New E3-Shown Games Push Sexual Envelope

Thanks to CNN Money for its article discussing the seamier side of E3's videogame selection, as it notes: "It's one thing to see Lara Croft's hot-shorts clad posterior while you play 'Tomb Raider.' It's another thing entirely to see the sagging, slightly lumpy and entirely unclothed buttocks of Larry Lovage streak across your screen." The article also discusses Singles, the Eidos U.S.-published title "best described as a naughty version of 'The Sims.'...[which] doesn't shy away from male or female full frontal nudity", noting that "the ESRB slapped 'Singles' with an AO rating", which is "essentially, an NC-17 or worse... Most retailers will not sell a game with that rating." Tom Marx of Eidos expresses his distress with this rating, arguing for an M rating instead, and noting as part of his argument: "I don't really think someone is going to get the same feeling of attraction in seeing a full frontal digital game character as they would from seeing that in an actor or actress."

Comments

Stupid

[Henry V .009]

This is stupid marketing. If you want to make a game with adult content, sell a PG-13 kiddie version that everybody under 5 can buy, and release the hardcore porn in a patch.

Helps if you don't have a soul, but big entertainment has proved that lack often enough.

Re:Adults only?

[praxis22]

You can find this title readily in Germany, it's been reviewed by every major magazine to one extent or another. You really have to wonder about the Puritanical sensibilities of the US at times. What amused me most was seeing many years ago the version of robocop that was screened on TV in America, they left all the violence in, (even the bits they wouldn't show in the UK) but took all the swearing out, which ruined most of the really funny jokes. Wierdness...

Article author is an idiot...

[Mitleid]

Please tell me how it is not sexist to compare a completely unrealistically proportioned female in sexy ass-pants to a middle-aged scumbag trying to get some action, and declaring the latter as beginning to "cross the line"?

This is a lot like all the hubbub people made about the fucking superbowl "scandal". You have sports institutions like the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders or whatever dressed as clad as legally possible for national TV, and then some "racy" pop star busts out her breast for all of America to see and it's an outrage? Come on!

Nudity and sex is all about context, and being an American it seems that too many people get bent out of shape about someone being naked, and it's seriously going to warp the minds of our youth. Nudity is declared as innapropriate, but it's completely OK for every other (if not all) female character on TV to be sporting some sort of cleavage or ass-revealing outfit? Leisure Suit Larry is an ADULT-ORIENTED and sexually themed game, thus I hope we get to see some guys nuts and maybe a rediculously-sized breast getting thrown across our screens here and there. That's the appeal of games like that, right? (I don't play them; someone help me out here...) What I don't understand is why do I happen to turn on some tripe like CSI and see a woman clad in the most "professionally-appropriate" revealing outfit and that's "OK"?

Personally, I think sex is overused in all aspects of American pop culture. But at the same time, the media portrays it as controversial and extreme, and that's why it sells. People always talk about the sexual revolution, blah blah blah, but all the "progress" made in America that ever seems to happen is just allowing women to be able to show more and more of their bodies, and the twisted fools that read magazines like Maxim to oggle over them and continue objectifying, and I think this article only illustrates what kind of a double standard these "journalists" help to create.

Re:Article author is an idiot...

[Lynxara]

A hot naked man is just the best thing in the world to look at (for me, anyhow). But so many men buy into the bullshit about men just being innately ugly, that they won't even try to make themselves look good. And thus, they do become pretty ugly.

This leads to a needless waste of hot man potential, and it leaves me just a little bit sadder.

HERE! HERE!

[filmsmith]

We need a better rating system in games AND in movies. Roger Ebert makes this case very well in one of his Movie Answer Man columns

Q. I just returned from seeing "The Passion of the Christ." Had I been able to wrench my attention away from all of the horrified children gasping in the audience, I might have appreciated it more.

I can understand parents showing up at this film with their children expecting something different, but after a few minutes of the tremendous violence shown onscreen, I would have thought more parents would have spared their children further horror. Shouldn't ticket sellers offer some kind of warning to parents showing up with good intentions and young children?

Carson Utz, Novato, Calif.

A. I'll go further than that: No responsible parent would allow a child to see the film. "The Passion of the Christ," the most violent film I have ever seen, received an R rating from the MPAA because the group, which exists in part to quell the fears of churchgoing America, lacked the nerve to give it the NC-17 rating it clearly deserves.

This becomes an unanswerable argument for my recommendation of an A (for adults only) rating between the R (which allows parents to take in children of any age) and the NC-17, which is irretrievably associated with pornography.

Because many theaters refuse to book NC-17 films, and many media outlets will not advertise them, imagine the irony if their own policies had forced them to boycott "The Passion of the Christ"!

Let the MPAA bring back the X, which everyone understands, for porno and establish a useful adults-only rating for films that are not pornography but are simply unsuitable for children.

fs

Re:HERE! HERE!

[JavaLord]

I can understand parents showing up at this film with their children expecting something different, but after a few minutes of the tremendous violence shown onscreen, I would have thought more parents would have spared their children further horror. Shouldn't ticket sellers offer some kind of warning to parents showing up with good intentions and young children?

Just as with Video games, parents need to be informed. How could any parent have missed the media frenzy bitching about how violent "passion of the christ" was? Having managed a movie theater back in my college days, I can tell you that parents just don't care nowadays. I constantly saw parents taking their young children in to see movies like "leathal weapon 4". I don't think it was out of ignorance, I think it's more indifference. I find that most parents just don't know how to be parents anymore and try to treat their children as friends. It's sad.

If you are a parent and you bring your child to a R rated movie, which is clearly stated to be for people 18 and above, then it's your fault when the child sees the violence, or sex in that movie. It's not the fault of the MPAA or anyone else.

For the religious right:

[KDR_11k]

It's noteworthy that Singles supports homosexual relationships.

Re:LOVAGE??

[mahdi13]

It was Laffer...but maybe they change it because they completely left Al Lowe out of this one!