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Who's holding back the breasts in videogames?
emnmnme
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Don't get me wrong - I'm not eager to see polygonal boobs. This is a thread about voluntary restraint in the electronic software entertainment industry.
Consumers get a good sense growing up that corporations will do anything to make a buck if they can get away with it. It's easy to demonize and parody the rich when you're coming from the middle class but if you ask Joe American how he feels about executives and yuppies, he'll say they have no scruples and they'd eat children for profit if no one was watching. So I'm curious why the gaming industry in general hasn't allowed sex or nudity in games. Ultra violence and obscene language worked their ways into M-Rated games thanks to trailblazers like Midway and iD. So it mystifies me when games give you a thousand gruesome ways to kill enemies but bare breasts and objectifying women are just not done.
The obvious answer is publishers fear the 'AO' rating. But games like God of War and Conan have shown that you can have topless women and still retain an 'M' rating. The ESRB considers AO territory to include actual sex scenes or penetration so I figure simple nudity won't bring down the hammer on anyone.
Clearly males aged 18-34 are horny. Why are game publishers restraining themselves when they know a good game will sell to the horndog audience but a good game with boobs will sell even more? Is it a worry about public image, that the Puritans in North America will somehow be angrier at Midway for including topless prostitutes in their next game than decapitating a boss enemy? Have there been no pioneers in needlessly injecting tatas into games like iD included gore in the original Doom? Or does the public just not want it? That last one makes little sense considering all the sexy female characters in gaming. Don't tell me you've never steered Lara Croft into a corner so you can stare at her ass.
Consumers get a good sense growing up that corporations will do anything to make a buck if they can get away with it. It's easy to demonize and parody the rich when you're coming from the middle class but if you ask Joe American how he feels about executives and yuppies, he'll say they have no scruples and they'd eat children for profit if no one was watching. So I'm curious why the gaming industry in general hasn't allowed sex or nudity in games. Ultra violence and obscene language worked their ways into M-Rated games thanks to trailblazers like Midway and iD. So it mystifies me when games give you a thousand gruesome ways to kill enemies but bare breasts and objectifying women are just not done.
The obvious answer is publishers fear the 'AO' rating. But games like God of War and Conan have shown that you can have topless women and still retain an 'M' rating. The ESRB considers AO territory to include actual sex scenes or penetration so I figure simple nudity won't bring down the hammer on anyone.
Clearly males aged 18-34 are horny. Why are game publishers restraining themselves when they know a good game will sell to the horndog audience but a good game with boobs will sell even more? Is it a worry about public image, that the Puritans in North America will somehow be angrier at Midway for including topless prostitutes in their next game than decapitating a boss enemy? Have there been no pioneers in needlessly injecting tatas into games like iD included gore in the original Doom? Or does the public just not want it? That last one makes little sense considering all the sexy female characters in gaming. Don't tell me you've never steered Lara Croft into a corner so you can stare at her ass.
emnmnme on
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There is no objectification of women in video games? Are you daft? Gamers swim in a sea of impossibly proportioned women wearing physics defying clothing that have teams of coders dedicated to coding in physics spefically for boobs. Your options if you are a female gamer are pretty much
a) stick with nintendo and the scattered mainstream game with positive female characters
b) hate yourself a little bit.
Then you have loads of Japanese rape games if you are looking for something a little more soul eroding.
I cannot fathom why it is that you feel you need more digital pandering to your peen.
PR.
I don't mean sexual story games, there are a ton of other story games without sexual content. There is a reason why those aren't avaliable here and thats because there is no market.
Maybe?
Showing a woman with exposed boobs would be AO. Showing a crazy undead Nazi dominatrix with exposed boobs, only completely skinless as a result of having been flayed and with metal hooks gouging where the nipples had been warrants an M.
Something is wrong in our society.
I'll be fine, just give me a minute, a man's got a limit, I can't get a life if my heart's not in it.
Seriously, though, it’s because any mainstream game with nudity will probably end up in mainstream media with mothers and family councils yelling that children might see nudity, even though the children can’t buy the games. It’s similar to why there are only straight characters (with the exception of Mass Effect, if memory serves).
Multi-million selling GTA:SA has an un-used sex game? AO.
Blockbuster Oblivion has nipple textures hidden on the disk? AO that fucker.
The Witcher has naked wood elves and racy tarot cards for each of your "conquests"? Never heard of it. Rated M.
I'm glad you brought that one up. If your character is showing 90% of an exposed breast, why not just go 100%? All that's left to hide is the nipple underneath a shoestring so what's the point of covering up after that much exposure? Itagaki said once that it was love for his creations that kept nudity out of his games.
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I'm gonna have to agree with this - Oblivion had hidden textures and got a bump in rating. The PC version of Max Payne 2 had a whole nude model of Mona Sax 'hidden' and remained 'M'.
It's the nipple itself that's horribly offensive, my friend. How dare it be there?
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Yes, it was and that does. Because the whole Hot Coffee bullshit established precedent. Very stupid precedent, frankly.
Yes, but topless women or women wearing skin tight clothes doesn't equal an AO rating, as DoA, God of War, and Conan show. AO starts when those characters start humping each other. So you could have nekked enemies in Ghost Recon with wangs dangling or you could have prostitutes that flash you in GTA 4 and still have an M rating. Possibly.
The thing to remember is the ESRB has a panel of average people come in and watch a highlights reel of the game they're rating. After an hour or so of watching footage, they judge the rating themselves. So, like a jury, panels can differ in opinion slightly over the same game.
He also noted that he things that the nude mods were pitiful and the people playing them were also pitiful.
There is a fine line between Nude and Not Nude. Covering yourself with a leaf? Not Nude. No Leaf? Nude.
Whats the point of Nudity anyway? Aside form the 14 year old going "Huff Duff" there is no need for a non-Hentai or anyother sort of game to have nudity. It doesn't advance the story agian, unless its a Hentai game where it does.
You could argue gore doesn't enhance an action game either but it's still satisfying to use a chainsaw in Gears of War or perform a fatality in Mortal Kombat.
Oh, I wasn't aware of that, actually.
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Nudity, though, albeit pink-free, is all over games.
Most fantasy games have tons of nudity, they just delete the pink.
Suggestive nudity, besides, is far more powerful, especially since it gives people room for plausible deniability.
o/` One of these things is not like the others, one of these things doesn't belong... o/`
I know this was a couple hours ago, but I have to express how much I agree with what's being said here.
LoL: failboattootoot
Except I have a real problem allowing Wal-Mart to be the aribter of our coulture, especially considering their support of some odious practices like "conscientious objection".
So the reason the purple hologram Cortana doesn't have nipples is Microsoft is afraid of damaging a family-friendly image it has with an already M-rated game? No, of course not - the devs didn't want to include nipples but they may have been encouraged by the publisher to make Cortana shapely and semi-nude. I don't know for sure but a fine line has been laid down somewhere and it seems like the whole industry has silently agreed to observe it.
After checking, yes, the Playboy Mansion game did have nudity and was rated M, not AO.
Symphony of the Night had plenty of naked statues (both male and female) and enemies and was rated T.
Statues are pretty kosher. You're allowed to see 'art' with nude subjects in school, I thought.
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I remember playing it at 11 and always worrying that my parents would walk in during that battle and be mad.
You parents wouldn't get mad at all the bloody corpses strewn around your Barbarian? Damn, you were lucky. I couldn't even watch violent cartoons or play with toy guns growing up.
I just checked.
Edit: Proof--
edited out
Looks basically like sunday school to me.
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That Wal-Mart is basically your Aunt Tillie merged with a megacorp?
I would later come to realize they actually wouldn't have cared much about the boobies either. Hell, they both know I smoke weed, and not only know I have sex, but facilitate it. Other issues they don't care about: curfews, moderate drinking, porn, and whatever else people with strict parents have to worry about.
:P
Also yeah she has the chains but you can totally see areola so I think that counts because even a hint of that shit gets blurred on TV. I think it counts as obscene -- not just the nipple-proper.