To relieve some of the tensions of my 1st entry of the cultural gap series http://screwattack.com/node/11517 , I thought about a pretty funny topic to talk about that was mentioned on hard news a while back. Today’s I’d like to point out our views on 2 taboos of videogames in the east (mainly Japan) and in the west (mostly America). (I’d talk about Europe too, but I don’t know anything about the gaming culture there to make any valid points so I’ll leave that out for the G1s to comment and discuss) First I would like to talk about us western gamers. We love violence. Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto are probably some of our most cherished franchises that aren’t as popular in Japan. However, there is one thing that we don’t tolerate here and that is sex in videogames, a very popular genre in Japan. I don't understand why our violent titles don't do well over there while their own share of violence like Ninja Gaiden do really well. As for Japan goes, I’m sure some people have heard of a genre of games there called “Eroge (エロゲ)." It’s short for erotic games. While most are generic dating sims with voice-overed sex scenes in between, there are a few, mostly developed by a company called “illusion” which made games like Sexy Beach, Artificial Girl and Rapelay which are pretty much sex/rape simulation games. Those kinds of games will never be released in the U.S. It’s not like Japan doesn’t have its share of violent games: Ninja Gaiden, Biohazard/Resident Evil series, as well as many others. I’m not saying hey, let’s bring eroge’s here to the US! No, in fact, that would be terrible. It’ll just be more reasons for our politicians to ***** and whine about games. But I think it’s funny because if you look at it from a real-life perspective… Having sex is only a way of reproduction; it’s not a crime. But I’m pretty sure you’ll be pretty screwed if you’re caught ripping someone’s spine out or decapitating people like you do in Mortal Kombat. In other words, I think that violence is much worse than sex. But it is the cultural barriers that tell our society it is the other way around. ...Actually I take that back, it would be funny as hell to see what Jack Thompson wants to say about any of illusion's titles if they were brought overseas xD (wow I just noticed that I spelled cultural wrong on the title of my first blog... how embarassing)