stopping that. But the AO rating is retail death and everyone in the video game business understands that. No publisher would waste their time and money submitting a RapeLay to the ESRB, which is why I maintain that such games are banned in advance. I don't have a problem with any of this, by the way. It's how the system was designed to work. True, there are occasional calls for a marketable AO rating. But the ESRB would probably need to create an XXX rating to accomodate games like RapeLay if AO ever became acceptable to Wal-Mart and GameStop.

And while RapeLay's developers are within their rights to create a game based upon sexual violence and pedophilia, retailers are certainly within theirs not to carry the game. Women's groups are free to protest its messages. And the rest of us are free to be creeped out by RapeLay.

Penn Jillette Argues Against RapeLay Ban

May 29, 2009

Penn Jillette has weighed in on the controversy over Japanese PC game RapeLay in a YouTube video.

The comedian argues against banning such games:

Prosecuting thought crimes is wrong...

 

[Critics'] complaint is that this game normalizes sexual violence. I think that blaming a video game for rape is normalizing violent sexual behavior. What that says is that we are all rapists and that rape is just under the surface of us and all we need is a video game to just push us a little way.

 

What blaming the video game does is it shows compassion for the rapist. It shows understanding. At some level, in some small amount, it says, "It's not really the rapist's fault; it's society's fault for putting this stuff out here." And I think that the rapist deserves no understanding and no compassion whatsoever.

GP: Thanks to GamePolitics reader Thomas McKenna for alerting us to the video...

Japanese Copyright Boss Calls DS Piracy Terrorism

May 26, 2009

A leading copyright enforcement official in Japan has likened individuals who pirate Nintendo DS games to terrorists.

tech.radar reports that Yutaka Kubota (left), who heads Japan's Association of Copyright for Computer Software, made the comment to Famitsu magazine:

This is an issue that affects our national interests and, personally, I see it as a form of information terrorism that is crushing Japan's industry.

tech.radar also notes that Kubota's organization has close ties to Nintendo. The DS manufacturer claims that 120 million bootleg copies of DS games were downloaded through the end of 2007. Such activity is not illegal in Japan, but pending legislation would make such downloading a crime.

Japanese Political Party Targets Rape Games

May 21, 2009

In the wake of the controversy generated by RapeLay, one of Japan's political parties has issued a general condemnation against computer games featuring forced sex.

The news comes by way of erotic games site Sankaku Complex (NSFW):

Japan’s Koumeito party, long a member of the ruling coalition, has condemned adult games featuring sexual coercion and violence as being a highly negative influence on Japan’s tiny rates of sex crimes. They are calling for a ban or further restrictions on their sale.

GP: I'll confess to having little knowledge of Japanese politics. Meanwhile, Sankaku Complex veers off into a rant, as one might expect for a site that supports such games, so I'll just leave it there.

Via: Kotaku

Swine Flu May Impact Capcom's E3

May 19, 2009

Just when you thought the swine flu panic was winding down, Develop reports that the virus may impact Capcom's scheduled E3 appearance.

Japan, which has seen a recent jump in swine flu cases, has been closing schools in Hyogo and Osaka prefectures at the request of the government. The outbreak could keep Japanese employees of the Resident Evil publisher away from E3:

Capcom has told Develop that its Japanese arm remains undecided on whether it will be attending the upcoming E3 event in Los Angeles. The publisher has stated however that it will still have a presence at the event with US and UK teams attending...

A spokesperson for Capcom... stated that Japan’s tough travel regulations has impacted on Capcom Japan’s options for E3...

Capcom did however clarify that it will still have a big presence at E3... “The show is in Los Angeles and we have offices in America, so E3 is still on” the spokesperson added.

RapeLay Passed Japanese Software Group's Ethics Screening Process

May 15, 2009

The controversial Japanese game RapeLay was cleared by a software industry screening board, reports The Yomiuri Shimbun.

According to the newspaper, the Tokyo-based Ethics Organization of Computer Software screened RapeLay without advising its publisher, Illusion, to make any edits. 235 computer game firms belong to the supposedly self-regulating organization. While an unnamed official of the group would not reveal its screening standards, he told the newspaper:

[The organization] follows the Penal Code and the law, which bans child prostitution and child pornography. Also, we ask for self-regulation of games, to ensure stories depicted stay at a permissible level from a social perspective...

 

[Given the RapeLay controversy the organization] should discuss what kind of self-imposed regulations are required to ensure [games] are acceptable to society.

The Yomiuri Shimbun also reports that RapeLay which caused an uproar when it was found to be available on Amazon.com via a third-party reseller, has been pulled from the market. The move comes in the wake of a protest lodged by New York-based women's rights organization Equality Now. Attorney Yukiko Tsunoda, a member of Equality Now,commented:

The problem isn't just about this specific game, but about all similar games still available [in Japan].

RapeLay Developer "Bewildered" By Furor Over Game

May 8, 2009

The controversy over RapeLay, an obscure but disgusting forced sex simulation, appears to be rekindling. GamePolitics readers will recall that the game sparked a furor earlier this year after it was found to be for sale by a third-party reseller on Amazon.com. In response to complaints the online retailer quickly removed the listing.

This month, New York-based women's group Equality Now has targeted RapeLay and similar games for a letter-writing campaign:

Please write to [developer] Illusion Software asking it to withdraw immediately from sale of all games, including RapeLay, which involve rape, stalking or other forms of sexual violence or which otherwise denigrate women... Please write a similar letter to Amazon Japan.

 

Write also to... Japanese government officials... calling on them to comply with Japan’s obligations under [the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women] and the Japanese Constitution to... ban the sale of computer games such as RapeLay, which normalize and promote sexual violence against women and girls.

Australian news site ABC.net reports that the Japanese developer of RapeLay, Illusion, claims to be "bewildered" by the uproar. Spokesman Makoto Nakaoka told ABC.net:

We are simply bewildered by the [Equality Now protest]. We make the games for the domestic market and abide by laws here. We cannot possibly comment on [the campaign] because we don't sell them overseas.

A Japanese Government spokeswoman to ABC.net:

[The government] realises the problem is there. While we recognise that some sort of measures need to be taken, the office is currently studying what can be done.

Dubya Immortalized on the Famicom

May 7, 2009

In a bit of political commentary, George W. Bush - looking very much like a chimp - has turned up on a fanciful cartridge for Nintendo's Famicon

Kotaku notes that the former President's cartridge is one of 58 contained in retro game shop Meteor's 2009 Famicase exhibit.

Whaling Protest Game "Harpooned" Gets an Update

April 6, 2009

GamePolitics first reported on Harpooned: Japanese Cetacean Research Simulator more than a year ago.

The protest game, designed to raise public awareness of the fight against commercial whaling, has now received a 2009 update.

New features include

  • a Mac version
  • players can now capture protesters that get too close to the whaling vessel
  • online leaderboards

Barack Obama Portrayed in Quirky Japanese Super Mario Scene

March 31, 2009

We don't know the origin of this video other than to point out the obvious: that it's from a Japanese television show, features a comic Super Mario scene using real actors, and has an improbable cameo appearance by a faux Barack Obama.

Still, it's pretty cool. Be sure to watch it all the way through.

The link was circulated by Wendu Xu on Twitter.

Via: Kotaku

Faux Religious Site Satirizes RapeLay Controversy

March 26, 2009

RapeLay, an obscure Japanese hentai game, sparked controversy earlier this year when an Amazon re-seller was found to be offering the PC title in the U.S. market.

Although there would seem to almost limitless room to criticize the thoroughly disgusting RapeLay, parody site Christwire added a satirical touch yesterday with some over-the-top commentary:

My friends the Japanese are at it again, this time as they prepare to rape your child’s mind and ethics with a horrifying new video game named Rapelay...

I cannot find the words to express my outrage, disgust and disbelief with this anime pornography game, especially the liberals who are trying to market it in America.

Last year studies revealed that 98% of games being marketed to teens contain violence, and after playing a violent video games teens may become 3 times more likely to commit acts of murder, drug violence and date rape...

 

America is a land that is being overrun with video game violence. Last year California banned the banning of violent video game sales and Barack Obama allows a Wii in the White House while not pushing for a universal anti-violent video game law.

How many more of these games are we going to allow to exist anywhere on Earth? ...

My friends, the gaming liberals and their atheistic Japanese allies are without morals when it comes to video game violence...

GP: Some around the web seem confused as to whether Christwire is a parody. But gay-oriented news site The Advocate reports that Christwire is an affiliate of The Onion.

GamePolitics ShoutBox

Posted 11/07/09 at 04:27pm
ZippyDSMlee: man I got alot of junk and dup files too >< god I need orginization...and no not the knee capping media mafia kind :P
Posted 11/07/09 at 04:26pm
ZippyDSMlee: replaced :P
Posted 11/07/09 at 04:23pm
ZippyDSMlee: beemoh:hey its like 60GB porn,400GB anime 100GB games and crap I have took from all my DVDs, I hate waiting on dvds to install stuff..... oh and 40GB of my porn was in the found.000 folder...mostly corrupted.... least I got names of wut needs to be repa
Posted 11/07/09 at 04:18pm
beemoh: @Zip: ...and you'd have to spend all that time re-downloading that porn?
Posted 11/07/09 at 03:34pm
ZippyDSMlee: ggrrrrr......vista lost one of my hard drives and I had a heart attack thinking I lost 1TB of data....
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:58am
JDKJ: Which could be explained by both (a) and (b).
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:56am
Austin_Lewis: JDKJ: You forgot C) the fact that, for some reason, every time he did something that would suggest he shouldn't be in the military, let alone an officer, higher ups ignored it or let it slide.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:51am
JDKJ: Part of the problem is, I believe, that (a) the Army had a lot of time and money already invested in him and which they were unwilling to simply write-off and (b) an increasing need for the type of skills and services he provided.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:48am
JDKJ: And that even if he was begging not to get cut loose, he was apparently a real good candidate for being cut loose, anyway.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:11am
JDKJ: @chada: And while Kennedy once noted that there's usually more than enough blame for everyone to get a slice, the possibility that the Army was unwilling to cut loose someone who was asking to get cut loose could be a factor.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:07am
ZippyDSMlee: *noms on his feet*..nomnomnomnom*droooll* ...wuuutttttt uuu looking at?
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:05am
JDKJ: I'm no psychologist, but I'm told that crazy people have a tendency to do crazy things.
Posted 11/07/09 at 10:03am
chadachada321: Whoops, was out of the convo for awhile. I do wonder what type of ammo he used etc, but the real issue is WHY he did it, not HOW
Posted 11/07/09 at 09:56am
JDKJ: But if it turns out that they actually did, they'll have Hell to pay.
Posted 11/07/09 at 09:45am
JDKJ: And I'd tend to rule out the possibilty of FN Herstal supplying restricted ammunition to someone merely because they're ordering it from a military base.
Posted 11/07/09 at 09:37am
JDKJ: I know you don't leave your gated community and get around much in dark alleys, so you may be surprised to learn that there's this thing called "the black market" where, if you've got enough money, ain't too much of anything which can't be bought.
Posted 11/07/09 at 09:36am
Austin_Lewis: Or, maybe he or someone else at the base ordered the SS190 from FN Herstal.
Posted 11/07/09 at 09:32am
Austin_Lewis: the hands of private owners. They run about 300 dollars minimum for a box of 50, and boxes of AP 5.7 are extremely scarce, mainly residing in the hands of Class III stores or individuals who for one reason or another got a demo box of it.
Posted 11/07/09 at 09:30am
Austin_Lewis: There are other firearms that fire the 5.7. However, I too would like to know where he got the ammo and what kind was used. Maybe Hasan, planning not to live through this, went out and bought one the boxes of SS190 that are floating around in
Posted 11/07/09 at 08:44am
JDKJ: And it isn't yet clear what type of ammunition Hasan used. It's strange that he purchased a gun but didn't purchase ammunition for it at the same place and time. Especially because the calibre required is peculiar to the actual gun.
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