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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.
This is a far different case - fans created a mod which introduced nudity into a game that never had it on its original media. It'd be like me hacking a Super Mario ROM, adding boobs onto the Mario sprite, and then suing Nintendo for what I created and pasted into their game without their knowledge.
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There was no nude content included in the game. Please read the article.
The difference with Hot Coffee was that the content was part of the game, people simply gained access to it.
This is like rating Half-Life AO because someone might release a multiplayer porn mod.
For that matter...have you *SEEN* some of the stuff that's been done with Garry's Mod?
HL2...it's not for kids any more. (not that it ever was, but whatever).
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
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?
Yes, it could apply if we take two fundamentally different situations and irrationally apply the same logic, then yes. The "Hot Coffee" material was unlocked by a third party, and the Oblivion material was created by a third party. If your game can be modded and hacked into a mature game, then you should be a mature game? The game that comes on the disc contains nothing sexually explicit, locked or unlocked... you have to literally go out onto the web and download the explicit artfile yourself. If being able to "go out on the internet and download porno into the game" is sufficient grounds for calling something mature.. that's a wee bit ridiculous. Every game ever moddable, then, should be rated mature... since modders can make them mature at will.
Rockstar has mature materials actually on the game disc.. they created it, they sold it. It wasn't accessible, but it was there. It was their code with their name on it. I consider that situation to be materially different than Oblivion is getting blamed for art NOT on their game disc.
While I don't agree with the GTA decision or the ES4 decision there is a distinct difference.
In GTA the content WAS ON THE DISC, it might not have been accessible but it was on there. In ES4 the content didn't even exist, some user created it and added it into the game themselves.
Imagine this, you buy a computer with a hidden and locked folder that contains vulgar content... You don't know it exists but someone finds it out and starts telling people how to hack their computers to get at it... THIS is GTA.
Now Imagine you buy a computer with NO hidden or locked content at all. Someone starts a porn site on the internet and starts telling people how to download it to their computers... THIS is ES4
You might as well not sell computers, cameras, or even pens and pencils to minors because they might be inclined, to download, take pictures of, or draw their own nudity.
I think the REAL kicker is the 360 version, not having it's rating upped for nudity but for violence and gore, which according to Bethesda they noted as the highest possible level when submitting the game for review. It just shows the ESRB's incompetence, and THAT is the sort of thing that starts to draw the attention from the political types.
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We'd have just that many more welfare recipients running around.
I mean, where else can incompetant, lazy, worthless individuals rise to power to think they get to determine what content I or my children should or should not see.
That's a decision for me alone. If I determine that my 12 year old is mature enough to handle gore/violence/nudity whatever, that's my choice - not some dork pulling a god trip trying to force feed the nation their *opinion*.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
Propably because the case is different. In the case of Hot Coffee, there was sex in the game, it simply required special measures to unlock it. In the case of Oblivion, there's none, but someone made a nude model and imported it into the game.
The real question is, in games where hundreds or thousands are killed with fists, swords and machine guns, why is the deciding factor of making these "adults only" whether someones breasts are showing or not ? I saw breasts for the first time before I was a day old, and don't have any psychopathic tendencies I am aware of...
...Altought this cellar does seem to accumulate more bones every night. Strange.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.