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Penny Arcade Report on KOF 13: "casual sexism", "cringe-inducing racial imagery"

Also, what was the point of the article?

serisously, it reads like this:
KOF IS SEXIST
KOF IS RACIST









oh btw the online's good and the graphics and mechanics are nice

wtf?

That's just video game reviews nowadays.

Graphics
Story
Sexism/Racisim
Lugoscababib Discobiscuits
9/10
 
I saw this in the Fighting game weekly thread earlier. There was actually a fairly moderate discussion going on in the comments section of the review, but they decided to shut it down. Didn't see anything too offensive there, but then again I guess I don't have the same barometer as the PAR folks.


Damn, didn't know he threw his two cents in there. I was just browsing the last couple of days from when the "review" went online.

This tweet is hilarious

https://twitter.com/BenKuchera/status/383628287517265921

For reference, this is a native Brazillian in King of Fighters:

brazilxiiizoom2.jpg


The man's keen power of perception overlooked that all those "people" have tails.
 
Holy shit.

BEN KUCHERA / 22 HOURS AGO
Yeah, this is out of hand. I'm shutting down the comments. The temper tantrums can continue elsewhere. Everyone have a great day. :)

geth, close this thread

They post a troll-white knight-out there article, and then close its discussion?
 

JordanN

Banned
In another example, the female character King's shirt gets blasted off to reveal her bra if she's KOed with a special move like a fireball.
I remember reading this before. Yeah, this is pretty bad.

I got no problems with Mai though so call me a hypocrite. Ha.
 

Salex_

Member
Obviously just following the template

ilftm65vDxKN5.jpg

I never understood the complaints with that trophy. If someone isn't a hoe why would they have a problem with that? There's guys and girls who are what they call a "hoe" but if you know you aren't that why complain. Am I alone with this line of thinking? ._.
 

Shito

Member
The French stage shows dozens of highly overweight caucasian women with bad haircuts and big noses eating and cheering you on.
I'm French and this is probably my most favorite stage in the game.
I blame the poor guy who can't seem to understand humor and light-hearted parody; and the Penny Arcade guys should pay more attention to what is written bearing their name.
 

Chavelo

Member
Also, why are people saying that PAR =/= PA?

Penny Arcade Report
Penny Arcade Comic

Or is it two completely different companies that just happen to share the same name for no reason whatsover? I mean, it does say Copyright Penny-Arcade.com in the bottom...
 

Raging Spaniard

If they are Dutch, upright and breathing they are more racist than your favorite player
More and more I get the impression that the only way to have a Japanese game not called out for sexism or racism is for every background to be this:


and for every character to be this

938498_10-personagens-pouco-conhecidos-de-street-fighter.jpg
 

jediyoshi

Member
Also, why are people saying that PAR =/= PA?

Penny Arcade Report
Penny Arcade Comic

Or is it two completely different companies that just happen to share the same name for no reason whatsover? I mean, it does say Copyright Penny-Arcade.com in the bottom...

Penny Arcade comic is headed up by different people. Kuchera is the writer for PAR.
 

kadotsu

Banned
I'm sorry that's the wrong game. The correct answer for this week's installment of 'Name that Sexist Japanese Game' was Disgaea D2.
 

pizza dog

Banned
Also, why are people saying that PAR =/= PA?

Penny Arcade Report
Penny Arcade Comic

Or is it two completely different companies that just happen to share the same name for no reason whatsover? I mean, it does say Copyright Penny-Arcade.com in the bottom...

Ben Kuchera is the EOC of PAR and he lives in Cincinnati. Penny Arcade the comic is made by Mike and Jerry in Seattle. Mike and Jerry don't take any kind of oversight on nor provide editorial input to PAR, they leave it to Ben.

A fighting game with racist stereotypes?????

My goodness that's never happened before

superSF4-8-650x325.jpg


[...more...]

"It's ok because it's pervasive" is a pretty weak argument.
 
Also, why are people saying that PAR =/= PA?

Penny Arcade Report
Penny Arcade Comic

Or is it two completely different companies that just happen to share the same name for no reason whatsover? I mean, it does say Copyright Penny-Arcade.com in the bottom...

last time we had a thread about an article of PAR 90% of the thread was insults towards the guys making the comic. who probably didn't even know the article existed.
 

FyreWulff

Member
this is not by the guys who draw the comics. just to get this out of the way. they have little to do with this.

ofc. it will be ignored.

They fund and pay for the Penny Arcade Report to exist and promote it on the front of their site.

They cannot wash their hands of the actions of employees they explicitly endorse the activities of. They cannot have their cake and eat it too. Penny Arcade cannot say the Penny Arcade Report is not their doing. Their fucking name is right on it.
 
They should patch it so the males' clothing also gets ripped after a special move KO.

Edit:
Yeah, I agree.
Doesn't Soul Calibur do that?
Mortal Kombat does it with enough damage taken, I think. (It's been a while.)

That, or the "clothes-off" should be patched out, though. That way, there's no prob.
 

Zonic

Gives all the fucks
I remember reading this before. Yeah, this is pretty bad.

I got no problems with Mai though so call me a hypocrite. Ha.
You've been able to do that (along with Yuri) for quite some time (as in KoF '94 & '95, along with Art of Fighting 1 & 2 (both for King & 2 for Yuri)). Heck, Blue Mary in Real Bout: Fatal Fury loses her top completely if you do a special KO & knock her in the water. You can barely see anything, but still.
 
Wasn't SNK one of the first companies to have a female as the main character?
Weren't they one of the first to have a transgender person as a playable character?

And these things aren't mentioned in his article. This is what bothers me.
 

Shane

Member
I don't understand the outrage against the piece. It seems like the points are somewhat valid, and I always appreciate reviews that tackle a game from a new perspective.

Agreed.

I'm more interested to check the game out now as they still enjoyed it even with their concerns.

Not sure why there can be an aversion to the discussion of videogames in a wider context. I don't want reviews that read like one of a car; cold, mechanical and dull.

Edit: There's also a lack of 'respectful disagreement'. Blacklisting an entire publication because you disagree with a single opinion, from a single contributor is worrisome.
 

jediyoshi

Member
When they put the name of their comic on their site, they endorsed it.

When he submitted the article, Mike and Jerry probably weren't hovering over his shoulder giving him a thumbs up. You missing the necessity for this distinction are clearly not reading the thread.
 

Htown

STOP SHITTING ON MY MOTHER'S HEADSTONE
The problem here is not that it's wrong to criticize a game as racist and/or sexist; it's that his criticisms here are weak, and it reads as though he didn't spend much time playing the game or getting into the mechanics, so he went down a feature list for two paragraphs and filled the rest of the space with controversy bait.

Certain things about KOF13 seem a bit weird from a racial/sexual perspective, but no more so than many other fighting games, and quite a bit less so than some.

Incidentally, King's clothing becomes ripped to show a bra for tradition's sake; the character's original appearance in Art of Fighting had the character design as slightly more androgynous, and the shirt ripping acted as an end-of-match reveal that the character you had been fighting was female the whole time.
 
Doesn't make any of them right or okay though.

What does this mean? Why wouldn't it be ok? It doesn't make fun of those characters.. if I could identify with these characters I would be happy that they were represented in a game I played.

Should we just have standardized and faceless crash test dummies in fighting games so we don't offend anyone?
 

pizza dog

Banned
They fund and pay for the Penny Arcade Report to exist and promote it on the front of their site.

They cannot wash their hands of the actions of employees they explicitly endorse the activities of. They cannot have their cake and eat it too. Penny Arcade cannot say the Penny Arcade Report is not their doing. Their fucking name is right on it.

As far as you know, PAR is self-sufficient. Is Ben an employee or a partner? Hell if I know. Though, again, this piece wasn't even written by Ben.
 

Nozem

Member
And, yes, the relentless smear campaign by PAR, Kotaku, and the like against Japanese developers is utterly disgraceful and shameful, not only for its effects on the industry but for the ugliness and brutality of its racism and xenophobia. They have failed not only as journalists but as human beings, and I feel nothing but shame for the way Japan has been treated by our country.
You sound like an expert on Japanese culture.
 

Sapiens

Member
I find none of it hateful, so it's not a problem.

Leave the artificial outrage and forced political correctness to the baby boomer, please.
 

JordanN

Banned
You've been able to do that (along with Yuri) for quite some time (as in the '90s). Heck, Blue Mary in Real Bout: Fatal Fury loses her top completely if you do a special KO & knock her in the water. You can barely see anything, but still.
If it serves no purpose other than to get male gamers sexually excited, I can't defend it.

In these scenarios, I can understand how it could piss some people off if it's only happening to one gender.

But again, I'm not offended by Mai so you can choose to listen to what I have to say about this.
 

GooeyHeat

Member
They should patch it so the males' clothing also gets ripped after a special move KO.
While this article is insanely stupid, I agree that this should happen for Ryu, Robert, and Takuma, because it did in the original Art of Fighting games.

Also, it's funny because the whole "women can't fight" thing is mostly perpetuated by Hwa Jai, who, for one, is an asshole, and two, only appeared in one previous fighter, in which there were no female characters (the original Fatal Fury). He's just confused by all of these newfangled equal rights. It's part of his character, not a belief of the company or even the majority of characters.
 
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