Something I’d like in a perfect world is legislation to fight back against general “contact unavailability” of large companies.
I generally recognize that there are lots of people that call for simple stuff that they could’ve checked online. That said, there has to be a legislative median that ensures people with serious concerns can follow some path to contact some sentient person. Heck, even just to serve them lawsuit papers.
The thing is, I actually appreciate the idea of “de-objectifying” people in terms of fictional design; but I want that to be encouraged as part of the creative expression. A sexy female character with an identity and story behind her is a lot more fun to me than one just created to have big boobs. Heck, those same design principles can help design sexy men that appeal to female/gay groups.
But needless to say, forcing those views as part of these acts isn’t helping anyone. It’s just exerting forceful control, and we know how well that works for art.
Hopefully you’re referring to Visa/Paypal, not Itch.
One place that comes to mind is Verotel. I barely know them, but supposedly one of their star attributes is their use for adult businesses. Likely someone else knows them better.
I just picked up Beyond Galaxyland in a Fanatical bundle. I have not played it yet, so tentative recommendation, but reviews are indicating it may be a hidden gem.
For an older one I really liked: Cosmic Star Heroine. Pixel art, great soundtrack especially for bosses, and fantastic combat mechanics. It’s all very uniquely designed to encourage high-risk gameplay and variety on every turn, pushing moments where you buff yourself up for one or two supremely powerful strikes in a fight, or even sacrifice a character to KO the last enemy (all characters heal to full after every fight)
For even older: As someone who had that same kind of music-swelling nostalgia around FF7, I managed to win back that feeling when I played “The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky”. It’s a two-part game (sold as two units), that begins a giant series of games, but I only played it out of curiosity. Even though I didn’t fully enjoy later games, Trails had both a lot of enjoyable and unique elements to its combat, and a very emotionally written story that occasionally throws in silliness to retain charm. Though the game itself is old, it got a series of patches by a “master porting engineer” at Falcom that adds features like an experimental fast-forward mode to help with long battle animations.
On grinding, one great thing about the games is their XP system. They grant a lot more XP anytime you’re underleveled for enemies, and much less when you’re overleveled - helping to equalize the experience after just a few fights, many of which can be short thanks to fast forwarding. But, the story is still long overall.
You’ll see a Trails 3, which is very optional in my view. Weirdly, it’s a bit more of a “lore dump” for future games than closing off any major plot threads. To me it was a little bit of a signal of them taking their “Marvel universe” style of world a bit too far.
There’s even an argument that SKG is a good financial motive for studios. Consumer electronics/entertainment spending is down, and it’s not hard to connect the idea that people are less enthused about video games when they aren’t sure they get to keep them. Which are you more likely to buy: Snake oil from a merchant on a turbo-driven truck ready to leave town? Or multiple panel-certified medicine from an extremely tightly-regulated industry.
A) Honest mistake. I appreciated people pointing out the country of origin.
B) While the specifics of my comment were off the mark, even with this group being Australian, this group affects world commerce, and American politics has strong influence on that world in turn. Just like how president of the USA would have a big effect on the levels of violence and cruelty in Gaza. Visa is an American corporation, and they’re clearly quite on board with this censorship influence.
If GTA V is allowed, I’m pretty certain most of what we’ve seen from NSFW games is as well. Regardless, a payment company should not be acting as judge for such things, just as media companies should not act as judge on copyright infringement on YouTube.