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Retailers Won't Sell New Acclaim Game
DrEnter writes "According to this Yahoo article, Wal-Mart, Toys R Us, and Kay-Bee Toys are refusing to carry Acclaim's new video game 'BMX XXX'. Best Buy has stated it will sell a censored version of the game. Acclaim is billing it as the first major release game to feature full-action nudity, with prostitutes and pimps and main characters. A Wal-Mart spokesman stated "We're not going to carry any software with any vulgarity or nudity -- we're just not going to do it." I'm pretty sure Wal-Mart sells rated-R movies (including those arguably targeted at the same age group as this game is), so make your own judgement..."
There is all that Playboy and Penthouse software on the top shelf of the computer software section at Hastings...
That was vulgar and featured nudity and everybody loved it. No stores, as I recall, refused to sell that. Still I suppose the graphics have come a little since those days, perhaps it is the realism that shocks them.
Rake Free + Mac Poker: CardCrusade
Prostitutes and pimps - sure, but main characters? Won't somebody please think of the children?
-- Free speech is only free if your time is worth nothing.
The walmart spokesman cleared his throat and continued, "The staple of gaming content has always been VIOLENCE. Sure, we'll sell games where you can watch someone get their head cut off, THATS good clean fun."
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Just like one of the posters said on the accompanying message board, this is nothing but capitalism working as it normally does, and working quite well.
;-D) in person.
"Developers have the right to make it. Stores have the right to carry it or shun it. We have the right to buy it, ignore it or shop elsewhere."
Sure, it serves as an eye-popper and conversation piece for news outlets since there's (gasp!) nudity in a video game, but it's not like 99.6% of all 15-year old guys haven't already seen a naked woman on video, in a magazine, or (hopefully
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
This isn't these stores taking "responsibility", its them acknowledging that the parents who can't police their children properly will shove their responsibility (that of the parents) onto the store. The fact is, if parents were able to actually take care of their children, it wouldn't matter if hard-core pornography was shelved next to Barney cartoons - the kids wouldn't ever actually get access. My parents made it quite clear whenever I was not to be doing something, and when I went behind their backs I was inevitably punished. More importantly, they explained their reasons for each edict, and as a result I respected their decisions as my parents instead of resenting them blindly. Thats the lesson the stores are teaching parents: if you dont take care of your kids, we'll do it for you. Thats plain fucking lazy.
"Stumble before you crawl"
People will do as they want. If stores didnt carry Grand Theft Auto 3, they would be losing out on a good chunk of change.
If this game gets that popular, then either they will sell it or miss out on the profit.
I really dont have a problem with things like this unless it is the government (federal, state, or local) saying that something can't be sold in town, state, or country. If Wal-Mart et al want to not sell it, frankly, its their business.
Of course it is good that the public stays informed... Wal-mart doesnt get my money when I need paper towels any more if they choose to censor this.
But that their choice, and I imagine plenty of other people who like dirty games will continue to buy their paper towels at Wal-Mart.
From reading the blurb from the acclaim site I would say it is not near X rated. While I do think it is compleatly distastefull, I think you can find more sexual content in "Not Another Teen Movie" or "Too High".
... I won't *buy* it at Wal-mart, Best Buy...
FLR
Acclaim is to the game industry what Troma is to the movie industry.
On a related note, does anyone know if this game will use the extremely rare "AO" (Adults Only) ESRB rating?
Schnapple
I think the article's comparisons to GTA 3 are unfounded. Why? Because GTA 3 had some very innovative gameplay: a continuous and hugely interactive world with missions taking place directly in the environment, a wide variety of exploration options leading to a huge replay value.
BMX XXX is a.... bmx game. Now I'm not going to say that GTA 3 is a Goodfellas or even a Sopranos but it at least had a semi-adult theme: criminal underworld. It was about as accurate as... I dunno, a CBS Sunday Night movie on the mob. And so there was little stretching the imagination to see that prostitution and drugs and violence would be involved.
But a BMX game? It's like trying to get people to switch to Linux by lacing nekkid girlie pictures into the kernel. A shallow attempt to spice something up.
What is music when you despise all sound?
... until Kazaa users turn ethical.
Actually it's worse that you think.
Think about it for a moment; there are only two words you need to mention, to show the bias in the media: "fucking" and "farting".
You can have a fuck-specialist on the news, who's just written a book about how to fuck, who to fuck, how to feel after you fucked and who you should fuck next. You just don't call it fucking. Hell, look at day-time TV. You know that in that soap-opera you enjoy, all it really revolves around, is did he fuck her, has he fucked her, who else did he fuck, did she fuck someone else and what the fuck is going on.
But - when was the last time you saw ANYONE even talk about farting? You've never had anyone on the Late Show who's just written a book about how to fart, who to fart at, how to feel after you farted and who you should fart at next.
Farting is WORSE than fucking! Think about that for a while.
(With apologies to George Carlin).
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
"Farting is WORSE than fucking!"
I'm going to have to agree with you there. I'd much rather fuck than fart.
So the following sample of Eminem lyrics
That's actually Ja Rule. Eminem has made a point of the fact that he won't say "nigga" because he is white and for a white man to refer to a black man as a "nigga" is considered derogatory. If you actually listen to Eminem's message, it's basically self-parody. He's got a point that if this country was truly so shocked by what he had to say, NO ONE WOULD BUY HIS ALBUMS.
A better analogy would be that Wal-Mart sells shotguns. Killing animals with firearms = good, playing a video game with virtual tits and ass = bad. That's just typical good ol' boy thinking anyway - it's to be expected from Wal-Mart.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
I am from Sweden but I have been living in the US for a few years now. In Sweden, violence is censored to a much greater extent than in the US, but for nudity it is the other way around.
I can see the reasoning behind the ciolence argument (although I am not sure to what extent I agree)
watching lotsa violence -> violent behavior
But for nudity...
watching lotsa nudity -> ???
Spontanious stripping? Unlikely.
Will young men start raping girls if they see somebody naked? C'mon.
Will there be more unprotected sex? No, lack of information has to my knowledge never stopped anyone that wanted to get at it.
Could somebody with longer time in the US please explain. I really don't get it.
Tor
Insightful huh?
Last time I checked, I haven't heard about anyone writing a book about stamps appear on TV. By your logic, Stamp collecting must be far-far worse than sex or farting.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I'm a store manager for one of the video game chains that will be selling BMX XXX, and last month I got a chance to hear about the game from the people at Akklaim and even saw a bit of game footage. Here is what I took away from the preview: 1) This game plays like the old dave mirra games, but with more plot thrown into each stage ( pimps yelling at their employees, monkeys throwing poo, dogs fornicating) 2) Somebody went to great pains to give you the ultimate control in the create a skater mode including breast size and (abscence of) choice of clothes. 3) If you get enough money, you get to go to Scores gentleman's club to watch a video clip of a real dancer. 4) The Gamecube and XBOX versions will have a raunch-o-meter to let you turn off nudity and bad language while the PS2 version will automatically be a little more tame (no full nudity). 5) They made sure to stay in the M rating, as an Ao would mean that the rest of the chains that are selling the game would also drop it from their shelves.
Basically, it looks like annother lame BMX game that Akklaim is trying to boost sales of by tossing in a little raunch. A good buy, if you have no life or acess to better adult materials.
Being from NZ an' all...
Wal-mart won't sell a computer game because of a little bit of nudity, yet it continues to sell guns.
Is there anyone _inside_ the US that doesn't find that just a tad strange?
Consultancy: If you're not part of the solution, there's money to be made in prolonging the problem
Does Walmart sell Penthouse / Playboy / Hustler? No?
Do they sell Time / Field & Stream / Sports Illustrated? Yes?
Then why isn't everyone here getting their panties in a bunch over _that_ bias? Why would not the clear policy they have for which print media they retail carry across into the electronic media they stock? Why should a retailer like Walmart make an exception for a one-trick pony console game?
Hey, Mr. Magazine Man! Yeah, you! You're selling House & Garden, but I don't see no Juggs! What kind of friggin' hypocrite are you? Don't you know this is America, Land of the Free, and I gotta right to buy what I want where I want to? [spit]
[sigh]
Sometimes it seems everybody is spoilin' for a fight, but all these Walmart guys are doing is looking to make a living and not piss off their core clientele. Seems to me they're behaving sensibly.
Only topless nudity. The dialogue and such isn't anything worse than GTA3. No full frontals, definately no sex .. just alot of attitude. Really, if they dont sell this, they shouldn't sell GTA3.
....
.. graphic violence is fine, easily found on their shelves, the heavens forbid we should see a nipple! For crying out loud ...
[sarcasm]
yeah, its way more moral to carjack and kill people in GTA3 than it is to ride a skateboard and look at women's boobs
[/sarcasm]
This society has a rediculous double standard when it comes to what kids see and watch
"Old man yells at systemd"
Yeah
but it is ironic that they will usually carry games where you can KILL others but the minute you show some one naked it's vulger.
So the message to the youth... making love is bad. Killing is good.
so mindless.
VGs with violence always integrate it into the gameplay but VGs with nudity or sexual content make it some side bonus that isn't really part of the game.
What if there was a video game that did integrate sex into the gameplay? In Japan they've had point-and-click dating games, but what if nudity/love/sex were part of other genres?
For example, the Japanese have a comic book about a sex sport where a man and woman try to make the other person come first. What if there was a video game about that, styled after 1 on 1 fighting games? There'd be the usual selection of characters and backdrops, but instead of a damage bar there'd be a horniness bar. There'd be plenty of flashy special moves, but instead of doing damage they'd be foreplay moves that raise the other person's horniness bar. Horniness would also be represented visually by clothes falling off, blushing, trembling and heavy breathing. Instead of Mortal Kombat's "Fatalities" or Street Fighter's "Super Finishers" there'd be orgasm moves. I'd want an anime-style game company doing this because the Japanese put sex in their entertainment way better than Americans do.
I also wonder if abstract or "cartoonized" sex is better than realistic sex. Think of the arguments about realistic violence vs cartoon violence. Some say that kids will be less harmed by seeing fake, cartoon violence because perhaps if kids don't see the real thing, they won't do the real thing. Others say that kids will be less harmed by seeing realistic violence because they'll see the real consequences and fear them. I don't know the answer to that argument, but I do ask: Is fake looking sex or realistic looking sex better for kids? If that 1-on-1 sex game kept the moves but hid the crotches, would it be OK for kids of all ages?
Screw fileshack, they want you to WAIT for the download to start. They actually have queues, the wait time right now is at least 12 minutes. Why not get the trailer directly from the bmx xxx site. Its embedded in a page but here's the URL it pulls the mpg from:
m pg
http://209.10.163.130/aux/bmxxxx/movies/mpg_01.
Its only a matter of time until Namco announces Cocksucker Pacman
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c | Acclaim's somewhere around here
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Free Advertisement
I've lived in the US my entire life, and I've never understood it. People here have somehow picked up the idea that naked bodies hurt children, but violence does not.
What if a store wanted to sell me a shotgun, a Nirvana album and an R-rated movie, but no nudity-containing video game? Well I'd settle for a few porn magazines. Point is, I need a one-stop-shop, and WalMart ain't got it.
Please, Walmart, for the decent people out there, give us a place to buy recordings of violent acts, endorsements of violence, instruments of violence and porno. Think of the children.
I am a Wal Mart electronics associate.
We carry Fallout (vulgarity, text), Die Hard (vulgarity, audio). We'll be carrying GTA4: Vice city (audio vulgarity ?).
We carry very violent games.. (PS2) GTA3, (XBOX) Dead to Rights, the new Mortal Kombat game, (PS2) Mark of Kri, (PC) Mafia, etc etc.
The register prompts whether the customer is 17 when you ring a [M] rated game, or [R] rated movie. I let every parent know what they're buying -- and kids don't get mature games from me. :)
Ya know that US stereotype of a cowboy - the guy who carries at least one gun on him at all times, but doesn't even take his clothes off to bathe?
That's us.
We still think violence is an excellent way to solve problems, and are largely inured to it - hence the reason why we're one of the last countries in the world to allow captial punishment for mentally retarded individuals.
Besides, violence raises few anxieties in people that affect them directly. Sex, on the other hand, raises all sorts of issues that Americans never deal with - like our own lack of comfort with our bodies. I still think one of the biggest reasons why there is basically no full-frontal male nudity in movies as opposed to female full-frontal nudity, which is quite common, is related to size issues. I wouldn't be surprised if there are guys out there who have refused to se The Pillow Book because they know they'd have to see Ewan McGregor's big dick.
Of course, I can't really say this is all that much different from other cultures, since I have never lived anywhere but the USA. Let's hope I'm providing some insight, though - I'd be depressed if this is the way it is around the world.
Anyway, I think it IS likely to cause spontaneous stripping. People are more readily programmed by television than you think. It puts you into an alpha state. (Boy is it hard to find reasonably reputable links about that!) As such, you are more suggestible (it is similar to the state achieved during hypnosis, though with somewhat different results here, we hope.)
Now, am I saying that guys are going to run around raping people because they see more porn? No. In fact, some studies have shown just the opposite. If you don't make people feel guilty about sexual urges they're more likely to beat off and get all that tension out of their system. Then they can just beat women up instead of raping them, like good little Americans. Hey, it works for football stars.
Will there be more unprotected sex? I'm sure there will be more sex, and a certain percentage of it is unprotected. So you could say yes, but probably not. Then again, if you make people horny enough they sometimes skip the protection and move right onto the beast with two backs phase of the evening.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I live in the UK. On Sunday night Channel 4 showed A Clockwork Orange at last - first time on UK TV (other than cable). Very good movie.
Plenty of violence and nudity and drugs and the old in out in out.
What did my partner say at the end? "Was there any need for all those tits? Kubrick was a dirty old man wasn't he! No dicks though you notice!"
No mention of the hefty doses of violence, sinister political activities, etc... just "why so many tits"
Why do I mention this? Because I think the whole anti-nudity thing boils down to guys not wanting to see other guys dicks on the TV.
The latest thing to stir up the tabloid is Tipping the Velvet, a BBC period costume drama with healthy doses of girl on girl lesbian action. Complaints to the BBC are all about how LITTLE action there was. Safe. No guys. Everyone wants to watch!
Equality values are so live, especially in my neck of the woods, that any unequal representation is offensive - particularly if its seen to exploit the ladies. For many, the glimpse of boobs in Fifth Element is more offensive than 'that scene' in Reservoir Dogs. Simply because of the exploitation.
Also, nudity is often surplus to the plot. Shooting someone in the face brings the plot along, because that character is now dead. Seeing some chicks ass doesn't move the plot alon in the same way most of the time. It's just eye candy. So its easier to look down on and condemn. Which film would make more sense if you saw a penis in it? Which would make less sense without the tits? Without the guns? without the swearing?
Personally - I'd throw it all in and let people make and show what they want. Clockwork Orange was a good film. Fifth Element was not. Nothing to do with the tit count, gun count, or how many times a big guy says 'Shit!' as someone comes into shot.
...to regain their reputation as a company pushing the envelope in video game vulgarity. Remember how big of a hit Mortal Kombat was when it first came out? Pure shock value. Acclaim made a killing off it, as well as MK2, and even made a movie out of it the video game.
Since then we've had countless other fighting games, some of which were purely copycat games, others which introduced new technology such as 3D arenas, which Acclaim hasn't really been keeping up with. Now that gore fest fighting games are no longer so offensive, perhaps even tame compared to gore fest shooters like Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament, they decide to make money off the next most provocative cultural taboo--Sex.
What's next? A game about wife beaters? Kids who set fire to animals? No, I'm not some paranoid Rosie 'O Donnel wannabe, and I'm glad id won their lawsuit against those neglegent deadbeat Columbine parents, but there is a point when it just becomes painfully obvious that some in the entertainment business are out to take advantage of stupid kids with too much money by offering them the forbidden fruit in a medium their parents are likely very ill-informed about.