A Devolution of Risk and Risque, in picture form!

 [source]

An interesting find I had regarding the same company I'd posted about earlier and their romance scenes. With the recent release of Dragon Age II by this company, some of the fans over on Bioware's forums are complaining that they're holding back on the romantics to appease those people who had claimed a scandal on Mass Effect back in 2007. There definitely is a gradual change in what's shown as one progresses through the games. Having played each one-- and yes, romanced a character in each one-- I can attest to the comic's legitimacy. Here's to hoping Mass Effect 3 doesn't actually have xenophiliac costumed roleplaying.

But it does raise the question of why Bioware has steadily become more tame. Is it an artistic choice? Or is it a corporate one? Do we actually want nudity, or is it more about the suspension of belief while playing our games? I can deal with a character walking away from an explosion all badass, but cuddling in bed with every scrap of clothes and weapons still on? Who does that? It takes me out of the moment and reminds me, "Hey, this is a game." Kind of ruins the roleplaying game genre.

Just something to ponder. But the topic of what roleplaying games means and what emotions they stimulate or are/aren't supposed to stimulate is a completely different kettle of worms. I think this topic is best left at "something to think about" for now.


Posted by Josh Wallace

Lara Croft: Bimbo or Just Drawn That Way?

“It was a defining moment for me as I watched her strut seductively across my screen and into the sex symbol status that would turn the gaming world on its head. Fast-forward eight years through the evolution of next-gen hardware, multimillion-dollar budgets, and massive acceptance of games in pop culture. Still, Lara Croft continues to personify an ongoing culture clash over gender, sexuality, empowerment, and objectification.” - Writer Zoe Flowers on Lara Croft's icon status in 2005.

Lady Lara Croft, originally intended by her designer to be sexy “only because of her power” holds the Guinness Book of World Records record as the most popular video game heroine.  She is the combination of most male fantasies- she is a sexually attractive woman, powerful, capable of taking care of herself, smart, rich, self-sufficient, and capable of taking down hordes of enemies quickly.  Although her measurements have gone up and down throughout her evolution, the average set of measurements put her at 38"-24"-24'.  Is the image of women portrayed in video games what young men really expect women to look like?  While the video gaming industry still seems to believe that only young men play video games, in reality, 40% of the video game audience is female.  Berrin Beasley and Tracy Collins Standley found in their study of video games that 28 per cent of females in the game were portrayed as sexual objects; as a matter of fact, the women portrayed in these games must be both strong and beautiful- it is not simply enough that they be strong intellectually, emotionally and, they have to also be able to kick the ass of a large group of foes with their hair looking perfect.  The greatest problem with video games is that there is an emphasis on the breasts and buttocks.  With women making up a larger and larger population of the video game consumer population, why is this emphasis continued?  Why is the emphasis still on the tits and ass of the characters rather than on their beauty and brains?  

It is interesting to note that the characters in the games are sexual objects that are often engaging in acts of violence.  Is it more acceptable to see a woman shooting nonstop at an undead army or take a chainsaw to a zombie if her boobies are jiggling at the same time?  Why is the sexualization of the video game heroine more palatable to the general public when accompanied by rampant violence?  The voyeuristic feeling of control given in a video game, the over arcing sense of control when dealing with the feminine character, and leading her into situation wherein the player controls whether or not the character lives or dies appeals to many, and can also exercise a sense of chivalry in a weirdly twisted manner. 

For further review, please check out:

Beasley, Berrin, and Tracy Collins Standley. "Shirts vs. Skins: Clothing as an Indicator of Gender Role Stereotyping in Video Games." Mass Communication and Society 5.3 (2002): 279-93.

Tragos, Peter. "Monster Masculinity: Honey, I’ll Be In The Garage Reasserting My Manhood." The Journal of Popular Culture 42.3 (2009): 541-53. 

Harrison Kirsten, Martins Nicole, Ratan Rabindra A. and Williams Dmitri C., A Content Analysis of Female Body Imagery in Video Games, 2009. It can be read here: http://dmitriwilliams.com/femalebodies.pdf

Posted by Franki Simms 

Sex or Sexuality: which is "worse"?

I've explained my home life in an earlier post, regarding my parents (love 'em) and their idea of repressing ideas with which they did not agree. This included changing the channel when they heard a "bleep", or checking CD collections for the infamous "Parental Advisory" tag (to which I responded by simply folding the art booklet inside out). Playing "bad" videogames meant turning down the volume with them in the house, and watching "bad" movies simply didn't happen under that roof, if one cared about seeing the ending. It was the way they decided to do things.

And I know that there are similar parenting styles abound, with varying variables among them. Perhaps one mom can't handle any violence but loves to cuss like a sailor. Maybe one dad prohibits anything sexual, but popping heads in Call of Duty is his favorite pastime. Variables.

But something that I've seen not only in parenting but in society as a whole is the appeal of sexuality. It's almost unavoidable. TV commercials have sexed-up models for things as simple as deodorant brands, and even Doritos ads get in on the sexwagon. Seriously! Doritos? I need sex to sell me on the snack I eat when watching reruns of the Colbert Report by myself?

But I'm not here to bash the use of sexual undertones and overtones. It's a fair marketing strategy. Even the Jonas Brothers benefit from it despite their purity rings, long as there's no statutory rape via advertisements. Rather, after analyzing the Mass Effect "sex" scandal in my last post, I wanted to ponder on something bigger:

Why is a sexy girl trying to lure me into a product any more acceptable than seeing an actual boob or two?

Seriously. To give a comparison to that M-rated, scandal-inducing Mass Effect side-boob scene, other videogames have sexed-up women in them that keep their "clothes" on the entire game, such as Soul Calibur IV. This fighting game received a "Teen" rating, meaning it's one notch less "bad" than the likes of Mass Effect and is available in this country for anyone thirteen years of age or older to purchase. This is the game with this, this, and this. This game and genre's absurd sense of what women wear while fighting was even spoofed by Rooster Teeth's Immersion series, shown here:

While clearly a sketch intended for comedy, the video does raise some valuable points on the absurdity of females in fighting games, as well as, briefly, the hypocrisy of seeing only women as overly sexualized when many male characters get the same treatment-- they just don't have boobs.

Regardless of whether or not a "naughty" spot is seen, sexual images are still tantalizing. They evoke emotions caused by hormones because we're animals. Take movies as an example. A movie like Austin Powers, with its plethora of sex jokes, innuendos and acted out-- albeit exaggerated-- sex acts receives a PG-13 rating because there isn't any actual nudity. But, does the actual image of a nude woman give any more of an effect than sounds and semi-censored images of acts we find sexually stimulating?

I found an interesting piece on what determines film ratings, and it wasn't what I expected. Here's the excerpt I want to share from it, but feel free to read the entire article; it may surprise you.

Movies need contain only one of the following to be rated R.

1. The f-word as a verb
If the word is used only as an expletive and three times or fewer, it will likely be granted a PG-13 rating. But even one use of the f-word as a verb, even as a participle, guarantees an R.

2. Tobacco use
In 2007, the MPAA announced that parent reviewers would factor tobacco use when rating movies. Universal Studios went a step further and banned tobacco products in movies rated G, PG and PG-13.

3. Hard drugs
Regardless of the rest of a movie’s content, any depiction of illegal drugs will earn a film at least a PG-13 rating; but a graphic depiction of hard drug use will typically be slapped with an R. No less than Roger Ebert has called this particular criterion “a wild overreaction.”

4. Nudity
This is a tricky one: Shirtless men are allowed in G-rated films, while topless women usually earn at least a PG-13; but naked men nearly always garner an R-rating (see: Sideways), while fully naked women are routinely seen in PG-13 movies (see: Titanic, rated PG-13). And you can forget about sex. Even non-graphic depictions of love-making will render an otherwise tame movie unacceptable for 16-year-olds (see: Never Let Me Go).

5. Extreme and graphic violence
A movie has to be approaching the sadistic to get an R-rating. Think torture. The Dark Knight and the three Lord of the Rings films are all very violent and rated PG-13. The uber-gory Saving Private Ryan, not to mentionPassion of the Christ, “one of the most violent movies ever made” are both rated R, despite the fact that many people well over 17 found the imagery disturbing to say the least.

Plenty to ponder here regarding our values surrounding drugs, sex and violence. While the Titanic example is in fact one of a naked woman in a PG-13 film, I can't think of any others off hand to classify as "routinely", but maybe I should just see more movies. And the fact that topless males can get into G-rated movies brings back the idea that Rooster Teeth had brought up in the video above: why is sexualizing men not as bad as sexualizing women? And on that note, hy are we so afraid of penises, even when not in a sexual nature?

I guess my point in all this is... What's the difference? Sight isn't the only sense we can use. If I hear exaggerated moaning, I get what's trying to be conveyed. If I get a joke about boobs or penetration or balls, I still get that sexuality. What's the difference between seeing a naked woman's chest and this?

Food for thought. (Get it?)


Posted by: Josh Wallace

Porn vs. "Torture Porn"

"Torture porn" is a phrased used to describe such movies as the Saw and Hostel series.  Movies where human beings suffer horrible, agonizing deaths at the hands of people who do it for pleasure or some screwed up moral framework.  Pornography is… well, you know what that is. 

The question I want to bring up is this: Why does our society consider such violent displays of murder as acceptable in the mainstream culture, but also considers pornography as unacceptable in the mainstream culture.  By mainstream, I of course mean what is advertised, openly discussed, and found in normal television channels or movie theatres.

Is sex worse than violence? Is nudity worse than gore?  Is it really fair for society to censor one but not the other?  

I feel that one of the most important things to look at with regard to this is the psychological responses of watching the material.  One objection to torture movies is that watching such gross material can lead to desensitizing towards violence against real human beings.  A team at Iowa State University did a research project titled, "The Effects of Video Game Violence on Physiological Desensitization to Real-Life Violence," and concluded that violent video games do lead to desensitization against real-life violence.  However, whether or not this translates over to movies, or whether this can translate to overt behavior is contentious.   

The concern here is that if you sit around watching people get mutilated for entertainment, perhaps you may not see much pity in real people suffering in real scenarios.   

Alternatively, a study done by Dolf Zillman of the University of Indiana and Jennings Bryant of the University of Houston researched whether viewing pornography had any effect on one's actual relationships.  The study claims, "Repeated exposure to pornography results in a decreased satisfaction with one's sexual partner, with the partner's sexuality, and with the partner's sexual curiosity. There was a decrease in the valuation of faithfulness and a major increase in the importance of sex without attachment."  Despite this claim, such conclusions do not necessarily agree with popular psychology magazines like Psychology Today, heralding porn as a way to, "foster emotional and sexual intimacy."  Needless to say, like violence, porn struggles with agreement on its psychological effect.  However, the original concern here is that if you are getting sexually stimulated by nameless persons with surgically enhanced bodies, do you lose your desire for your real life partner?

It seems in both cases we're dealing with a potential problem of desensitization.  Furthermore, desensitization, if it actually happens, seems to matter in both dosage and context.  The torture movies bombard the viewer with violence and gore with a negligible plot, while porn does the same with sex.  In both cases, there's no characters the audience really empathizes with, thus robbing the violence of its tragedy and the sex of its intimacy.  Perhaps the entire question could be avoided if we cared for movies with real meaning and purpose instead of worrying about what visual content was in it.

Nevertheless, finding strong data is surprisingly difficult with either case.  Both cases seem either ignored, or exaggerated for moral reasons.  Furthermore, it's no surprise that popular media gives very little help on the issue when both the movie and pornography industries are multi-billion dollar industries.

So what do you think?  Is this stuff harmful? Is one better than the other?  Should society censor them?  Should we just personally avoid them?  Or are they actually helpful for us?

Sources:

http://psychcentral.com/news/2006/07/28/video-games-desensitize-to-real-violence/137.html

http://www.beliefnet.com/Love-Family/Relationships/Marriage/The-Elastic-Bed-Syndrome.aspx

"You, Me and Porn Make Three," Psychology Today magazine, publication date: Sep/Oct 2005

~~Eric Basham

Rhetoric in the News: Appealing to the Bible Belt of America

In 2007, Bioware released an ambitious role playing videogame titled Mass Effect, which looked to push the envelope on the believable by focusing on character interaction and enabling the player with the power of choice. These choices ranged from the mundane to the extreme, from whether or not you wanted to disconnect a call with your superiors to the life or extinction of an entire species. The plot plays out based on each and every decision the player, as Commander Shepard, makes, whether he even realizes it or not.

The game itself is a 20-50 hour experience, depending (again) on what you decide to explore or not explore. There is the required set of missions that assemble your team and pursue the main plot, then there is a vast amount extra to check out, from exploring new planets, finding artifacts and learning about the game's universe by speaking with teammates after missions, politicians before them or natives during. Needless to say, there is plenty of stuff in this game to keep a player interested, as every interaction varies from the last.

Now, hopefully this all sounds lovely. But what does it have to do with rhetoric in the news? Well, what if I told you that within that 20-50 hour experience of killing bad guys, deciding fates and learning about a wide-ranging fictional universe, there were two-- two-- chances for a 30 second sex scene? And what if I told you that those sex scenes could involve an alien? Or alien lesbians?

These were the scenes that Fox News decided to focus upon in their story regarding the then newly released Mass Effect. To put their emphasis into perspective, each of these possible scenes takes up at most .00000417% of the total time played in one campaign. But it's not Fox News's job to advertise media products; they're simply there to report the news. So here's the report from beginning to end:

Now, there are two audiences to address here: those who haven't played the game but are still interested in what was so wrong about this news story, and those who have played the game and already know what was so wrong about this news story. First, I'd like to address those who have not played the game, so we all know the context of what's being said.

As mentioned, the scenes are thirty seconds long, and there are two possible ones: a quickie with a "Consort" after a mission to save her reputation-- should you go the "renegade" bad boy route-- and a more meaningful experience with one of your squadmates before the game's final, possibly suicidal, mission to an unknown planet in an unexplored system. In addition, your Shepard character can be either a male or a female, and your possible partners vary according to that; for example, the female lead of your squad, Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams, "doesn't swing that way" if you are a female Shepard. Same goes with Lt. Kaiden Alenko for the male Shepard. In this sense, even though the game revolves around your choices, you aren't a God in a sandbox; your collective minor decisions build up the narrative, and the story progresses accordingly. There is no "want to have sex?" button.

Furthermore, they are possible scenes, in the sense that they are not automatic and require-- you guessed it-- decisions to be made. Getting to one of these scenes requires constant interaction with the character in question, kinda like how getting laid in real life requires constant interaction (most times). It requires a relationship to develop through dialogue, and then there's even more dialogue before and after the scene regarding the relationship your Shepard has with the character in question. Plus, funny enough, your romantic interest could die at a point in the game in which Shepard must decide who to leave with a special tasks group. Didn't see that one coming, did ya romancers?

Actually, how about I stop trying to explain it to you. Here is the ending scene for male Shepard and Ashley Williams, full and uncut (and yet perfectly safe for Youtube). The other possible scenes vary only in their dialogue before and after; the actual animations and "full digital nudity and sex", as described by Fox News, does not change.

There you have it. NSFW? Perhaps, depending on where you work. I'd say watching this at a church's receptionist desk may get you fired, but other than that, it's probably not too much to worry about. I've seen more stimulating stuff in PG-13 movies.

But now that Mass Effect players and non-players are on relatively the same page, I have a bone to pick with Fox News and their choice in rhetoric. And to save myself from ranting, I'd like to hit them in bulletpoints:

• The lead title: " "SE"XBOX? " Witty, sure. But it's already setting up a false interpretation of the game as an interactive porno. This is only fortified by the subtitle: "NEW VIDEO GAME SHOWS FULL DIGITAL NUDITY AND SEX". It's not full digital nudity-- I see no boobs!
• Dr. Cooper as an expert: Sure, she has some informed and important things to say about desensitization. But what she has to say on the game itself is not only misleading, but entirely incorrect. She states that the women in the game are being seen as "objects of desire" and that it's a man deciding "how many women he wants to be with". If an object of desire requires me talking to her for about an hour's worth of playing time for thirty seconds of playing time's worth of sex, then what does that make prostitutes?
• Also, I love how, when Cooper is asked if she's even played the game, her response is "hahahaha nooooo!" Could you imagine this scenario playing out in another story? "Thanks for coming to the program, (name of expert here), and talking with us about the State of the Union. First of all, I'd like to ask: did you watch it?" "Hahahaha nooooo!" Would that expert's opinion even be allowed on air after that?
• The panel: Why were they even brought on? None of them had played the game, or seemed to have any actual knowledge about it besides a briefing beforehand saying "there's sex in this videogame". The first man on the panel calls Mass Effect "Luke Skywalker meets Debbie Does Dallas". There are so many things wrong with that statement that I can't even... I refuse. Why does he know what Debbie Does Dallas even is, anyway?

There was a glimmer of hope, however, coming from the final man on the panel. He said something I wholeheartedly agree with:

"At the end of the day... it's up to parents to control what their kids are seeing."

Strangely enough, this point was brushed off by the other panelists, giving the equivalent of an argument to "well I can't be a parent ALL the time". The exact point that they were trying to make is lost on me, aside from "this is bad". Should government censor what's allowed in a game? Should the scene be toned down? Why should it get an Adulst Only rating instead of Mature? What about the violence in the game or the foul language or the themes of corruption and breaking laws for the greater good? Misinformed or not, I failed to see much of a point to what most of them were saying. Which brings about the question...

What was the point of the story?

Here's my take. I have a pair of grandparents who watch Fox News for hours a day. They have their favorite programs that they record if they aren't there, but most every day, they're watching it live. And during a story, they give their thoughts to anyone who can hear. Lesbians getting married in Connecticut? Grandma says that's terrible and quotes the Bible. Man in custody for a murder? Grandpa says that's terrible and quotes the Bible.

This sort of story is geared towards people like my grandparents, and the rhetoric is based on them. They aren't going to care that the game is a major feat in graphics, narrative and player interaction in the videogame industry. They're going to care, instead, about the degrading of society's values and how, after they die, we're all going to ruin what used to be a nice neighborhood. While appealing to that crowd is Fox News's business model for getting ratings, consider the trickling effect. People like my grandparents have kids who have kids. Or perhaps other viewers are parents themselves. The game now, unjustifiably, has the label of "Luke Skywalker meets Debbie Does Dallas", and one of these parents' dependents who wanted the game for so much more than a brief glimpse of a pixelated butt (trust me: if he/she wanted something like that, the internet has so much better for so much less effort) may not get to play it based upon a hugely false perception.

It's up to parents to determine what's okay and not okay for their children. But misinformed news stories lead to misinformed parents, and misinformed parents make misinformed decisions. News stations need to get their ratings, but shouldn't news be about an appeal to knowledge rather than emotion?

- Josh Wallace

Kill ‘Em, But Don’t Fuck ‘Em

The American view on sex and violence was once quite eloquently expressed by a dear friend of mine in a tequila-fueled stupor while discussing sex, violence and politics: “It’s ok to kill ‘em all… but for God’s sake, don’t fuck anyone.”

Is it the fact that we are a country founded by Puritans, and then reborn in blood through a Revolution that makes us the way we are?  The first permanent settlers to the United States were the Puritans; however, it is not without a little bit of tongue-in-cheek humor that we look back now at the diaries of 17^th century Maine midwife Laurel Ulrich, who’s diaries show us that 38% of the deliveries she attended were of children conceived before the marriage.  In The Hypocrisy of Puritanism, Dana Ward reminds us that “Puritans are often credited as the first American individualists, and at the same time the Puritan predilection to control others and how they live has been identified with an American social cultural tendency to oppose things such as alcohol and open sexuality.”  It is somewhat telling that the Puritans had strict rules regarding the disciplining of spouses if they did not perform their sexual marital duties, in accordance with 1 Corinthians 7 and other biblical passages- and what were these methods of discipline?  The stocks, the pillory, the ducking stool, whipping, the public wearing of letters representing your crime- or, in some cases, having the letter branded on your forehead; a hot awl through the tongue for speaking against the church, and of course, the old standby- execution.  So if you didn’t fuck ‘em right, they killed you. 

Consider that some of the most popular video games of our time base entire advertising campaigns, or even take pride in, being name “the bloodiest game ever”, or “your mom will hate this”, but Mass Effect having an optional romantic subplot lead to rumors that the game “…can be customised to sodomise whatever, whomever, however, the game player wishes," and "with its ‘over the net’ capabilities virtual orgasmic rape is just the push of a button away."   Really?  In the midst of blowing up a world, developing a relationship was the worst thing a player could do?  The violence is ok… but a tender moment the night before what could be their deaths is just too much. 

American sociologist Steven Seidman states, “We are born with bodies, but it is society that determines which parts of the body and which pleasures are sexual.  Also, the classification of sex acts into good and bad or acceptable and illicit is today understood as a product of social power; the dominant sexual norms express the beliefs of the dominant sexual groups.

Picture a naked female breast.  Is this in and of itself a dirty thing?  To some it is, but if you are a baby- its food.  To the four year old, the penis is for peeing- and panic ensues when he is trying to figure out how mommy pees without one- or where her penis went (I am not even going to TRY and deal with all the Freudian aspects here, that is a totally different class).  Somewhere along the way parts are no longer parts but become anthropomorphized things with minds of their own- men blame their penis for bad decisions while women have the old standby of “I was drunk.”

As funny as the anecdotal evidence can be to discuss when it comes to sex, violence, and the differences between cultures, why is there such a disparity between European countries and the United States?  Is it because it has been so long since there has been a truly violent conflict on American soil?  America reeled at the Oklahoma City bombing , and the attacks on September 11; however, culturally, we have not been subject to the horrors of war on our soil since 1865.  However, most of Europe spent the years between 1914 and 1918 and then again from 1939 to 1935 dealing with the ravages of war- food rations, destroyed buildings, bodies, bombs, blood spatters on infrastructure and front steps; neighbors going missing in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again.  When you have generations which live day in and day out through the horrors and hell of war in their back yards, when you have a history of war as long as most of the countries in Europe, it loses its glamour and appeal.  Since the days of the city states, when the men of Sparta trained their sons to be soldiers first and foremost, young men have dreamt of honor and glory on the field of battle; in our modern times, the gladiatorial fields of combat tend to come with screaming fans, cheerleaders, and most importantly, safety equipment.  In Europe, the glamour and glory and taste for war is gone- this is not the case in the United States.

According to "Where We Stand, while the United States leads the world with 203 murders per 200,000 15-23 year olds, most European countries barely break the 150 mark.   We lead the world in premature deaths due to obesity, cardiac arrest, and cancers, and 60% of Americans believe we need a fundamental change in our health care system.  But life and death?  What does this have to do with sex?  In Sweden, 46.4% of all children are born out of wedlock, while in the US that number is only 21.5%.  However, even with all these little bastard children running around, only 8% of American families are headed by a single parent as opposed to only 4% of families in the United Kingdom. Sex education is more customary in Europe than America, where conservatives oppose more than just abstinence based sex education on the grounds that it encourages increased sexual behavior. The statistics prove the consequences of this policy among American teens; 65% of American teens admit to being sexually active, with 12% of males and 16% of females have not engaged in intercourse by the age of 20- but only 56% of them are using birth control.  Compare this to France, which is traditionally viewed as a hotbed of unbridled sexuality, where only 34% of teens are sexually active, and 9% of males and 25% of females have not had intercourse by the age of 20 with higher rates of use of birth control.

So what is the bottom line?  The bottom line is that while Americans are still Puritanical in our approach to sex, perhaps there is hope for us yet.  As we continue to develop as a global community in our current age of "sexual discovery", where everything is available for review, perusal and experimenting with through the wonders of the internet.  When wars and battles are fought by young men thousands of miles from the battlefield sitting at computer screens in dark rooms with air conditioning, Red Bull, and who go home to their own couches at the end of a day in battle.  We need to ask our,selves when we as a culture, as a society, and as Americans determined that it really was all right to kill everything in sight and have the profile of weapons as a part of the popular culture, but to still run away from the though of sexual health education, sexual identity, and in general... sex.

Posted by Franki Simms 

Censorship defeats the purpose, or broadens audience?

 [source]

Here's a comic strip from two and a half years ago that crossed my mind. It's an homage to one of my favorite current-generation videogame titles, Gears of War 2, by Epic Games. If you aren't familiar with the game, I'll sum up it in terms of its violent content with one thing and one thing only:

It has chainsaws attached to its guns.

If you just pictured the epitome of awesome, you aren't the only one. The series has sold strongly based on its advanced graphics, unique cover-based battle gameplay, and its ridiculous amount of gore and manliness. In the games, you can chainsaw your way through an enemy with a loud, bellying roar. You can attach a grenade to an enemy's head and roll away before it explodes, thus getting a witty one-liner from your character, like, "'Sup bitches?" or, "Mother'd love a face like that!" You can "curb stomp" a downed enemy, thus crushing his skull with a sick "pop" sound. Blood splatters the screen when most of this happens as well, just to add to the effect.

So, does censorship of this content take away from the intended experience, or is it a good implementation to expand its audience? In Gears of War 2, Epic Games decided to give the option of turning on a censor, which blanked out any cusswords-- of which there are plenty-- and got rid of any and all blood, which results in very comical chainsaw animations ("WAAHHGBRGHRHJG!!!" *falls over like he fainted*). Since this is optional, I'm inclined to think it's a good addition in terms of options with which to play the game. But upon a second look, I'm not entirely sure.

First of all, yes, it's optional, but in a house where, say, the sound of cusswords means the media in question is going to be taken away, it's not so much "optional" as it is "a required option". My house was one of these. Though, when Gears 2 was released, I no longer lived there, my little brother did. He always had it turned on.

Still, good thing, right? Well... Upon further inspection, all this is doing is reinforcing the negativity in the household toward "bad" subjects, and my family's inclination toward censoring altogether, rather than discussing the hows and whys of the need to censor ourselves from "bad" things. Rather than, say, "Now you know this is what's expected of you, right?" we usually just got the item in question taken away. Sure, the message of "no cussing" or "no gore" were still present, but repressing and discussing a topic, to me, are two separate things. The former is absolute authority, the other is a more flexible learning environment. But who am I to judge? I'm no parent yet.

Still. If parents don't want a kid to be toying with such "bad" concepts as saying the F-bomb when one is shotgun'd in the side and decapitating a barely breathing person with the inside of a torque bow, why are they purchasing a game called "Gears of War" for their children? Turning on the censor is the equivalent of saying that the thoughts behind the media are okay, long as you shelter your innocent ears. Behind those instances of "****" in the subtitles, we know the words they're saying aren't "love". When a chainsaw is causing a guy to go into a spasm before tripping over his own two feet, we know the characters aren't playing tag. So why bother censoring the final result when the intent is still so obviously present?

That's my take anyway. Maybe I'm just too defensive of my games. But they tend to be the scapegoat for children doing bad things, and while that may hold some merit, I'd like to think that halfway parenting and repression of ideas to which children are being clearly exposed also account for problems with the youth.


Posted by: Josh Wallace