The Gamer's Quarter

[dhex]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050721/ap_on_hi_te/video_game_sex

short thought - will game makers learn to stop worrying and love the adults only bomb? there's gold in them thar hills, as anyone who ever bought a cassette because it had the explicit lyrics sticker on it knows.

rockstar, if they were smart, would go on the offensive. but no doubt they've been told to hang back, and admittedly, releasing a game with content like that on the disc, locked or not, is stupid. we have to have this collision anyway, along with some court rulings establishing the "artistic merit" of games (in a legalistic, miller v. california sense) anyway...

EDIT: oh, well, they have gone on the offensive, but in the wrong direction.

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20050720005870&newsLang=en
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[SuperWes]

The thing is that the M label is supposed to be the equivalent of the "explicit lyrics" sticker. The AO label is something totally different. Reserved for Strip Poker games and Tentacle Rape sims. There's little in between, just because to slip just past the M rating and into the AO realm would be to cut off 99.999999% of potential retailers willing to sell your product. The question is: Is the Hot Coffee mod good for the industry or bad for the industry in the long run? This whole controvercy is going to have the effect of teaching parents that M rated games are definately not for kids.

When all of this is over there's very little chance that the government will actually step in and take over the ratings. That would come too close to singling out games specifically over movies and books.

Come to think of it, why is there no rating system for books?

-Wes
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[dhex]

because books are no longer shocking.

i think the AO rating could be leveraged into something else if rockstar threw their weight behind it.
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[Mr. Mechanical]

I thought they were "going on the offensive" when they made Manhunt.

[SuperWes]

See, I don't know. Even with Rock* behind it, the AO rating will still be the equivalent of NC-17, which is still mostly reserved for indie flicks that don't really get into big theatres.

I want all of you to read this comic by 1up's Jeremy Parish. My own personal professional game writer hero:


-Wes
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[Mr. Mechanical]

That's a funny comic.

[disneyland]

UK uses the same ratings system for games as film.

GTA is an 18 only game, sort of like Monster's Ball is an 18 only flick.

Fully understood, country-wide embraced ratings system. North America goes about things in such a moronic way sometimes. If GTA was rated 'R', that would be that. But no, there has to be a super-slick ESRB sub-ratings system that can cater to the government and to the PTA all across the great and wholesome nation.

Happily, it took a politician whose husband screwed his secretary and lied about it to the entire country in a high court to remind the nation of its values. Nice.

Meanwhile, little Jimmy is watching soft porn every night on cable.

[TOLLMASTER]

Why the hell do I have to provide a counterpoint here? I wish these people would have their damn Rapture and get the hell off of the planet they've decided to destroy with their gas-guzzling SUVs and policy of destroying nations that weren't so well off in the first place. Why the hell do I have to agree with them?

The fact is, in America, any kind of serious sexual content demands an adult rating. Why? Because children aren't exposed to sex at a young age, and it's a shock to them when they find out what goes on in mommy and daddy's bedroom at night. Don't you remember the first time you figured out what the difference between boys and girls was? Wasn't it a shock to you then? Do you want a video game to give children ideas on how sexual activities go on, instead of schools or, god forbid, the parents themselves explaining it?

And while the violent content of GTA:SA not getting this same kind of attention shows that we are indeed a twisted and disturbed society, the bottom line is: kids see violence every day. Hell, for boys, it's encouraged. You get them the GI Joe or Ninja Turtle action figures or whatever the hell they have these days, and from their source material they're not prone to negotiation. They fight, their purpose is to fight, they like to fight. Violence is a part of American values, seemingly. If you told your parents at 10 you liked action movies where people get killed, it's all right; if you tell them you like porno movies, you're in trouble. So when children see violence in GTA, it's not surprising. They're bred into seeing that kind of thing every day.

So please, think a little before you automatically side with the game developers. I think the idea of such a controversy is stupid, too, for content that isn't even available without a modification. But the fact is, there is potential that a kid could see it, and in today's society, that's just not acceptable. It deserves the AO rating, kids should be carded, parents should be warned, etc. After that it's out of our hands.

And yeah, I didn't play God of War, despite the universal exclaim, because there were breasts in it. I didn't want my brother to watch me play the game and see it, and start asking questions about ladies and men. He can play the Simpsons' Hit and Run and kick his wife Marge 'til she falls down and then run over her with the family car, but I draw the line at breasts. It's not something he's been prepared for.

I'm an advocate of early sex education, if that means anything.

[SuperWes]

The point about GTA in this case is that they falsified their submission to the ESRB in the first place in order to get the rating that they did. There are naked sluts on the disc and a mini game where you thrust your (fully clothed) wang into a digital nude girl (who happens to be extremely bad looking). This was not part of what they submitted to the ESRB, and while I think sending out AO stickers for a game that was obviously never sent through the full ESRB process of recieving an AO rating is a bit questionable, Rockstar deserves some sort of punishment.

If this really was a ploy to get more sales I'm glad this is ending up the way it is.

-Wes
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[disneyland]

Consider another side of it:

[Shapermc]

At least I am not the only person who realised how bizarre it was to never mention the sex in God of War.

[disneyland]

...Wait till you see Darkwatch.

[dessgeega]

i never played god of war, and subsequently never heard of this, ever.
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[Shapermc]

[Shapermc]

[dark steve]

Rated AO by an all white jury!

[Shapermc]

You know... I am slightly tempted to grab an AO stickered GTA:SA. For shits-and-giggles factors 10 or so years from now.

[dessgeega]

[Lackey]

I played Daggerfall when I was 12. You could take all your character's clothes off in that game, and there were naked prostitues or women changing in most of the inns. I was quite surprised!

That hardly relates, except that I don't think its a wonder Bethesda didn't go that route with Morrowind, since I don't think ratings even existed in '96. There were a fair number of games with pretty 'mature' content around then.

PS: Does anyone know how controversial Custer's Revenge was? This is not a new debate!
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| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |

[TOLLMASTER]

[dessgeega]

did ancient romans kill people who gave them life-ups?
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[dhex]

[Shapermc]

Ok, I think I can make this post. It is chock full of spoilers. The only benefit is that the best part of the game is playing it, not the story.

To note: This is one of the very small handful of games that I have ever traded in to an EB or the sort.

SO! You have this guy who you control. He is you, right? Well his name is Kratos:


So this is you as you travel through the ancient Greek landscape and kick the living shit out of a million different (pallet swapped) creatures with blades on chains attached to your hands. Think Rygar if this is hard for you to imagine the game play.

So what is the plot? Well we find out that you use to be the most blood thirsty and horrible war lord in the world. Then something happen with your wife and child and you are searching for retribution through Athena. So she puts you on all these quests in which you will save (city name I can’t remember) from Ares who is GIGANTIC and wreaking havoc.

We find out in the cut scene at the end of the first level that your retribution is a lie. You don’t care about anyone or anything, at all. You are given the opportunity to save a man’s life (quite easily… way too easily) and yet you just throw him to his death so that you can get the key to the ship. Now, when I say you I am speaking for Kronos, as I would have saved the guy begging for help, it would have been no hassle. This was the first moment in the game where I felt disjointed from it.

Then, right at the start of level two, right after you saw a few cut scenes about why he is seeking “redemption” (most which involve horrible dreams), you can have sex with two woman at once. You get tons of experience in this mini game (which is similar to tagging in Jet Set Radio) the first time. You can continue this three-some as many times as you want while getting only a small amount of experience on subsequent romps. Now, if you have no brain and the sound off, this mini-game is just about moving the bed fast enough to make a vase fall off and break.

Kratos must really miss his wife and kid.

So we continue on with this. Now let me give you a small history less on Greek and Roman “sex appeal.” In these times too many people were poor and had to be outside. Everyone was tanned and supermodel thin, it was not sexy. Slightly chubby and pale was HOT. Stark, raving, drop-dead, Sexay. Being slightly chubby means that you had enough money to eat well and you could keep a little warmer in the cold season. Pale meant you did not have to work outside and had the luxury to lay around all day in the shade. Not see-through clothed thin tanned “perfect” woman that is used for all the main female characters in the game.

Then you have the points where the only way to refill your health is to kill civilians running from the threats you are told to eliminate. I avoided this as much as I could until this one boss fight where the civilians are literally swarming around the area you need to kill the boss. It is impossible to kill him without hitting the civilians.

Towards the end of the game you’re further detached from Kratos to the point of not believing that he cared about any life other than his own. Then you are thrown into a position where you have to protect your wife and kid as some kind of test. This test seems impossible at the time you play it as you are fighting dozens of forms of yourself. I thought that perhaps you were supposed to let your wife and kid die to teach you a lesson … or something. No, you need to protect them through this part only to then fight Ares and win the game. You are forgiven for your “sins” but are not relieved of your nightmares. Sad and depressed you try to throw yourself off a cliff (this is also the very first scene of the game). But… so fucking what? I mean by this time the game has driven into you that Kratos is a despicable character that cares only about himself, so good, do it.

No, this is not how it works out. You are rewarded for your services to the gods by taking over the now defunct seat of the God of War and then you sit in this seat through all of time (showing flash forwards through even recent wars). What? Perhaps the game could have redeemed itself somewhat by showing people that have no regard for other lives that perhaps suicide is the answer, but no. You are rewarded at the end. By this time I did not really care about the plot or the character to the point that I was only further outraged. I am missing some things that upset me, and glossing over others (like the inability to stop Kratos from killing people), but this should give you an idea. The game looks amazing and the game play is fun, if not redundant, but I could not accept the game.

Most people who I commented to about this said I was crazy for feeling this way or looking to far into the game. I could no longer keep the game, and wanted something for it. I also figured that if EB sold it to some kid that it would kill a sale for Sony. If you choose the path of evil (KotoR) that is one thing, when you are forced to do things against your will (and then to pull out a good, morally deficient ending on top of it) is another.

And now for some humor on it.

[dessgeega]

chubby IS sexay.

anyway this game sounds like nonsense.
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[SuperWes]

Bah. The game was awesome. It's probably my favorite game of the year (unless it came out last year, I can't really remember). It's not what the game's story is, it's how it is told, and the story of God of War is told surprisingly well. It's interesting that your description makes the game sound a lot worse than it really is.

-Wes
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[dhex]

huh. that actually makes it seem more interesting.

playing the embodyment of war, of conflict, of bloodshed, of human viciousness.
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[Shapermc]

[TOLLMASTER]

[friedchicken]

Okay, I was pretty vocal some months back about disliking God of War, for much the same reasons as shapermc. For the record, it's the first game in a LONG time that I've sold back, about two weeks after buying and beating it. It made me realize how important what the game is all about is to me. I really liked the user interface in GoW-- it was well thought out and implemented. The game looked good and was fun to play. Where it collapsed for me was almost exclusively the morality of it. I've got no problem with people who want to play this kind of game, it just turned me off. Like Mortal Kombat has always turned me off-- I think it has more to do with the aesthetic. Shapermc, I know what scene you're talking about where you're given no choice about the civilians, and it was the turning point for me. Up until then I had been able to avoid that course of action, probably making the game much harder to me that it could have been. I think they should have made that way of playing through possible, but they didn't.

Now. The relation to the GTA topic. Let me mention up front that I disagree strongly with government intervention into sales of games. As I understand it, the current ratings system is entirely voluntary on the part of the industry (someone correct me if I've got it wrong), which makes it exclusively a marketing tool, nothing more. But that's another topic. I think that places like Walmart yanking GTA after the recent revelations of sexual content is laughably hypocritical, and demonstrates a stupid American double-standard. GTA and other games where sold by the fucking boatload by retailers like Walmart and EB, etc., when the only issue was their violence and depiction of criminal activity. Now that there is some amount of sexual content there as well, off the shelves it goes (incidentally, whether it's a marketing stunt or not, I wouldn't be surprised to find that sales of GTA have risen lately).

It's just a joke.

[Shapermc]

I think the main thing I had a problem with was that I did not believe his motives. Why, if he is the perfect embodiment of war, disturbed by scenes of violence in his dreams? Why does the death of his wife and child bother him if he has no care for human life in general?

[dhex]

[Shapermc]

[SuperWes]

Hmm. So do you think you would have liked the game if killing innocent people for power ups came naturally to you (as it does for all ancient romans)?

-Wes
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[Shapermc]

[SuperWes]

[Lackey]

Ancient Greek, isn't it?
And the one bare breast thing is remarkably accurate, at least as far as statuary goes. I'm kind of impressed they didn't ignore a cultural detail like that.

I'd still like to try this game sometime. The character does sound truly ruthless, which brings up other interesting questions about projection and how it relates to games, but which I don't have anything interesting or relevant to say about. Does the player always have to empathize with the character?
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| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |

[dessgeega]

[Lackey]

Seriously? Tell me more. This concept is fascinating.
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| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |

[dessgeega]

i can't really describe it any more without spoilers, so serious spoiler alert here.

the game begins in the protagonist's apartment. the protagonist is waiting for a cab. the cab will take the protagonist to the airport, and to a well-deserved vacation. however, the key to the front door is missing. we need to look for it.

we begin searching the apartment. we find a bunch of stuff - we find out, for instance, that the vacation the protagonist has planned is to an event called "the big om" taking place in death valley. there's something on the news about it - apparently some of the attendees have gone missing. at some point, we open a cupboard, and sand pours out.

we are taken aback a little bit. hesitantly, we direct the protagonist to open the next cupboard...sand. pretty soon the kitchen is covered in sand, and we try the closet on the other side of the apartment. sand.

soon we are dancing around the apartment like a madperson, touching things and watching them burst into sand. eventually there is no apartment left. we are in the desert, where the protagonist, having wandered off from the big om days ago, is hallucinating madly from dehydration and lack of food.

the protagonist, of course, is doomed. the desert is all. we have won the game.

(we are one with the environment. om.)
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[Mr. Mechanical]

I liked God of War a lot. Not for the story, no, but I enjoyed the gameplay itself. Shaper makes some excellent points, though I wasn't as bothered as he was.

Also, I love linking this, according to this(scroll down a bit) Hideo Kojima loved God of War. I don't know what that means. I guess the Kojima-san likes violence? Either way the game is worth playing because it gets so many conventions of the 3D action genre right. It easily proves, as a lot of other games coming out lately in the same vein of GoW have proved as well, that all those 2D action brawlers were actually trying to be 3D action games like we see now. It's eerie, almost, how transparent a developer's intentions are through their games.

Or perhaps not.

Vice versa, either way, the two genres are fundamentally connected I tell you!

[friedchicken]

I'll freely admit that the one and only problem I had with the game was the innocent-people-killing. I guess part of that is the environment too-- you're thrown into this city that's under attack by monsters and told to kill the monsters-- that's great, but here are all these bystanders who are also under attack. Your goal is to kill the monsters. Oh yeah, but all of the bystanders will be getting in your way. Okay, still great, it's a challenge to kill monsters without killing bystanders. BUT WAIT! He're a scene where you are in the town square and there's a dozen innocents along with a few huge monsters. What a challenge to avoid killing innocents until they get the fuck out of the way! ...hold on, when the monster kills them, they respawn and just run around in a circle. Seriously, especially considering that your weapon swings in this huge arc, I could only avoid killing bystanders for so long. I just didn't care for it is all.

As for the boobs, *yawn*. The only reason anyone pays attention to the fact that they are in the game is that mainsteam games have avoided showing them for the most part. I think the only reason they were included here is because they figured 'what the fuck, it's going to get a mature rating, let's throw in some boobs'-- and it would be a selling point. It added to the shlocky MKish feel of the game for me. Again, this wasn't something that would have turned me away from GoW on its own, it just added to the generally cornball look and feel. I hesitate to even mention that I thought it was funny that all the women have these enormous globular melons-- but that's a genre convention, so I'll let it go.

I don't know, maybe I'm just more jaded than I care to admit.

One thing GoW has shown me though, is how important character design and backstory can be in making an enjoyable game. Like I said before, excellent gameplay, bordering on flawless. Makes Rygar (which I enjoyed at the time) look like a turd. Makes the second Maximo game (which I still enjoy) look not as hot, at least in terms of variety. But the aesthetic and design of those two is light years ahead of GoW in my opinion. Okay, except for the Britney Spears princess in Rygar.

[dhex]

http://www.reason.com/links/links072205.shtml

nanny statist nanny nanny statist
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[wourme]

[dessgeega]

says andrew plotkin on god of war:

"Story? Character? Flatlined. I called every 'plot twist' in five seconds or less. The protagonist has the personality of a potato. A brutal, angry potato. He's supposed to be a brutal, angry, tormented potato but they couldn't get that much emotion into him. Actually, the anger isn't really there either, except for repeated cries of 'Rrrarrrgghh!' Kratos kills monsters like he's punching a time-clock. Grim brutal antiheroes are officially OVER."
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[dark steve]

That last part is the best news i've heard all day.

[Shapermc]

[dark steve]

No it's an eggplant!

[Lackey]

I suppose! I think it is inappropriate in either case!
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| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |