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Bethesda Responds To Oblivion Re-Rating
Gamespot has details on Bethesda's response to the ESRB for their (some would argue) knee-jerk reaction to fan-added elements of Oblivion. From the article: "There is no nudity in Oblivion without a third party modification. In the PC version of the game only - this doesn't apply to the Xbox 360 version - some modders have used a third party tool to hack into and modify an art archive file to make it possible to create a mesh for a partially nude (topless) female that they add into the game. Bethesda didn't create a game with nudity and does not intend that nudity appear in Oblivion." They go on to state they submitted a 60-page document detailing the violence in the game. If anyone is at fault here, I think it's the ESRB.
One could apply the same thinking to the original Hot Coffee debacle, that the content was only accessible via a third party hack. They got rerated, but somehow Bethesda wants to be treated differently?
I'm not saying I'm agreeing with this kind of crap, but it's nobody's fault but their own for including the content inside the game in some capacity and not cleaning it out after GTA suffered the same fate. They should just suck it up, and enjoy the free publicity.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
2 points:
1) I'm pretty sure you're referencing the DMCA. This was a product not of the Bush administration, but the Clinton administration.
2) Considering how most people seem to enjoy the concept of a nanny-state where their government will protect its citizens from "the bad people" (which may be Communists, terrorists, Socialists, homosexuals, hippies, pedophiles, athiests, intellectuals, liberals, etc), I'm pretty sure many people would enjoy living in a totalitarian regime that protects everone from being offended or shocked. Those who would not enjoy such a fate would likely be branded one of "the bad people".
A man who can't pronouce "nuclear arsenal" shouldn't have one -sig ends here.
Now that's something that would be interesting to explain to parents. =P
If you've played the game, there's more than enough violence and gore to earn a mature rating. I'm thinking in particular of the final Dark Brotherhood quest, and that daedra quest with the mad wizard...it was pretty "Resident Evil"-esque. Personally, I like the violence and gore. I don't really care that it's rated M, but I'm pretty sure the M rating is appropriate. The real question is how did the ESRB miss all of that gore? Maybe their just making a big deal about the topless mod to smokescreen the fact that the game should never have gotten a Teen rating.
I am sick of people hopping onboard the ethical bandwagon when something obscure, like nipples, could possibly be exposed to our once "breast fed" children. What the ESRB did was wrong. They should have done their homework on the nudity mod before making a re-rating of the game. I have placed a complaint to the ESRB concerning this problem and I ask that anyone else who loves this game do the same.
You can submit a comment/complaint here.
If i wanted to hear bullshit, i'd go to church.
The rating system should be changed. Instead of a single "Teens", "Children", "Mature" etc. rating, this should be multi-layered system. The box should have something like this:
Puting into the parents hands the burden of deciding what is and isn't appropriate for their children.
In short: any kind of measurement must be somewhat precise. There's no precision at all in compressing these different dimensions into a generic "this is okay for teens, that isn't".
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
at least, with some minor modifications (stripping) you can get them both NAKED! With nipples!
I even saw them in PR0N on the internet. No really there was this YouTube flick where... ah, anyway.
We Europeans have some problems of our own, but this whole "no-nudity-concept" seems even more flawed (and older, obviously) than the DMCA.