Kotaku Gets Flak For Trying To Create Persona 5 Localization Drama

One of the few Japanese games localized for Western audiences that seems to have been localized correctly is Persona 5 from Atlus. The game has been receiving a lot of positive criticism from most real gamers and a lot of great feedback for bringing the experience to the West without perverting it with ideological nonsense or American localizers attempting to subvert the game with their own personal politics. Well, Kotaku wasn’t too happy about that, and they tried to stir up some hate-bait and controversy by creating needless drama over the game’s localization.

[KwokXi]

This is a great article, stuff like Nintendo Treehouse 'Americanizing' Japanese games is terrible. I'm not American so I don't know how well received things like this are there but for me I really appreciate Persona 5 and it's straight up translation, nothing gets changed or bastardised for the Western audience other than the voices and the text. I really hate when people change the developers and artists original vision because they believe either a) Western audiences will be offended by it (completely stupid) or b) Western audiences won't understand it.

The people buying Persona 5 are weebs and people that like Japanese games, there is no need to get rid of the 'Japanese-ness' of any game to cater to a Western audience, the 'Japanese-ness' is the main factor many buy these types of games.

Also, doesn't need to be said but, Kotaku needs to die.

[Nitrowolf2]

You know this is the 1st time that i read this.

Persona 5 is a pretty ace game, one of my faavorites. Here i thought before hand that it was going to be about them downplaying some of the translated text, because ill be honest that can be rough, but it still gets its message through.

Instead i find out how its a "fail" because the translator translated something correctly, but the person playing wanted it to reflect American values instead, or "westernize" the questions? So They want to get rid of the japanese from a game that takes plave in Japan?

Wow, thats just, idk how to even respond to that.

You know, its funny because that question that gets asked about which is Gold I got right. Theres a lot of questions in the game i straight up didnt know though, and for me that was part of the experience. It literally taught me some new things, why do i need it to hold my hand and ask something thats from America because Im from there??? The game is based in Japan, Come on!!

[Cy]

Kotaku is such a garbage site. IIRC the person who wrote that article was the same person who defended all the memes and shit like that in FE: Fates too. Some people are too stupid to be allowed to express themselves publicly.

[Summons75]

What doesn't Kotaku get flak for? They will sit there and trash everything for clicks or makeup completely nonsensical and baseless rumors about games being canceled if they don't receive an update every week. Not to mention all their crying because they get blacklisted by developers and publishers for leaking information all the time.

[Razzer]

Ugh....kotaku was a good gaming site years ago. It has gone to utter shit except for a couple of writers on the staff who, frankly, could do better.

[rando]

as they should.

[TheGamez100]

Its a game that takes place in japan so....yeah. It does give us knowledge of their culture too which is good. If you get confused on something cultural... google is your friend. Dont give us that 4kids crap kotaku.

Edit: Lol they even went as far as Atlus proving the guy wrong and even a jp native helping out.
"Let Us Prove This Fool" - Atlus

[Dixiedevil]

I haven't gotten the game because it seems kind of corny but if SJWs don't like it, I just might have to pick it up.

[Princess_Pilfer]

It has literally nothing to do with SJWs. It (and the persona series in general) actually have a left leaning ideology on a number of topics, especially given Japans tendancy towards being socially conservative. I can think of 1 thing (literally, exactly 1) I have a problem with as far as representation goes, and that is that (to my knowledge) (and I'm 75 hours in) every instance of a gay character and the implication of a gay character is played for laughs, and 2 of the 3 total instances resort to tired and offensive stereotypes. I could be wrong, I haven't seen all of the content in the game, but yeah that bothers me. Is 1 minute of conversation in a 100 hour game a make a break thing? No. Do they have a right to do it? Yes. Should it be changed because I don't like it? No. Does that mean it's above critisizm and I'm not allowed to comment on it? No.

Also the complaints listed in the article were about people who don't understand that games about Japan and explicitly dealing with Japanese culture shouldn't be cutting out parts of Japanese culture that might not be immediately understandable. (in this case, shogi.)

[Princess_Pilfer]

I say for the millionth time. If you disagree, and do not leave a comment explaining what you disagree with and why, you either don't have a point worth making, or you're a moron disagreeing based on something other than the actual argument.

[KwokXi]

Sweetie, those 2 reasons aren't the only reasons why people may disagree with you and I believe that you know that. The agree/disagree system is simply that, there is no need to leave a comment of any kind.

Although I am leaving this comment just so you know that this is the reason I disagreed with your second comment. :)

[Princess_Pilfer]

No, those are the only 2. If it was a point worth making, and it wasn't made, it obviously wasn't worth making. Wether anyone would actually agree with it if it was made doesn't matter to that point.

Only other reason is that there isn't a proper reason.

[DaleCooper]

Kotaku (along with polygon) nearly killed my love for gaming news. Every opinion piece was negativity about games wrapped in manufactured drama. I quit going there years ago and found other sites that were actually informative and written by people whose passion for games showed in their writing (Dualshockers, Easy Allies). In turn, my excitement for gaming and gaming news has never been stronger.

[CrimsonPheonix]

Easy Allies baby!

[Princess_Pilfer]

I'm confused. The Persona (and wider SMT) series is comprised of 80% ideoloical "nonsense." Really, really unsubtle ideological "nonsense." It's perhaps the most intensely political game that's not explicitly about some form politics.

Like, remember that time you literally killed the Jewish/Christian god? Not even a joke, you actually do that in like 3 or 4 of the games in the series. How much more explicit of a metaphor can "helping others deal with their problems that are in no way related to you directly benefits you through combat bonuses" be? Persona 5 just straight up makes the claim that crappy, corrupt older generations have bent the world over a barrel and are exploiting the crap out of the younger generations for their own benefit.

Maybe I'm missing something here, like some context clue I just didn't get, but SMT games are not "perverted" by ideological themes and commentary, they're explicitly defined by them.

[ColonelHugh]

"Persona 5 just straight up makes the claim that crappy, corrupt older generations have bent the world over a barrel and are exploiting the crap out of the younger generations for their own benefit."

I don't see a problem here. For the most part, Persona only picks at Japanese society and its problems. Japan's culture has long been based on hierarchy, both in terms of wealth and power and then age (where elders generally have more respect and stability than juniors of the same rank). Capitalism has not done anything to change this way of thinking, and businesses often see corporate stooges or entire cliques of like-minded people. Konami's family-oriented board of directors making changes based on the whim of a temperamental clan leader rather than sticking to an established method is a good example of fairly average business practice in Japan. Some international corporations and conglomerates do buck the trend to varying degrees, though.

Worse still, Japan has an inverted population pyramid, where children are rare and elders are very common. This not only isn't sustainable, it means the younger generations have extremely little say in both politics and corporate life.
Couple that with natural human greed, and it would be surprising if corrupt older generations haven't "bent (Japan) over a barrel and are exploiting the crap out of the younger generations for their own benefit."

[Princess_Pilfer]

I don't see a problem either. I don't care if a game has something to say or not (though if it does I do care what it says.) I was more commenting on the idea that you can't pervert a game that is all about real world ideological conflicts with "ideological nonsense."

Atlus may or may not have done it on purpose, I have no idea, but many of the problems they talk about are not really problem exclusive to Japan. . Places with decent birthrates still manage to have weird population distributions in terms of age .Like the baby boomers are, all by themselves, like 50% of the working/voting age population in the US, so unsuprisingly whatever most baby boomers want is what the US tends to get. Also, if you want to talk giant entities making decisions on the whims of a tempermental clan leader of a dynasty family, oh boy.

I dare say the game probably wouldn't be doing so well in the west if the problems it describes were limited to Japan.

[Hugodastrevas]

The corruption of (a) God and then killing it seems to be a recurring theme, like in Demon's Souls, FFVI and a lot of Anime/Manga.

[CaitSith]

F@#K! Kotaku, why does it exist?!

[opinionated]

The only time I see 'kotaku' on here is when they say something real dumb. I rarely see their daily drivel here on n4g. People post some pretty crappy web sources around here but even they won't link to kotaku lol. I'm an American playing through p5 and it doesn't bother me. It's my first jrpg and I understood when I bought it that it was a Japanese game with a comic style. I cut slack on the translation and I guess at the Japanese questions, I'm not real familiar with their history. I know some names but not many.

[FullmetalRoyale]

What I liked about P4, and this one, is that sure sometimes I'll know an answer to a question. Sometimes I guess and get it right. But my favorite part is when finals roll around and I am asked those questions again, and I know the answers. It's a good feeling to gain something other than pure entertainment from a game.

[opinionated]

Yeah I have guessed a lot and got them right and I will remember those names in the future. I can honestly say I learned something and that's unusual for sure lol.

[TheColbertinator]

Kotaku. Dumping trash on the internet since 2007.

[Yohshida]

Noone should even click on anything Kotaku or Polygon, those are just blogs from people that have zero knowledge of gaming.

[Jayszen]

I have been playing Japanese games for as long as I can remember and Persona 5 is one of the best if not the best in the manner it has been localized, mainly for the fact that the game retains its Japanese identity rather than being "westernized" but also because the humour has been retained. There were a couple of Yakuza games where some of the more risque content was omitted or changed for Western audiences and it was never right and diminished those games. The latest (Yakuza 0 in the West) has avoided this practice and is all the more enjoyable.

No one should demand that a game should be changed to appeal to another culture. We would not want our material treated in such a manner.

[Chaos_Order]

The same people calling Persona 5's localisation bad are the same people praising the translation for Fire Emblem: Fates. Let that sink in. They genuinely WANT utter mediocrity, lazy translations, "westernized" (read: dumbing down to all hell) dialogue, and complete lack of respect to the Japanese culture.

I'm guessing Persona 5 needed more jelly donuts instead of sushi and questions about American football instead of, you know, allowing people to actually learn about new things and expand their minds. Sounds to me like they're racist towards the Japanese...

[deafdani]

i don't see a source to the Kotaku article anywhere. Am I supposed to just take thos article's word? God forbid I get a proper context for everything before passing judgment... but hey, it's cool to hate Kotaku, O guess.

[Liqu1d]

http://kotaku.com/this-migh...

10 secs on Google. Kotaku are garbage.

[SaveFerris]

The main gripe I have with localisations is the censorship that occurs because the localisation team has some kind of social or political agenda to promote. I want to play a game as the creator intended it, I don't want the content edited and/or censored by some contractor and part time activist who was hired to translate dialogue, because it was 'problematic' and it 'triggered' them.

[CrimsonWing69]

Good it was completely unnecessary and had an agenda behind it. It's disgusting how these sites try to rial up groups. This was clearly a try to give SJWs fuel to set a fire and to get people talking about Kotaku. It's disgusting and shameless.

[Aura7541]

It irks me to no end that Kotaku was basically giving Persona 5 and Atlus a lot of flak for doing localization the right way. Remember, this is the same site that lauded Nintendo Treehouse's so-called 'localization' of Fire Emblem Fates.

No, Kotaku. You claim to be for accurate localization, but in truth, you are advocating for what I call 'loc-alter-ization'.

[Protagonist]

The game mostly gets 10s so someone, somewhere in this case kotaku got to create a nontroversy!