In a dubious victory for the moral outrage police, Koei Tecmo has decided not to bring their newest titillating entry in the Dead Or Alive Xtreme volleyball series to Western shores. The company has decided it just isn’t worth the expected criticism from social justice warriors. The thing is, they’re probably right.
Let’s be clear: while the DOAX games aren’t particularly classy, they’re also no more insidious than a collection of simple minigames amidst a fleet of bikini-clad women. The thing is, DOAX is sort of a feminist utopia, at least as sexual liberation campaigners of the past would have understood the term, with sex-positive women capering about on an island with little to no male presence whatsoever. Everything is catered, and the most threatening thing on tap is a beach ball. None of the available games and activities are forced upon you. You’ll have to consent to volleyball and tug of war.
If you grow uncomfortable, you can turn off the game without being cajoled any further. It’s hard to imagine a product that more completely encompasses the virtues of modern feminism.
Apparently, the Modern Matriarchy disagrees.
Companies like Koei Tecmo are starting to pick up on the cognitive dissonance in the fine print of progressive branding. On Facebook, their answer was succinct:
We do not bring DOAX3 to the west and won’t have any plan change in the future. Thank you for asking.
When pressed to elaborate, the developers were very clear as to the reasoning behind their decision (archive link). The issues in the video game industry regarding the portrayal of women were deemed too volatile to approach. After at least a year of internal debate, they’ve decided that it’s just not worth the trouble.
Feminists and SJWs persist in claiming that they don’t want to distort or censor the video game market, only to broaden its horizons. In contrast, we’re starting to see the real-world effects of a message that turns its argument on a dime, and how restrictive their endless carping can be to a burgeoning industry.
It’s the constant stream of rhetoric about video games as an abusive evil that has discouraged Koei Tecmo from bringing the latest entry within firing range of the militant social justice movement. On a regular basis, entertainment media that doesn’t adhere to the constantly shifting lines of progressive social politics is derided with fury.
The problem with deciding which games need to be censored to protect the fragility of feminists’ egos is that it accomplishes the exact opposite of the movement’s purported intent. You can’t censor sexuality and try to promote it at the same time. Freedom of expression means that not every expression is going to be one you approve of. Pretending to promote unmitigated empowerment while campaigning for restrictions to shackle artistic creation to one set of ideals isn’t just disingenuous, it’s a logical impossibility.
Besides, the current image of a “good” feminist life is only one version of what a female-centric Utopia could be. It’s also hardly a universally accepted vision; many women just don’t seem to identify with the careful boundaries and heavily regulated world that modern social justice advocates.
It’s virtue signalling on any “Frequency.”
Nate Church is @Get2Church on Twitter, and he can’t become a wildly overhyped internet celebrity without your help. Follow, retweet, and favorite everything he says. It’s the Right Thing To Do™!
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