Child-like characters?

[Ftail]

I have my doubts that they're virtue signalling given the frequency of scandals involving such things within the FFXIV community, particularly where Reddit and Twitter are concerned. Even this forum isn't free of creepy requests/commentary in regards to such things - as some of the contributions to this thread prove.

"Among some of the feedback we received were requests for playable characters that resembled young boys and girls. Unfortunately, this is one request we cannot consider for ethical reasons.

With every passing year the debate surrounding moral and ethical issues in games grows more intense, and we do not want to present children in battle or in pain" edit: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...24#post4975024

If that were true Alphinaud, Alisaie, Ryne, that kid we are trying to cure in Shadowbringers wouldn't exist.

They won't even create headpieces for the new races. What makes you think they will go back and make the armor pieces fit child races? The armor pieces for Viera are the same ones, but slightly made larger and they decided to not do the head pieces because the ears get in the way (Aesthetic decision). If they created a child race, changing the armor wouldn't be as easy as decreasing the size.

You are getting hung up on me saying, "virtue signaling", when they are just making a wise PR decision.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

You are getting hung up on me saying, "virtue signaling", when they are just making a wise PR decision.

With every passing year the debate surrounding moral and ethical issues in games grows more intense, and we do not want to present children in battle or in pain—and posing such characters sexually and taking screenshots and so forth would be expressly forbidden.
In any event, regardless of what our players did or did not intend to do, the fact remains that if a review board were to evaluate such content and determine it were unacceptable, we would be forced to suspend FFXIV’s service. We ask that you keep these factors in mind as we strive to abide by the changing standards of the times.

I think this is a wise decision that goes beyond PR.

[Ftail]

I think this is a wise decision that goes beyond PR.

It goes beyond PR, you are correct. The main concern SE has is about maximizing profit. Using their workforce to create a child-race and everything that would accompany that would be a gross misallocation of their resources. I don't think they should create child avatars for players. They should work on stuff the majority of players actually want, an example of that would be the Nier Raids.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

It goes beyond PR, you are correct. The main concern SE has is about maximizing profit. Using their workforce to create a child-race and everything that would accompany that would be a gross misallocation of their resources. I don't think they should create child avatars for players. They should work on stuff the majority of players actually want, an example of that would be the Nier Raids.

Lets get rid of the Whole "Money" thing here. The issue also boils down to that SE and YoshiP do not want to risk Young childlike characters being sexualized in their MMO. Which puts their company, and the Entire game at risk of being shutdown. You can argue that a game being suspended is a loss of money...yes. But money and Maximizing Profits isn't the drive here.

[Elgeron]

Lets get rid of the Whole "Money" thing here. The issue also boils down to that SE and YoshiP do not want to risk Young childlike characters being sexualized in their MMO. Which puts their company, and the Entire game at risk of being shutdown. You can argue that a game being suspended is a loss of money...yes. But money and Maximizing Profits isn't the drive here.

Actually I think Ftail may be partially right. I think you are perfectly right that SE wants to maintain a certain image, specially because they deal with a huge international market. But I think the inconsistencies of how minors are portrayed and the declarations of Yoshi-P may point out more to covering their asses while trying to make good PR for themselves. Mainly, the issues is the character of Ryne. While the game is not stranger to present minors in situations of violence or danger (from the Scions twins to the children victim of war in SB), most of this cases were a bit in the "grey area" because the twins are clearly late teens, so it is not so frowned upon to see them in combat (while I would say SE is being cautious of avoiding any kind of sexualization of said characters), and other minors are, at most, implied to had been victims of violence off-screen. So far, so good. But the introduction of Ryne breaks this, by being a 12-13 year old girl clearly engaging in combat on-screen. Even more poignant, being involved in actual gameplay. Unless there is a piece of lore that I may had miss and Ryne turns out to be older, it seems to go against what was declared by Yoshi, and that it may not be so big of an issue.

Of course, you are right that they want to avoid any scandal that may arise from players sexualizing child characters, but I think as big of a reason is that it would be a nightmare to introduce a child version of each race, even if they would limit them to be 16 or so. It has to be all or none, or you will end up with even a worse situation than Vieras and Hrotgarh's limitations. Add having to make all gear fix, animation look good on them, probably make some new ones, and if they have to adapt dialogue to avoid unfortunate situations (NPCs flirting or making remarks of a sexual nature to the WoL) etc, etc, even if there was no moral issue, it would be a nightmare and too big of an invest of resources for what would be a very superficial feature of the game (reason why I would be against it and against adding more races).

But money and Maximizing Profits isn't the drive here.

I'll say that the vast majority of times, profits is the main reason for almost any decision a company makes, specially a big one like SE. No matter how noble or right it may seem.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Actually I think Ftail may be partially right. I think you are perfectly right that SE wants to maintain a certain image, specially because they deal with a huge international market. But I think the inconsistencies of how minors are portrayed and the declarations of Yoshi-P may point out more to covering their asses while trying to make good PR for themselves. Mainly, the issues is the character of Ryne. While the game is not stranger to present minors in situations of violence or danger (from the Scions twins to the children victim of war in SB), most of this cases were a bit in the "grey area" because the twins are clearly late teens, so it is not so frowned upon to see them in combat (while I would say SE is being cautious of avoiding any kind of sexualization of said characters), and other minors are, at most, implied to had been victims of violence off-screen. So far, so good. But the introduction of Ryne breaks this, by being a 12-13 year old girl clearly engaging in combat on-screen. Even more poignant, being involved in actual gameplay. Unless there is a piece of lore that I may had miss and Ryne turns out to be older, it seems to go against what was declared by Yoshi, and that it may not be so big of an issue.

Of course, you are right that they want to avoid any scandal that may arise from players sexualizing child characters, but I think as big of a reason is that it would be a nightmare to introduce a child version of each race, even if they would limit them to be 16 or so. It has to be all or none, or you will end up with even a worse situation than Vieras and Hrotgarh's limitations. Add having to make all gear fix, animation look good on them, probably make some new ones, and if they have to adapt dialogue to avoid unfortunate situations (NPCs flirting or making remarks of a sexual nature to the WoL) etc, etc, even if there was no moral issue, it would be a nightmare and too big of an invest of resources for what would be a very superficial feature of the game (reason why I would be against it and against adding more races).



I'll say that the vast majority of times, profits is the main reason for almost any decision a company makes, specially a big one like SE. No matter how noble or right it may seem.

I love how even if a good and sensible statement is made, people wanna say its because Money. *groan* just, that makes my head spin.
I get your argument, but c'mon, I think its deeper then just money. They even pointed out the problems it would cause.

[Elgeron]

I love how even if a good and sensible statement is made, people wanna say its because Money. *groan* just, that makes my head spin.
I get your argument, but c'mon, I think its deeper then just money. They even pointed out the problems it would cause.

The thing is that both of us can speculate as much as we want, but it is really impossible to really determine the real reasons behind the decision. Could you, 100% assure me, that if SE could make more money by introducing children without any kind of negative repercussion, regardless if it was moral or not to do so, they wouldn't do it? I would say is impossible for you to do so, just as much as I can't prove that they would introduce them under such (impossible) circustamces. The problems it would cause ultimately lead to them risking the game, which is one of the main sources of income of SE, together with mobile games, and one of their few recent successful IPs, both economically and critically. Look, I do not doubt that developers like Yoshi or his team had strong moral sense and they do feel very personal about the issue, but I think it is important to consider that Yoshi hands are "tied up" to a certain degree about what he can or cannot say or do by SE. I do not even disagree with the decision, it is the most sensible and reasonable one, even if I feel sorry for those that wanted to play as young characters, but I think is naive to think that a company as big as SE, which has quite a questionable history when it comes to some of their decisions, hundreds of people with different believes working together, a company focused on creating products and entertainment, would mainly concern itself with ethical issues when making decisions.