The Big Picture: Off Target - Don't Censor Me Part 2

Suhi89

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I posted something similar to this on part one, but it seems as though people still refuse to believe words mean what they clearly mean. So, from Wikipedia.

Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication or other information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions.

Governments, private organizations and individuals may engage in censorship. When an individual such as an author or other creator engages in censorship of their own works or speech, it is called self-censorship. Censorship may be direct or it may be indirect, in which case it is called soft censorship. It occurs in a variety of different media, including speech, books, music, films, and other arts, the press, radio, television, and the Internet for a variety of claimed reasons including national security, to control obscenity, child pornography, and hate speech, to protect children or other vulnerable groups, to promote or restrict political or religious views, and to prevent slander and libel.
From vocabulary.com
Censorship blocks something from being read, heard, or seen. If you've ever heard the sound of bleeping when someone is speaking on television, that's censorship.
To "censor" is to review something and to choose to remove or hide parts of it that are considered unacceptable. Censorship is the name for the process or idea of keeping things like obscene word or graphic images from an audience. There is also such a thing as self-censorship, which is when you refrain from saying certain things ? or possibly re-wording them ? depending on who is listening.
oxforddictionaries.com
Examine (a book, film, etc.) officially and suppress unacceptable parts of it.
merriamwebster.com

censor verb
: to examine books, movies, letters, etc., in order to remove things that are considered to be offensive, immoral, harmful to society, etc.
You get my point. Censorship doesn't have to be official or government backed to be censorship. This is simple definitions of words. It just requires the removal of something for reasons of offence or unacceptability. This is how it different from choosing not to stock something because you believe that it won't make you enough money. It also doesn't matter if you can get it elsewhere. Target has censored GTAV by the definition of the word.

And even if I couldn't go to the top few results from google when I type in 'censorship definition' to back up my point, words are defined by their usage. Decimate is now essentially a synonym of destroy. Less can mean fewer. Literally doesn't literally have to mean literally. You might not like it, but you're going to have to live with it.
 

JMac85

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So, I don't get what Bob was trying to convey at the end about the prostitutes. Does he want them to be invincible like children in Skyrim? Does he not want them to simply not be in the games like children in GTA? Because by simple virtue of being NPC's in a GTA game they're fair game to be gunned down, ran over, stabbed, and blown the fuck up just like everyone else.
 

Makabriel

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MaddKossack115 said:
Cranyx said:
Yes you can kill hookers in GTA, but do you know who else you kill? Everyone. You're not incentivized to go out and murder prostitutes anymore than you are to cause other types of general mayhem and destruction. Should Prostitutes be the one character group in GTA whom you can't kill, or is Bob taking the stance that Grand Theft Auto should remove the violence from its games?
Well, I think the issue is less "oh, you shouldn't kill them", and more "hey, instead of using hookers as an excuse to put 'sex' in the game, perhaps we should point out the ways that being a prostitute is NOT good for the prostitute at all? Y'know, with abusive pimps, even more abusive 'customers', and getting treated like crap by everybody in society for something they were likely forced into, that sort of thing?" I don't think that sex workers should be "immune" when you suddenly whip out an assault rifle and go on a GTA-style Rampage, but it's probably best not to trivialize their portrayals to "oh these girls are just SO happy to take your money and give you sex", and just ignore all the abuse they falsely receive from virtually every part of society, especially when Rockstar is trying to give the characters of the "GTA HD-era" more meaningful depth and story than the "personified Ids" of the "GTA 3D-era".

And if you REALLY need to put optional sex in the GTA games, I personally think that the "girlfriend dating system" of GTA IV may be worth taking another swing at. True, the mechanics should be refined so the player isn't constantly nagged to drag their girls on dates every few minutes or so, but it would edge off the "sex workers as shameless whores for the sole benefit of the player" angle at least.
I don't know about you guys, but I attempted to date pretty much all the strippers in the game. Kill them? Heck no! They're my harem!

Oh, wait.. is that worse than killing them? I can't seem to figure that out these days.
 

Anomynous 167

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Stop the presses! Target sells games. That itself is news to me, considering how large their clothes sections are it is hard to notice anything else they sell.
Jman1236 said:
So your not selling this game? Fine I'll go across the street to gamestop, or god forbid walmart, they'll gladly take my money and future business from me unlike you.
Two problems with that. Number 1: Here in Sydney, the nearest Wallmart is in South Korea, and I doubt they accept Australian dollars there.
The other problem is why go across the street to "Gamestop", when you can take an escalator to EB Games.
 

Lightknight

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How about calling it sexist of Target to do this?

Sexist against women because it implies that they are weaker group more in need of protection by big brother Target than males.

Sexist against males because banning this based on violence to women and not violence in general when the vast majority of violence is committed against males (I'm told something like two women die in the story mode compared to countless males) implies that violence against males is acceptable.

As far as saying that it "normalizes" violence in the real world... got any citation or are we just going to pull from Jack Thompson's bag of dismissed studies? Are we also going to ignore that this is something a player can do but do not have to do?

Are you just upset that they're depicted at all? I mean, they do exist so...?
 

NinjaDeathSlap

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I just wanna say...

Whenever I solicited a prostitute to give me a blowjob in GTA5, I let her walk away with her hard earned money without any fuss.

That's all. I have nothing of value to contribute to this utterly valueless debate. I just saw an entertaining opportunity to say those words and still somehow emerge as looking sane and level-headed in my surroundings.
 

WhiteNachos

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It "contributes to the atmosphere that normalizes and downplays that kind of violence"

Sounds like the same old "it'll desensitize people to violence" BS now with different wording. I'd like to see any kind of evidence it'll do that.

And Bob why should they tone it down when it comes to prostitutes? The violence/abuse you can commit against prostitutes you can also commit against anyone else in the game, the consequences of killing them are also the same for any other civilian the game. The only way the game treats prostitutes different than other civilians is that you can pay to have sex with them. That in and of itself is not violence so the only way GTA could "rectify" this is to not let you have sex with a prostitute (which would be kinda weird if they remove that crime but not all the murder) or treat prostitutes differently than everyone else in terms of violence.

So Bob if you're not asking them to remove the ability to use the services of a prostitute. yo're not asking for fair treatment for sex you're asking for different, special treatment.

Seriously these were the kind of arguments the media made all the time about GTA back in the era where games were the scapegoat of the decade and they're still wrong. It's baffling that you're making the same arguments and saying there's an indirect link between that violence and real life violence.

Did you always believe this stuff Bob?
 

C.S.Strowbridge

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Cranyx said:
Yes you can kill hookers in GTA, but do you know who else you kill? Everyone.
From 4:20 into the video... "Sex workers are consistently one of the most at risk professions in the world..." Comparing what happens to them to what happens to everyone else is not a valid comparison. Constantly showing them as victimized without any real attempt to address the problem makes it so that people in the real world are less likely to combat the real problems.
 

Burnouts3s3

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Also, as the resident Biodrone here, where was this outrage when Dragon Age: Inquistion was banned in India and no one could play that game?
 

Schadrach

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MovieBob said:
Off Target - Don't Censor Me Part 2

Is Target censoring Grand Theft Auto?

Watch Video
First off, you keep talking about it as a year old last gen game, while ignoring the recent current gen rerelease that your game footage was from.

Secondly, GTA V was pulled from two Australian store chains, one chain in New Zealand, and has a group in Norway (Norwegian Women's Front) trying to get it banned from sale there.

The obvious fear is that this is the start of a slippery slope. If you can get something as expensive and involved to produce as a video game pulled from just a few major chains in one of the larger markets, you can easily create an environment in which developers are functionally restricted from being able to make certain things because morality police have de facto banned it.

KazeAizen said:
Having never played the games I just need to ask one question. Does killing other ordinary citizens grant you any boon in the game? Do they do anything for you? If not then there might be something to it. Bob isn't taking the stance that GTA should remove all violence but when a GTA game comes out what is the thing the news media pretty much always mentions? The fact that you can have sex with a hooker to restore your health and then beat her to death and take your money back. At this point, by the description he gave of 4 and 5, it does seem kinda stupid to keep it in there. There are better ways to have a mechanic like that that maybe doesn't involve the potential of killing the person. Its also seen as just more dehumanizing of that particular group of people.
Ordinary citizens drop money too. In fact the thing being complained about is in essence an emergent combination of two other mechanics.

1. Having sex with a prostitute restores your health in GTA titles (it is not the only thing that does so).
2. When you murder any random civilian, they drop cash.

The only ways I can see to solve this evil, misogynistic problem with GTA is either to remove the prostitutes from the game world entirely (which seems unrealistic in a large urban environment), not allow the player to hire said prostitutes (which means you are capable of armed robbery and mass murder but draw the line at paying for sex), or make prostitutes arbitrarily invulnerable to harm (treating some women like some games treat children for ratings reasons).
 

WindKnight

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Cranyx said:
Yes you can kill hookers in GTA, but do you know who else you kill? Everyone. You're not incentivized to go out and murder prostitutes anymore than you are to cause other types of general mayhem and destruction. Should Prostitutes be the one character group in GTA whom you can't kill, or is Bob taking the stance that Grand Theft Auto should remove the violence from its games?
Buying sex from prostitutes gives you health back, at the cost of your money. Killing the prostitutes then means you get all the money you spent on getting your health up back.

So, you've used a service, and a casual, no consequences murder lets you ignore the cost of that service. Gee, that's totally not an incentive!

(for the record, I specifically heard about this from guys at work/volunteering who found out I was into games and totally though that screwing then killing the prostitutes to get their money back was totally an awesome feature)
 

Something Amyss

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The idea that this is a slippery slope is predicated on the notion that there will be the same market forces acting on any such petition. That's unlikely, given the market demographic and the game in question.

Sigmund Av Volsung said:
Does anyone really have to point out to Bob that GTA is a satire?
Considering he points it out in the video, something you should know if you watched it, no.

Burnouts3s3 said:
Also, as the resident Biodrone here, where was this outrage when Dragon Age: Inquistion was banned in India and no one could play that game?
It couldn't be blamed on feminists, so nobody cared.
 

Schadrach

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Burnouts3s3 said:
Also, as the resident Biodrone here, where was this outrage when Dragon Age: Inquistion was banned in India and no one could play that game?
I think it just didn't get the coverage necessary to draw attention. Because I certainly have a problem with that too.
 

Something Amyss

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Windknight said:
Buying sex from prostitutes gives you health back, at the cost of your money.
Wait, it actually still does that? I haven't solicited a hooker in the game except for the 100% (which I still haven;'t got because "bored now" and I started playing online), so I didn't notice if it did, but I thought they pulled that out of the games in the PS2 era.
 

MaddKossack115

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JMac85 said:
So, I don't get what Bob was trying to convey at the end about the prostitutes. Does he want them to be invincible like children in Skyrim? Does he not want them to simply not be in the games like children in GTA? Because by simple virtue of being NPC's in a GTA game they're fair game to be gunned down, ran over, stabbed, and blown the fuck up just like everyone else.
Okay, I've already made this point with another commentator, but I think what MovieBob mostly means to say is that prostitutes don't have to be cut from the games altogether, and shouldn't be granted magic invincibility when a GTA player goes on a rampage, but they should do more to acknowledge how abusive a sex worker's life is, (like with pimps who abuse them to keep them in line, 'customers' who abuse them just to get their rocks off, and so on), rather than just treat them with a "Hey guys! Just pay these happy girls for instant sex!" attitude that was laughably cheesy in the 3D-era, but increasingly out of touch and creepy in the HD-era.

It's not like they can't use the "girlfriend dating" system from GTA IV. It admittedly needs some improvements both mechanically and tonally, but it's still better than acting like prostitutes are happily shameless in performing sex acts for just a bit of money, when in reality they're likely forced and abused into the life by criminal scumbags, and are screwed over even harder by law enforcement and mainstream society blaming the hookers for "bringing it on themselves" instead of the pimps actually forcing them to do those acts.

And if the argument is "oh, EVERYBODY is dehumanized in a GTA game", that can easily be accomplished by dehumanizing the people abusing sex workers, thus getting closer to the root of the problem, while still being a more acceptable message - it's what Watch_Dogs did during the "Human Trafficking" sidequest (namely, hunting down a band of criminals importing sex slaves into the city).
 

mattawbrown

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So is the big picture already turning into a poor mans Jimquisition? Also do we need more Americans telling us what to be mad at in other countries? Clearly Bob isn't up to date on his Australlia VS Video game news.
 

Miroluck

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Zachary Amaranth said:
Windknight said:
Buying sex from prostitutes gives you health back, at the cost of your money.
Wait, it actually still does that? I haven't solicited a hooker in the game except for the 100% (which I still haven;'t got because "bored now" and I started playing online), so I didn't notice if it did, but I thought they pulled that out of the games in the PS2 era.
Nope. That noble tradition is still there. (Was in IV/EfLC, at least).
 

Batou667

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1) Dear Bob, please realise that you're not the authority on who is and isn't allowed to be upset about what. Because two can play at that game, and I've decided that the people who created the "ban GTA" petition are being entitled and over-reacting.

2) I too use the "It's not collusion, just capitalism" line, when complaints are made about tropes or depictions or lack of diversity. If this is an apparently unsatisfactory thing to say in that case, why is "LOL capitalism" something we ought to just suck up when directed at the other side?

3) If bowing to the demands of a vocal minority and altering your policies accordingly isn't censorship, would Bob also take an apolitical, c'est la vie stance if homophobes successfully got Gay Times pulled from the shelves? Or if racists convinced Target to stop selling rap and R'n'B CDs because of sensationalised claims about "glorifying thug culture"? Would the importance of the issue still be contingent on the relatively small Australian market, the smaller-yet market share of Target, and the age of the products being banned, OR would it become a matter of principle?

4) So, permitting violence against prostitutes is bad and "normalises" real-world sexual violence, but on the other hand the depictions of gun violence, vehicular violence, and gang crime that the GTA series is utterly dependent on, is something only a nut like Jack Thompson would try to ban! No cognitive dissonance here, boss!
 

Something Amyss

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Schadrach said:
I think it just didn't get the coverage necessary to draw attention. Because I certainly have a problem with that too.
It got coverage on here, where everyone's flipping tables and accusing Target of censorship. The thread made two pages and died. Honestly, that should more tell which has more value to posters here.
 

WhiteNachos

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C.S.Strowbridge said:
Cranyx said:
Yes you can kill hookers in GTA, but do you know who else you kill? Everyone.
From 4:20 into the video... "Sex workers are consistently one of the most at risk professions in the world..." Comparing what happens to them to what happens to everyone else is not a valid comparison.
Why? They don't become more injured and their deaths aren't more important.

C.S.Strowbridge said:
Constantly showing them as victimized without any real attempt to address the problem makes it so that people in the real world are less likely to combat the real problems.
They don't show them as more victimized. And I sincerely doubt that showing people as victimized all the time makes people less likely to help. If that were true we wouldn't have charity drives for Africa.