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SFV R. Mika default costume was deemed too revealing by ESPN

The point of customization options is for others to see you using the costumes. If people can turn off costumes others are paying extra for, then we have a problem.

Why? You can still see it can't you?

I buy alt Costumes for me to ogle, not others

Why would I care if someone can turn them off if they are offended?
 
Overall, you want on TV, you play by their rules. It was one costume and didn't really affect the core game or anyone's enjoyment. One costume for much more exposure.

All these people are non-FGC and watched EVO for the first time. Gallery not made by me: https://imgur.com/a/c0oqq

I think there's much more too from what I saw last night that aren't even included in that gallery. Overall, very positive reception and reaching many more people than ever before. It's a compromise, and a perfectly fine one at that.

So, my main take away form those tweets is that Capcom's probably going to turn that bear into a DLC character. :p
 

Negaduck

Member
Who cares, there is always some censorship by networks with the money.

I doubt they let sports commentators curse on TV without getting in trouble so changing costumes is no big deal.

You have to make compromises when dealing with that large of a viewerbase.

And if it's the first step to bigger better things then just pick another costume it's no big deal at all.
 

Alucrid

Banned
I honestly think that this is an internal standards and practices decision. I don't think Mika's outfit is so outrageous that they would have incurred penalties at the time of night. The game is merely rated T by the ESRB after all. And I believe that at least the first match was aired with the default costume, right?

for top 8 winner's fuudo used the "banned" costume for all three games against MOV. for winners semi against infil he switched to the story mode costume and used that until the end.
 
Do you have information on this in which we can read?

All I see is a tweet.

Or is this an assumption?
It's an assumption, based on the info below:
I honestly think that this is an internal standards and practices decision. I don't think Mika's outfit is so outrageous that they would have incurred penalties at the time of night. The game is merely rated T by the ESRB after all. And I believe that at least the first match was aired with the default costume, right?
They did air it with the default costume at first, and I think I saw tweets about her Critical Art (the butt to face move) which might have been what crossed the line and made ESPN either decide or realise that it was inappropriate. Capcom have previously said that they edited the CA to keep the T rating so it would probably be considered borderline as it is.
 

Palculator

Unconfirmed Member
As the only mod visibly posting (possibly reading as well, I don't know), in general I would prefer civility regardless of which side of the divide you're on. However, the quoted posts aren't really over the arbitrary line in the sand that I've drawn in terms of what I'm willing to ban for. For the sake of clarity, I've issued one ban thus far, and it was for this post: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=210441321

Calling another poster stupid or "a fucking liar" is clearly over the line.
I just don't see how it's not a poor form of argument or conduct. Someone pointed out how they would've enjoyed the event more with the default costume because they liked R. Mika in her sexy outfit. Then the immediate conclusion was that that person must have no life (whatever exactly that entails, I'm presuming lack of employment and significant other since that seems to be the consensus on what a "life" is) and the response was to belittle that poster based on that assumption. Not only is that quite rude because why would you make fun of someone for that, it also fails to address any point made and contributes nothing to the discussion besides trying to make someone feel bad for their opinion. An opinion expressed completely civil, non-confrontational and with none of the outrage Garret Hawke then justified their ridicule with.

In any case, I don't want to derail the thread further with moderation discussion (which is technically not kosher anyway), it just seemed like this thread is more severe than other threads regarding similar cases. I'm open to continue via PM, though.
 

Labolas

Member
If you're complaining about Mika's outfit being ridiculous. Then nix SF as a whole because being ridiculous and colorful is apart of its own history. And people saying mainstream female wrestling isn't sexuality than why the fuck does WWE hired models as wrestlers. Why do they have to look a certain way? Just because they're aren't dress as Mika doesn't mean they aren't sexualized.
 
Why? You can still see it can't you?

I buy alt Costumes for me to ogle, not others

Why would I care if someone can turn them off if they are offended?
Some people care about being seen in the costumes and colors, that's what customization is for. When the second batch of SSF4 costumes came, people complained because you had to download a compatibility update and a lot of people didn't do that.

If people could turn off a costume I wanted I wouldn't buy that costume in the first place, being offended is free, costumes are 4~5 bucks a pop.
Love seeing those tweets :)
It's hilarious seeing people react to competitive videogames. VIDEOGAMES IN MY TV? WHAT SORCERY IS THIS GRUMBLE GRUMBLE
 

Vex_

Banned
if this is something that genuinely bothers someone then they really need to reconsider their life choices



get a life, p l e a s e

Eh. That's not cool, Garrett. :/ I mean, one could say the same thing about people arguing about video games on a forum in the first place instead of doing something else productive.

That shouldn't be anyone's concern. Personal matters, that is. Surprised that came out of you is all.

*Shrugs*
 
I don't understand the outrage over this decision, it's not like they've removed the costumes from the game.

It's clearly a business decision where they thought that the average person likely to tune in would have found that costume in bad taste. That's it. I think the exposure gained is worth a temporary loss of cleavage.
 

Yukinari

Member
Why? You can still see it can't you?

I buy alt Costumes for me to ogle, not others

Why would I care if someone can turn them off if they are offended?

The entire economies of Valve games revolve around being able to show off and buy fancy cosmetic items. People wouldnt give a rats ass about cosmetics in those games if there was an in-game option to turn them off.
 

Gren

Member
The entire economies of Valve games revolve around being able to show off and buy fancy cosmetic items. People wouldnt give a rats ass about cosmetics in those games if there was an in-game option to turn them off.

Maye some, but definitely not everyone.

Costume mods have always been big for SFIV/V, and no one else can see them except oneself.
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
The entire economies of Valve games revolve around being able to show off and buy fancy cosmetic items. People wouldnt give a rats ass about cosmetics in those games if there was an in-game option to turn them off.
Except that this isnt a valve game.
 
Maye some, but definitely not everyone.

Costume mods have always been big for SFIV/V, and no one else can see them except oneself.
Not everyone, of course, but in the same vein not everyone gives a shit about what costumes people are wearing.

The point is it's not some easy "win win" situation where no one will have anything to complain about.
 

Platy

Member
To grind that extra salt into their wounds of course.

You sure you're a real member of the FGC?

And people are surprised I don't play online =P

Not everyone, of course, but in the same vein not everyone gives a shit about what costumes people are wearing.

The point is it's not some easy "win win" situation where no one will have anything to complain about.

So you are freaking out that I care about what the characters are wearing ... but you are someone who cares that people see what your character is wearing ?
 

Labolas

Member
Yeah wrestling isn't sexualized at all.

FAFO2MJ.gif


janWivs.jpg


rwmibm.gif


F36FgM.gif


Face it, Mika is just an overexaggerate joshi, that's all. And personally, both of her alts are revealing so I really don't see the difference.
 
The best part is that from what i heard the ESPN broadcast had worse editing compared to the twitch stream. Can anyone confirm?

ESPN's everything was better than Twitch's. Stream quality, commentating, production values and yes, editing. Sound balance was a bit iffy at first with the stream commentating being blared over the arena's speakers so they bled into the ESPN cast, but that was fixed relatively quickly and not that big a deal. Hell, every few matches they even went over a bracket updated in real time and they talked about who was left/etc. I don't think I've ever seen that in Evo, where you have to hunt down brackets via other URLs and even then many times they're not updated as fast as they have to be.

Whoever you read making those declarations probably has an ax to grind.

Yeah wrestling isn't sexualized at all.

http://i.imgur.com/FAFO2MJ.gif
http://i.imgur.com/janWivs.jpg
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y14/shishisenkou/rwmibm.gif
http://i.makeagif.com/media/9-02-2015/F36FgM.gif

Face it, Mika is just an overexaggerate joshi, that's all. And personally, both of her alts are revealing so I really don't see the difference.

How many of those came from broadcasts that aired on ESPN on a Sunday night?
 
It doesn't have to be one or the other, but I do think it represents a potential problem when a default costume is deemed inappropriate for mass television consumption assuming your aim is a mass audience.

I think it would've been fine if it wasn't her default outfit. Her Zangief tag-team costume would've been fine as the default, or just something else entirely. Just from a financial standpoint you could even argue that it'd made more sense to have her original costume as DLC because it's extremely popular. Even as someone that likes fanservice, they certainly could've made some of the default outfits less revealing. Especially since alts are going to be a huge part of the future of the game.
 
So you are freaking out that I care about what the characters are wearing ... but you are someone who cares that people see what your character is wearing ?
Uhh, yeah? What's your point?

And "freaking out"? I literally just asked you to elaborate on your posts because they were contradictory, how the hell is that freaking out?
 

dity

Member
Eh, seems fine to me. It's not like it effects how he is going to play or anything... Well, unless his skill comes from cleavage. That's probably the plot of an anime. I Can't Believe Cleavage Makes Me Game This Good!
 
I think it would've been fine if it wasn't her default outfit. Her Zangief tag-team costume would've been fine as the default, or just something else entirely. Just from a financial standpoint you could even argue that it'd made more sense to have her original costume as DLC because it's extremely popular. Even as someone that likes fanservice, they certainly could've made some of the default outfits less revealing. Especially since alts are going to be a huge part of the future of the game.

Sure. And to be clear, my advice -- assuming anyone is asking for it which I know they aren't -- isn't to take all conventional wisdom and toss it out the window. Maybe you can make everyone happy. But assuming you can't, I don't think the right move is to take your existing base and just toss them aside in favor of the blue ocean of rising popularity of eSports ushering in a fresh new wave of casuals into the mix. But I just do think this type of thing highlights the sort of flack we're already seeing in the industry.
 

Labolas

Member
ESPN's everything was better than Twitch's. Stream quality, commentating, production values and yes, editing. Hell, every few matches they even went over a bracket updated in real time and they talked about who was left/etc. I don't think I've ever seen that in Evo, where you have to hunt down brackets via other URLs and even then many times they're not updated as fast as they have to be.

Whoever you read making those declarations probably has an ax to grind.



How many of those came from broadcasts that aired on ESPN on a Sunday night?

None. But most of those are on a major broadcast with over 1 million viewers. And that wasn't my point.
 

Crossing Eden

Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Im just saying most people in the majority of games enjoy unlocking/buying cosmetics more often in online titles because they want to be individuals or centers of attention.
Which is why I should be given the option to ignore them. I don't care if they get the need to spend money on a costume to stick out. Even more so if it's a fan service consume.
 

Riposte

Member
There's a difference. People poin out the lack of believability. Ryu throwing Hadokens is believable in context. The majority of women dressing up in skimpy outfits that would result in them constantly having to pop heir breasts back in and are clearly designed for NOTHING other than cheap sexual objectification are not not. Another thing to consider is that Ru throwing a fireball has nothing to do with the fact that he's a man, the women being designed that way, absolutely is. The males are often designed in a way that resembles caricatures and because they're supposed to "look cool," not for sexualization, (even more proof of this is that Capcom was surprised at the way that the fans reacted to Ryu shirtless."), it's usually the opposite situation for the female characters, these leads to the game feeling less inclusive. Excuse like "it's fiction1!!1" are actually insulting to artists, because it implies that no thought needs to go into making things believable.

Street Fighter is a cartoon world with cartoon characters and physics. They can jump ten plus feet in the air in either direction from standing position and can't move side ways, for example. Ever heard of Loony Tunes or Dragon Ball? Boobs not flopping out shirts has everything to do with context, but the context of style. You completely overlook the possibility of a game being stylized in this way, for the same reason why you abandon this argument less than a halfway through the paragraph and reveal what really bothers you. You don't care about believability at all; you just want the material not to be "sexist" and the whole believability thing is a clumsy bludgeon in the place of an argument about aesthetics. For what it's worth, "believability" is just a means, not an ends. The ends is aesthetic pleasure, such as making your game nice looking - believability, to whatever extent you can actually say it doesn't exist here, might be worth sacrificing for that.


EDIT: As for the actual topic, this is only really problem if it begins to influence Capcom's creative decisions. I.e., eSports ambitions now influencing aesthetics; eSports has an ugly and boring mindset by nature. This probably going to be ultimately the case some way or another; "it's about that paper" - Jago.
 

Kintaro

Worships the porcelain goddess
As for your assumption that SF can't reach a larger audience without ditching fighting game gameplay, I totally disagree and think that's an incredibly limited perspective on things.

No, its realistic.

Fighters are a genre that is limiting by nature. In fact SFV hasnt even sold as mich its previous games. So, less people are actually buying it.

You must also practice. More than almost any other genre. Tou practice to get you head beat in. You pour thousands of hours just to be considered not a scrub.

There is also the control schemes with consistently alienate casual users. Throw in the amount of moves. Then the match ups. Then the tech. Etc. Then you hope you can find people locally to play. If not, hope online worls worth a damn.

On and on go into foghters. And you think this can reach a wider audience (and we still dont even know what this means) without a genre shake up?

Good luck.

As for the rest, ill concede to whatever. I am tired, at work and its a shitty day already. So im not up for the deeper issues atm. You make good points and i think you are swell. o/
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
Eh, seems fine to me. It's not like it effects how he is going to play or anything... Well, unless his skill comes from cleavage. That's probably the plot of an anime. I Can't Believe Cleavage Makes Me Game This Good!

It may or may not be placebo, but some people will swear that they perform worse since they are used to seeing/playing one type of character look for so long.

I swore I was better at default MK ninjas than their contrast shaded alts when I was younger. I can only imagine a larger look design when you are used to a certain repetition and flow.

It's an assumption, based on the info below:

So you had an assumption, based on his comment, that came after yours, in response to yours, which does not quite agree with yours fully, considering it is a cable channel, which does not have as hard of restrictions after a certain time, with the likes of pro-wresting, and other shows on other cable networks which show full rear nudity (The Shield/Orphan Black) and the like?

I am confused with these two statements you just made, lol.

I think it was just ESPN having a slight stigma due to how gaming is perceived versus other mediums. Nothing regulatory above them where they are 'free from blame' other than Disney themselves.
 

Platy

Member
Uhh, yeah? What's your point?

And "freaking out"? I literally just asked you to elaborate on your posts because they were contradictory, how the hell is that freaking out?

You and I share the same importance in costumes.

You would hate that people don't see the ones you payed and I hate to see the ones I did not.

And some default ones as well =P
 

KingBroly

Banned
Street Fighter is a cartoon world with cartoon characters and physics. They can jump ten plus feet in the air in either direction and can't move side ways, for example. Ever heard of Loony Tunes or Dragon Ball? Boobs not flopping out shirts has everything to do with context, but the context of style. You completely overlook the possibility of a game being stylized in this way, for the same reason why you abandon this argument less than a halfway through the paragraph and reveal what really bothers you. You don't care about believability at all; you just want the material not to be "sexist" and the whole believability thing is a clumsy bludgeon in the place of an argument about aesthetics. For what its worth, "believability" is just a means, not an ends. The ends is aesthetic pleasure, such as making your game nice looking - believability, to whatever extent you can actually say it doesn't exist here, might be worth sacrificing for that.

People do have a problem with these characters going to settings where they look completely out of the element. It might be cartoon characters, but you really have to stretch your imagination to make it work sometimes. Like Cammy walking around a busy train station with no pants on. It's like 'what? That doesn't make sense.' That's an actual thing that happens in SF5.
 

dity

Member
It may or may not be placebo, but some people will swear that they perform worse since they are used to seeing/playing one type of character look for so long.

I swore I was better at default MK ninjas than their contrast shaded alts when I was younger. I can only imagine a larger look design when you are used to a certain repetition and flow.

I now eagerly await the day that "I count the invincibility frames via the characters cleavage" becomes a thing said in eSports. That will be quite the day.
 
None. But most of those are on a major broadcast with over 1 million viewers. And that wasn't my point.

SFV aired on ESPN, though, so it's up to the higher ups at ESPN to determine what they are willing or not wiling to show. Just because they appeared in other channels doesn't mean ESPN should be cool with showing Mika's default costume.

Professional wrestling is sexualized, but this isn't a professional wrestling game, nor is it being shown in a professional wrestling channel.
 

Kalamari

Member
I don't recall seeing Mika's butt slap move at all last night. I wonder if there would have been any fallout from that, even in its censored form.
 
I can't believe people are upset at ESPN wanting not to show a bare ass on TV for a fighting game the first time they ever broadcast it.

Relax people. It's the price of exposure. This is how the world works. Sometimes you have to adapt.
 
I can't believe people are upset at ESPN wanting not to show a bare ass on TV for a fighting game the first time they ever broadcast it.

Relax people. It's the price of exposure. This is how the world works. Sometimes you have to adapt.

It's really odd that people are just now finding out that you can't show literally anything you want on television.
 
I don't recall seeing Mika's butt slap move at all last night. I wonder if there would have been any fallout from that, even in its censored form.

Fuudo just doesn't use her CA that often. Mika's much more dangerous if you can use her EX moves properly. So it's more important to use the bar for that than to spent it entirely on the CA.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
I don't recall seeing Mika's butt slap move at all last night. I wonder if there would have been any fallout from that, even in its censored form.

That is exclusive to baseball, football, and beach volleyball, sorry. ;-P

It's really odd that people are just now finding out that you can't show literally anything you want on television.

You can show more than what is in the game on cable TV here.

As an example The Shield and Orphan Black had full rear nude body scenes, showing full ass, and even her jumping on him with it spreading in sex scenes where even I went, "holy shit, this is not Late Night Cinemax/HBO?". On cable TV with commercials. No censoring. Other shows had full blown boobs shown from the side throwing towels around, just shy of the nipple.

Now I understand the apprehension since it was the first time airing something like this for them, and probably trying to adhere to a culture that starts at the top with Disney. However, I also believe there is a stigma due to it being a video game, since they have no issue selling sex in other real life sports mediums with some of their promotional content.

Trying to appeal to a larger audience does make sense from the 'taboo' perspective, but let is not think her outfit was to risqué for cable TV with some of the things you can easily see on cable channels.
 

ishibear

is a goddamn bear
I'd say there's a pretty clear difference

The first one is actually pretty cool imo.

The ruffles speak to her childlike character so much. This one's also better because it's maintaining the exaggerated costume designs that are common for wrestlers without sexualization seeming to be at the fore. Looks more like ridiculousness was the inspiration and that's perfect for her character.
 

Trey

Member
Some director at ESPN/ABC was probably like "yeah that's a little much, can we tone it down a bit?" and Mr. Wizard and/or combofiend was like "yeah, sure, who gives a shit?"
 
are you purposely being obtuse?

No I just think you're in denial.

You're saying they're embodying tropes. But tropes are not all the same.

Ryu, Ken, Zangief, they're characters comparable to Super Mario in terms of caricature. That's why they appear in things like Wreck it Ralph

Characters like Mika, Sakura, Karin are when the line crosses to something that embodies the tropes you would see in those niche anime fighters where all the characters are girls.

You try and shield yourself saying it's all the same, but no one would say SFII, SF alpha and SFIII design sensibilities are the same. Ask any crazy 3s devotee.
 
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