Comment by falsaberN1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by falsaberN1 | Hacker News Reader

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This idea is very common among the community. I paid for the games baaaack in the day (I even have a disk signed by ZUN himself) because shumps are my favorite genre and when Touhou 6-7 came out there was a huge drought. The games were good, I never particularly cared about the characters but the gameplay was solid and interesting, with good scoring mechanics and some spectacle despite ZUN's terribad art skills.

This was a huge hot take apparently and members of the community hated everyone who obtained (and played) the games legally. You'd get bullied relentlessly for it. And I don't mean "guys you gotta buy the games to support the artist" or any form of moralizing, just mentioning you purchased the games got you unreasonable amounts of anger. Even friends from Japan who bought extra stuff like the music CDs and stuff made them so angry that my friends got banned from the IRC channel and forums. I left after that because that was unsustainable, people were only there to discuss fanfics of the characters and porn.

I still like the games, but the community at large is disgusting and hate people who actually play the games. Triple so if they are purchased. This guy is the perfect representation of that attitude.

Oh my god. I just found the mirror universe version of that Japanese otaku antipiracy flamewar that keeps flaring up on Twitter every few months.

I don't get it, why would they be upset if somebody pays for the game ?

It's been 23 years and I still don't have an answer to that question. I sincerely don't know.

The submission notwithstanding, it's probably changed since then, no? Or just "the community" has split into more pieces, more of them willing to pay for stuff (e.g. fumos). I've primarily enjoyed the games (especially 7) for a long time but I've also often seen discussions that are like "games? What games?" Not as much hostility to paying for a game, though of course some, usually I've just seen frustrations over no way to pay without going to Japan, then when some new games came to Steam frustrations over no official English support, and no one cares about game piracy. At the same time there's a lot more games now, including the recent successful (and more properly marketed) 6 remaster, plus a huge pile of third party games, including a bunch with paid Steam releases, covering just about every other genre.

Wikipedia links from the Touhou Project to an interesting article, called "database consumption", where people are fans of the component parts of an original work, but want nothing to do with the original work itself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_consumption

It gives the example of Hatsune Miku, who strictly speaking is a fictional character attributed to a sampled singing voice in a vocal synthesizer VST called Vocaloid 2. She was the product branding. There is now a huge industry of fans inventing stories about Hatsune Miku and rendering/drawing pictures of her and enjoying thoughts of her being their waifu. Whatever they've made up is now their headcanon.

I can totally understand Hatsune Miku fans asking you to get lost if you tell them you bought Vocaloid 2, it's cramping their vibe.

Is it the same with the menagerie of Touhou characters? Are there people enjoying thoughts of Marisa Kirisame who don't want to be reminded she's a character in a shoot'em'up?

Is this the first "not even wrong" moment for me??? Why would Miku fans not like someone using the VL2? It just makes no sense...

Due to how Touhou is liberally licensed, there absolutely are people who are fans of the characters/story/music/fangames but have never played any of the actual shoot-em-up games. Within the community they're referred to as "secondary fans" since they only engage with the franchise through derivative works. I haven't heard of people who are hostile to the idea that Touhou is a shoot-em-up franchise though.

ZUN is hostile to non-Japanese people plating shmups because he doesn't imagine that racially handicapped people can play such a challenging genre. I'm barely being facetious. Western fans are opposed to buying the games because of that. Why play the games at all if it bothers you so much, fair question, it's not like there aren't better games from that genre. I always pirated them but I pirate everything anyway.

There's a certain online segment that's proud of not having a "real" job and has made that core to their identity. For reasons (4chan), Touhou blew up in part of that community during the great recession. They twist their arguments about Touhou specifically (reading OP's rant, wow the goalposts sure have shifted in the last decade), but ultimately I'm convinced it just boils down to wanting to feel superior for having opted out of the entire economic system.

Ah, that makes sense actually. Thanks.

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