Drakengard/Nier wasn't very mainstream or even that big in the weeb groups.
Well that's because they were made by Cavia, a mostly anime license slop making company, so they weren't exactly big name worthy and the combat was less than stellar. Automata's biggest reason for success, besides the butt, was getting Platinum, a hugely popular company, to develop the gameplay element to cover their weaknesses.
So unfortunately I think the biggest takeaway there is "have your small indie creator get a popular company to risk their budget/time on him and you might be universally acclaimed." Because without Platinum involved, it absolutely would have remained a cult little title like Gestalt was.
Its still something that was "censored and removed" for the Western release, for people who maintain very hardline stances on that principle.
I think its improved, as making it wierdly sexual/romantic cheapens the two's brotherly/paternal relationship and how powerful that grows to be. But it was still part of Yoko Taro's "creative vision" originally, so I can understand some people preferring it for the principle of the matter.
Very true on the Persona 5 point, though I think we can make some distinction between "Japanese games" and "anime games." Persona 5 is unabashedly anime in many ways, whereas Automata isn't really that anime but is still undeniably Japanese.
I think all of them combined came together to shift the tides back in the favor of Japan being itself in gaming, in various ways.
Automata I think is probably the biggest culprit for unrestrained hot MCs and open thirsting getting a comeback, which is a little sad because its a lot more than that but its what most people took from it.
There were plenty of very "Japanese" games and franchises that existed before Nier Automata.
I think its worth remembering the culture at the time here.
During the late 2000s and into the 2010s, the game journos and industry was full force shitting on Japanese games. Anything made in Japan was getting unfairly lambasted. Basically every trope of a Japanese game was being put under the microscope and hated on, and it basically was succeeding in making people reject a lot of those things as cliche and bad relative to Western Games of the time.
You can pull up a lot of reviews and the like from the time and find just how brutal and mocking they are of Japanese titles that aren't trying to ape Western sensibilities and culture. Especially as this was the zenith of Game Journos being high on their own shit, thinking themselves cultural titans, and using their influence to fuck with the Japanese devs. That's one of the reasons why people were so primed to destroy them in Gamergate.
While I don't think Automata is fully responsible, it is one of the most successful examples to show the big name companies that they didn't need to hide everything Japanese to appeal to the West.
I'll never forget the time he visited 8chan for an (attempted) AMA
Never forget the time when someone (might have been this visit) asked him why the final boss of Drakengard 3 was so maddening and difficult, and he just said "because its the final boss" and nothing further. Just let that punch sit.
Its a shame that Automata is probably the weakest game in the series in every way besides the combat itself, which is mostly just passable compared to prior games boring to outright bad. And I guess fanservice, though Drakengard 3 has plenty of that in hilariously in your face ways.
Its also the first time in the series where it feels distinctly Japanese, as both Drakengard (literally using a map of Europe for the world map) and Nier Gestalt were very much medieval Europe fairy tale like. And, thanks to being made by a Japanese mad man, they don't shy away from the worst aspects those stories could reach like a Western dev would, like child soldiers, familial sacrifice, and actually difficult moral questions.
Heck Gestalt/Replicant is probably one of the rare cases where self-censorship not only improved a game, but is a direct example of the problem being talked about here.
For those that don't know, the original Nier game was made with "teenage pretty boy" MC going on a journey to save his little sister. It was very cliche Japan in every way. At some point in development, Squeenix said it wouldn't appeal to the Western audiences, so they created a different version of the game with a 40 something year old as the MC instead trying to save his daughter. And while both versions would be released in Japan (one for 360, the other for PS3), the rest of us would only get dad version.
And dad version is way fucking better. All the emotional beats hit better with a world weary older man instead of a sarcastic, sassy teenager, the story works better (such as you just getting a job fighting to make money, instead of needing an edgy "sold his body to older men" plotpoint), and the only loss is the removal of a gay ship with Emil wanting to fuck the MC because he was nice to him. And it continued the trend of the series of getting to play unique characters, from Caim the bloodthirsty monster to now the middle aged crag of a man and how the world reacts differently to those types of people instead.
So its a series that hits every part of this debate. Drakengard was famous for its MC being so distinctly not like every other Japanese game at the time, Nier showing them chasing both rabbits at once, and then Automata going back to fully Japanese. And Drakengard 3 exists as well doing whatever it does.
He replaced him with the guy from 24, which was a big budget Hollywoodesque action series. To his Westaboo mind that's way more fitting than boring old Hayter the guy who made like 2 movies and is mostly just a video game VA.
It really is egregious just how much Kojima is influenced by generic Hollywood slop and how much he will simp for it, despite he himself technically being "above" them in most hierarchies.
It says in the article it takes around two months, which is pretty bad.
There is no doubt a lot of improvement to be made to it, but going full digital and focusing on making it super duper fast is almost guaranteed to bring a whole host of other problems by going to the opposite extreme.
I've worked enough random jobs where we had a shitty, but workable system for some random task, and a new Exec with bright ideas came in and tried to fully automate and digitize it, only for that to be riddled with so many failures and problems we end up taking triple the time, losing mass productivity/profit due to failures, and just going back to the old system anyway. While said Exec cashes out and leaves us all holding the bag of fixing the mess.
Which is what I foresee happening based on what this guy is putting his focus on, not improving the system but making it shiny and futuristic and just like Apple.
Kojima absolutely needs multiple tard wranglers, because as you pointed out once he was without one, and had free reign and infinite budgets, his games became increasingly stupid, wasteful, and completely Westaboo'd.
Because you can explain so many of his bad decisions from MGS4/5 and Death Stranding as him just so hard trying to be an American Hollywood guy.
And what's sad is he clearly still has talent and ideas that should be refined. MGS5 could have been the defining open world stealth game, you can feel it getting just close to it but falling short. DS is fun once it stops trying to tell you a retarded story and just lets you enjoy the world and its mechanics.
But without that wrangler he puts too much focus on his nonsense stories and cheesy dialogue, and then forgets that the gameplay elements aren't supposed to just be bridges between cutscenes.
Gebbia wants to change the retirement process from its current paper-based system to “an online digital process that will take a few days at most.”
This can only go wrong, like it always does when some fancy big idealist tries to take a limping but still working system and overhaul it to a full digital "seamless and easy" procedure.
I have no doubt the current process is inefficient, because its the federal government, but these people retiring are getting a lot of benefits. It should take a moment to make sure they qualify properly and are getting only what they should be getting. They could probably cut a lot of the inefficiency while still keeping it fully hard copy and reliable.
I like a lot of what DOGE is doing, but we should also be weary of reaching the other extreme, where we lose site of doing things fully properly just to make it quick and minimalist, or just part of Musk's futurist all digital utopian ideals.
that tackles painfully real emotions and fears felt by parents
God I am so sick of this shit. Every fucking horror story has to be a multilayer allegory where all the plot holes and nonsense is excused with "that's how it is in real life with X!" Its such basic deflection. Like you can't call the movies bad because the fans and director will run in and use the real world tragedy to guilt you into not talking bad about them.
And in doing so, we have the very reason why people write articles like this. A simple horror movie trope, the last second "they didn't actually escape!" twist, is now an indication that they actually shot themselves based on nothing but "well it implies it!" And they deserve this kind of criticism, because they wrote a gay ass movie about "muh depression" as a fucking monster like a tumblr girl.
Capcom did the same with the Megaman gacha game, which they removed all online features, rebalanced the economy around not having any MTX available, and then just let people buy it.
Which then became a huge modding scene since it was offline that allowed what is basically continued events and updates through the fanscene to keep it alive.
Same as Squeenix, a company with many problems but sometimes Capcom turns around a cool move like that too.
At least some companies have already started releasing gacha games as "fully released" titles on Steam (and probably elsewhere wherever the Asians have access to) to keep them accessible once the servers go offline. Which I imagine is a trend that will only increase in prominence because its literally free money for assets that already exist.
Its such a common thing that a character having blond hair is supposed to be visual storytelling to fill you in about a character's personality and backstory in a lot of works. They are either a rebel/delinquent, or a foreigner (and always at least partially Japanese because otherwise that's a big problem for them).
This doesn't always apply in series with rainbow colors present, but even then the blond specifically often will still get singled out as a big deal because of how much cultural baggage the Japs have with it.
Yeah JFK Sr. is one of the most obvious examples of "almost everything wrong with American politics" from the grooming his family to try and be the nobles and royalty of the country, to basically treating themselves as the Elite who all of the country must obey.
While he isn't the source of that kind of behavior, his was one of the major players keeping it alive in the 20th century and if he was doing it today he would be well noted as the most Swamp creature possible in our country, regardless of any particularly "based" beliefs he may have.
There is an entire industry of Leftists who believe its not only acceptable but cheap to charge people hundreds of dollars for a black and white drawing of some character, no background. And that you should be forced to wait in line for such a great offering. That's before getting into the porn side, which felt even more comfortable in their niche as "the only guy drawing this specific thing."
They all want to be the "Elite's Chosen Money Launderer" being able to live as an artist making lots of money on silly scribbles, so they forced the industry to accept ridiculous prices as the default to feed their ego and laziness. And AI represents the breaking of that monopoly.
AFAIK, he was just a shutin who lived in the middle of nowhere. If not for the internet, he would be one of those trailer park boys we all know that live and die in their momma's house like a local cryptid. So there is no one to do an intervention anyway.
I feel for him in a way, because I know dozens of guys from my hometown who spent their entire existence in a sad state like that. But none of them had the money to easily escape it, so its kept minimal.
If you aren't drunk on anti-white and DEI bullshit, illegals are nothing but negatives for law enforcement. It requires bilingual on hand, a shit ton more paperwork, and a whole new ghetto (which all bring a whole host of problems with gangs, insular communities, and the like).
So any cop that is being honest with themselves probably is all for this, even if their bosses aren't for political reasons.
Huh, almost like showing that you could have done something about the illegals destroying your town might make people suddenly question why you didn't and cease to trust your judgement further.
The same way most of that trust was eroded in 2020 when the cops showed they could stop anybody outside if they were breaking "quarantine" but they chose not to if those people were doing it to riot and protest for some nigger.
He was living like that despite already being a millionaire streamer. This was all well after he got famous, and the question of why he continued to live like that despite being able to easily afford a cleaner and real dental work is why it was so notable and a knock against him as a person.
I'd consider most of that passable if he was still just a white trash boy trying to make it still.
The movie would have been bad, but she likely would have walked off unscathed from it. The alien face girl from Little Mermaid not too long ago did by being mostly quiet about the controversy and just letting the movie pass instead of trying to provoke people constantly.
It also probably did make the film do worse, simply because people then had a more vested interest in making it fail beyond just "this shouldn't exist." So there was more discussion about its problems, more focus on its various faults, and just more pictures of her which is enough to put people off the film.
Whereas most of us can only recall that one screenshot from Little Mermaid of her midsong, because it spoke for itself and people instead just laughed it off.
The entire 10/7 thing showed that they were only ever anti-war because they associated "war" with "bombing brown countries" like it meant during the Bush era most Lefties grew up in.
Once they could openly lust for war against whites like Russia and, to them, Israel they were all for it.
is it some old joke where his teeth fell out
One of his teeth literally fell out mid sentence on a stream, you can go watch the clip. He lived in a room so covered with trash and unfinished food that you could see the roaches behind him most days. He sleeps next to a wall covered in hundreds of blood stains because, by his own admission, his gums would bleed while he slept so he would just wipe them on the wall his entire life. He literally killed his mother because he would go buy her cigarettes and she blew herself up with her oxygen tank while he was in the house.
He also does just look like a rodent, but that's not his fault mostly.
There is a laundry list of things on that train so I won't keep harping on it, the kind where its a lot bigger than just memes about being a regular gross nerd and makes him physically revolting as a person. At the level that makes anything he says, regardless of validity, pretty useless.
He also responded to a guy who said his girlfriend dressed up as 2B with something along the lines of: