Zen wrote:AxelMill wrote:Zen wrote:What in the actual fuck is this image? A female child with a teddy bear? And this has what to do with this a shooting game now? (Goes to Steam page. Yup, Steam page has a female child with a teddy bear)
Since the shmups player demographic is, in the main, male, late teens and up, care to explain the marketing behind this, NickPalmerDegica?
Surprise, 90% (purely made up number) of modern shmups are about "female children". Welcome to [current year].
Now, yes, maybe Pedobear was a bit too much.
Why, are "90% (purely made up number) of modern shmups are about "female children"?
That's what sells, to give a concise answer.
Not as concise would be: In all likelihood, the game will make more money this way than it would if they made the playable(s) some random spaceship like it used to be the case 25 years ago. Saying they're all about female children may be a bit much since clearly, we have tit monsters as well but that's probably beside the point. Naturally, the reason this is done is because girls are cuter than spaceships. I'm sure you will agree with that. Of course, I know many of you will say that cuteness doesn't matter in shmups and you may be right with that, but find it weird or creepy as you might, neither you nor I are part of the intended audience Japanese game developers want to reach.
The Japanese society values cuteness greatly not only in games but also other areas of entertainment (anime/manga, visual novels, regular TV, idols/voice actors, video games in general not just shmups, etc). This is prevalent even in sports, not in girl form here but as mascots, although here their cute may differ from yours or mine. The reason why game developers choose to pick girls are characters and not puppies, kittens or some weird ass mascot is because of race. It's easier to identify yourself with a human-character than it is with an over sized plush that looks like a mix of three different animals. This current fad, which no doubt will disappear in a decade or two, also explains how new games like SDOJ have the typical Japanese squeaky voices while you play. That's cute over there (although I admit that in SDOJ's case, it's also clearly geared towards sexy and not just cute). At this point, I again want to say that you can tell me that it's creepy or that the voices are just hurting your eyes, but we are not the target audience so our (or more like your) worries and complaints are perfectly irrelevant to the developers.
There is nothing wrong with a little girls having a teddy bear, by the way. My sister is 20 now and still collects plushies. I will agree that the perspective is weird, thus making it look like she is fondling the bear's crotch but it isn't intended to be some sexual innuendo, most likely. The artist probably didn't give it any thought in that direction. Her cuddling the teddy like you would with a plushy would have been a much better image imo but it ultimately doesn't matter.
