#yostar

[gacha-incels]

“Arknights/Limbus Company/etc is obviously very political, why are these incels playing it?” Here’s a longer answer if you’re interested.

If you haven’t been watching gacha communities for the past decade this might be confusing to you, but these guys see the games as just apolitical stories with a majority or all-female cast being there to titillate the male viewer. They are for his consumption. It’s why in both eastern and western “gacha game” communities you can see them talking about how these games are better for having “beautiful” anime women versus the hideous hags of western media. I’ve seen so many people asking “how are incels playing a game with so many strong female characters?” They see them not as “strong female” characters but rather “eyecandy made for me”. tbh when it comes down to it I wouldn’t call any of the designs in these games absolutely groundbreaking for the anime genre they’re aiming for. Arknights even follows the standard “fully animal faced-guy” and the female equivalent “small featured anime animal girl with some fur”. This doesn’t mean the designs are bad or you’re foolish for enjoying them of course, there are a lot of fun ones. Anyway, you can see the same sentiment in the majority of anime communities as well. Like do you think that stereotype of an anime nerd who “loves 2D women but hates 3D women” means he’s a feminist because the 2D girl is still female?

To be frank, after some of the actions taken by these companies (ex. the firing of women for posting anything vaguely feminist) can you honestly say an “apolitical game with anime babes” is not the way the games are often enjoyed? The company Yostar who publishes Arknights in Korea literally wrote a statement saying the game is apolitical and calling feminism a dividing force. If the publisher can say something so flippantly like this just to appease their incel fanbase, how can the game be making any meaningful, hardline progressive political statements? I am of course not saying this renders any positive message you get from these games moot nor am I saying it’s impossible for the writers to be passionate about their work, I’m just relaying the thoughts of the incels/“gacha gamers” playing them because there seems to be confusion. What I’m writing here doesn’t mean the worst interpretation of these games are their defining interpretations. I’m trying to explain how the games that many people see as being antithetical to incel beliefs can have these same men as high-spending fans.

Gacha games are unique in the world of consumer media in their extremely close and constant relationship with the consumer. You have to not only love each character’s design (and sometimes story) but also be willing to drop serious gambling money to “buy” them every single month. It’s like merchandizing on steroids. I think the term “whale” has been watered down since younger kids have started playing, but these people spend thousands per patch. Over the years I’ve heard about multiple games like this being sustained by just a couple of high spenders. In 2018 there was even a western news article about a man who had spent $70k+ on FGO. The publisher can’t rock the boat too much to displease the consumer too many times without risking EoS. Every character design and story of a gacha game is affected by this FIRST while any artistic intent comes second.

A Korean woman who had lost her job due to similar “feminist hunting” tactics wrote an article describing the way these incel men think. I posted it here and part of it summarized: the men that play these games see themselves as buying and “owning” the female characters in gacha games, who are often dressed and presented to them in a highly sexualized manner and will obey their commands. In the same way they “own” these 2D women, they also want to own the thoughts of the real live female illustrators who work on the games. Therefore, if these women have expressed ideas that the male gamers find upsetting, they will be angry she doesn’t conform to what they want like the servile 2D girl and do everything to get her fired (this is where she mentions Limbus Company as the most recent example of this happening).

You can argue for some of these games, maybe the girls aren’t dressed super provocatively and give (you) shit instead of being a simpering doll, but in the end it’s not like they can physically walk away or stop speaking to you. For the “waifu” hunter guy it’s just a different type of anime girl to collect.

The stories in these games are generally not what gets targeted as much by incels. In gacha “gamer” communities, especially the Korean incel ones, their main concerns are: how revealing are the summer swimsuits? How many women work for the company designing characters? and related, Are the male characters designed for women or for men and do they “look gay”? If you search through this blog, you can see them directly speaking about these things in regards to their hatred of Genshin Impact and Star Rail. All of these have also been encapsulated in the original Limbus Company incel attack: they hated that the summer female character looked more “clothed” (wearing a skintight suit instead of a bikini) than the male summer character. They thought the collar necklace and open shirt on the male summer character meant he was “a slave” for the female viewers, so obviously it was designed by a woman. When they learned a man designed and illustrated those characters, they searched to find a female illustrator who worked in the game and went after her instead. These guys WERE FANS that played the game beforehand and didn’t think anything in the story was upsetting enough to attack the company about. They were familiar enough with the works of Project Moon to name their little group after an antagonizing force in one of PM’s previous (non-gacha) videogames. And Project Moon saw them as such a significant part of their gacha fanbase that they wrote an immediate apology and fired the artist. How do these actions in reality inform their fiction and the interpretation of it? Getting this out of the way, they were NOT in any danger, the “fans” were not clamoring to get in their offices or camping outside, they were let in and calmly had a meeting with some employees at the office. You can still find photos of them goofing around, the ridiculous write up they brought with them and a transcript of the conversation. This was not a “guy shows up at Mihoyo’s offices with a knife” situation. In the end it was a financial and moral loss for the studio with many new and longtime fans completely dropping the games and Limbus Company taking one of the biggest financial and D/MAU drops for a gacha I’ve ever seen. You can read more regarding the ramifications of this here, this post is already pretty long for this website anyway.

Again I’m not writing this to shame anyone who plays these games, loves their characters or enjoys their stories. I don’t really care either way, and I obviously find the genre interesting or else I wouldn’t have been monitoring it and the fans for a decade. I just want to shine a light on the thoughts of the more “incel” gamers that play some of these games since I have seen a lot of genuine confusion as to why they would play them. In the future my aim is to write a more in-depth post about these issues, their history and the way antifeminists think.

#Arknights #yostar #hypergryph #project moon #limbus company #Genshin impact #long post #korean incel #incel ideology #gacha #fate grand order #fgo

[stelladess]

I strongly recommend anyone else angry about what Yostar Korea pulled (tl;dr: they took down the work of an artist who has made a lot of promo stuff for the Korean social media account because incels dug up a years old tweet where she said women deserve equal pay for equal work and another years old tweet where she did a doodle for international women´s day, these posts were then used to justify taking her work down and saying she was inciting "division" in the fandom with radical political positions, they then said that arknights is a game that strives to tell a fun story without getting into any divisive politics which is absurd) Anyway I strongly advice anyone else mad about it to write about that in the current survey in the game, ESPECIALLY if this has made you no longer want to spend money on the game, and if so to specifically say that. I also recommend you write to Hypergryph: [email protected] They had nothing to do with this decision and has in the past had a good track record on condeming misogyny even from business partners, but they have not commented on the current situation yet, and I believe HG speaking about it would make it FAR more likely for Yostar to actually do anything here. I would also suggest contacting Yostar, but their complaints forum has been down since this situation broke down. Either this is from too much traffic (in which case they are clearly unprofessional for not handling this amount of outrage with any sort of apology or recompensation to the artist they wronged) or its deliberately taken down, in which case that is even worse. Do not put insults, just be clear and concise that you think that behavior from the Yostar Korea branch is unacceptable, the fact that Yostar as a whole has not done anything about this, despite how this was also a blatant overreach from Yostar Korea (they took down her art less then an hour after complaints from incels began, meaning there is no way anyone at their parent company or at Hypergryph was consulted) makes them look unprofessional and poisonous for studios to work with, and that continuing to associate with Yostar unless they do anything about this will only make HG also look like they support this.

It is far more likely something will be done or at least said about the situation if we keep messaging HG and Yostar about this.

#arknights #yostar korea #yostar

[mui-ka]

Arknights: Lonetrail

#arknights #arknights gif #muikagifs #ak #arkn #ak muelsyse #arknights muelsyse #ak ho'olheyak #arknights ho'olheyak #ak saria #arknights saria #gacha gifs #gacha edits #yostar #arknights rosmontis #arknights ifrit #gacha edit #gacha games #arknights doctor #ak doctor

[yukiyoenjoyer]

Surtr from Arknights, summer skin

#surtr #arknights #arknights surtr #summer #beach #ice cream #yostar

[biseugen]

Thanks to the artist - Nagu (@wooperfuri) for creating this amazing piece of artwork for us.

#azur lane #ning hai #ping hai #cheshire #prinz eugen #shimakaze #new jersey #vittorio veneto #official art #yostar #manjuu

[minu10321]

#arknights #mudrock #my art #art #painting #anime art #yostar

[maounosekai]

Hello, Doktahs~!

How are y'all faring with the Lone Trail event? Has the gravity switches drained you of all of the sanity (like I did askdhfasdf)?

Elf waif desktop wallpaper and the hi-res full image are available for supporters on Ko-Fi: ko-fi.com/maounosekai

#muelsyse #arknights #arknights muelsyse #muelsyse arknights #rhine lab #arknights fanart #fanart #hypergryph #yostar

[artmek]

Guardian Tales JP Anniversary PV

[Part 2]

#guardian tales #gt #ガーディアンテイルズ #kakao games #kong studios #yostar #mobile games #my shit #future princess

[mai-han]

"Doctor, are you going out again…? Okay, I know. I'll wait here for you… Um, Doctor, please hurry back…"

Hi! I'm the EN VA for Greyy (Caster) and I'm doing a live signing over at streamily for both Greyy prints and prints of my Vtuber! If you'd like one you can grab one at streamily.com/maihan.

Art is by the amazing CGcrescent

All prints will be signed 🔴 Live 🔴 on November 30th at 6pm PDT and will include a free sticker!

I hope I get to sign something for you

#arknights #arknights greyy #yostar #gacha

[hopelessh0st]

In commemoration of Ebenholz getting his well deserved skin. I'm posting the video I made after finishing the lingering echoes event

#hes so gorgeous #I cant wait for the 4th anni guys #arknights #ebenholz #yostar #ALSO DID YALL SEE THE SPECTER ALTER SKIN HOLY MAMA OIIIOOOOOOOO

[gacha-incels]

Statement document link

KGCS tweet link

#arknights #yostar #hypergryph #misogyny #korean game consumer society #Feminist ideological verification

[stelladess]

So instead of doing something fun I wake up to finding out more bs from Yostar Korea, I will explain below but first, reminder, please write in about this to Yostar and Hypergryph (again, unlikely HG had anything to do with this but their silence on this matter is still extremely disappointing) [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

They did not take down an artist´s work this time for extremely flimsy reasons and call not hating women a divisive position that divides people and then go on about how Arknights strives to be apolitical. Or have the social media manager liking on the official AK Korea twitter account art of Jessica being tortured. This time it was a bit less severe, they censored Jessica the Liberated in game artwork.

For those unaware there is a conspiracy theory in South Korea about there being a wide spread thing of femenists in video games hiding hand signs that imply small dicks in gacha games specificallly to harass men. Because of this many gacha games will censor any hand gesture that can even remotely resemble such when publishing in Korea, this is very common and done by many gacha games. Which like, is part of the problem. They are catering to sexist pigs which then helps cultivate an audience of said sexist pigs who they need to keep placating. And quite frankly, the people who make these games, artists, writers, etc. Deserve to be treated better then to have their work censored or removed to appease sexists. Because I love Arknights and it means a lot to me it really hurts seeing the people making it have their work be disrespected like this by the publisher, and it hurts seeing the studio being silent about this. I strongly suggest completely boycotting originite packs and similar things, make clear on any survey for the game that actions such as this make you NOT want to spend money on the game, WRITE to both Yostar and Hypergryph and explain you do NOT want to support a game that bends over to the whims of sexist pigs. I want to be able to say that I did *something* about this. Arknights is the gacha game I have spent the most money in, but I have a hard time justifying doing so anymore if this situation continues, which I am going to tell Yostar and Hypergryph, and I think anyone reading this should do so as well, also I think you should tell other people to tell them that as well. Yostar needs to issue a full apology and put back all the artworks they took down or censored to the way they were, and unless that or HG cutting off their partnership with Yostar happens, or at the very least strongly condemns these actions, I am gonna stop buying any more packs for the game. I do however suggest you go support artists harmed by such practices, im sure other people know of more but the only one I know of from the top of my head is here: https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/16826909 For Arknights ones, for other games i also know at least of Vellmori for Limbus Company who was also targetted by incels. EDIT: had written poll instead of survey by accident

EDIT: Previously suggested boycotting Jessica banner, this was a pretty silly suggestion made in anger when not thinking clearly. The important thing is to refuse to give any MONEY. Pull all you want. Just dont spend ANY money.

#arknights #jessica the liberated #yostar #yostar korea #incel nonsense #arknights jessica #jessica arknights

[mui-ka]

Arknights: All Quiet under the Thunder

#arknights #arknights gif #ak #arkn #muikagifs #gacha edit #gacha games #gacha gifs #ak amiya #ak siege #amiya #siege #ak ines #arknights ines #arknights amiya #arknights siege #yostar #arknightsource

[cerastes]

Is the event order permafucked or do you think they'll get it loosely back on track?

There’s a strong chance that it’ll remain all sorts of messed without recourse, simply because Yostar is adamantly refusing to run things concurrently or semi-concurrently as they do in CN. Every time CN does that and Yostar doesn’t follow suit, it’s extra fuckery you are adding to the schedule. Mind you, what CN runs concurrently with events is CC, which is virtually downtime and doesn’t consume Sanity.

Then, consider that there are dates more or less set in stone for big banners, like limited stuff: 2nd week of January is the non-CN anniversary, so they run big limited events there (W, Moist Ch’en, Gavialter), Golden Week is another one (Rosmontis, Nearl the NTR), end of July and beginning of August is the designated Chinese New Year event timeslot (Nian, Dusk, Ling), etc.

What this means is that they have to navigate the rest of the content around these dates, and Yostar is bad navigator: The dead time Yostar has put on the servers that Hypergryph didn’t on CN has added up, not to mention running two weeks of CC that didn’t exist on CN due to CN running those semi-concurrently with other events meaning that’s a whole two weeks they threw to the bin for no reason. Then you look at February 2023, where we had a reel event and a rerun, despite the fact that there’s been an event that has been delayed for far too long, and they could’ve perfectly have run that instead of a rerun. Yostar is not a good navigator.

From here on, this is a Game Theory but it helps illustrate the state of the schedule: Golden Week is coming (end of April, start of May) and they’ll likely want to run Texas the Omertosa there to follow trend. However, they can’t run that without Chapter 11, because Operators from the Siracusano event need materials from Chapter 11, but Chapter 11 itself cannot exist without the pre-Chapter 11 banner, so that’s already a large swath of time that’s spoken for. Dorothy’s Vision will run from the 14th to the 28th, and there’s also the Near Light Rerun (and IS3, but that’s a special case that doesn’t really necessarily get in the way, if previous precedent is anything to go by) that’s supposed to come out soon. All of this means that there literally exists no time between now (March 10th) and Golden Week for Mlynar’s event (which occurred before Sicarusano) to happen, meaning that, by necessity, Mlynar has to occur post-Siracusano, much like Dorothy’s Vision is going to happen after Ideal City, whereas in CN, DV happened before IC. Game Theory ends here, but surely you can see how it makes sense, just by looking back on previous events.

It’s a perpetual state of entanglement because Yostar keeps adding dead time and refusing to run things concurrently when CN does, and time is not a luxury they have.

#arknights #yostar

[biseugen]

Commander, the Snowrealm Peregrination event is currently ongoing! Have you found out why Sovetsky Soyuz is so fond of Arctic hares?

#azur lane #sovetsky soyuz #manjuu #yostar #i was so happy when she got announced i freaked out sjsmmsmsmsms #official art

[pinaxpinakes]

Work stuff. Arknights Holungday event illustration I did for Yostar last year.

#art #myart #mydrawing #my art #my drawing #anime #anime art #anime illustration #arknights #holungday #chen #hoshiguma #swire #lin #yostar #illustration #illustrator