Because there's something to be said for being teased by the content to make you want to see more.DementedSheep said:
What's keeping the West from making DOAX style games?
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While I agree with the other two, I'm pretty sure DA:O sold itself on being Baldur's Gate with the serial numbers filed off.Metalix Knightmare said:
From my perspective the possibility is highly there. WoW "no clothes" models already are in underwear and they can meet the beach scenario as well in world. They also already have mini-games and other "events" in WoW. It mainly goes unnoticed and without much attention.EternallyBored said:
Also a large portion of their fanbase are adults, have become adults, and will be becoming adults and there was a lot of love x lust for Alexstrasza, Sylvanas, Whitemane, and Tyrande back in my days playing.
They don't commit to making it standalone because like I mentioned before it will be a PR nightmare trying to defend it. Money has nothing to do with it. The illusion of needing to sell millions is preposterous and sounds like bad budgeting which is what the industry has done for decades now instead of cutting back on PR and focusing more on their products. We wouldn't have gotten DoA 2 and 3 if a franchise needed to sell millions of copies and many other franchises would have been out of this industry, regardless of platform, with that kind of benchmark.
Yet if it came to sells figures Blizzard could easily manage to sell 1m because that's brand loyalty.
That's a massive stretch, as pretty much every RPG lets you strip to your skivvies to some extent in order to represent your model not wearing any armor. You could apply that same logic to everything from Everquest to Dragon Age, its a standard representation, not some sort of indication for how likely a company is to make a titillation bathing suit game.Gamerpalooza said:
The mini-game thing is within WoW itself, and is there to expand their already massive content base for the game, it indicates little about Blizzard's willingness to separate a bunch of low content minigames into its own separate game. Blizzard is a company that cancelled a massive MMORPG (Titan), a third person shooter (Starcraft: Ghost), and a point and click adventure game (Warcraft Adventures) for not living up to their own standard. I would consider that a far stronger argument for Blizzard never releasing something as halfassed as a loosely themed minigame collection as a standalone title. The closest I could ever see them doing is having a beach volleyball (or similar) minigame in WoW itself.
What does this have to do with anything? There's tons of porn and attraction to almost every character in any AAA game ever made, that has nothing to do with how likely a company is to make a DOAX style spinoff series.
PR or not has nothing to do with it, even without the bad PR Blizzard wouldn't touch the concept because Blizzard is the poster child company for being stingy with its licenses, their spinoffs mimic super successful genres, titillation based minigame compilations isn't something they would touch even with good PR.
PR isn't why Blizzard doesn't make such games, Blizzard just doesn't make spinoffs like DOAX period, titillation or no.
Bullshit, Blizzard doesn't get out of bed for less than 5 million sold, the kind of advertising they put behind their projects would justify nothing less, 1m would be an abject failure to the kinds of bloated budgets Blizzard throws around. Blizzard banked on brand loyalty for Heroes of the Storm and while the game isn't a failure, it still sold short of expectations, I can't imagine a DOAX style game would fare better, likely much worse.
In essence, Blizzard isn't going to touch a DOAX style game for a multitude of reasons, but mainly because Blizzard creates games only in the AAA category, and doesn't trailblaze into genres that aren't already wildly popular, their only two spinoffs of note being in the trading card genre and DOTA style game, both genres playing in a totally different league from any genre you could slot DOAX into.
Basically, even without the stigma surrounding such games, Blizzard wouldn't create a DOAX style game, in such a hypothetical scenario they may insert more titillation into their future games, but DOAX still would be an extremely unlikely outcome to Blizzard suddenly embracing titillation as a primary motivation rather than just as a part of the aesthetic like they do currently.
EDIT: Actually, looking at sales figures for Overwatch and Diablo 3, it would probably be more accurate to say that Blizzard won't even try to make a game with less than 10 million projected sales, something I seriously doubt a DOAX style game could accomplish even without any stigma attached.
It's not that hard, Leisure Suit Larry managed. You just have to appeal to something that exists in large numbers. A lot of people on this forum seem to confuse their own person (extreme) passion for something, with the general temperature in the room. The fact that almost no one really enjoys a "DOAX" experience isn't down to prudery, it's down to:Callate said:
Access to real people
Access to more porn than is easily conceived of
A desire that a game isn't boring; why sift through hours of BLEGH just for a virtual tit jiggle?
Teens outside of Japan are generally not losing their minds over panty shots, or virtual titty jiggles.[footnote]As Estarc said, "As if every kid with a smartphone isn't on fucking pornhub anyway nowadays." Needless to say, after Pornhub, DOAX feels just as childish as it is.[/footnote] A thousand "bloody nose" jokes gets old in a hurry.
It's just difficult for most people over the age of 15 or with a healthy social life, to enjoy a game that is so puerile. The sex doesn't make it puerile, the puerility makes it hard to enjoy the sex. It's hard to lose the awareness say, when watching an episode of 'Irregular At Magic Highschool', that clearly this is someone's desperate fantasy. Well, my fantasies don't revolve around being an emotionless Gary Stu with an incestuous twist, and if they did, I'd want to see them actually FUCK, not blush about it and stammer.
Or yeah, "The West" is just prudish, that must be it. Or people don't want to engage because of the subject matter. That must be why advertising, television, cinema, and other games are drenched in sex...
I mean really, maybe some of you didn't watch Animal House, or Fast Times at Ridgemont High?... and that was decades ago.
Makes sense. The same way that games rated AO aren't illegal, it's just that developers always tone their games down to M since retailers don't want to sell games with that rating.infohippie said:
This combined with the West's acceptance of violence and shunning of the human body seem like the two biggest factors here. I personnally don't get the appeal of these titillating games but I just don't buy that there's no audience for them.
Can we stop using "the West" interchangeably with the United States, because none of what you described is applicable to Europe, or even Canada to some extent. France has topless female models on billboards, and I know thats not standard in Japan, France by itself would be seen as overly sexual by Japanese standards. Ironically, even the United States is often viewed by native Japanese people as being too sexualized or open about topics of sex. It was always amusing how blown away Japanese exchange students were about how hardcore our pornography was or how we used sex to sell virtually everything the same way Japan uses cute mascots.JUMBO PALACE said:
It's always weird having been to Japan and having Japanese relatives (in-laws), and then seeing people in the West talk about the West being prudish and closed to sexuality, Japan has its own hangups, and compared to places I've been in Europe, is almost puritanical by comparison. It's always been one of those weird quirks of culture to see Westerners talk about the West being so prudish, the seeing Eastern people talk about how the West is too open with sex.
Which proves my point, bad budgeting. Also the biggest flaw in your statement is neglecting HotS.EternallyBored said:
Regardless of hypotheticals we already know the reason. It ain't financials one it's an image one. One that Blizzard tries avoid the most and Overwatch is the current example of that.
Literally nailed it. There's an audience for just about everything but companies are not just afraid of taking risks but these kinds of decisions will hang over their company from years to decades. This is the nightmare of the business class where to do something as simple as get funding or putting titles on a platform can be denied because of something that becomes controversial.EternallyBored said:
Industries have boxed themselves from being able to do and say many things because it all falls back on their image. So many companies are left with the notion that their is no right choice and they gotta stick to their decision until it breaks the bank.
Which looks mainly like a western industry thing because of what's happened in the past here.
The fact that I mentioned HOTS multiple times, including in the line right after the one you quoted makes me question whether you actually read my post or you're just skimming so you can restate your point, any time I mention them making a DOTA or LoL type game I am talking about HOTS. Which does prove my point that it's a sales issue, Blizzard only makes games that meet hypothetical sales goals, which a DOAX type game has never gotten close to, I am talking about the genre of the game, IE, a minigame collection centered around titillation, it is not just the titillation that stops Blizzard, it is the actual gameplay portion as well. HOTS did not meet sales expectations or retention, that was brought up to counter your point about brand loyalty, brand loyalty did not equal automatic success, and that was blizzard mimicking one of the most successful genres, the MOBA, even without the stigma, the sales of all of the DOAX games does not meet the level of success that Blizzard would bother throwing its own take on the genre into the ring, that genre being a minigame collection centered around titilation, not just the titillation, I am talking about the actual type of game it is, not just the concept of sexualization in general.Gamerpalooza said:
The rest is meaningless, it's hard for me not to laugh at someone talking about bad budgeting in regards to a company that regularly posts massive profits and just salvaged the sunk costs of Titan with the launch of Overwatch. Blizzard has abandoned projects after sinking a lot of money into them, but they've also maintained their brand image by doing so, in some respects their budgeting is part of what makes them Such a celebrated and profitable company, blizzard is willing to sink a lot of money into its properties, even Diablo 3 is estimated at 10's of millions of units sold. Even if the image changed in the West, DOAX's sales even in Japan, are not enough to motivate Blizzard into making a similar game involving their own characters so it's obviously more than just image.
Unless you are talking about a societal shift on the sales of such games, which is a meaningless statement as you can say that about literally any niche or small genre.
Sorry, find another playmate.slo said:
When you say, "The West", it sounds every bit as ignorant as someone looking at the entire world from the Middle East, through India, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Japan and making some sweeping statement about "Asians". In Australia for example (part of "The West" by most estimations) the government does sometimes outright BAN games. In the US that would be unconstitutional. In Canada this time of year brings out the loveliest young women with cut-off shorts showing their bare asscheeks. If you really think that the monolithic "West" is somehow epitomized by WASPs, you need to get out more.JUMBO PALACE said:
Or you could have just read the thread before you posted, whatever works for you.
Okie dokie. The United States then.EternallyBored said:
It is interesting to hear that some Japanese people view the USA as open about sexuality. I think the assumption that Japan is so open about sex comes from the few nuggets that get latched on to by American culture. When you learn about lolis, hentai, tentacle porn, etc. I would imagine it would be hard to suspect anything other than a culture that's very open about sex and nudity.
The way you describe things, it sounds like the US is sexualized and vanilla while Japan is repressed and kinky.
It was a poor choice of words and I had no intention to offend you or anyone else. I didn't even say anything inflammatory, so I'm not sure why you felt the need to jump down my throat and call me ignorant. I know this is the internet but if you wanted to disagree with something I said you could have skipped the hostility.Einspanner said:
Good, then prove it by leaving me alone.slo said:
I wasn't trying to single you out, but if you see this thread, it's five pages of people bitching about "The West" in a totally unironic way.JUMBO PALACE said:
Thank you for being understanding about the distinction, it's just a little odd to hear about the West as if the United States is the only country there.JUMBO PALACE said:
As for views, it's a simplistic way of putting it, but you have hit on some of the difference.
For Japan, there's a sort of acceptable, almost humorous sort of perversion in fiction that would generally be portrayed as creepy and wrong in US entertainment. Teasing and skimpy outfits are also common in Japanese fiction but generally unacceptable outside of cosplay. On the flip side though, the American penchant for dressing skimpy even in day to day life, bikinis on the beach front, and skimpy shorts, is seen as overly sexual by a lot of Japanese society, mimicking that kind of American clothing is seen as rebellious and socially deviant a Japanese person walking down the street in short jeans and a thong is seen as obscene in a lot of areas. There's also a massive difference in what's acceptable in downtown Tokyo versus the smaller cities and rural areas.
Talking about sex is probably where you are closest with your comparison, from my experience, America is much more open in discussing the act of sex and sexual relationships, while being reluctant to discuss sexual deviancy, whereas Japan is much more reserved, you aren't going to get guys going to the bar to talk to women about casual one night stands as often or as easily, but deviancy is more open, even if not quite accepted, for example, gay relationships are more common in fiction, but outside the fetishishization Japanese society sees homosexuality as a passing phase that is acceptable as a teenager but should be discarded in favor of heterosexual marriage as an adult.
On mobile so can't type more, the subject is interesting though, in some ways Japan is open, and in others very closed, its hard to compare to Western countries on a scale of being more or less prudish than the other.
On that note, I don't even have to look at games to prove that "good taste" isn't even CLOSE to the reason DOAX type games aren't big in the states. George Carlin showed off our lack of good taste in our freaking FOOD!crimson5pheonix said:
Delicious indeed, but Deep Fried Beer (Yes, it's a thing. It was made in Texas because of course it was.) is not exactly what one would think of when it comes to the subject of good taste.George Carlin said:
Indeed. EA was so scared, they paid fake protesters to pretend like they were religious people protesting their new game, Dante's Inferno, in order to drum up false controversy. They also created an entire add campaign centered around how "your mom will hate it." Copious amounts of violence and nudity were added for good measure.Estarc said:
Those western business men sure are terrified of soccer moms and religion!
You don't make a claim like that and then refuse to back it up dude. A lot of people DO in fact enjoy the DOAX experience and the fanservice it offers. They wouldn't have made three of the frigging games if they didn't.Einspanner said:
Heck, the Hooters restaurant chain still remaining open kind of proves you really don't have a point there.