There has
always been a never-ending debate about the exaggerated proportions of female
characters in Japanese video games. Many players think that it is a simple
aesthetic whim of the illustrators to attract attention, but the reality is
much more complex and involves legal issues of distribution. Yuji Usuda, the
CEO of studio Qureate, creators of attractive titles such as Bunny
Garden, has just confessed the real reason behind his striking designs:
creating adult women with small breasts has become a very high risk for any
developer today.
A shield
against modern censorship
During a
recent interview, the executive explained that the interactive entertainment
industry has become extremely strict with content regulations. The central
problem lies in the fact that, even if the script clearly specifies that a
female character is of legal age, if she has a very thin build and little bust,
distribution platforms tend to immediately classify her as a child figure. To
avoid blockages, review delays or total bans on digital stores, the studio
decided to take the safest path and equip absolutely all of its protagonists
with monumental curves, thus eliminating any margin for misinterpretation by
reviewers.
The
strategy behind Bunny Garden
This
curious corporate prevention measure became very evident with the successful
launch of Bunny Garden. When the development team prepared the
console version, they received very specific requests to modify certain
suggestive scenes. Thanks to the fact that their characters already had a
design that made their adulthood undeniably clear, the team was able to make
the adjustments without major complications and launch the game on time. Usuda
stressed that they prefer to abide by small visual corrections rather than face
the terror of their project being canceled altogether due to confusion about
the ages of their heroines.
At the end
of the day, what many perceived as a simple artistic preference of the Qureate team,
turned out to be an elaborate commercial survival tactic to be able to continue
creating the engaging games that their audience enjoys so much without hitting
the wall of international regulation. Knowing that regulations are becoming
more and more severe with anime-style designs.
