Censorship defeats the purpose, or broadens audience?

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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