Most offensive content in a video game

[Kohan]

I find the OP's poll stupid(and olde as fuck, published: April), but for a different reason than anyone else. [...]

IAWTP and we should have hot hetero orgies with severed heads to celebrate.

In relation to the ESRB, it is a shame that many parents don't bother to research and use the system as a guideline, but they can not care about what their kid watches/plays all they want. While I do agree that too many people in North American society believe violence is less harmful than sex, the poll isn't a very good one and is also a topic that has been visited countless times before.

[Alleya]

I kind of agree with BRP, but at the same time you can't deny that sex is much more "offensive" than violence in this culture. Our culture is built on the notion of war and killing (look at politics...the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on terror...sport hunting, gun collecting, all these things), and violence is deemed much more acceptable than sex as a result. Watch network TV any night of the week. You'll see dozens of people get shot, but you'll never see a naked tit. QED

[BRP]

I never really implied sex isn't looked down upon even more so than a majority of violence. What's more important is that people go nuts if anyone deems any amount of violence is more acceptable than any amount of sexuality.

EDIT: Call me when videogames start showing people piss themselves after dying.

[Elesirdur]

Well BRP I do applaud your ability to find the flaws in my arguments, of which I freely admit I have painted in broad and flawed strokes, it is you ability to apply the categorical imperative to anything I find impressive.

I guess the "going nuts..." part comes in because it seems so incongruous to our general lives as human beings. By asserting that virtual violence is more acceptable, though still not always welcome, than virtual sexuality it flies in the face of what I think is common human interaction which places a value on non-violent interaction. As video games are an escapist fantasy for us to enjoy (and I do mean that in the best sense possible, not the cranky alarmist anti-VG sentiment that gets dredged up in the media using that phrase) they do still provide an interesting window into what a society enjoys and what values it has.

I'm smart enough to know that the preponderance of games that feature violence does not mean Western society is some blood-thirsty civilization hell-bent on destruction and mayhem, but that it represents a social and literary history of heroic tales where the enemies are justly destroyed and the homestead is saved. The overwhelming emotional immaturity of the medium- the boy's club attitude with women only serving as commodities to rescue/protect and as fetishist sexual objects - is beginning to change, but macro-social attitudes toward gender, sexuality, and emotional maturity keep games in that pre-teen male ghetto.

Again, the irony of it all is that for games to develop that emotional maturity that can include sexuality will incite backlash because it's "too real" and therefore scary or unsitable for parts of society. The violence is easy enough to wave off as explecitly fictional since the average person has no conception of the kind of violence we see in games from their real lives. However, the issues of sexuality and emotions are ever-present in our daily lives and have a greater impact on us.

The medium is growing in leaps and bounds to be sure, social conservative backlash and attacks or not. The question remains if games will be able to escape that pre-teen boy's club ghetto that it's earstwhile associate animation and comics are rutted into in America and the West.

[archibaldcrane]

The poll doesn't even mention how this fits in with the ESRB or rating systems(or even if they are offensive to the answerer or their children). Technically these are all M-rated material

Since when is a realistic depiction of human sex M-rated in video games?

I'm pretty sure that any game that has attempted it either removed it from the final version (GTA) or ...well, I can't even think of games that have actually depicted (not hinted at, but shown, like you would show a chainsaw cutting off a head) sex. I've watched the Mass Effect "sex" scene and it's not even close to an actual depiction of sex.

Actual depiction of sex, meaning person on person naked thrusting, would get an AO rating every time.

[Elesirdur]

But the thing is that the "sex" in Mass Effect is done very tastefully with the idea that the two people aren't just rutting in a spaceship like some futuristic porn, but that it was something meaningful for the characters and warranted based on their experiences (though totally irrelevant to the story). However, despite all the lying bullshit about it people still got up in arms about the fact that there was any inkling of sex, really intimacy moreso, in the game.

[BRP]

I actually wasn't replying to anyone exactly(well, aside from the OP), just to what usually happens in threads like these. It an attack-dog mentality on anything outside the common BG opinion that shits up threads. It gets really bad when anything is within one step of big evil religion even if opinions have nothing to do with religion.

I mean it is obvious why things are the way they are. You've said a lot about it and it is something talked about dozen times over. I don't even see it as wrong really, only a matter of perspective. Did this poll make any indication that these parents want videogames to not feature this content at all?

Who is to say people who voted found the stuff unacceptable in the first place? The question "...WOULD you find offensive" makes it possible for anyone answer. I could pick one of those choices and yet none of those things bother me. Thank god we don't live in a country like Australia where games = kids and young teens only or they get banned.

Since when is a realistic depiction of human sex M-rated in video games?

The key is if it is tasteful, not realistic. You can call GTA's hot coffee realistic, but it more hardcore than anything else. Thrusting and all that goodness will probably also fall under hardcore too. When you say realistic it sounds like you are speaking of explicit, which is kind of the opposite of what should be approved in M really.

[archibaldcrane]

When I say realistic I just mean that the characters are actually doing things that people in real life actually do, and you are actually seeing it. I don't mean closeups of porno-style cock plunging into vagina, but moreso the way that sex is depicted often in R-rated films. I've never seen Hot Coffee - it sounded like a buggy graphic mess but yeah, so I can't comment on that.

[Kyo]

Kinda Indirectly related but like a game like Dead Space got banned from being sold in Japan, but they have tons of games like Onichanbara: Bikini Samurai Slayers, pretty much naked women slice up zombies with swords and its extremly bloody. I dont get it :l

[archibaldcrane]

Dead Space got banned from being sold in Japan

What? Even something like Resident Evil 4 shows way more humans getting brutally killed.

[Kyo]

What? Even something like Resident Evil 4 shows way more humans getting brutally killed.

Yes I know, but they banned it from being sold in Japan, ill go find the article.

Edit: Here yah go. http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/action/d...97321&mode=all

Kinda old news but people still werent aware of it.

[Elesirdur]

Well Japanese obscenity laws draw a pretty firm line between media featuring real people, requiring blurred genitalia etc, and fictitious drawn or animated media which has much fewer regulations. Which is why you get freaky guro shit, blech.

[BRP]

I think it's important to note that the more surreal and insane shit coming out of Japan usually is from the "underground" or whatever it is called. Thinking about Japan's crazy shit seems like a task where you wouldn't leave unscathed. Like trying to find out about Silent Hill.

[Kuya]

Does the fact that it's a foreign game have anything to do with the ban? It's just so odd, considering the things they show.

[Kyo]

Does the fact that it's a foreign game have anything to do with the ban? It's just so odd, considering the things they show.

Had something to do with giving nightmares or something to that effect, might have something to do with the classification system too, the reasoning was rather odd.

[fantasticdan]

I think it's specifically to do with all the decapitation, it's generally censored out of JP versions of games, including RE4.

[Beckwin]

It gets really bad when anything is within one step of big evil religion even if opinions have nothing to do with religion.

Except when you're talking about demonization of sexuality in America, you objectively are within one step of "big evil religion."

also as far as M and AO goes, I can't really recall a game needing to be toned down for violence, but sex/drugs have been issues before. I guess maybe Thrill Kill was toned down before it got axed or whatever, but I think that may have been a combination of sexuality/nudity and graphic violence.

[Kohan]

also as far as M and AO goes, I can't really recall a game needing to be toned down for violence,

"Manhunt 2" was a fairly recent one.

It's also the only one I can remember.

[Kyo]

"Manhunt 2" was a fairly recent one.

It's also the only one I can remember.

Same, Im suprised they didnt try to do the same with the first one as well.

Rockstar Games: Manhunt 2 Producer Talks Multiplayer, AO Directors Cut

[Sythe]

Thrill Kill was awesome lol