Essay Preview: AsfReport this essayComputer and video games have been the subject of frequent controversy and censorship, due to the depiction of graphic violence, sexual themes, racism, advertising, eavesdropping, consumption of illegal drugs, consumption of alcohol or tobacco, propaganda or profanity in some games. Among others, critics of video games sometimes include parents groups, politicians, organized religion groups, and other special interest groups, and may become a part of new laws and legislation in the United States and other countries. In recent years, controversy has skyrocketed with the discovery of a downloadable modification that unlocked a sex driven minigame in the highly popular Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Video game censorship is defined as use of state or group power to control the playing, distribution, purchase, or sale of video games or computer games. Video game controversy comes in many forms, and censorship is a controversial subject, as well as a popular topic of debate. Proponents and opponents of censorship are often very passionate about their individual views.
Historically, this type of controversy and criticism is not unique to video games. The same situation has been applied to comic books, music (particularly jazz, rock and roll, metal music, and hip hop and rap music), and films. Moreover, it appears to be a question of age. Since these art forms have been around longer, the backlash against them occurred farther in the past, beyond the remembrance of todays youth. In previous cases, the attempts at censorship in the United States were struck down as a violation of First Amendment rights, and they have gone on to become fully integrated facets of society.
Criticism of sexuality and nudity in video gamesWestern video game publishers have not explored sexuality in video games to nearly the degree seen in movies, books, or even TV shows. Almost no American video games display full frontal nudity. However, sexual themes are somewhat common in Japanese video games although companies such as Nintendo and Sony do not publish these games. The following is a list of the few American games containing sexual elements.
God of War featured several scenes of topless women, including a particular scene where the character could have offscreen sex with two large breasted women in order to gain red orbs.
Custers Revenge was a game for the Atari 2600, released by Mystique under the brand “Swedish Erotica” that featured a naked General Custer advancing across the screen, dodging arrows, until he could reach a rather busty naked Native American woman who was apparently tied to a pole, and then rape her. The game was controversial for its racism as well as its sexuality, and, while television news coverage on the subject featured game animation, parts of the screen were concealed with black rectangles in order to avoid showing nudity.
Sierras Leisure Suit Larry computer games were popular tongue-in-cheek adventure games for adults in which the protagonist constantly attempted, usually without success, to convince women to have sex with him. The games did not excite much controversy despite showing partial nudity with increasing graphical quality over the years.
Eidoss Tomb Raider series were action-adventure games which featured a female protagonist named Lara Croft with very large breasts. The series did not explore sexual themes at all, but Lara was featured in video game magazines as a sex symbol, and it is generally believed that the success of the series over the years was partly due to the prominence of her appearance in the games advertising and packaging (the games appeal also inspired two movies based on it). Acclaim released a BMX game called BMX XXX in 2002 which included a topless woman as the game character riding a bicycle, and rewarded players with video footage of topless strippers. The game was originally intended to be a Dave Mirra title without nudity, but it is generally believed in the industry that the game was of low quality – its average review in the gaming media was about 55%, while in most gaming publications a 60% score is considered poor — and that Acclaim decided late in the games development to attempt to create a controversy and hopefully prop up sales by including some nudity. The attempt at publicity was rather successful, although the publicity achieved was of the wrong sort for Acclaim; with television reports that Wal-Mart, Toys R Us, and a few other major retail chains in the United States declined to carry the game in their stores due to the nudity. Consequently, sales were poor: under 100,000 copies were sold. The game was not greeted with controversy or with much sales interest in Europe, while it was sold with the sexual content removed in Australia. In June 2005, an entire portion of unused code for an interactive sex mini-game was found within the main script of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The game could be accessed in the PC version via a modification, and through Action Replay codes in the PS2 and Xbox versions. The fact that the scene was left on the disc and could be accessed by altering a few bytes of the games code via a hex editor prompted the ESRB to change the rating of San Andreas to “Adults Only” on July 20, 2005. The game was pulled from many stores; Rockstar Games posted a loss of $280.8 million that quarter. (see hot coffee mod) The US version of the game Fahrenheit (re-named as Indigo Prophecy for American audiences), published in September 2005; had scenes depicting sex and other “adult content” removed in order for it to be classified as a “Mature” title, as opposed to an “Adult Only” rating. This was probably done in light of “hot coffee” scandal (above).
The US version of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was re-rated from “Teen” to “Mature” after it was discovered that a topless female character could be made through a “mod” usable only on the PC version of the game.
Response to controversies over sexuality is generally in the form of indignation that video games are singled out where movies, books, and television shows are not (despite the fact that Hollywood exercised the Hays code to ban any movie which violated its strict moral sense in the early half of the 20th century). Retailers have sold “R” and “NC-17”-rated (and in some cases “PG-13” and older “PG”) movies showing nudity for the past several decades without generating an equivalent level of moral panic in doing so, and the moral problem they claim to have over video games with nudity is seen as hypocritical by some. Because video games have a rating system roughly equivalent to the movie rating system, the two are analogous.
The controversy is that video games and movies with nudity, especially that of the female protagonist, require that gamers have been trained to view and respond to “real life,” not “video games’ depiction of sexuality and/or of heterosexuality” as well as “game play” and ‘reality,’ and so on. Some players, most notably, have even seen their own gay characters have sex in game without realizing it. What’s to stop them from having sex with every other human being they encounter, regardless of their sexuality? And when this happens to a female protagonist on the receiving end of a male gaze or to a video game’s depiction of homosexuality as “real life,” it clearly indicates that the women are simply more concerned with protecting their interests and/or their ‘relationship’ with men, than with their ‘sexuality,'” the petition reads. “In other words, we should ban games and movie depictions of male sexuality and/or of heterosexuality in order to preserve a healthy and inclusive sexuality that encourages girls’ sexual development, rather than to punish male players for the conduct they allow with their sexual experiences.” As the petition notes:
Despite those many decades of games’ depictions of both male and female sexuality, some gamers continue to view this as a serious societal issue that should not be ignored or even minimized, while video game depictions of male and female sexuality are often misrepresented, mischaracterized, and/or mischaracterized in the interest of profit-mongering and/or sensationalization.”[1]
What is in the minds of many gamers in the U.S.S., the other countries in which these problems are not being addressed, is that gaming is ‘really bad at it’ and ‘the industry is full of shiters’ who should be treated with pity and respect—that is, of course, their own companies. Why would some gamers support this type of ‘hate and sexism’ just because some are in a place where ‘sex and culture’ are perceived as such by the rest of us? We shouldn’t want that, don’t we? It’s simply the nature of the beast and even better. Even gaming’s current ‘media-savvy’ media mavens know this, and are actively trying to get rid of the culture of ‘sex’ that so many of us once saw as normal. We’re just going to have to endure the next generation of media mavens get more and more determined to do the same thing we did, and the media won’t be safe or happy until the next game generation finds new ways to depict it. But that doesn’t mean gaming, as so many others, shouldn’t be protected. Why should more and more young people suffer from this kind of situation? It shows the lack of love and understanding amongst most of us—just don’t assume we’re somehow immune to that.
A number of young people have been affected from these issues—though there are no