Family Panties in a Twist
July 21st, 2009, by
Posted in Translation
, Tagged: Family Project, JAST USA
Apparently JAST USA’s Family Project has still some rough sailing ahead of it. It was discovered that some images of nudity in the game were covered up with lingerie instead of being demosaiced. There was some quite vocal outrage over this, including on their own forums. Owner Peter Payne has now issued an official statement on the forums.
The events today started with a post on the No Name Losers website describing changes they’ve found in the localized release of Family Project. The post opened with a mention of NNL’s fansub of the opening movie from back in the day, expressing humility at what may possibly be inaccurate translations in the subtitles. This was followed by a statement saying that JAST USA had claimed that the game would be “fully uncensored,” with a link [via the Wayback Machine since the site has now changed] to the Peach Princess (one of the member brands of JAST USA) website showing that indeed the sales page says “fully uncensored.” Then, to invalidate this claim, two sets of images were posted comparing the original Japanese version of the game with the JAST USA release. One is from a scene in the bathroom, where Matsuri, one of the characters in the game, has no underwear on in the original version of the game but has pink panties in the JAST USA release. The other is from a scene where Matsuri is fully naked under a blanket in the original version and wearing a bra and panties in the JAST USA version. This post was updated later during the day with a pair of images indicating that Matsuri had a rolled up tanktop with a bare chest in a scene, which was covered up with a bra in the JAST USA version.
This post soon spread like wildfire over various Internet communities, eventually leading to a long thread of complaints on the company’s official BBS. A lot of the anger seemed to have been focused towards JAST USA’s not having notified the public of the changes to the game before the game was released, pointing to the statement on the Peach Princess site that the game was “fully uncensored.” Furthermore, one forum poster noted that when it was found that X-Change 3 had a lot of changes made to it, Peter Payne had promised to inform people of changes next time. Some wondered if these changes would mark the beginning of a slippery slope that end up with games in the future being modified as well, such as games from Nitro+.
After talking with some staff from JAST USA, it appears that the “fully uncensored” line on the Peach Princess website was left in by mistake after the game description template was copied from a previous game. In fact, neither the G-Collections site nor the J-List site from when preorders started for the game ever indicated that the game was 100% uncensored, although other games were marked as such. RightStuf’s listing also does not have this line, and even still lists the release date as the end of the month. The game packaging, the mini-poster insert, and the included JAST USA Dating-Sim Game Catalog 2009-2010 did not contain any mention of “uncensored.” As of this writing, the line on the Peach Princess site has now been changed from “Fully Uncensored” to “Fully Uncensored (update: 3 images slightly altered for content clarity).”
Peter Payne finally issued a statement on the company BBS, apologizing for not notifying buyers of the changes that were applied to the game. According to Peter, “a few sections were changed in the English version of the game, to make it clear that all characters engaged in any sexual activity or nudity were 18 or older,” which he said were necessary due to “the world in which we live.” The story of Matsuri in the game directly involves her being clearly underaged in the beginning of the game, and Peter states this as the reason they needed to add clothes to her. He says the alternative was to perform a lot of changes to the story in order to dispel the notion that she could possibly be underaged. Peter felt that changes like that would have really affected the story and that the decision to simply add some clothes to her and make some minor modifications to the script was the best way to retain the integrity of the story.
In closing, Peter vowed to properly inform potential customers of any changes like this to a game once the game hits golden master status. It is not clear if he views this situation as being very different from the situation with X-Change 3. Peter also offers to unconditionally refund any one who feels that they have been wronged by these changes and for requests like this and also private feedback to be posted through J-List’s website feedback system.
July 21st, 2009 at 6:21 am
Guy sure has his way with words. I know that he is not honest here and just tells people what they want in order to calm them down and get “what a nice guy, let’s forgive him” or “he gave his word, i trust him”
That’s how the business world is after all.
July 21st, 2009 at 7:44 am
oh Peter…
what the hell is this
I want to say that, but nevermind
a few of changes like that not affect me to play this game :D
July 21st, 2009 at 11:10 am
I just wish all the rage would come from people who actually buy their games.
July 21st, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Disclosure would have been nice but it is far from something that takes away from the game. It was something that had to be done for them to keep the story intact and still be legal in many western markets they sell to. Much better to have this then to mess the story all up to try to pass her off as an adult who without parents, being “raised” by a-hole relatives before “running away”. it just wouldn’t make sense and the same people would still be bitching about a butchered translation. It had to be done and it’s something we just have to live with it or move to japan and suffered censored images there only in a different way. The only part I am disappointed about in all this is PP has said in the past the company would disclose such changes and didn’t. It’s a bad business practice to make promises like this and then sound like a broken record with the “we’ll do it next time” excuse.
July 21st, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Wait..so its still uncensored right?
The only problem is its not 100% uncensored right?
July 21st, 2009 at 1:17 pm
@Ronald
Yes, only 3 images are censored.
@zombi
As I asked two times on JAST’s BBS and I’m still waiting for an answer, if Matsuri’s age was the reason for censorship, even though there was no sexual act when she was underaged, then they would need to pick up all the copies of Sagara Family that they are selling, to censor them, since there is clearly an underaged character (Ruruka) in there who does all kinds of sexual intercourse with the protagonist and who even says that he will become a criminal if someone mentions her age, which is repeated several times along the game. If they don’t pull a Hot Coffee on it, they are simply being hypocrites.
July 21st, 2009 at 4:07 pm
sorry this has some spoilers but it felt was needed. I have not played sagara so I cannot comment on that character but things are seem to bit on shaky ground right now with the rapelay backlash having recently started here in the U.S. and spreading over to Japan. This may in fact have been arbitrary and unneeded but in the end they did what they believed they had to do to get a released out here without threat of legal action. The edit was minor compared to what they would have had to change in the story to get the same effect. With a more story centric game like this one is would it not be better to try to respect the characters and story as they were were written? One could argue that those scenes being edited is still a change in the story and it’s a valid point. In the case of the bathroom scene doesn’t it still convey the same embarrassment for both characters regardless of if she has panties on? Later in the game when she throws herself at tsukasa and he thinks of her as a little sister is that sentiment not as strong because under the towel she had on a bra and panties? Her feeling of loss and desperate attempt to keep things together was still very strong in the scene. That is what was important in the game. Trying to twist the age and back story of her character in this sense would have only butchered her path in the game. Be mad they pp didn’t follow through on his promise to inform us of changes but at least try to see they felt it was legally needed.
July 21st, 2009 at 7:29 pm
I never questioned any of that and you are not spoiling me anything. The fact is that JAST continues dealing with eroge that contains things a lot worse than seeing a 13 year old naked, like group sex with an 11/12 in the middle in The Sagara Family and they don’t seem any intent on stopping it, so why was Family Project so offensive? If the moralfags get their hands on a copy of Sagara Family or another “old” JAST title, they will have enough fuel to burn them down instead of picking something so soft as those scenes in Family Project, if that is their fear.
July 22nd, 2009 at 12:10 am
@ManaYagami
While I’ve already made plenty of posts regarding the legality of the content censored in Family Project, you seem to be a bit confused about something. In the Sagara Family, the youngest character is 18. Even in the Japanese version.
July 22nd, 2009 at 10:04 am
I’m so confused that that same sentence is clearly mentioned several times along the game, but I won’t discuss this anymore. JAST’s fanboys are blind and will eat anything that they throw at them.
July 22nd, 2009 at 10:26 am
@ManaYagami, there is an alternative to JAST. Learn Japanese and get the unmodified copy (with the exception of the mosaic).
The real problem here is the failure from JAST to announce the editing of the CGs _before_ people started to preorder*. As for the decision to modify the CGs, every company can modify *THEIR* product before releasing it for whatever reason they wish to do**. The modification of the CGs is not the limit of how much they can modify, they can even change the music if they decide _not_ to license the music for the game. (example, Manhunt 2 was modified before being release so that the title will get an ‘M’ rating instead of ‘AO’).
* this is only a problem to people who already had access to the Japanese version and bothered to compare the 2 copies. AFAIK JAST is not obliged to be 100% loyal to the original game. Last time I checked, Germans get a modified copy of _every_ violent game released.
** this is a fact, deal with it
July 22nd, 2009 at 11:15 am
It is JAST and DO who desides what should they censor, and what they shouldn’t. Play it with image that it was in original like that, I think you don’t have ANY right to complain.
July 22nd, 2009 at 5:53 pm
@ManaYagami
I could show you the Japanese site if I thought you could read it, but I doubt you can. It clearly says shes 18. (In a somewhat joking manner, though.)
July 22nd, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Just got an email from JAST on the whole issue that further solidifies why I have no problem with the edit and am in fact glad they handled it the way they did as opposed to the alternative. btw the “big mess” is not following though on past promises.
“Thanks for your feedback and for your understanding. I think it was a big mess, and we didn’t handle it as proactively as we should have. The recent court cases did not help our attitude about having the nude shots in the game, despite the fact that they were not ero, but I believe we had no choice to add the panties, or else strip out 10% of Matsuri’s lines, which would have been worse. We hope to avoid this kind of thing in the future, certainly!”
If looking for a story centric VN go buy it! It is one of the better licensed releases I have played and I can’t recommend it enough.
July 22nd, 2009 at 11:40 pm
I could care less if they censor their games or not, if I wanted to see the pictures, there are better ones on the internets, but the fact that they are such hypocrites is what worries me and why I post about it. Instead of protecting them so much, why don’t you think for a while before writing walls of text that aren’t even related to what I wrote?
@Shade543: That doesn’t change the actual sentences in game and that’s why I consider them hypocrites in their business politic. It goes as far as giving misleading information to their customers. This time it was 3 images that almost no one cares about, but the next time, they could change something far more significant without bothering to inform those same customers who accept anything from them without asking why they are contradicting themselves.
July 23rd, 2009 at 12:10 am
I will buy it regardless, and just wince at having bought a game which was reverse-uncensored… but the original would have been worse since pixellation makes me rage.
And ManaYagami, I think you mean you couldn’t care less.
July 23rd, 2009 at 11:00 am
I’m sorry for not being a native English speaker.
August 4th, 2009 at 10:29 am
The remaining point is begged:
Where does “Kana ~Little Sister~” fit into this current “society” we have right now?
~Chun