The
gaming community has grown massively since 1980’s and 1990’s. It still
continues to grow today, and many people of all ages and ethnicities play video
games. Despite that… I believe this community isn’t as welcoming or friendly to
others as it COULD be. Far too many people these days seem to prefer to argue
over which consoles or games are “good”, and many online communities can be
quite vitriolic. It seems that people seem to have forgotten the most important
thing: games are meant to be FUN. Every game does things differently; it
doesn’t matter if you’re enjoying something as simple as a Mario game or
exploring the grand narrative of the Mass Effect games as long as you’re having
fun. People seem to have forgotten about all of that in favor of arguing among themselves over petty things or putting others down due to their
gender, ethnicity, or even taste in games.
That
brings me to my next point. Nintendo’s been… a little overzealous in keeping a
“family friendly name”. And it makes absolutely no sense for them to do so at
all in this day and age. Games like Xenoblade Chronicles X, Fire Emblem
Awakening, and the upcoming Fire Emblem Fates and Bravely Second have all been
censored to some degree. This is all in spite of games like Bayonetta 2, No
More Heroes, and MadWorld existing (2 of those are EXCLUSIVE to Nintendo
consoles as well). It’s baffling that they choose to do this, as the things
that are being censored are perfectly acceptable for the rating that the ESRB
has given the games in question. I agree that this needs to stop, but people
are overreacting to all of this (some are boycotting those games until the
censorship stops). None of the changes in any of those games really harms the overall
experience, and they’re all still great games. You’d be doing yourselves a
disservice to skip out on all of those amazing games simply because of
localization changes.
Fire
Emblem Fates is scheduled for a February 19th release, while Bravely
Second will be coming to the U.S in April. Xenoblade Chronicles X has been out for a while,
and you can see my review of it here.
