101: The Breasts That Broke The Game
- Thread starter The Escapist Staff
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The problem lies mainly with the ESRB's whole rating structure. It simply should be replaced with a system which mirrors that of the film industry. The movies' system, while far from perfect, is more refined and has more caregories, and is pretty well understood by just about everyone. An 'M' rating to begin with would not have hampered sales at all, and saved Bethesda a lot of loot. The handwriting is still on the wall, however, as evidenced by Halo 2's delay for Vista because of the reported nudity issue therein. Attacking games is in a very long American tradition of blaming the latest mass entertainment phenomenon for the troubles of our society. I don't see it ending very soon.
What baffles me most is the fact that the game companies can be held liable for material AFTER the release of a game. In the world of movies, DVDs can include special features and get away with simply putting, "Special features have not been rated." No one bats an eye.
It's simply that the politicians have video games in their crosshairs for now, until the next big form of media comes along and makes a more convenient target. Until then, every moddable game had better put a disclaimer along the lines of the Online Play disclaimer, "Game can be moddable, you might be offended if you install a mod that has the word 'Breasts' in it." And every game from Barbie to Manhunt might as well rate themselves 'M' and save themselves the heartache.
It's simply that the politicians have video games in their crosshairs for now, until the next big form of media comes along and makes a more convenient target. Until then, every moddable game had better put a disclaimer along the lines of the Online Play disclaimer, "Game can be moddable, you might be offended if you install a mod that has the word 'Breasts' in it." And every game from Barbie to Manhunt might as well rate themselves 'M' and save themselves the heartache.
I kinda disagree with the whole article. I understand it in spirit, but the facts don't back it up.
First of all, as was explained in the article, the nude content was on the disc sent to stores. That's as deep as I'd need to dig to come to a conclusion. It's the exact same scenario as Hot Coffee. And since this happened after Hot Coffee (and under the same publisher, Take Two) I see no reason Bethesda should be seen as innocent here.
Second, games that have user generated content will not need to be re-rated as long as the publisher does not ship the game with any overly-objectionable material. To see a real example of this, look at the Sims. Underneath the pixelation, is just smooth skin. No details. So the game gets a T rating. There are skins on the internet that let you add various sexual details. However, EA has no control over them, without compromising the allowable content. Therefore, they are not at fault and the ESRB doesn't need to do anything.
I think it would be responsible for a publisher of a user-modifiable game to let parents know that mods exist and some might be bad. But they don't need to re-rate every game, nor do they need to rate every mod. And they had no plans to.
I think Bethesda is getting too much credit here. If this scenario happened in any other medium, it would invoke the same repercussions. Imagine if Pixar released a DVD that had several nude models hidden on the disc. You had to rip the DVD and go through a few levels of encryption or something, but they were still there. There is no defense for that. Was the content on the disc. Yes. Did they distribute it. Yes. They would be guilty and so is Bethesda.
First of all, as was explained in the article, the nude content was on the disc sent to stores. That's as deep as I'd need to dig to come to a conclusion. It's the exact same scenario as Hot Coffee. And since this happened after Hot Coffee (and under the same publisher, Take Two) I see no reason Bethesda should be seen as innocent here.
Second, games that have user generated content will not need to be re-rated as long as the publisher does not ship the game with any overly-objectionable material. To see a real example of this, look at the Sims. Underneath the pixelation, is just smooth skin. No details. So the game gets a T rating. There are skins on the internet that let you add various sexual details. However, EA has no control over them, without compromising the allowable content. Therefore, they are not at fault and the ESRB doesn't need to do anything.
I think it would be responsible for a publisher of a user-modifiable game to let parents know that mods exist and some might be bad. But they don't need to re-rate every game, nor do they need to rate every mod. And they had no plans to.
I think Bethesda is getting too much credit here. If this scenario happened in any other medium, it would invoke the same repercussions. Imagine if Pixar released a DVD that had several nude models hidden on the disc. You had to rip the DVD and go through a few levels of encryption or something, but they were still there. There is no defense for that. Was the content on the disc. Yes. Did they distribute it. Yes. They would be guilty and so is Bethesda.
I think this example is flawed. When you're doing 3-D modeling, if you want the stuff that appears over a model to appear natural, there needs to be a natural layer under that stuff. Enter boobs on orcs. I'm willing to bet the princess from Shrek has them, too, and if Shrek had to render the movement on clothing and draw characters as the camera pans around randomly, there'd be some nude textures hidden away on an encrypted section of the DVD. It's like saying models shouldn't have skeletons or muscles.Probot said:
I think the real problem here is the way contracts between the ESRB and developers are structured. I have trouble blaming developers for their customers using hex editors to get to stuff they're not supposed to. (Not that I blame people for doing it; get all the fun you can out of a game.) The little Johnnys of the world, the people the ESRB is there to protect, aren't going to have access to that type of equipment. And really, like Michael said, until the media got a hold of this mod, no one even knew it existed in the first place, so I doubt a kid would've gone looking for it.
Additionally, I think the real question here is one of respect for the ESRB's calls. If it insists on this mincing, overly puritanical viewpoint, it's going to lose the credibility it has built up. The fact that Microsoft had to repackage Halo 2 on Vista because of a picture of a programmer's butt in an obscure error code only reachable in the level builder, at substantial cost, is ludicrous.
People laugh about it on forums and such, but the subtext is: the ESRB doesn't understand the important things. I find this especially applicable here, because of their claim that they 'found new violence and gore' when they went back to look at the game. Bethesda made it perfectly clear from the get-go how violent the game was; the fact that the ESRB apparently missed this the first time around says things about their observation process. They're not good things.
People laugh about it on forums and such, but the subtext is: the ESRB doesn't understand the important things. I find this especially applicable here, because of their claim that they 'found new violence and gore' when they went back to look at the game. Bethesda made it perfectly clear from the get-go how violent the game was; the fact that the ESRB apparently missed this the first time around says things about their observation process. They're not good things.
I fully support the ESRB's right to pre-emptively cover their asses. When Presidential hopefuls base a lot of their campaign around having your industry in their crosshairs, the only sensible option is to anticipate anything that'll get you bad press, and make a big show of cracking down on it before the bad press happens. The ESRB drew the line at having the content on the disc, readily available or not. An arbitrary line from a technical point of view, but their opponent is equally arbitrary.
At this stage in the development of the medium, the ESRB is there to make us look legitimate, until such time as our legitimacy is self-evident.
At this stage in the development of the medium, the ESRB is there to make us look legitimate, until such time as our legitimacy is self-evident.
Developers should be more responsible, I think. The big studios reflect on the industry, and if they give a damn about it they shouldn't act like 12 year olds and put stupid crap in there like "hot coffee" or whatever. There is no need for a developer to put in a realistic nude skin, there is no defense for that.
No matter how hard it is to access, putting that data on the disc makes the industry look stupid.
Aside from that, the ESRB has displayed their own inadequacy. They could have been frank and simply told us that yes, the nudity mod was the reason for the rating change, but instead they said basically: in addition, we can't get the job done right the first time, so lets add gore and violence to the list of reasons for the amendment.
I'm sick of hearing about re-ratings of games already out. It's not society, it's not developers, it's not the ESRB, it's all three of them.
No matter how hard it is to access, putting that data on the disc makes the industry look stupid.
Aside from that, the ESRB has displayed their own inadequacy. They could have been frank and simply told us that yes, the nudity mod was the reason for the rating change, but instead they said basically: in addition, we can't get the job done right the first time, so lets add gore and violence to the list of reasons for the amendment.
I'm sick of hearing about re-ratings of games already out. It's not society, it's not developers, it's not the ESRB, it's all three of them.
Hammer, nail, head. We don't give Barbie dolls a "Teen" rating. The whole thing is absurd.Joe said:
Indeed.whoisdialogue said:
I also agree that the rating system [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESRB#Current] is broken. For instance, consider:
M -- Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language.
AO -- Titles in this category may include prolonged scenes of intense violence and/or graphic sexual content and nudity.
Resident Evil 4 is M. So's Gears of War. I love both games, but judging by those metrics they ought to have been AO -- unless the ESRB means something very different by "prolonged scenes of intense violence" than I do. In reality, to my knowledge, no game has ever been rated AO solely for violent content. "Graphic sexual content" is the only hard-and-fast criterion the ESRB uses for making games AO, despite the wording of their ratings.
As far as the issue of whether "Bethesda was to blame" or not, Joe nailed it. Holding them accountable and judging their work as M rated or pornographic would be like throwing the paritioners out of church for being naked under their clothes.
As far as the ESRB goes, they try. They really, really try. And their whole effort, their whole reason for existence, is to prevent the government or a "consumer group" from creating an outside body governing games. That's it. They need to be as strident and as accountable as they can be to prove to government that they are handling the issue and that we don't need a Jack Valenti or RIAA coming in and telling games makers how to make their games. And believe me, if you think the ESRB is screwed up, you don't want to see what would replace them if they failed.
As far as the ESRB goes, they try. They really, really try. And their whole effort, their whole reason for existence, is to prevent the government or a "consumer group" from creating an outside body governing games. That's it. They need to be as strident and as accountable as they can be to prove to government that they are handling the issue and that we don't need a Jack Valenti or RIAA coming in and telling games makers how to make their games. And believe me, if you think the ESRB is screwed up, you don't want to see what would replace them if they failed.
I wouldn't be so quick to judge Bethesda for being irresponsible. There wasn't a hidden nude texture for the female torso on the Oblivion disc. The modder just changed a small portion of the file to point to the male torso texture instead of the female torso texture. Instant nipplage.
I expect full body long-johns in Elder Scrolls V.
At some point I would just expect the developers to ask for an M rating whether the game is even close to it or not, just to avoid the potential risk. Why wouldn't they if the game is susceptible to reevaluation due to user modification? By those standards any game is likely to be rated M months after release.
Has there been any indication that Little Big Planet will allow custom textures? All I've seen so far is the manipulation of assets provided by the game's developers.
I expect full body long-johns in Elder Scrolls V.
At some point I would just expect the developers to ask for an M rating whether the game is even close to it or not, just to avoid the potential risk. Why wouldn't they if the game is susceptible to reevaluation due to user modification? By those standards any game is likely to be rated M months after release.
Has there been any indication that Little Big Planet will allow custom textures? All I've seen so far is the manipulation of assets provided by the game's developers.
Daggerfall was filled with pixilated nudity, if I (fondly) remember correctly. Obviously, I was scarred for life. ;-)
I wasn't aware that this was the case, but it makes the whole scenario seem so stupid its just not funny.Danjo Olivaw said:
Last I heard there wasn't anything wrong with a guy who has man-boobs walking around topless, in fact many people would think that was heading away from the sexual content end of the spectrum. So where did the ESRB get the idea that the included textures (which as stated, are from a male torso) are pornographic? Just because someone made a mod that makes all the girls look like guys?!
I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I think the biggest problem here is not with the organisations that define and enforce the ratings, but with the values of the society that these ratings stem from.
There are many many countries in the world were girls (real girls, not computer animations) going topless is not only acceptable but somewhat expected in public areas like beaches. For a country that is so bound by the concepts of freedom, like free speech and the right to own a gun, the US has some bafflingly close minded views about what is unacceptable with respect to nudity and sexual content.
At a resolution so low as to seem censored by today's standards. I love it.Echolocating said:
Well, the mod still leaves the female torso model, so they have boobs, and then with the guys' texture they get nipples. The end result is pornographic by WalMart standards. Honestly, I don't think the ESRB or Bethesda looked into it very deeply at all. The ESRB because they don't know what they're doing, and Bethesda because they know it would just cost less to just bend over and take it.Goofonian said:
There seems to be confusion on what the nature of the toplessness in Oblivion was. I read what the modder who created the topless mod described how they created it from the site where it was posted(though I forget what the site was). When all clothing is removed on a character in oblivion, there is always an ugly loincloth on the hips on both genders and on females a bra made of an ugly rag. When clothing is worn on a female model, the bra is removed as not to clash models with the clothing. When the bra is removed on the topless female model by modding, you see nothing; the breasts are invisible. The skin is absent on the breasts and you can see right into the character model. Now, the skins for females and males are the same, so the modder simply changed how the skin was applied on the female model so that the breasts could be seen. The combination of removal of the bra and modification of the female model skin application was the topless mod.
From my understanding, bethesda created a situation where you couldn't see the breasts unless you actually changed the game itself, and was thus beyond ESRB guidelines. I do, however, understand that the ESRB and to do something, even if nothing needed to be done(which nothing needed to be done, in an ideal world), and rerated the game to defend against the forces of ignorance and hysteria using the violence as an excuse to give to the gamer's side.
From my understanding, bethesda created a situation where you couldn't see the breasts unless you actually changed the game itself, and was thus beyond ESRB guidelines. I do, however, understand that the ESRB and to do something, even if nothing needed to be done(which nothing needed to be done, in an ideal world), and rerated the game to defend against the forces of ignorance and hysteria using the violence as an excuse to give to the gamer's side.