A gamer's complaint: don't censor games

Due to various cultural elements that a specific to a place or territory, a game that looks perfectly fine in one place might be disregarded somewhere else. Such issues highlight why localization - unlike translation- is necessary for computer and consoles games.

That said, one seemingly simple yet relatively deep and complicated question has always bothered me: when does localization go so far that it becomes censorship? Should gamers accept this?

In order to illustrate my thoughts, Yakuza 3 on PS3 shows well how thin the frontier between censorship and localization can be. Almost immediately, it came under fire for the huge cuts it suffered at the hands of Western localizers. Apparently, a significant chunk of the cut scenes, minigames, and events were removed from the US release, deemed "inappropriate" for American audiences.

Now the question is: do all of these elements actually required to be changed? Isn't that just based on a stereotype that American gamers tend to be more religious and concerned about nudity and violence? Gamers were most likely expecting something different after reading about the game in specialized media

Most of gamers are reasonable adults who just want to enjoy the game as it is, instead of playing an edited, censored version of it. So please, developers, think of gamers first when you are localizing your games.

Video game localization is an important process to bring games to new people, and shouldn't be taken that lightly.