Given how standard those games are there, and the popularity of the artist... they just might consider it a good thing.
Some elements of society, certainly - but there's no doubt that on many levels, Korean culture is still far more conservative than western culture. Teenage boys both in Korea and the west may be drooling onehandedly over Blade & Soul, but what about the rest of our respective societies?
And I mourn for our world's youth and the visuals that will be assaulting their impressionable minds. "Let's lower the value of our world's women and take something beautiful (the human body) and grotesquely reshape it to meet our disgusting 'needs'."
Of course, I'm sure they're (NCSoft) is grateful for this thread... because we're offering them free advertising.
"There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary." - Brendan Behan.
"You must pursue this investigation of Watergate even if it leads to the president. I'm innocent. You've got to believe I'm innocent. If you don't, take my job." - Richard Nixon
Sometimes, bad publicity
is bad publicity after all
Reading what both Knightslayer and Soundtrack say leads me to another interesting "Hmm..." point though -
youth and maturity.Of all the MMOs I've played, CoH has without a doubt the highest proportion of 'mature' players, by which I mean not just people over 18, but in many cases waaaay over 18.
And ironically, Blade and Soul will likely have a 'M' rating, but I've no doubt at all that a large percentage of the playerbase will be under 18s who shouldn't be playing the game at all.
It just goes to show that large corporations are no respecters of culture of
any age - on the one hand they're insulting adults by killing a game with a mature demographic and behaving like a pouty child who's taken away his ball to bury it so no one else can have it, and on the other, they're peddling softcore porn they
know underage children will play, all the while hiding behind a ratings shield and laughing as they count the coins those kids have forked over.
*laughs*
That's three (at least) moral denouncements I've made about NCSoft in this thread now. It was never my intention to become some sort of moralistic crusader...but unfortunately, the more I look at NCSoft (and Blade and Soul in particular) the more I feel myself turning into one. It's hard not to really, isn't it?