The RPG deckbuilder “Cross Blitz” is now available for PC via Steam EA
Press release:
Paris, November 29th, 2023.
The Paris-based (France) indie games publisher The Arcade[...]
This OP of mine originally started off as a rather slim and “shooting from the hip” kind of publication. However…As I was writing everything up on the fly and putting all the pieces together.
I soon realized that that I got something much bigger, more complex, and more important on my hands than I originally anticipated.
Just like Max Payne said in his first game: “One thing you can count on: You push a man too far, and sooner or later he’ll start pushing back.”. Simply put, Top Hat Studios set the record straight by making a public statement via Twitter about “Sense” and what’s been going on as of late with the game’s recent Nintendo Switch release.
You see, the whole deal with Top Hat Studios and their recent public statement (which they made on 2021-01-01) about their (and Suzaku’s 2.5D) horror game “Sense” wasn’t just about setting the record straight (lies Vs the truth) and defending the product which they believe in (something of which you can also see them do in our previous “Sense” interview and Top Hat Studios interview).
That’s right, “industry-adjacent” people started to slander and gaslight Top Hat Studios as liars. Thus the reason why Top Hat Studios decided to release some photo evidence of e-mails, tweets, FB messages, and whatnot, which they have received from some very unfriendly and hateful people as of late…
No, because it was also about making a stand where Top Hat Studios said no to cancel culture, censorship, bullies, and haters. Because Top Hat Studios showed the whole world that they don’t cave in to demands of censorship (“Sense” will not be censored on the Nintendo Switch), nor that they accept any bullying and death threats towards their team.
I can’t say that I’m all that surprised that some games journalists and mainstream gaming sites started to state that Top Hat Studios had just fooled everyone with a PR-trick, because I knew on beforehand that Top Hat Studios would get accused of exactly that later on…And I was right!
So, my from point of view. Top Hat Studios might just have made not only this year’s most import statement in the video games industry, but one of the most important statements in the video game industry in the 2000s.
This right here, is a school-book example of how you deal with bullies, haters, and SJW/PC madness. You simply tell them to fu** off, and you stick to your guns while you keep on doing your thing (your main focus should ALWAYS be on your fans/consumers!).
“misogynist”? “hyper sexualized”?Karen, please, stop, just stop! And please do tell that to Emi Kamuko on Twitter while you’re at it (you know, the “Where Are Her Organs” part? And “Females like that don’t exist for real” part).
Because the day that Top Hat Studios made that statement, that was the day when Top Hat Studios also said yes to creative and artistic freedom, and no to forced censorship in the video games industry.
I’m pretty well-known by now for telling it like it is without sugar-coating anything. Well, I kept things raw and straight forward in the case with “Sense” Vs the SJW camp as well..
The hard truth is this. 1. You can’t cure stupid. 2. No matter how much evidence Top Hat Studios showed via social media, “some” people still called them for liars and PR-tricksters.
So, hopefully, because of Top Hat Studios public statement, they might have given other game developers and game publishers the courage to do and say what’s needed to be said and done. I for one hope so, because the more people that dare to speak-up about censorship, cancel culture, and SJW/PC madness in the current year, the better it is.
Luckily enough for Top Hat Studios and Suzaku, the people who called them liars, sent them death threats, gaslighted them, and much more, ain’t exactly the smartest of cats (as seen in the above picture).
The Gaming news site “The Gamer” got blasted hard on Twitter for their “journalism” and Twitter statements about Top Hat Studios and their public statement about “Sense”.
Because it’s about damn time that game studios and game publishers put their foot down and tell the SJW/PC crowd to fu** off! I for one have written and warned people about censorship and the SJW/PC camp for over six years time now via TGG (our site launched back in 2014)…
If anything, Top Hat Studios earned a lot of respect and new fans by defending “Sense” and the development team.
Well said indeed, and I agree with J-Step to 100%, because it’s always great to see creators stand-up for their creations and refuse to censor their own products.
And looking back at what I’ve said and written from back then (2014) to the now (2021). I have to say that GamerGate has been right about pretty much everything which they warned Gamers about (censorship, corruption, SJW/PC madness, you name it).
Top Hat Studios had my respect long before their public statement about “Sense”, but yes, I agree.
Have no worries Yogensha! More game developers and game publishers will follow Top Hat Studio’s example in the future, I’m sure of it! (more and more people are getting fed-up with PC/SJW culture by the hour worldwide).
So you can think and say what you want about GamerGate, but the part concerning their worries about censorship, cancel culture, and the SJW/PC agenda in the games industry was (and IS) 100% correct even in the current year (2021).
I don’t know why, but for all the years that I’ve written for TGG, the SJW camp has ALWAYS hated female boobs and the female form…
Now that’s funny, don’t you think? I mean, I bet that the SJW folks didn’t even know that the writer and artist of “Sense” is a female.
With that said. I also got one bone to pick with the mainstream gaming news media, as quite a few of them have lied, stayed silent, put out smoke screens, and even engaged in bullying throughout the whole “Top Hat Studios Inc and Sense Vs SJWs” aftermath.
The more video game developers and game publishers that do this, the better it is for the games industry as a whole.
Top hat studios did what should have been done by many plenty of years ago…But better late than never I suppose.
So I’m going to jump straight into that matter right now, and right here. Well, right off the bat, from what I can tell. Big gaming news sites such as Kotaku, IGN, Gamespot, Polygon, PC Gamer has been silent as the grave about what went down with Top Hat Studios and “Sense” even though death and doxing threats were made against Top Hat Studios.
This is pretty much the short summary of how the whole event started and ended after Top Hat Studio’s public “Sense” statement via Twitter.
It’s quite simple really, Top Hat Studios just doesn’t fit into the narrative and agenda of the mainstream Gaming media, and that’s all there is to it.
However, there was one particular gaming site that stood out from the crowd throughout the whole Top hat studios and “Sense” Vs the SJW camp aftermath, and that was “The Gamer”…At first I didn’t know what to make out of it, because I thought that “The Gamer” was some kind of Gaming version of “The Onion”, but that’s not the case…
Do you remember when Naughty Dog was receiving “harassment” before and after the release of “The Last of US Part II”? Well, the mainstream media sure was very fast to come to their aid when that happened, but that was not the case when Top Hat Studios received death threats and whatnot…
You see, on the 5th of January (2021) “The Gamer” released an article called “Top Hat Studios And Cyberpunk Anime Game “Sense” – Anti-Censorship Or Viral Marketing?” (which was written by Cian Maher, lead features editor at TheGamer).
Well…I just couldn’t help to notice how very different the tone was in the case with Top Hat Studios and “Sense” Vs how the mainstream gaming media sounded when Naughty Dog got “harassed” during and after the release of “The Last of Us Part II”…
“Legitimate criticism of the art style and sexualization” – I can’t even make this sh** up…
And once again the Gaming news site “The Gamer” gets burned on Twitter for being anything but “honest” with their journalism about Top Hat Studios and “Sense”.
As a matter of fact, “The Gamer” more or less tried to spin it as if everything that happened with Top Hat Studios and “Sense” was nothing more than a cheap PR-trick:
“Top Hat Studios has stated that it will not censor Sense: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story – although it looks like nobody even asked in the first place.”
“If Nintendo asked for Sense to be censored, you can guarantee it would have been. But Nintendo didn’t ask for it to be censored, and virtually nobody else did either. The only parties talking about censorship are Top Hat and the people it has riled up to buy a game that nobody, on either side, really cares about.” – The Gamer
I honestly don’t even like to be called a “games journalist” for this very reason…so please call me a “Gaming enthusiast” instead, because I don’t want to be put into the same category as these muppets.
Say hello to Eric Switzer. the editor for The Gamer, what a lovely fellow, don’t you think? (Archived links – https://archive.is/vwJh4 and https://archive.is/qnV8i)
Here’s the thing though, plenty of games have been censored before or after it’s release due to pressure from the SJW crowd in the past… (some games have even ended up not being released in the West at all, games such as “Omega Labyrinth Z“, and “Dead or Alive Xtreme 3“).
And let’s not forget how whole video game series such as “Senran Kagura” has been toned-down and even self-censored in the current year to please Sony…
Another example would be PQube and the lewd game developer Inti Creates upcoming lewd rail shooter “Gal Gun Returns“, which won’t be launching on the Playstation platform at all…It’s also worth pointing out that “Gal Gun Returns” was also on i’s way to the Xbox platform, but then the game was canceled at the last minute…
In the wake of what went down in DC as of late, Vox brought in the well-known liar and professional victim Zoë Quinn to pin everything down on GamerGate (let’s be honest, we all knew that GG would get blamed for it sooner or later).
Well, I think you get the idea and my point. So I’m just going to let you guys and girls judge for yourselves what to believe in the case with Top Hat Studios and “Sense”. Me, I think it’s 100% legit.
I mean, just take me. I’m not even a game developer, and I’ve had my fair share of threats and whatnot since 2014 (including a crazy Canadian mother of three who wanted me dead because of my MEA article).
What I’m trying to say is that it doesn’t take a whole lot to tick off the SJW/Feminazi crowd (just look at what happened in the case with the “Mandalorian” TV-series and Gina Carano…), so why in hell would Top Hat Studios have to fake it?
Just take my most recent adventures on Twitter which ended-up with us being suspended for 12-hours because of “harassment” and “violent conduct” (you can read the whole thing for yourselves here: https://archive.is/DD0Sg + https://archive.is/Onl3y).
Long story short, in the current year, the SJW/PC madness is worse than ever before (just check out the ResetEra/RetardEra forum, the news about Parler, and China’s on-going censorship war on the Internet), and the same can be said about censorship and cancel culture as well (Sweden, my nation, is now a full-blown 1984 state thanks to the new COVID-19 laws…).
That’s also why people need to wake the hell up, and fast! (just compare our most recent interview with Running with Scissors to our 2015 interview with Mark Kern, that’s how fast things have gone on the censorship front between then to the current year…).
With that said, what’s your take on this matter? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section down below!
Source:
Top Hat Studios inc Twitter statement part 1
Top Hat Studios inc Twitter statement part 2
Top Hat Studios inc Twitter statement part 3
YongYea – (via Twitter)
Dark Titan Enterprises
The Gamer (Archive)
Nichegamer (via Twitter)
Nintendo Life (via Twitter)
Twinfinite
gonintendo (Via Twitter)
Vox (via Twitter)
N4G
***Disclaimer***
This is a personal opinion of the writer, and it doesn’t necessarily represent the other writers (nor The Gaming Ground´s) opinions.
Credit:
Elton BorMes
Robin “V-Act” Ek
Editor in chief
The Gaming Ground
Twitter: @TheGamingGround
More by Robin Ek:
Tags: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story, Censorship, Cyberpunk, Indie games, Kickstarter, PC games, Sense, SJW, Suzaku, Top Hat Studios
