Ellen Page Nudity in Beyond: Two Souls Triggers Aggressive Sony Response

[Sheo_Dagana]

I'm also surprised Sony isn't having their balls busted by the ESRB as well. Last time I checked, the game wasn't even rated for partial nudity, let alone full frontal nudity.

 

[tofulove]

Am i the only one hopping she sues the shit out of them?

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

Removing something like this form the internet...oh Sony & Page that's just precious.

This was my immediate first thought.

Yes Sony, because "Scrub X from the internet" can totally work.

Also it's kind of silly in the first place. There have been shopped CG nudes of actresses since the dawn of man.

Though to be fair, this crusade will probably sell quite a few copies of the game. All publicity involving Ellen Page naked is good publicity as they say...

 

[-Dragmire-]

Usually the texturing of genitalia/nipples is not common as it would be wasted time, from what I've seen anyway. Odd practices there.


Well, I suppose it's a good thing for her that she didn't feature in a moddable Bethesda game...

 

[freedash22]

Saw the images online and I was underwhelmed. The shower scene is really nothing special. I have found greater delight in nude mods of Skyrim with hi-res skin textures and custom settings so I really can't call this one attractive at the least (no offense to Sony, David or "Jodie"). I really tried hard to get happy emotions out of this but it just wasn't there. Ofcourse, I can imagine Sony using their full legal might to stop the power of the internet once again (or bully it into submission). I can also imagine Ellen Page suing David and Co. into extinction and devolving this into yet another overblown legal circus just because.

 

[SacremPyrobolum]

You know, I actually have some respect for someone who will render something in detail even if it is unlikely it will ever be seen.

This is a bit creepy though, considering it is an actual person, but someone has already said that modeling all the "features" of a character is standard practice so I guess I'm okay with it a little.

At this point, it depends on how Page feels about the whole thing and whether or not it was stated that she should not bee shown nude in her contract.

I'm guessing to all the non-Americans out there, freaking out about some nipples seems a bit silly.

 

[Seracen]

Probably already mentioned...but I'm surprised nobody thought of this during game development...this is the internet, after all.

Heck, these exact same things happened to the character models from Heavy Rain. In fact, the same thing happened in Mass Effect as well. People extracted the model for Miranda Lawson mere weeks after game launch.

This would place Yvonne Strahovski in the same boat as Ellen Page, yet they never kicked up any flags back during ME2's launch. It's most likely because the "offending" models were never in the game (as in B:2S), but crafted afterwords.

She's most likely had to deal with the photoshopped stuff of her already, and Yvonne's character and likeness are never in danger of being confused for someone who is underage (as in certain B:2S scenes).

Doesn't mean it's right, just saying that the internet being what it is, there was ample evidence that this WOULD happen.

 

[glider4]

OW EM GEE NUDITY!?!? Run for the hills this is horrible! OK I have no idea why this is controversial, It's just a video game model.

 

[briankoontz]

Fuck that! Where's my Willem Dafoe nudity!?

Have you ever heard of a little film called Antichrist? [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0870984/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1] Just.... Throwing that out there, to fill your Dafoe nudity needs.

For those people who want to take it to a whole 'nother level, google "Channel J" - The Dance of the Sphinx & The Chimera.

Congratulations - You're now a Level 30 Defoe Nakedologist and the game is thankfully over.

 

[Vigormortis]

Hmm, yes. Why would David Cage; a man who actively collected a plethora of photos from around the web of Ellen Page as a child and adult; insist that the character designers craft a fully-detailed, fully-nude model of Page's character if he had no intention on actually showing the character in full?

Hmm. Can't for the life of me think of why a man like Cage would do such a thing...

Seriously. The guy's either obsessed or a creeper. Or both. [http://kotaku.com/the-video-game-that-began-with-pictures-of-ellen-page-1440500148]

But hey, whatever. Quantic, Sony, and Cage brought this on themselves.

It's like company execs don't realize that modders, hackers, and the internet exist.

 

[magicmonkeybars]

If I was going to put a shower scene into a game, I'd want my characters to be anatomically correct, even if I never intended for the player to see any nipples.

A more interesting question I'd like to ask is if we've bridged the uncanny valley ?
Is it real enough for this to be an invasion of Ellen Page's privacy by whoever made the images or is responsible for them being this detailed ?

I'm not convinced myself and I think this is all a giant overreaction and they should have just accepted it and moved on because this will never be purged from the internet.
We'll forget about it in about two weeks and not care but it'll always be out there, somewhere on the internet.

 

[mjc0961]

Apparently someone's never heard of the Streisand Effect.

Also yeah, why would you bother rendering all the naughty bits if you weren't going to show them anyway? Should have just made a "barbie doll" model with nothing on it.

Oh and why does anyone want to see a character model with Ellen Page's face on it so badly anyway? If I want to look at women's naughty bits, the internet is full of high quality video of actual women who would be more than happy for you to look at their naughty bits.

Why would you render her bits if you aren't going to show them?

Probably stock model. Not really an excuse - this stuff always happens.

That only begs the question of why the stock model has the naughty bits on it. Unless you're making a game with a lot of nudity you don't need naughty bits on models that are going to be wearing clothing all the time.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Say it with me: Fair use, assholes.

Seriously, this is classic fair use, and Sony is breaking the law by issuing these takedown notices. Somebody needs to countersue. Now Sony may or may not be in trouble with Ellen Paige's lawyers for the model being, er, fully functional to begin with, but that has no bearing on what the consumers are doing.

Err how is this fair use? Someone has used a dev kit to open up the models that are contained on the game disc and rendered them from angles that the game didn't depict, this isn't fair use in any stretch of the imagination.

It's contained in the publicly released product. For all we know no dev kit was involved, just a modded console with some basic hex editing tools (read: modern day gameshark.) Sony could make an argument along the lines you're giving, but any judge who actually goes for it should be booted out of office for ignoring consumer protections (i.e., the law) in favor of corporate profits.

Edit: To put it in context, what Sony is doing here is like if Rockstar had tried to censor all information about the hot coffee mod, including sending takedown notices to sites hosting screenshots, instead of just admitting that they made a mistake by dummying out the code instead of removing it entirely. There's at least two points Sony could have nipped this in the bud (changing the texture for one that's about as anatomically correct as a barbie doll, or actually removing the debug mode, instead of just dummying it out), and they screwed up on both, and are now blaming the customers for their mistake.

Being contained on the disc does not give you the legal right to rip the file out and use it elsewhere, that's what copyright is protecting them against you doing. The model is not yours to do with as you see fit, regardless of weather a dev kit is needed or not. There is no consumer protection giving you the right to steal models from a game.

Actually, that's wrong. Copyright would allow you to do whatever you want with the contents of that disc, as long as it didn't involve distributing it... outside of certain exceptions, one of which is fair use, which a screenshot being used as these are being used falls under. What you're thinking of is the EULA, which is a piece of crap that corporate lawyers came up with in order to get around the consumer protections on copyright, which is pretty much totally invalid outside of the US, and only valid in certain states (and there only because the Supreme Court still hasn't spoken) inside of the US.

 

[cefm]

So, Mr. Cage - can you clearly and accurately describe to the best of your ability what artistic value made the fully-nude 3-D modeling of the character necessary for a scene in which nudity was not intended to be shown?

 

[saxman234]

If I was going to put a shower scene into a game, I'd want my characters to be anatomically correct, even if I never intended for the player to see any nipples.

A more interesting question I'd like to ask is if we've bridged the uncanny valley ?
Is it real enough for this to be an invasion of Ellen Page's privacy by whoever made the images or is responsible for them being this detailed ?

I'm not convinced myself and I think this is all a giant overreaction and they should have just accepted it and moved on because this will never be purged from the internet.
We'll forget about it in about two weeks and not care but it'll always be out there, somewhere on the internet.

Personally, I think this is closer to a photoshop picture than a privacy issue. She has a right to be frustrated with this, but honestly, this is not her body, it is a video game model. Maybe a pretty realistic model, but still just a model. Any decent photoshop person can create a realistic photo by putting some actors head on a nude model. Truthfully, I don't know why we are modeling in game characters as actors at this point, but I guess everything has to be more like Hollywood where we need to use movie actors. Imagine in MGS5, they remake snakes character model to be based off of Keifer Sutherland.

 

[freedash22]

I almost forgot, this is David Cage we are talking about, so to him this is not nudity.
But simply, a-collection-of-polygons-and-curved-surfaces-that-create-positive-emotion.

I wouldn't be surprised if people started labeling this as a good example of developers abusing actors and models by filling in the blanks they didn't say at the contract or paid for.

 

[Kungfusam]

Its possible that the scene was always going to be in the game until Anita Frequency happend and Sony or David Cage decided they didn't want the shitstorm

Admittedly he is a bloody idiot and that probably is a bigger factor

 

[kburns10]

Serious question: if you are a celebrity (especially a female), does this sort of press turn you off from providing your voice/likeness to a video game character? It's cool that so many celebrities are starting to get involved in the medium and (sometimes) delivering great voice acting. But if you're worried the developers might portray you in a way not originally agreed on, does that make people shy away from video games? It definitely doesn't help the case for games and gamers being mature (even though this is the developers fault not the consumers).

 

[sth1729]

Sony will never come anywhere close to getting this to go away and are just gonna have to bite the bullet if they get sued for it, because they certainly have the right to do so. I think I would actually bet money on Cage telling them to model 'everything' after hearing how he became obsessed with Ellen Page

 

[FilmDude89]

I'm sort of ashamed to admit that I googled the image in question.. My curiosity got the better of me again! It's nothing special to be honest but that's not the point anyways. I feel sorry for Ms. Page.. she's been getting a lot of mud thrown her way recently. Pretty much all from the Video game industry too. I hope these experiences don't sour her or any other celebrities opinion's on doing work for Video games. I can't say I'd blame them if it did though, to be perfectly honest.

Edit: I just realized now that by saying "it's nothing special" could cause unintended offence. I just meant that it just looks like a poorly done rendering of an otherwise very attractive young woman. That's all.