Mediaboss Marketing

(Last Updated On: March 29, 2017)

In order to appease the growing trend of third-wave feminist requests to censor the sexuality of fictional female characters, many developers have opted to cover up cleavage, make sure that the women in fantasy games are fully clothed with realistic designs, and remove things like jiggle or boob physics to placate SJWs, similar to Mortal Kombat X. Well, the developer of the action-RPG Kings Raid, Vespa Inc, received a lot of backlash after they attempted to censor and cover up their female characters.

Censored Gaming covered the incident, showcasing how many of the female characters in the game were covered up from head to toe to either hide cleavage, or add extra articles of clothing to lessen the sex appeal of the character illustrations and in-game models.

A large enough segment of their fans rebuffed this decision, complaining about Vespa censoring the characters in Kings Raid, the mobile hack-and-slash RPG.

The complaints were made in such abundance that just a day after the update was released, Vespa made a post on Facebook on March 24th, 2017 stating

We are aware that the update on March 23 has upset many of our Raiders, especially regarding the change brought to the Heroes appearances. As it is our ultimate goal to support and enhance the players experience, we have decided to take your voices to revoke some of the changes to the Heroes appearances.

They showed an image of the characters that were censored in the previous update, and how they were going to uncensor them in the following update, following the fan complaints.

As you can see, not only did they alter the games anime-style illustrations but they also modified the characters 3D meshes, covering them up and attempting to make them more conservatively dressed.

The backlash over the censorship rippled through the reviews of the game as well, with people complaining about the change.

While a lot of fans thanked Vespa for uncensoring the characters, others complained that the game should be censored and that they also need to remove one of the staple features in Kings Raid: the boob physics.

One of the people on the Google Play store going by the handle of Narendra MC wrote

Well, in overall its good. I just saw some comments about censorship and i really think that it doesnt really matter to people who arent a bunch of horndogs. I support censhorship as it reduces the possibility of people becoming more attracted in to sexual stuff.

The Facebook page where the announcement was originally made is now a full sociopolitical argument over censorship, female sexuality and identity politics.

Many male Asian gamers like the boob physics and cleavage. Many European and North American gamers are complaining about the sexualization of the characters and saying that the original art caters toward perverted gamers. Awais from Ontario, Canada wrote

They didnt even do anything wrong. Cant believe how ridiculous most of you adults were over a little censoring. Absolutely ridiculous how no one appreciates a company for finally focusing less on satisfying the perverted gamers Nope, but its alright because as long as you get to drool over pixel tits, theres nothing wrong right? Shameless community cant think outside theyre horny little bubbles.

As evidenced on the Facebook page, Awais was clearly in the minority with his beliefs and was shouted down by a lot of other gamers.

Additionally, Censored Gaming pointed out that Vespa never actually stated the reasons as to why they made the change in the first place.

The Western release of Kings Raid is rather recent, though. It launched back in the middle of February, 2017. The Asian version of the game was available since the middle of last year in 2016. The game was quite popular for bringing hardcore hack-and-slash action to mobile devices with PS2-quality graphics and a lot of fan-service.

As showcased in the video below from Android Gameplay, the in-game characters, illustrations and dialogue sequences were filled with plenty of fan-service, lots of cleavage and jiggle physics.

Vespa may have weighed the complaints of Western gamers versus Eastern gamers and attempted to make the change. However, if the gamers who actually bought microtransactions are the ones who enjoyed the fan-service, then Vespa may have decided to revert back to the uncensored version of the game to appease the people who actually put money in their coffers.

However, all of the above is just speculation when it comes to the reasons behind Vespa uncensoring Kings Raid. Unless the company decides to share their reasons such as the Dragon Heroes developers who were forced by Google and Apple to censor their game we dont actually know why they censored and then uncensored the game, but it was pretty obvious a significant portion of the community was not happy with the censorship.

Read the original:
King's Raid Devs Remove Censorship Following Fan Complaints - One Angry Gamer (blog)

Columnist Ali Spies revealed last week in The Standard that her COM 115: Fundamentals of Public Speaking instructor, purportedly acting on instructions of the Department of Communication, rejected her proposal to research, compose and deliver a brief speech about Planned Parenthood in the United States. The instructor asserted that the topic has ... too much controversy ... and implied that, while some controversy might be acceptable, too much controversy is off-limits. Spiess Department of Communication instructor censored Spies. Dr. Shawn T. Wahl heads the MSU Department of Communication.

George Anastaplo, a professor of law at Loyola University in Chicago, wrote that censorship is ... the changing or the suppression or prohibition of speech or writing that is deemed subversive of the common good. In other words, our universitys Department of Communication determined before Spies had begun to research her topic that mere mention of the topic would subvert the well-being of our academic community. Without further explanation, we can only speculate in our collective bafflement how the history of Planned Parenthood could possibly subvert the moral or physical welfare of our academic community.

The Department of Communications intellectual tyranny is not unique. A member of the Department of English censored me several semesters ago. In a fiction writing class, I submitted a story that included horrific violence to be discussed and evaluated by my classmates and instructor during our next class.

The instructor inexplicably failed to read the entire piece until just before class, although all of my classmates had read it. Rather than proceed, the instructor blindsided me and told the class that my story was inappropriate for class discussion.

The instructors censorship struck me as particularly hypocritical, given not only the graphic sex and violence in some of the published short stories the instructor had assigned the class to read, but also the instructors reading aloud to the class a lengthy and particularly graphic episode of deviant sex excerpted from one of those assigned short stories. The smug instructors hypocrisy is now part of a successful, if mediocre, academic career.

Given the Department of Communications irrational fear of controversy, its rewriting of Emma Lazaruss sentiment on the plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty, might well read:

Give me your apathetic, your indolent,

Your texting masses yearning to shop,

The benighted spawn of your vacuous world.

Send these, the complacent, directionless to me,

I lift my middle finger to their delusive dreams!

Censorship at a university is an abuse of power and a corruption of authority; it is a tool of bullies and despots whose victims are never the same. This toxic silencing stunts the intellectual growth of students and abuses them to such a degree that, out of paranoia, they self-correct whenever they feel theyve entered uncharted territory. They fear rocking the boat; their souls are crippled and their respect for instructors of all ranks becomes wary and stressful.

If Einstein had been intimidated effectively by mediocre instructors, would it have delayed special relativity or general relativity? If incompetent, self-hating instructors had strong-armed Lincoln, would he have authored the Emancipation Proclamation? Is it unreasonable to hope that theres a special place in Hell for I darent eat a peach instructors who hog-tie youths exuberant and yeasty passions for learning?

Whether the above incidents of censorship are anomalies or part and parcel of university dry-rot and mediocrity needs to be investigated, but first, Missouri State President Clif Smart and Wahl each needs to apologize to Spies for permitting censorship to exist on their collective watch. Since Spiess experience is now quite public, both Smarts and Wahls apologies should also be public; our academic community demands redress.

Continued here:
Censorship: Is it happening at MSU? - Standard Online

No China release date for the fifthPiratesfilm has been announced yet.

Disneys Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales has been approved for cinemas in China, according to sources familiar with the matter, but a release date is yet to be announced.

Directed by Joachim Rnning and Espen Sandberg, the film marks the third time the franchise has made it to what is now the worlds second-largest entertainment market.

A decade ago, Pirates Of The Caribbean: At Worlds End was the first of the series to show in China and ended up earning RMB 125 million (USD$18.1 million). In 2011, Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides pulled in RMB 476 million ($69 million).

Earlier this month it was announced that all of the previous installments in the franchise will screen in the out of competition section of this years Beijing International Film Festival the first clear sign the newest film would also make it to the Chinese market.

The film sees Johnny Depp return as Captain Jack Sparrow as he is chased down by a group of deadly ghost pirates lead by new arch-nemesis Captain Salazar (Javier Bardem).

While a China release date is yet to be announced, the film is confirmed to be coming out in North America on May 26.

The impending release in China will no doubt help bolster attendance at the Shanghai Disney Resort, which opened in June 2016.

The resort has become an obligatory stop for stars of Disney films since it opened. Late last month the cast of Beauty and the Beast including Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans, Kevin Kline, and Josh Gad met fans at the resort ahead of its release on March 17.

The resort received close to 8 million visitors in the first nine months since opening last year, according to Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger.

About the author Fergus Ryan has worked in media, communications and marketing roles in China and Australia for close to a decade. Most recently, Fergus was a journalist for the News Corp. publications China Spectator and The Australian. He has also been published in The Guardian and Foreign Policy. Prior to that, Fergus worked on business development for the A-list star Li Bingbing at Huayi Brothers, and on celebrity engagement and social media for the WWF and DMG Entertainment.

Go here to see the original:
'Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales' Passes China Censorship - China Film Insider

Southlands Sun

#HandsOffSocialMedia as 'internet censorship' bill booed Southlands Sun It comes on the back of a range of existing, deeply problematic censorship policies, including the Film and Publication Board's internet censorship regulations, the draft Hate Speech Bill, and the new Cybercrimes Bill, which would 'hand the keys of ...

See the original post:
#HandsOffSocialMedia as 'internet censorship' bill booed - Southlands Sun

By Justus Leicht 24 March 2017

Under the pretext of combatting fake news and hate speech on the internet, Justice Minister Heiko Maas (Social Democratic Party, SPD) is planning a massive attack on free speech.

On March 14, Maas presented a draft of a so-called network enforcement law (NetzDG), which imposes extensive surveillance and censorship responsibilities on commercial social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. If the draft becomes law, such sites will be required to react immediately to complaints and block obviously illegal content within 24 hours. Other illegal content must be erased within seven days.

The corporations will have to decide on their own what is illegal and, to this end, they will have to set up a contact office in Germany. The law would turn them into investigators, judges and executioners over free speech, as the platform Netzpolitik.org writes.

If they do not live up to their duty to delete content, they are threatened with draconian fines of up to 50 million. These fines are left to the discretion of the Federal Office of Justice and can be imposed even in the case of a single offense, regardless of whether it is intentional or the result of negligence.

The law would apply to social networks that have at least 2 million users registered in Germany. However, the definition of a social network is so broadly formulated that, in addition to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, other services such as Whatsapp and Skype, and even larger email providers and file hosting sites, could fall under its purview.

The providers would be required not only to delete content, but also all copies of it, and would have to prevent it from being uploaded once again. At the same time, the content would have to be saved, possibly indefinitely, for evidentiary purposes.

The provider would be required to inform the user about the deletion and would be required to justify the decision, but a multiple choice justification form would suffice. If the user does not agree with the deletion, he would have to spend months, or even years, on costly legal proceedings. During this time, the deletion would remain in force.

The draft legislation includes more than a dozen clauses whose violation would lead to deletion. In addition to open calls to commit crimes and related offenses, it lists libel, defamation, slander, disparagement of the German president, and insults to religious communities.

As the Berlin law professor Niko Hrting remarked, the law is about unlawful and not punishable content. He insists that this is an important difference. Hrting fears that the law will lead to a situation in which the scope of criminal prohibitions will be expanded considerably, and that the new law will make it much easier to forbid certain statements.

Whether a statement is insulting, disparaging or defamatory has often been the object of a lengthy process of legal dispute. Not infrequently, charges and court actions have been employed in an effort to criminalize and silence personal and political opponents. The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe has repeatedly, though not always consistently, come to decisions that emphasized the value of free speech.

A well-known example is a decision of the Federal Constitutional Court in 1995. It decided that the statement by the German-Jewish journalist, satirist and writer that soldiers are murderers does not constitute libel, and it authored a decision to this effect. The legal dispute over the poem by the satirist Jan Bhmermann about Turkish President Erdogan is ongoing.

The extremely short inspection period combined with the threat of draconian fines makes it likely that corporations like Facebook or Google will react to reports of supposedly criminal content by erring on the side of caution and deleting it. Every sharp, critical, polemic, ironic or satirical post on a social network would vanish in no time.

The internet and the social networks on which people publicly voice and exchange views independently of the official political institutions, parties and media, have long been a thorn in the side of the ruling elite, which views the right to freedom of speech as a threat.

The draft legislation addresses this quite openly. Hate criminalityaccording to this law almost everythingthat cannot be combatted and pursued effectively, threatens peaceful coexistence in a free, open and democratic society, it says. Then the American election is openly invoked as an example: After the experience in the US election, the combatting of punishable false reports (fake news) has also won high priority in Germany.

To this end, corporations valued in the billions will be tasked with suppressing disagreeable statements and opinions. A lengthy court process, in which a decision in favour of free speech might be reached once again, will be replaced with a short process: a report, followed by deletion and justification by multiple choice.

Several critical journalists have also noted that the real concern of the Justice Minister is the suppression of free speech and criticism. Harald Martenstein wrote an article for Tagesspiegel, Where the government decides what is truth and what is fake, we are in despotism. But precisely now, while we are still excited about Erdogan, Erdogan methods are being prepared here in this country. Justice Minister Heiko Maas has presented draft legislation that reads as though it came from the novel 1984.

On the other hand, representatives of the two ruling parties, the SPD and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), welcomed the planned legislation. Moreover, in the view of the Green Party, which is an opposition party to the government, the law does not go far enough.

Green Party parliamentary representative, Renate Knast, who is the president of the Parliamentary Committee for Law and Consumer Protection, told the German radio station Deutschlandfunk that it is a problem that the draft legislation only covers punishable content! She also wants to suppress free speech that is explicitly not punishable.

Knast left no room for doubt that for her the point of the law is to silence oppositional voices in the population: With 30 million Facebook users in Germany, all of this vulgar behaviour, even when it is not punishable, has an impact on real and virtual life. It has an influence. Even mayors are resigning because they are being molested.

In addition, she advocated viewing social media providers like newspapers and radio stations, which are made directly responsible for the content they bring to the public. This would lead in effect to a comprehensive review of all content and self-censorship in advance of publication rather than afterwards.

The legislation proposed by Justice Minister Maas and the criticism of it by former Green Party Minister of the Environment Knast are indicative of the attitude to basic democratic rights of a future red-red-green federal coalition government. Such a government would not have the slightest interest in defending democratic principles.

Visit link:
German justice minister proposes internet censorship legislation ... - World Socialist Web Site