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The ESRB Doesn't Take Games Seriously?
Eurogamer has word of comments by the president of developer Factor 5, Julian Eggebrecht. The veteran game developer had some extremely pointed things to say about the ESRB, an organization he painted as 'not taking games seriously'. Says Eggebrecht, "I would be happy if in games we could talk about homosexuality, but we're not even at the point where we can admit that humans have heterosexual relationships, and that is a real problem - and it tends to show that games are not being seen, even by our own ratings boards, as an artform ... It's a flat out bizarre system...It makes it even harder for games than movies because we don't have the intermediate ratings. They don't really tell you what they will object to - they just say 'well, follow the standards that have been set before', which is a problem if you want to push the envelope." There's further discussion of this issue at Ars' Opposable Thumbs blog, which points out that the console makers hold some responsibility here too. Meanwhile, Rockstar is asking for help from the wider games industry to help them to fight the ESRB/BBFC rulings.
If you have a great game, it really doesn't matter what the rating is. Anyone would go and buy the game, even if you had to order it online, or pick it up at the local tiny computer store rather than wal-mart. This is how games like Doom got going; I remember seeing Doom, wolfenstein 3d, etc. for sale in random places when no regular stores were carrying games like that. It may not be as quick a return, but if the game is that good, then it will overcome the censors and be successful anyways (see mortal kombat series also.)
stuff |
Forbidden fruit and all.
The Banjo Players Must Die!
Do these ratings have any legal weight? Surely PC gamers can just pay for and download the games that they want. Do people still go to shops and buy a shiny disc in a plastic case?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
The ESRB takes games too seriously - it's the gamers they don't take seriously.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
Let's hope this means the ESRB will go the way of the National Legion of Decency. That is, maybe people will just stop paying attention.
Or, does the video game industry have enough power (read: money) yet to get government to change the rules?
Property is theft.
If the rating board doesn't treat it seriously (i.e. as art), then there's no reason to use the rating board. It's still a voluntary arrangement. So games companies should stop paying them to rating their games (badly) and restrict their vision.
p.s. someone tell Eggebrecht to stop whinging about the fact that he couldn't take the p!ss as he'd wanted
Do we really need content descriptors such as "Crude Humor", "Alcohol Reference", and most shocking of all, "Comic Mischief"?c riptors
http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.jsp#des
Leisure Suit Larry
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
So the ESRB is just as bad at doing its job as the MPAA rating board?
Did anyone check if the boards share the same members?
I've only played Tetris, Rogue, and Nethack so my experience is limited. However, yes, it would be nice to have, for example a homosexual "L" block in Tetris, or a Lesbian Wood Nymph in Nethack or a Gay Dragon in Rogue. Because these games are so simple, they will make an ideal platform for trying these ideas out and I suggest that all developers start working on this right away. A good starting point might be to begin with a transsexual "Hello World" program and you can work up from there.
What, no games that have been rated by the ESRB have ever had stories or characters that developed heterosexual relationships along the way? Say what? Apparently you've never played Final Fantasy. Any of them.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Originally, it was to protect the game industry from heavy handed government action. But lately, it has been even more heavy handed, because it isn't required to respect the first amendment, in order to appease all the helicopter parents that can't read labels and think videogames == kids.
However, there is only one real reason or goal that underlies the ESRBs actions and encompasses all of the above.
To keep getting paid for a job that doesn't require any heavy lifting or thinking.
And it will continue that way until videogame companies go the route of comic publishers, giving the ratings system the finger and putting out good "adult-only" title as out-of-store PC-only games until stores and consoles realize that there is money there and they show the ratings system who is the servant.
...most likely his idea for a game about heterosexual nasal sex targeted at ages 7 and up got squashed by the repressive ratings regime...
Or, does the video game industry have enough power (read: money) yet to get government to change the rules?
Obviously not, or some senators wouldn't be calling for probes into video games. They don't seem to have a problem with their buddies in Hollywood, though...
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Nice to include Rockstar/Manhunt 2 there. Not very controversial as such, just bit more gore than the norm right now. Actually the linked article says the same thing.
However, if you can see one digital nipple on-screen it's a big scandal.
This has to be the stupidest thing I have ever read. You are trying to "push the envelope" and you are surprised that you have a problem getting the rating you want?
Just remember - if the world didn't suck, we would all fall off.
Did you notice that the author said "Here in Germany"? Don't think he's American....
Version 2.0 New and Improved!
I just watched a movie called "this film is not yet rated" (get it on netflix) where they show just how incompetent and unfair the MPAA ratings board is. If the ESRB is WORSE, then I feel sorry for anyone trying to push the envelope in games developement.
PS. Jack valenti is still dead and in hell
God is real unless declared integer.
Yes, thats right, the ESRB is a self-regulatory body, cooked up [i]by the industry.[/i] It is completely voluntary, you can make games and sell them without a rating. However, most big-name publishers will have a game go through the process, because, as far I know, the WalMarts and Gamestops and EBs won't stock games without a rating. They are essentially complaining about their own rules here. This is a big problem, but not for Rockstar, or Factor 5, but for the industry as a whole. The problem is, that if they revise the ratings system, even if they simply add intermediate ratings, it'll just give ammo to the "Phock J. Tampons" and politicians desperately seeking an ambulance, and television networks, among others. However, the current situation just isn't acceptable, for the reasons pointed out by Julian in TFA.
/2cents
So, the ESRB, a ratings board set up by the industry itself, must please it's master whilst simultaneously dodging the wrath of capitol hill. Good luck guys.
Of course, they could always follow in hollywood's footsteps, and rebrand AO with some generic letter(s), and move AO up a notch. (T, M, "new thing replacing AO", AO) Or, perhaps make it A = T (adolescent/teen), with A being a new rating, thereby bumping teen to be mature, mature to be AO, and AO being something new. I'd rather them not make any serious changes though, with all their campaigns to educate parents, it would suck to do it all over again. (parents are confused and frightened by change, or responsibility).
I think part of the problem is the AO rating, It looks too much like XXX in movies. I think if it was changed from Ao to 18+ that would take away a lot of the inherent fear that AO titles have. It is less threatening and it says exactly what age group it is for. I do think that is still a band aid solution but it is a start. A huge part of the problem is that all the console makers will not allow AO products on their gaming system and the big chains will not sell it. The industry needs to grow out of this impression that video games are for kids. The average gamer is in his 30's, they need to wake up to the huge market base out there they are missing out on.
I don't know how much effort it would take on the part of developers, but if they get a good game together that the ESRB gives an AO rating, maybe the answer is to tone it down enough for a M rating and then also offer the unrated edition available from their websites. They could (potentially) cash in on the console market and the people who decide to impulse buy it at the store, and have the unrated version available for PC gamers. Maybe, if the sales look good enough, that'd creep over into console manufacturers giving a license to release AO games on their platform.
I'll grant you, it's not doable if the gameplay is centered around some AO elements, but if it's a matter of swapping some skins and maybe tweaking a part or two around...
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
games are meant to be fun.
they are supposed to take yu away from the day to day.
Making games more like 'life' is a drag.
Set it to C and you can be Gay when you want to be
Added Pressly: "Oh, and by the way, milk is nothing but liquid meat."
I'm shocked! Shocked I say to hear that corporate interests are supressing free speech. How dare you make such absurd assertions.
Let's see here.
Here's an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry entitled --Propoganda Model
"Since mainstream media outlets are either large corporations or part of conglomerates (e.g. Westinghouse or General Electric), the information presented to the public will be biased with respect to these interests. Such conglomerates frequently extend beyond traditional media fields, and thus have extensive financial interests that may be endangered when certain information is widely publicized. According to this reasoning, news items that most endanger the corporate financial interests of those who own the media will face the greatest bias and censorship."
So, it's easy to see how corporations would hobble the news media and yet we're pretending here to be amazed to learn that they would be doing the same thing in the tightly held DMCA enforced video game industry.
I find it very interesting that there are ratings for things such as video games and movies. Video games right now are the most difficult to get anything taboo or controversial at all. Movies have gotten to a point where they can be pretty graphic. These are the two main things that come to mind when you think of ratings, however, there are two other things that are far worse, restricted much less, and apparently don't carry ratings. Beyond that, BOTH are usually encouraged as well. First, the news. The news is terrible with the stuff on there, what makes it worse is that its real. Beyond that, they'll sensationalize stories to get higher ratings. They'll get the most shocking stories and try to make them even more shocking. Second, are books. Books, by far, have the MOST violent content. There are books that depict scenes that very few would even dream of trying to bring to the screen, and even fewer actors/actresses who would be willing to help. I'm not even talking about books that are written to be shocking. I'm reading a particular fantasy series, where apparently the guy has a tendency to go into a bit of detail about all the rape scenes (and in one case, where the woman gets the upper-hand, goes into detail with what she does to the guy who raped her).
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying lets rate books too. I'm saying we should do away with the system entirely. Parents find out whats in the books the same way they should be finding out in other media. They either read it themselves, research it, or ask their children. The MPAA and the ESRB are both organizations who have been for whatever reason entrusted with picking up the slack with parents. Parents shouldn't make excuses like they're too busy to do all that research or to read/play/watch the item in question themselves. Their first priority should be parenting and therefore they should prioritize properly. If they wanna help parents out, they should pick up half of what the TV shows are doing. Drop the rating system they have, but keep in place the whole "Contains nudity, violence, etc." type things. Have a system in place that says if you show nudity for x seconds, the "Nudity" label will be applied. They can have 3 levels of violence, "Violent" for no-blood, low-key violence (fights, FPS without blood), "Graphic Violence" for blood and obvious lethal violence, and "Gruesome Violence" for when limbs are being ripped off, etc. Yea, there'll be gray areas, but at this point, you'd have better luck convincing society to adopt this system as opposed to convincing them to dropping it entirely.
These boards shouldn't be allowed to decide who can play or watch what. They should only be able to give a summary of the type of controversial material they may find in the game (language, violence, sexual content, etc.). It should solely be in the parents hand to police what the kids do. If these boards want to give any aid at all, this should be as far as they go.
Personally, I think there should be no ratings or anything. It's easier to see what video games a kid is playing than to see what they're reading and we have no problem with books (though, that may be because fewer people are reading these days).
My twelve year old daughter explained comic mischief to me. It means the characters are sassy to each other. Spyro the dragon 2 had a lot of un-unnecessary annoying sassyness in it. She does not like that in her games. So if I see that in a game now I know..
Added Pressly: "Oh, and by the way, milk is nothing but liquid meat."
May I also point out that, in addition to the fact that no one will carry an AO title (that other posters have mentioned), there is also the harsh reality that an AO rating bars you from any console port of a game too (since all console games have to be licensed and MS, Sony, and Nintendo have all stated publically that they will not license any AO game).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Let's hope this means the ESRB will go the way of the National Legion of Decency. That is, maybe people will just stop paying attention.
Or, does the video game industry have enough power (read: money) yet to get government to change the rules?
The ESRB is the industry. Jesus Christ, how many times does it need to be said? The ESRB is comprised of representatives from the industry itself and is funded by dues paid by the industry. A quick glance of their web site would have confirmed this for you - what do you think "self-regulatory" means? All ESRB members are signatories of its charter and rules. That includes Rockstar, that includes Factor 5.
The ESRB has nothing whatsoever to do with government. That's why it exists; to head off government intervention.
Singles
A modern video game (above the level of Xbox Live Arcade material) requires a staff of 20 or more people (not including voice work) and can cost millions of dollars and years of work to develop. This means that money is a VERY real consideration in videogame development. No one is going to spend millions to develop a game that only a handful of stores in the whole country will carry.
Now, you can point out that doing a cheap flash game or simple tetris-like title can be done much cheaper and easier than a full-fledged game. But that's clearly not the kind of game the OP was referring to.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I think of Ned Flanders, angrily monitoring every single piece of television being broadcast, lest he allow his children to be exposed to the filth they might contain, everytime I see ridiculous labels like "Alcohol Reference" Hell, Mass has alcohol references. Several times. The pastor friggin' DRINKS WINE IN FRONT OF THE CONGREGATION.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
you are right on. It is a parents job to watch what their kids read the books children bring home. If there ever were a ratings board for books I personally would move to Canada and join up with Nerds on Site with the red beetle and everything if that happened. I would even learn French and drive like someone speaking Tullagu while eating a peanut butter sandwich. My parents did not care what I read so I filled my mind with Science Fiction and I became a Nerd. My children will not face this future they are reading classical Greek texts that I download from the Internet. Seriously, my wife is a book nazi she will burn any book that I bring in from a garage sale that she does not aprove of. Also once my daughter read an Unapproved book (some beverly cleary book)- and Mother took away her LOTR collection for a month. This was a grave punishment believe you me as she can quote from them, only recently has she been allowed to read something as lowbrow as Hilery Potter or whatever it is. At twelve she still has only "Suggest" as an option in the library.
Added Pressly: "Oh, and by the way, milk is nothing but liquid meat."
I can certainly sympathize with complaints about the disparity between violence/sexuality when it comes to ratings and with complaints that console makers that are obviously targeting adults shouldn't ban adult content.
But if developers want to explore topics outside of what is mainstream - why don't they just distribute these games outside the mainstream? Surely they don't need 20M from a publisher to realize their artistic expression. Why not just crank out an independently-released adult game in between blockbuster titles every now and again. If you get these worthwhile titles out into the open and demonstrate the market, you'll have a much better chance at getting Microsoft, Sony and the ESRB to change their tune.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
I would be happy if in games we could talk about homosexuality...
And how would that conversation be fun exactly? How would it entertain your audience? Have the gamers of the world been asking for games that "talk about homosexuality"?
The game industry is facing a new threat. It's this Hollywood-ization factor. Game makers are starting to forget their audience and their mission, just as many film-makers have forgotten.
To game and film makers: You are in the entertainment business. No one wants to hear about your ridiculous opinions on politics, culture, or anything else. No one wants to play a videogame where the object of the game is to maximize the game-creators' social climbing.
Tell a story. Show us some nice graphics and animation. Challenge us. Focus on game play.
Leave your teaching, preaching, whining, awareness-building, and all the rest of your nonsense -- anything that's about you and not about the audience -- for your blog entries that no one reads.
Because no one takes the ESRB ratings seriously. The only issue is that an M/AO rating can keep a title out of the big market stores (IE Walmart), hurting sales. If you're pushing the envelope, you don't necessarily want your game there anyway. If you make it good enough people will get it anyway.
On that note, does anyone know steam's policy on M/AO games?
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
I would be happy if in games we could talk about homosexuality, but we're not even at the point where we can admit that humans have heterosexual relationships Apparently Eggebrecht has never played The Sims. In The Sims your characters can have relationships with whoever you want. This includes homosexual relations, and you can even have several partners at the same time. They even let you have sex (censored of course, and called a "woohoo") with a same sex partner. This is a T rated game too. I don't see a need to "talk about" homosexuality in games. If the developer wants homosexuality in the game they should just make it happen and not try to draw extra attention to it, like in The Sims. It should just be a normal thing and the characters shouldn't act weird about it, or it shouldn't be in there at all. It's just like real life. I don't care if you're gay, but you don't have to go around telling everyone you meet you are and putting stickers on your car, etc.
Why do we need two separate ratings M = Mature and AO = Adults Only?
You know the difference? Mature-rated games can only be purchased by people of age 17 and up. Adults Only-rated games can only be purchased by people of age 18 and up, except that no retail store in North America will sell them.
It's hypocrisy on a grand scale. AO-rated titles contain content which society deems unacceptable for a 17-year old, but supposedly, adults should be allowed to choose for themselves. And yet a 30-year old such as myself is unable to buy them anywhere.
The real reason we have an AO rating is so that the culture police have something to slap on content that is too shocking to their sensitive, backward mores. They can virtually ban the content, just by slapping an AO on it.
Since the difference between M and AO is (supposedly) only one year, they should make M-rated games for 18+ and get rid of the AO rating entirely. Stop trying to censor content they don't like, and just let consumers vote with their dollars.
Slashdot groupthink knows nothing of truth. Be prepared to tow the party line or be modded into oblivion. Keep repeating ESRB = government regulation or your registration will be revoked.
*end transmission*
So why does more violence and sex make it more of an art form? How about more of a plot? More character development? I can understand about artists wanting no boundaries and not wanting their creativity stifled in any way, but I don't think boundaries are always bad. Eggebrecht draws a parallel with movies and complains about how much movies can get away with compared to video games. Well, let's look at movies in the old days, where they had to work around more limits. In a way that gave them the opportunity to be MORE creative, because they had to SUGGEST more than they could display. Hitchcock movies are VERY suspenseful, even though the violence and gore were pretty tame by today's standards.
You will always have ratings boards or something similar because some consumers WANT them. One person's "art" may offend someone else, so people want to know what they're getting into when they watch a movie or play a game. You may have the right to create whatever content you want, but you can't force me to watch it, and you can't force ESRB or anyone else to give it an "E for everyone" rating.
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
Video games? Art? Not really. I've only seen maybe a handful of games that I would call "art" versus just a pasttime. My short short list includes Rez and Flow.
The problem is that while film gets artsy fartsy conventions and festivals, game festivals are all about marketability and anything even remotely controvertial gets slammed (Super Columbine RPG anyone?).
I mean, Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and co have all stated in one way or another that they wouldn't license games exceeding M ratings. Imagine if the companies that build and sell movie projectors had the means to lock-out "unlicensed" film and wouldn't license anything with material they were not comfortable with!
All this combined with useful idiots like Ebert declaring that games cannot be art means there won't be any expansion of thought on gaming until the companies involved grow some balls.
More Twoson than Cupertino
IIRC, something like this went on with the history of Mad Magazine. Mad used to be a comic book, and as such, it came under the authority of the Comics Code Authority ( or some such body -- google it, I'm late for work ). William Gaines became particularly frustrated during a hearing where the Authority board had a problem with sweat on the brow of a black astronaut. So he made Mad into a magazine instead of a comic book, and continued on his merry way.
I just brushed over the wikipedia article, so get the real scoop there.
Anyway, instead of calling this a video game, maybe they could publish "interactive graphic videos" or something like that?
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
So.....don't "push the envelope." What is the big deal? I don't care if you push the envelope with graphics, resolution, etc, but why must you insist on "pushing the envelope" morally? Do you even have a sense of what morality is? Or is it a case of "I have my own morals, which are good for me, everybody else can live with it or shut up!"? How do a you determine what is "right" and what is "wrong"? The majority decides? If the majority agrees on a set of standards, what happens when that majority is replaced by a different majority?
l e.asp
d itorial.asp
a lity.asp
i ly.asp
The Bible is the Word of our Creator, and Genesis is literal history. Its science and history can be trusted. Therefore, we have an absolute authority that determines marriage.
See Bible Questions and Answers
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/bib
God made the first man and woman--the first marriage. Thus, marriage can only be a man and a woman because we are accountable to the One who made marriage in the first place.
And don't forget--according to Scripture, one of the primary reasons for marriage is to produce godly offspring. Adam and Eve were told to be fruitful and multiply, but there's no way a gay marriage can fulfill this command!
'That's nice for you, but it's not for me'
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v26/i1/e
Manuscript Support for the
Bible's Reliability
http://www.ronrhodes.org/Manuscript.html
Morality and Ethics Questions and Answers
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/mor
Bible and Christian Theology
http://www.christiananswers.net/menu-at1.html
Family & Marriage Questions and Answers
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/fam
1. Talk about homosexuality
2. Be censored
3. Become famous
4. Help change the censorship policy
you can even fit a "3.5 Profit!" if you want to. Of course I see a few issues for breakthrough-artist-wanabees :
* It HAS to be art
* It HAS to be censorship. Not just a "forbidden to kiddies" label
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
That's not entirely true. The ESRB is caving in to government pressure and kissing politicians asses to try and keep the U.S. government from creating a ratings board. Much of the asshatery that is going on can be traced back to the influence of Jack Thompson who, as a snake-bellied moral grandstander, has cozied up to a number of politicians who should know better and fired them up over the hot coffee scandal.
This is the fall out, the ESRB is scared that it will be replaced with a real censor board, and so now they're ending up being stooges for the government even though they're supposed to the be the industries stooges.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Do your part as a consumer: Buy the games you want, regardless of rating.
I don't respond to AC's.
I could really see this taking off. There could be spin-offs about religion, politics, abortion....
We need ratings. I said it. We need a group to help parents understand what level the game is at. There should be set policies about what rating a game should get. Right now there is a lot of gray area. Now me personally, I don't buy the "art form" garbage going around but at the same time they don't have much of a choice due to this gray area.
What we need more than anything are basic guidelines, or rather a checklist that a publisher must fill out about each game
1) Does this game contain nudity? (yes/no).
As a future parent... i don't give a damn if it's an art form or not, if billy is 6 years old he doesn't need to see that content. However if he's 16... I might be more apt to let him depending on my feelings about his maturity.
2) Does the game contain adult language (yes/no).
Adult language would contain curse words (S***, F***... you get the idea). It would also contain sexually explicit language... as to me that falls under ADULT language.
3) Does the game contain graphic violence? If so, are you jumping on their head? Are you shooting them in the head? Are you using a flame thrower in 1080i that slowly melts their skin as they scream in horrible pain?
While the above is a generalization, you can easily see the age differences with the examples.
The three above cover 99% of the problems we have encountered. Instead of having the agency rate the game, have the agency monitor how publishers rate their games. Create a system that is easy to follow and that publishers are then responsible for the content in their games and they know before they go up to the ESRB what their rating will be. If they mislabel it it will be obvious and they will be fined.
But right now... we don't have that. WE have a group of random individuals who rate games who have motives and different levels of beliefs on what is sexually explicit or not. We need to agree upon what makes a game this or that. Forget art. C'mon... that's an excuse. I'm glad you think it's art, it's still you pounding a hooker...
The problem comes with, WHO should be making up these rules. That's what the fights about right now. ESRB thinks they should, parents think they should, publishers think they should... so who should decide? Everyone has a motive for their own personal gain.
I am a game player, and sexuality is not a topic I want to see addressed in the games I play, or the games my son plays. My opinion is that games are the wrong place to express complex real life issues.
Maybe there needs to be a clear distinction made between actual "games" and simulations that deal with this kind of content.
You know, the shouting "dialogue" between the industry and ESRB/congress/naysayers/whoever is already looking to me sorta like this. (The somewhat sanitized version, with a lot of hyperbole and think-of-the-children taken out, for clarity sake.)
Objector: Aauugh, they're selling that sex and violence stuff to kids.
Publisher: STFU, not all games are for kids. My games were never meant for kids, at least. We have ESRB ratings for it, the sex and violence games don't get sold to kids.
ESRB: Ah, glad that you feel that way, because we're rating your latest sex- and gore-fest AO. It should be ok, if they're not sold to kids, right?
Publisher: Aauugh, ESRB is oppressing me! Help! First ammendment! If my game isn't on the kiddie shelf at WalMart and EB Games, I'll make less money! The outrage!
This is, as I was saying, just a massively sanitized excerpt, to illustrate the point that's starting to irk me: the two-facedness of the industry. They're essentially trying to have it both ways at the same time.
In a nutshell: fucking decide already whether you're (A) making a game for kids and teenagers, and live with the restrictions there, or (B) admit that it's for adults, and get that M or AO rating. That's what it's for.
Because otherwise it looks like the whole "leave us alone, we already have the ESRB ratings for it" is essentially a lie, if then you come and demand that everything gets a low rating so it can sell more copies. I don't freakin' care whether it's WalMart rules or Nintendo rules or whatever. Decide from the start whether you want to be in that slot or not.
Talk about "pushing the envelope" in this context is just weasel-wording for "I want to sneak a game that's just a little over the limits of AO, imto a lower category". Or simpler still, "I want to be allowed to lie about the rating, because we'll make more money that way." I'm sorry, that's not as much "pushing the envelope" as plain old dishonesty. And it being motivated by nothing more than profit (as in, "but we'll sell less copies if it's AO!!!") doesn't make dishonesty acceptable, it just turns it into fraud.
No, I don't think anyone has a sacred right to make money by breaking the rules. We don't live in that kind of society generally, so I fail to see why games would get a free ticket there. Just freakin' decide in which category you want to be, and live by those rules.
Trying to argue both "but some games are made for adults only, so STFU with the think-of-the-kids" _and_ "auugh, but I don't want to actually label it Adults Only" is getting surrealistic already in its overt dishonesty. And I, for one, had enough of it already.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"follow the standards that have been set before', which is a problem if you want to push the envelope."
As a former art student, I have to comment here. If you're doing it for the money, follow the legal guidelines and forget about making "art". If you're doing it for art's sake, forget about making money, forget about legal guidelines and instead only follow artistic guidelines (when applicable).
Hint: They may call them "recording artists" but neither Britney Spears nor Fiddy Cent are artists in any sense of the word, no matter how many CDs or downloads they sell. Art and commerce are most often at loggerheads; it is a rare work that is both art and salable.
-mcgrew
The real problem is that the public, and not just in America, doesn't take censorship seriously. All censorship is offensive to me. When you've got giant organizations like the ESRB that exist with the sole purpose of keeping you from seeing things that might be offensive, you need to take a step back and see what's wrong with your culture at large because there is something that is fundamentally broken. The question everyone needs to ask themselves is, how much control over what I see do I want to give to the government--or in this case the ESRB? Your answer should be none, as a thinking, rational adult who will expound the virtues of personal responsibility to anyone who'll listen until I'm blue in the face, I say let me decide what to see, read and hear. And if you've got kids, then it's YOUR job as a parent to make sure you control what they see. If you can't do this, or wont, then you have a problem and probably don't have any business raising a child anyway.
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Scrap the ratings systems. All of them, they have no legitimate uses. They exist only to sensor content that a select group of people sees as offensive.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
The answer is simple.
Sell games online. The ESRB is advisory on the web, simply because anyone capable of buying something online with a credit card is usually treated as already being an adult. Not to mention if something does happen to the game, god forbid, and if the game is popular... there's really nothing a committee can do to stop the game from spreading.
I have just this to say:
The same thing has been said about Novels, Television, Movies, and every other form of expression at one point or another.
Its not that Videogames don't have artwork, but rather that the medium as a whole is not artwork in the traditional sense of the
word, and its going to take a while for everyone to realize or even accept the notion.
Videogames I consider to HAVE art, (that have not been mentioned already):
Final Fantasy X - Redemption of Personal Sins.
Shadow of the Colossus - Sacrifice & Isolationism.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty - Post-Modern Expression and Exploration of Memes through the Concept of Self-Identity.
Ikaruga - Dualism & Poetry as Expressed in a Medium of Motion.
Tetris - Abstract Cubism Versus Conformity.
I know I will be disagreed with, but perhaps this will be a way
for ideas on how videogames will be judged as artwork in the future
to formulate =)
If there was to be a label placed, I'd probably use "Interactive Escapism",
or "Responsivism".
I think that "Eurogamer" being the first word in the summary should have been a hint right there.
Hmmm witty sig or funny sig? Maybe elitest techy sig!
WHO isn't at that point? I can think of two mainstream, A-list games, off the top of my head, that casually included heterosexual AND homosexual relationships:
I've never played the Sims, but I imagine it lets you create gay characters too.
Perhaps the problem is with Mr. Egglebert and Factor 5, not with the industry at large...?
You don't need girls running around topless or guys screwing each other for a game to be any good. Some of the most addicting games I've ever played have been incredibly simple graphically (16/32 bit 2D). Don't get me wrong - I love good graphics; maxing out HL2 and drooling over the facial detail they've got in that game is awesome, but... it'd all be pointless if the rest of the game was lame. These guys need to stop trying to "push the envelope" of decency and get back to making interesting games.
If I'm going to spend $50 on a game then I expect to be able to play that game over and over and still enjoy it. Novelty garbage like naked women and maggots crawling outta people's heads isn't what makes a game replayable. A compelling story line, unique weapons, unique environment, interesting missions, multiplayer - those are the things that keep players interested. The movie analogy doesn't hold - there are plenty of good action flicks with no token topless scene or token homosexual guy. Ever seen a John Wayne movie?
This just in - people are addicted to WoW. There is no graphic nudity and no excessive violence - yet people keep playing! That's crazy! OMGWTF! (Disclaimer - I don't play WOW).
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
Ever seen Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning? Now tell me, your "normal" motion picture (think ("Live Free or Die Hard") cost $175,000,000 to produce. Star Wreck cost a couple thousand, including CGI, sets, costumes, the whole shebang.
Money does not equal quality. You do not always get what you pay for. If the salesman says "you get what you pay for" hold on to your wallet, sucker. Any Linux-using nerd should know that you don't always pay for what you get, either. I mean, what, $500 for Vista and $0 for the infinitely superior Ubantu.
There's no reason a game should retail at $60 while a movie retails at $15, and no reason why a game needs a big budget. The original DOOM was done by half a dozen guys and nobody has yet to equal its fun, not even the high graphics, big budget successors.
-mcgrew
PS- methinks the ESRB may become gaming's version of the RIAA, eventually existing only to squeeze out new players as the RIAA now does with its fight against P2P and internet radio.
It is possible to make great games and not push the envelope. Games don't have to show the gory details of murder and death, we have imagination enough to know that when consenting adults disappear behind the bedroom door, hanky panky is going to occur. I don't need and don't want to see that crap.
/me a FPS/RPG/RTS gamer who turns of the blood splatter and turns down the foul language.
Let the story drive the game and leave the gore to sick people like those that made and watch SAW and porn to the porn industry.
I realize I am one side of the spectrum and these guys in Europe and Rockstar are the other side. I offer my opinion as a contrast to these guys and probably counter to many of the opinions of the people who browse these sites.
It's already easy to talk about homosexuality in games. Just jump on Xbox Live.
You may also encounter discourse on race relations.
It's interesting to hear this argument, when I don't know of any videogame that actually DOES explore, in depth and in complexity, homosexuality, for that matter, a heterosexual relationship. The complexity of relationships in even the best videogame, does not compare AT ALL to that of the best cinema. At best, all I've seen in videogames is the equivilent of a fairly tale love story. There aren't really any standouts that I know of.
But yes, perhaps it is a problem. If I wanted to make a game about the horrors of children in combat, that might require the player to target and kill children. From what I gather, this is a huge no-no for the ESRB. This is probably because of what I elude to above: there really aren't any games that use violence and sex in a way that is socially enlightening, and so they are percieved as a less serious medium. So it's sort of a catch 22: you can't make provocative games (and have them rated properly) unless you're taken seriously, yet you can't be taken seriously unless your games are provocative...
Yeah, I know I'm probably going to be modded -1 Offtopic, but this is the most relevent Slashdot story in a while.
There's a petition for the BBFC to not have powers to ban video games on the 10 Downing Street petition site, with Manhunt 2 the main inspiration for the petition. Now I know that online petitions rarely do something, but this isn't petitionsonline.com. It's got over 200 signatures, so the least we'll get is a response from the government (the ID cards petition got one supposedly from Tony Blair himself). It's got 4 days left, so we should have a response by then.
Two successful examples:
-Valve's Steam (while I personally dislike the DRM aspects, it seems to be accepted by enough customers).
-EVE Online is so far distributed exclusively by download. There are rumors about a boxed version being planned, but even without it, EVE has reached around 200.000 subscribers.
C - the footgun of programming languages
I don't know why developers can't just release different versions of a game. Just like "unrated" DVD versions of movies. It's not like they don't make a bundle of cash selling the same game multiple times with different packaging already.
The game is an RPG and has several romance options (the main character/you romancing a party member). You can play as a male or female and there is an oposite and same sex option for both plus if you are male you can even get both the girls to fall for you. Woohoo indeed.
But on the night before the big battle, when woohoo happens in the movies, you speak with the person you are about to woohoo and while the male/female pairing kiss (male/male I do not known) the female/female pairing cuts of just before the kiss and the threesome just sees the second girl arrive at your meeting and say "me too" before the fade out.
There might be a simple reason for this, sloppy development, the female/female pairing does show the player female grow enourmously and the NPC female looking UP into your eyes. For the rest of the game you are the same height. So could that mean the kiss is just the male/female animation with a model replacement?
This is by the way one of the weaknesses of computer games, that for every option you need to write code and design graphics and record speech. NWN2 never has the option to comment on your character too much. How many witty comments can you possibly record to account for every combo of race/sub-race, class and sex?
There have been others who claim that Jade Empire, and indeed other RPG's by bioware, has been rushed/unfinished/unpolished, so the lack of a female/female kiss might just be laziness. OR did they not want to loose their rating?
Personally I remember the days when the Elder Scrolls had a nude paperdoll (the figure of a character that is used in the inventory to put equipment on), nowadays the company seems almost afraid to even hint at the possibility that people are naked underneath their armour.
The Sims homoesexuality is "harmless". Anyone who attacks it clearly is a homophobe and even is the US that would be political suicide. For now.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I feel the need to point out the BBFC and the ESRB are not even close to the same thing. ESRB is a "voluntary" industry board where people can choose to either submit their works for rating or not. The BBFC is a government agency that is required to approve and rate media for sale within the UK. What Rockstart is struggling with is their game getting no rating from the BBFC which means they cannot legally sell their game in the UK.
/. editor did.
The article does not make this same confusion, though the
D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M.
SLASHDOT: The Game.
I for one welcome our video-game-trolling overlords.
So if he's a mid-westerner by choice, or by birth, you look down on him? hypocrite
Speaking as someone who's a dedicated, lifelong gamer... I have vague memories of playing Donkey Kong back before I even started school, and I'm the president and founder of my college's game club. I don't take games seriously-- actually, I hate when people take games seriously. Games are fun, and should be about fun.
Now, I'm not saying that someone shouldn't try to make an "artistic" game, whatever the hell that's supposed to mean, but rather that the most important thing is whether it's a fun game. If it's fun, it doesn't matter if it's artistic or not, and if it's not fun... it still doesn't matter of it's artistic or not. Hell, "fun" isn't even that easy to pin down. What's fun once quickly becomes un-fun through repetition. What's fun for one level of sophistication isn't fun for another; War is fun for a 5 year old but a poor game for anyone who's older than that; Monopoly and Risk are a fantastic games for non-gamers but quickly wear thin when you're used to Carcassone and Settlers of Catan.
The real art of a game is in the way its played; I don't "get" paintings, but a well-designed, subtle mechanic, the sort of thing that leads you to play the way you're supposed to play without even realizing it, is truly a thing of beauty.
While I see your point about _some_ retailers (though at least here plenty carry 18+ games anyway), two wrongs still don't make a right. Publishers arguing that the ESRB should give anyone a lower rating just so WalMart would carry their game is still not a fix, it's just the second wrong. And that's exactly what a couple of publishers are whining about.
They have my compassion for being shut out by WalMart (but again, not by a bunch of other chains) from some potential market share, but not for trying to fight it with dishonesty towards everyone else, and not for trying to subvert the ratings. Ratings, imperfect as they may be, are supposed to at least give a parent some indication of what they're buying there. I.e., they're supposed to reflect the actual content. _Not_ be just a rubberstamping of whatever market segment the publisher's marketting want.
Moving everything into the "over 17" instead of the "over 18" bracket isn't even a long term solution. Even if the ESRB just bent over and rubberstamped all porn and splatter as the lower category, how long until WalMart starts not carrying that category either? Since their objection (for PR image reason) was essentially to the content, not to the letters A and O. WalMart just tries to keep its image as far as possible from being associated with that kind of content. So if someone just "pushes the envelope" to include it in a lower bracket, then that bracket too might vanish off the shelves just as well.
Plus, as I was saying before, I'm seeing it as pure dishonesty of a couple of publishers. They can't have their cake and eat it. They can't claim, basically, "some games are for adults only, they're never meant for the kids and teenagers, we wouldn't ever encourage selling them to kids and teenagers" _and_ then come and whine that a game should get a lower rating because otherwise they'll lose profits. Sorry, one or the other. Asking that a game gets a lower rating, inherently means rubberstamping that it's ok for lower aged people, which blatantly contradicts the other claim.
Even the other popular whine that parents should look at what their kids buy and be more involved, is meaningless if they manage to corrupt the information a parent can base that kind of a decision on. The ESRB rating, imperfect as it may be, it tells a parent some rough idea of what it might contain. It's some (imperfectly) condensed information about the content. You can see there and see stuff like "nudity", and decide whether you want or don't want little Billy to see that. If it becomes just some meaningless collection of whatever lies it took to get WalMart to put it on the shelves, then essentially it just became useless. And in the process subverted the basis for the other whine too: one can't moan and bitch about parents who don't get involved enough, _and_ at the same time argue for subverting the very information that's supposed to help a parent make that decision.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The ESRB itself is an industry-funded organization intended to give the illusion of self-regulation. They adopted this model for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the resemblance between their industry and the movie industry. Additionally, there is the heavy involvement of the movie industry in the game industry.
Another valid reason for instituting ESRB was to forestall federal content regulation, a la the FCC. Some will say that it would be hard for the government to establish standing to regulate, but the pragmatic among us recognize that the government will find a way to do so if our dear elected officials think it will make it look like they are doing something to address their constituents' concerns and thus "earn" them reelection.
That being said, many localities and states have enacted legislation referencing ESRB ratings as the criterion for a variety of measures. Obviously these have met with varying degrees of permanence. http://www.davis.ca/en/blog/Video-Game-Law has some good references for your perusal.
So, if you happen to live in a jurisdiction that has such a law on the books, then it could, depending on the exact style of legislation be equivalently illegal to provide a minor with an "A" game as it is to provide them tobacco or alcohol. Obviously there is the question of prioritized enforcement of laws (jurisdictions targeting DUI enforcement more than (fill in the blank), but that's a bigger and even more inconsistent topic. Yeah.
More important than this on an economic scale is the compliance and recording burden placed on businesses that decide to sell all games regardless of rating in a jurisdiction that prohibits some sales. This is perhaps where the game and movie industries' similarity diverges the most in that movie theaters are able to simply not admit minors to certain movies and there is a strong precedent for this, whereas the legislation for games is newer and is done by legislators obsessed with metrics and atemporal enforcement.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
You make it sound like some illogical attachment to something physical, but in practice it's not that simple. There are perfectly logical reasons to go and buy a CD instead of downloading some installer, even if the download was instant. The two choices, more often than not, are just not the same. In no particular order:
1. Sometimes the download imposes far more unreasonable activation conditions than being tied to a CD. The fact is, publishers are paranoid about their content being copied, and it's the same guys that got us saddled with Starforce back in the day. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they're malevolent or anything, but in some cases the mere thought of even a copy getting pirated instead of bought seems to get these guys' brains to shut down and come up with stupid protection ideas than last time. So if they're going to let you just download their precious content, expect all sorts of draconic measures to prevent you from running it on more than one machine... or even on one machine without authenticating all the time with the server.
And I'm sorry, but I think it's more than just psychological attachment to expect to treat a game like I'd treat a book. If I want to pack it on a laptop too, for when I'm on the train, then I bloody expect to be able to do so. I don't want some retarded DRM scheme to kick in in the middle of the flight and go, "auugh, I can't talk to the servers, therefore I'll assume you're a pirate!" Or "auugh, you've activated it on another computer before, therefore I'll need all your personal data, home adress and telephone number, employer's telephone number, and notarized affidavit from two witnesses that you haven't pirated it!" Well, maybe not that extreme, but just to illustrate the point.
And just to hammer some more on that point:
2. Some online registration forms are stupidly intrusive and ask for personal data that they just don't have any need or excuse to ask for.
I'm sorry, even data mining only goes so far. To get a distribution of market by age, you just need to know my age bracket, not exact day and month of birth. To get a distribution by region they need at most the city I'm in, not exact street and house number. And why are they asking for a phone number? Basically a correlation along the lines of "our game sold the most to people in their mid-20's" is valuable data, but something like "1% of our buyers were born on a Friday the 13'th" is just useless trivia. Going into finer grained detail than you need is just turning information into trivia.
So why are they asking for that kind of data? At worst, some marketroid had at least in the back of the head the possibility of using that data for spam (directly or selling it to third parties), and at "best", they're just too clueless to know what data they need and how they're going to use it. And I say "best" between quotes, because it doesn't really make me feel better to give all my personal data to someone thoroughly incompetent. It's a bit like giving your credit card number and SSN to the village idiot: even if he doesn't use them personally, you just have to wonder where he'll lose that piece of paper or who he'll share it with.
Maybe that sounded too harsh, but at the very least data losses, break-ins, lost laptops, hard-drives binned or sold without properly erasing them, etc, happen all the time. Each extra place that has my data, is essentially an extra bit of risk that that data will be lost or stolen. So if they don't have a legitimate reason to absolutely _need_ that data, I don't want them demanding it to let me play the game I bought. And no, just the fact that some PHB feels so powerful and informed for having all that data, doesn't really count as a legitimate need.
Now admittedly, some games that come on CD have equ
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Ironically, they are becoming the very thing we were trying to avoid in the first place.
Wow I was unaware of how bad the ESRB makes things for companies. Honestly what is wrong with them? I mean you can have 5,000 burn to death with a rating of T but you have a little blood spatter on one person and you get an M? My question who came up with these ideas? What is suitable for one age group and not another? I mean a rating system is needed, to inform parents... I guess. But we need to advance to a more modern time with the guidlines. Honestly lets pretend it is the 21st century not the 1950s
If you're willing to submit to censorship then you don't really care about what you're producing anyway. Most movies are crap. They fit the formula and that's about it. Most games are crap. They fit the formula and that's about it. You can attempt art that happens to make money, but you can't attempt to make money and create art.
If we aren't careful video games are going to end up like comics/graphic novels. Infantilized bullshit featuring super underwear heroes. If we want video games that fulfill our demand for intelligent content, then we need a few game artists to tell the ESRB to fuck off and stick to their vision. The ESRB doesn't take games seriously, because censors don't take intellectual discourse seriously. Like all censors they'd rather have pleasant than interesting. The problem isn't the ESRB. The problem is that otherwise self-respecting adults take them seriously. If you're willing to be told what to think, do, say, or code and you're not 4 years old, you should be embarrassed.
I agree with the grandparent, I don't have a problem with someone being homosexual. I have a problem with everyone shoving it into my face and telling me how to feel about it. No matter what you say, being homosexual is _not_ normal in any way. Just like being super intelligent, a cripple, brain damaged, or having a good talent for sports is not normal. It may not be a "bad" thing just as it probably is not a "good" thing. It likely isn't even your "fault".
However, that is no reason to make it _my_ problem. If I see a cripple I'll feel sorry for him. If I see some super intelligent person I'll likely think he's awesome. If I learn someone is homosexual, I'll feel awkward about it. That is just life and you better get used to it.
You and society have absolutely no right to tell me how to feel about something. We're not all made to get along, and not all people are equal. Which is why I don't want movies, games and books forcing this stuff down my throat.
Imagine if I'd have a fetish for ugly/nasty stuff, or I'd only listen classical music, or all my drapes were pink or whatever, I don't automatically have the right to tell people how to feel about me.
That's just damn bizarre! Nein! I don't want to touch your monkey!
They're using their grammar skills there.
It is conforming itself to what the public (and thus by reaction, retailers) "expect" it to be; not the government. Saying otherwise misses a critical distinction.
Look, personally I use a variety of methods of consumption depending on whim and philosophy (agreeing with most of your objections, though acknowledging the relative futility in the face of some of the EULAs or undocumented spyware "features" of modern software.)
Please read the GP of your post to see the worldview I was addressing. I chose to take a stance that was closer to compatibility with their worldview in order to persuade them that there might be valid reasons to go to a store. My other option was to flame them. Maybe you could have recognized that and directed your flame at them instead of me. If you didn't read the GP to your post, then I'd suggest lowering your filter threshold.
"Alternatively, some of us like having backup copies of the games we play and don't trust magnetic media for it."
was above the part you got upset about. My list of reasons was not meant to be exhaustive, and I find my posts are quite long enough without having to put in a bloody disclaimer or qualifier like "there are more, but these are the ones I think you will relate to best."
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Rockstar can kiss my ass. They were utterly irresponsible by leaving that in a game that already gets people mad. We're in a democratic society, and if we don't behave, people will enact laws to force behaivior.
The ESRB was meant to prevent that from happening. Perhaps there needs to be some recognition of what artistic expression is allowed, but if it's homosexual sex, or any other kind of elicit sex (I don't really care which), then that stuff is for adults. IF your artform is really violent or sexual, perhaps there is nothing wrong with it being sold only to adults. If mommy thinks this is ok stuff for Junior to experience (And often it will be), then she can buy for him.
One of the serious screw ups Rockstar made was releasing a game that circumvented the claim its rating bore. It had a sex simulator hidden in it. And of course, Rockstar lied through their teeth about it. That means that parents who didn't mind their teenager playing GTA for the violence and themes weren't also aware of the explicit sex. MY opinion or your opinion on which is worse is not relevant. What's relevant is that parents weren't aware of the content as Rockstar lied about it. This wasn't some low budget download, this was a huge brand! You take that level of control and security away, and it becomes much easier to rally censors. Made the industry look like a bunch of retard clowns. Rockstar owes the entire industry a huge apology, because now we have to pay to lobby harder than before to keep our freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech will never be absolute. Laws will get in the way, and we've got to show we can act responsibly and produce artistic and interesting stuff without lying about the content.
We need to convince console makers to license AO content, and then we need to use that rating appropriately. The way to do that is to make your homosexual relationship game (or whatever else you are interested in) for the GOD DAMN PC. If it's really good, people will respect it, and things will change. I think games are an artform and I want to see more controversial material done in a thoughtful manner. I want more expression, but now we have Hot Coffee hanging over our heads.
Rockstar has zero credibility in this debate. Zero. I love GTA: SA, but they need to grow the hell up. Jack Thompson and various other assholes want nothing more than for dumbasses in this industry to get explicit content in the hands of kids.
So yeah, Hot Coffee is a good reason to ignore anything Rockstar wants to say about this.
Heh, chill out. It wasn't meant as an attack.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
A brief point... both M (game) and R (movie) ratings prevent viewing or purchasing by those under 17 years old... the "adult" threshold of things is 18. My question is this... what difference does that year make? I think things would be much simpler, make an OT (Older Teen) rating... perhaps 15-16 year olds for mid-level content, and then just push M to 18 years old. With that one year of being a minor in the eyes of the government eliminated, you'd be able to add in a bit more discussion. Also, I haven't read the comments, but I'm sure it's come up, he's not asking to be allowed to show tons of hardcore sex, he means the issue is that you can't even DISCUSS the issues half the time. I remember the origi nal release of FFVII... :) rated T for Animated blood and alchohol reference. Oh, there was also gratuitous cursing (only the F word was censored), lots of romantic interaction and tension between characters, and even a (mainly goofy, and not taken seriously) option for who Cloud went on a date with at the Golden Saucer based on character interactions... Tifa, Aeris, or BARRET.
Not marked for that though.
It is ridiculous to focus on Thompson when in Clinton you have a potent vote-getter both in the inner city and the suburbs. There are huge constituencies in both major parties that profoundly distrust the level of violence - some would call it depravity - exposed in a game like Manhunter 2 and have come to despise the gangster-game genre in particular.
Enchanted Arms also features a homosexual/transexual character and I don't believe that it was rated too severely. I think it was rated T. It's just a standard JRPG for the 360/PS3.
You could have an RPG exploring a character as he discovers that he is a gay -- not that this would be the entire plot of the game, merely an element.
Sexuality has already been in video games, and I think it can be tasteful and hilarious. Recall Cloud in FF7, cross-dressing to fool a pimp into letting him into his bedroom. Granted, I've yet to see a game to use sexuality in a romantic context (except possibly the Sims), but it takes a lot more effort to develop a plot line to allow such feelings to be created than the casual laugh. There's allusions to stuff occurring in romantic context -- but it's a hint, not really "talked about" explicitly.
For the art-movie fan, think of Amelie as an example of using sex in a similar way. Throughout the movie, sexuality is looked at as a punch-line -- explicit acts abound. But the most erotic moment in the movie (at least to me), is the final scene, involving nothing beyond the PG rating.
Art generally "shows" things rather than "telling" things -- the latter is for politicians. I think it's very possible a story-strong game could use elements the same way a movie does -- simply by having elements.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
From now on anyone who looses at MONOPOLY will now loose all their physical assets! This is serious folks! If you loose at Doom, guess what? The Rock is going to show up at your house with a BFG and blow your head off. Games are NOT for messing around! Coming soon will be twister - extreme edition. If you loose we'll send a REAL twister directly to your neighborhood! So START TAKING GAMES SERIOUSLY! We can't afford to have anyone not understand just how deadly serious we are. After all, what is real life but a gigantic real-world MMORPG?
Multi-player, online kill the guy with the BFG9000.
Skin him/her as a prancing fag (but he's got a BFG9000). Plenty of images of flamers out there to rip. Lots of room for sick humor. Stay out of the AIDs puddle and gibs or you go skinny and die.
What game should we mod?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You just need to skin a game. Pick a game any game.
Hero wears ass-less chaps and chains, damsel in distress is a heshe, allies are badassed lesbians with mow hawks and big tits ('cause everybody loves big tits) who get it on in the background anytime you stand around not killing (sorry that's the straight mod), villain/Boss is televangelist who is revealed to also be wearing ass-less chaps once you blow his armor off. Final cut scene is hero turning boss into his bitch while getting a rusty trombone from the heshe damsel in distress.
Laughs for everybody, even straight people.
I know, it's not PC to say so, but why does this guy keep going back to homosexuality for attacking the ESRB? It's not like this is really the issue at the forefront of censorship. Last I checked, most people within the gamer demographic still used words like "gay" as a pejorative. While there is certainly an argument to be had against the ESRB's rating system and censorship in general, I think this guy is more about pushing homosexuality than pushing games.
Every industry has its pros and cons that become a feature of its landscape. For example, anyone who goes into the oil industry should not be surprised to learn politicians bad mouthing it whenever gas prises rise as well as the 'Congress investigation' that occurs pratically every summer. One can blame Congress but it has become a feature of the landscape of that market. In a similar way, console companies cannot complain about other companies copying them since that has become part of the landscape of the market.
I am amazed that people are amazed Jack Thompsons and anti-game politicians exist. Where have you guys been? Politicians have been complaining about video games ever since Death Ralley and Custer's Last Stand. They have always complained about the game industry.
And, surprise surprise, twenty years from now they will still be complaining about the games industry and passing 'legislation' about it. The reason why they do this is purely political.
The Game Industry has a choice. It can either put a target on itself for all these politicians to target or they can self-regulate themselves so the politicians go away. Businesses do not win when they go against the government (as government not only has infinite money, it can alter the laws as they see fit).
The reason why Nintendo and Sony are saying there will never be an AO game on their system is not because of "zOMG censorship!" but because anyone who has studied the game industry knows the price these adult only games have. They can literally destroy the console in perception.
You might say, "The market demands an AO game," but, actually, it doesn't. The market becomes quite hostile to these AO games. If AO games were what people really wanted, retailers would stock them and Nintendo and Sony would want them on the console. Retailers (including Wal-Mart) stock other AO material and Nintendo had no problem making love hotels.
The problem is not the ESRB or Nintendo or Sony. The "problem" is ignorance from a European designer (not aware of the long pattern of AO game issues in America and elseware). But also the "problem" is the market itself. Porn sells which is why the Internet is filled with porn. But AO games do not sell which is why you rarely see them.
The market overcomes censorship and even self-regulation. This is why we see the equivalent of soft porn (with foul language) on TV during, what used to be known, as the family hours. Perhaps people ought to be asking about the lack of AO games is simply because the market doesn't want it (who really wants to put down money to play games about homosexuals?). Every time someone says "But its' art!" is almost always when the market doesn't want it (but the developer wants to make it anyway because they believe they are "artists").
I think the main problems with the ratings for games is that the outcome for the same rating is very different than for a movie. For a game, getting an AO rating means it won't be sold by some major retailers such as Wal-Mart. Can you imagine if the latest violent movie wasn't shown in most major movie theaters?
The consequences are getting very frustrating for adult gamers like me, who grew up playing games and still enjoy them. I'm 28 years old and my favorite way to spend my free time is still to fire up a good RPG game and let my mind escape somewhere else for one hour or two. I still enjoy games, but sadly the lack of mature content and plot lines is getting tiresome. I'm a bit past playing as 15 years old boys who are out to save the world from the Dark Wizard or whatever.
Games like Fallout 2 are what we're looking for, but the rating system scares developers into toning down and censoring their games a lot. RPGs are typically where the envelope is being pushed the most, and still there's a lot of censorship going: major titles like Neverwinter Nights 2 had concepts and locations "sanitized" by Atari out of fear or getting a high age rating.
Games can definitely be art. They can challenge you and make you think, or just shock you, or make you react emotionally. My main problem is that, because of ratings, games are usually fairly shallow. In Fallout 2, you were thrown into a post-apocalyptic world without laws and without orders. It wasn't a nice place, and the game properly represented what such a world could be like. Morality was pretty much: whoever has the biggest gun is right. In that game, you can prostitute yourself, you can marry someone of the same sex, heck, you can even sell your significant other to slavers when you're "tired" of him/her. Note that those decisions all have serious consequences, but the game allows you to explore the ramifications.
Fallout 2 was released in 1998 and I'm not sure that today such a game could still be made. I think the main problem is that legislators and even the Wal-Mart execs are all into the late fifties or later, and for them, video games just aren't something 30 years olds spend their time on. As more and more people of the gaming generation grow up and want games that are more serious and mentally challenging, the rules are going to relax, but it's going to take a while. For now it's all about "protecting the children" and people just don't consider games as a serious art form, or even communication medium. I can't wait until more people realize all the potential that interactivity brings...
Religion is the best example of mass psychosis
What? Spongebob Squarepants isn't enough?!
but we're not even at the point where we can admit that humans have heterosexual relationships, and that is a real problem - and it tends to show that games are not being seen, even by our own ratings boards, as an artform
Pssst. Those Sims with the little hearts over the avatars? That's not a secret Masonic password, fella.
"I want to see a game with real sexual content in a store here in Germany - I don't think it will happen unless we really recognise games as an artform," he told the audience. He pointed to Stanley Kubrick film Eyes Wide Shut, which "discusses relationship issues that you have in a marriage". "You don't have that in games - it is time to wake up and make it happen."
So games need more Nicole Kidman fantasizing about infidelity while you, as Tom Cruise, infiltrate a coven of America's elite who just happen to hold their orgies at the estate of the Federal Reserve Chairman while performing Gothic chants in red velvet hoodies?
Mouse control or not?
Amnesty International