Wow, OK. It seems in the short time I was gone from this forum, my words were quite heavily misunderstood!
I don't think you guys and I are on such opposite sides of the coin as you seem to feel we are; I think I'm just not quite making my points very clearly.
Allow me to clarify to the best of my ability.
No matter how you may feel about controversial content in games, you have to admit that on occasion, content comes up that -- if someone asks, "why is that in there?" -- the only real explanation anyone can come up with is, "for the hell of it." It doesn't fit the mood or feel of the game in any way, and seems to have been included solely for the sake of stirring the pot.
Now, there may be a deeper reason for its inclusion, which is part of why I feel it's necessary to always honor this content in localization. A lot of times, though, it's there before the creator didn't know any better -- maybe he/she saw it somewhere once and thought it was neat-looking, so he/she included it in the game without any further research whatsoever as to the possible subtler meaning behind it.
However, I believe more often than not, the real reason it's there is because the creator simply wanted to see how much he/she could get away with.
In other words, it exists as a DIRECT CHALLENGE to censorship culture. It's there because the creator knows all of his/her content is at risk of being altered or removed, and wants to see just how far he/she can push things before that happens.
What I want to see is a world where there's no need to test the waters like this; a world where creators know their content is never going to be altered or removed due to its offensive or salacious nature, so they no longer feel the need to add little things like that just to see if they can get away with them. Basically, I want a world where creators feel comfortable adding controversial content to their work whenever they feel it's appropriate to do so, without worry.
...And it would also be nice if creators educated themselves a bit more about stuff they don't understand, so they stop throwing in symbology without knowing what it actually represents. That way, if they still choose to include it, they do so with full awareness of its meaning, and can effectively defend it should the decision to include it be challenged.
That's basically all I'm saying here. I hate dealing with games that include "scandalous" content just for the sake of having it, because I hate that it's even necessary for game developers to do this; however, even in those cases, I will always defend that content, despite personally not liking it.
If that still offends or upsets anyone, I am sorry. But that is my personal view on this matter. I can't help it if I'd rather play (and thus also rather work on) games like Zwei, Brandish, and PopoloCrois -- those games are awesome, and can be localized without the constant fear of being told from above that some of their content needs to be changed.
Also, just to note: the reason I'm not mentioning any specific games or incidents by name is because most of them are from non-XSEED titles, and I don't feel it's in my place as an industry representative to blast other people's work. I just feel it would be professionally inappropriate for me to do so.
I'm sure you can all think of examples, though, where content was seemingly included "just for the hell of it," so please assume I'm talking about those titles in this discussion.
