"Erotic" themes too much for Sony in America

I'm a far-right republican Christian gamer. I'm all for free speech and no censorship in private media. If myself and others feel like this game is inappropriate for my nation, I just won't buy it. It'll flop, and they'll stop making similar titles for my society. Captialism is great.

The ONLY censorship that should stay in place is in broadcast media. You have an obligation to make your material appropriate to the lowest line of viewers. But items that you control content with, like videos, games, and books, shouldn't be censored, because you have control over that content.

This game would probably get an AO rating, so it'll stay out of most retail outlets anyways. I'm just thinking about those developers and just...eww... sick minds, guys.

Shall I point out that we still haven't seen what exactly this 'erotic content' is? I seriously doubt it's a bunch of little girls getting naked and going all girls gone wild on each other. (that creeped my out to even write.)

As f-ed up as some of the stuff that comes out of japan is, even a game with serious underage sexuality would be hard pressed to find release. The 'adult entertainment' industry over there walks a really slippery slope, one I don't care to explore, but this isn't a porn sim. It's a survival horror game. And horror comes from finding yourself in bizare, frighting situations. Keep in mind that THAT is the ultimate point of whatever these developers did in this game.

I say we all cool our jets until we know a little more about just how 'sexualized' this game is, or isn't. It might be something fairly tame, and we're all just freaking out over something fairly harmless.

This isn't kiddie porn we're talking about here. If it was, it wouldn't see the light of day in the states. It might be as simple as some really, really screwed up conversations between young characters.

Oh gawd! This isn't child porn! From the article's description, it just seems that the game touches upon the subject of human sensuality from a tough-provoking viewpoint, and it's not even the main theme of the game. The shock value of child porn is being used to beat down intelligent venues about self-knowledge and understanding of ourselves, humanity, as a whole.

Well, the thing is, is how much is the game overtly sexual and how much is the game a survival horror being told from an all-new perspective? Horror aims to remove people from their comfort zone. You'd never believe in the boogeyman, if you never had reason to acknowledge/question the menacing nature of shadows.

I haven't played RoR, but I have seen some pretty creepy things on some of the trailers
(notably, the "initiation" at night, where one of the girls has a paper bag on her head, then dowses Jennifer in water, and the conclusion, where Jennifer's tied down by cords by little hands and dragged down into darkness. There's also a sequence where Diana (redhead) inserts her index finger into her mouth - No context to this is offered, incidentally.)
Nothing inappropriate. Intriguing, yes, thought provoking, sure. The first trailer I saw simply made me curious to want to go and read up on what the game was actually about.

I absolutely think that the integrity of the creator's original vision should be respected. They intended from the off, to focus on the subject matter of a world viewed from the perspective of children. Some people just won't get that. But EVERYTHING in terms of promotion, the official Jap site, etc, supports that. It seems to me to be a dark twist on the social groups that schoolkids naturally form. There's a hierarchy, and you must "play" according to the rules (part of one of the Japanese trailers text translates to a similar meaning)...Which chances are, being an adult, you won't know. So you're more likely to become immersed, as you try to work out what's going on.

I think it's a great, fresh and interesting idea that Punchline has arrived at, it looks really interesting, and am I eager to fully support this title.
Gaming needs to evolve responsibly and sensibly. This game needn't be butchered before local release to ease the conscience of the insecure in the existing rating system's integrity.

Focusing on a minor thematic issue in a game is like concentrating reviews solely on graphical capabilities -- it's irrelevant to the overall gameplay experience. If the "erotic" issues enhance the creepy story and if the plot itself remains sensical and in... moderate taste, then it doesn't matter. I enjoy games for what they try to give me and I don't shut them out because they "cross the line" on one taboo subject.

Thank God for Atlus. Or else we'd only see mediocre games in the US.

Basheron if you did your homework, the press release on the Atlus website for this game is expecting an M rating by the ESRB. If "Rule of Rose" were to be rated AO, then why can you pre-order this title right now at Gamestop? If it were AO, then NO retailer would want to carry it and Atlus wouldn't even consider it.

Having read several accounts of what the game ACTUALLY contains, I am much more confident that this game is not just about little girls doing "erotic themes". I haven't played the game myself (since I don't speak a lick of Japanese), but I welcome yet another innovative and original title in the United States. There is more to life on the PS2 than Grand Theft Auto and Madden you know.

in reply to molecule.

As far as laboratory reproducibility, there are plenty things that can't be done in such a way, but they can be observed. Finding fossils is one of these ways, and we've found transitional fossils. I'm not saying Evolution in it's current state is the end all be all, but its the best answer we've got and we are fleshing out the details as we gain new information.

There is no strong scientific backing of Intelligent Design because it implies something worked outside of the forces of nature to create life. Also, the pinnacle of Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity, has been proven wrong. I would continue but this in detail but I'm derailing the discussion.

You also don't understand the scientific use of the word theory.

As far as the media controlling my mind, I highly doubt it. I mostly spend my time reading and playing videogames and actually don't watch much tv, if I ever do. It isn't insanity though, its just willful ignorance.

It is strange that the fuss about this game is over children depicted with (vague) sexual overtones, and not over the fact that children in the game commit murder.

Doesn't that strike anyone else as just a bit warped?

Your comments: I am getting sick and tired of these
comments about America being so
much more "puritan" than Japan. Here is an example of
what japanese
people think about this type of
material.[QUOTE=Otaku
harassed as sex-crime fears mount]By MICHAEL
HOFFMANSpa!
(Feb 1.)The kidnap-murder of a 7-year-old Nara
Prefecture
girl last November raised the inevitable question:
What sort of human
being would do such an inhuman thing?Ideas
flew thick and fast
-- for how could so appalling a crime fail to stir
thought? The
perpetrator, it was said, would be socially withdrawn,
unemployed,
wrapped up in computer games and cell-phone
photography and other
hyperelectronic pastimes. Real life would have passed
him by. His
sexual orientation would be uncertain, focusing on
children, dolls
and manga characters.So went the newspaper and
TV talk-show
speculation. Once more, it seems, it was open season
on otaku, that
swelling population of mostly young, male, disengaged
"maniacs"
("nerds" is another frequent English translation) who
devote
themselves, usually quietly and harmlessly but with a
single-mindedness that in extreme cases can distort
the personality,
to hobbies and fantasies the bustling outside world
has no time
for.Are otaku dangerous? Or are the media and
others merely
scapegoating easy targets, irresponsibly provoking
public aversion
toward unconventional lifestyles?Several weeks
after the
child's murder, police arrested a 36-year-old
newspaper sales agent
named Kaoru Kobayashi -- a past sex offender,
apparently, but no
otaku as the term is commonly
understood.Somehow, says Spa!,
that has not let otaku off the hook. "Otaku-bashing"
continues. Local
governments call for restrictions against
"otaku-media" -- ero-games,
ero-dolls, ero-manga and so on. Police, notably in
Tokyo's Akihabara,
go "otaku-hunting," Spa! claims, rounding up
otaku-looking individuals
on the slightest pretexts and subjecting them to
questioning or
arrest.And yet "there is no scientific
evidence that anime
and manga lead to sex crime," says a lawyer working
with an otaku
support group.Maybe not, but public
impressions are not
formed by scientific evidence alone, and when, back in
1989, serial
child-killer Tsutomu Miyazaki was found in possession
of thousands of
pornographic anime and slasher videos, a connection
was made that has
proven indelible.Is it false?It is at
least
oversimplified, Spa! believes. People have been quick
to conclude, on
the basis of a handful of sensational sex-murders,
that Japan is awash
in child pornography. Measured in terms of the number
of child porn
Web sites, that is not true, Italian researchers have
found lately.
The United States might have a serious problem in that
regard -- its
child-porn sites, numbering 10,503, constitute 61.72
percent of the
world's total. Japan ranks eighth, with 165 sites
comprising 0.72
percent of the total. Does the cartoon
eroticism of
otaku-oriented manga and games cause crime? It could
just as easily
prevent it, maintains journalist Nobuto Hosaka -- by
providing an
outlet for anti-social compulsions that might
otherwise demand
expression on the streets.Furthermore, argues
Hosaka, "if
manga catering to the Lolita complex are harmful, what
about
historical dramas, with people getting killed right
and left? Why not
ban suspense movies? How come gang-war films aren't a
problem?"
They probably are, though not a widely
acknowledged one.
Mainstream entertainment has this advantage over
fringe
entertainment: Few question its right to exist. Does
the revulsion
inspired by hard-core otaku ero-entertainment have any
basis in
objective reality, or is it mere blind prejudice,
amounting, in
Spa!'s view, to "persecution?" "People have
come to think,"
said an Aichi Prefecture assembly representative of
the effects of
otaku cyber-culture on the young, "that death can be
undone simply by
pressing the reset button." The assembly is debating a
bill that would
require "harmful" labels to be affixed on certain game
software.It's the age-old conflict, in
post-modern,
21st-century dress, between the claims of freedom and
the claims of
public order, heightened by the increasingly blurred
boundary between
fantasy and reality. No ultimate solution is in sight.
The
Japan Times: Feb. 6, 2005© All rights
reserved[/QUOTE]I am never planning on
going to japan,
but I think this pretty much clears up any
misconceptions about
puritanism. And this isn't a recent phenomena; I can
dredge up
information about arrests for loli porn back from the
80's. I also
once read that before and during the second war there
was a large
opposition to pornography in japan, and that
expressions of sexuality
in the media actually increased after the war.

I have played this game and it is really vague and tame on the erotic themes. The questionable content is more of implied lesbianism among some of the girls and innocent things they do that could be PERCIEVED as erotic. Its not said that the girls do anything overtly sexual, its more suggested.

For example: it is implied that the red head girl was molested by one of the adult, I think a teacher, of the ophanage because a scene shows him rubbing her hand and comforting her obsessively. You could also see that she has bandages around her upper thigh when she lifts her skirt. Some lesbianism is also hinted between some of the girls. Note that none of the erotic elements are directly stated or shown, its only hinted.

You guys are making it seem as if those erotic themes are the main focus of the game and something to be concerned about. There is nothing on this game that is worthy of being censored and should cause any controversy. If you played RoR, you would be suprised at how subtle the erotic undertones are used and many wouldn't even consider it erotic at all. Its mostly hype created by those who haven't played the game.