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[redcrayon]

Seeing as only a small minority of games manage to display even basic believable dialogue of relationships and friendships with any success, it's no wonder that sex scenes are still portrayed incredibly poorly. Feels like sometimes developers are trying to run before they can walk. I'm perfectly OK with sex in games as long as it's done well and stays true to the story and characters, rather than dropped in for quest rewards and never mentioned again.

That's a different argument to 'is there anything wrong with blatant titillation in games' though. Again, for me the answer is 'is it a coherent and fitting part of the game.' If a game is clearly about crude violence and pretty people having sex for little reason, then cool. Hundreds of those films get made too, nothing wrong with knowing your audience. If it's a relatively thoughtful character piece and the female lead suddenly decides to strip off for a shower scene ten hours in while moaning in apparent ecstasy and waving her arse and tits at the camera, it might feel a bit out of place. Context is key.

 

[RpgN]

Here's the thing, when games involve guns and violence, having blood and gore is fitting to the game. When it becomes excessive, it gets criticized.

Point two, violence is often justified in the games for their stories and settings. You have to use violence because aliens are about to take over the world. Or a mafia just killed your girlfriend. Or a country is starting war.

'Nudity' is often not justified. You see it randomly in a scene that is supposed to be serious. You see female soldiers or fighters who are supposedly wearing outfits that doesn't make sense, while men are dressed appropriately. It's fucked up logic that is being pushed in games to give some eye candy.

Point two, 'nudity' is very harmful to the portrayal of women and the effects that are derived from it. It is very personal when women are targeted 99% of the time. It hurts many and it enforces the notion that women are not welcome or the games are not made for them.

About the comparison between violence and nudity...often times it is not this is more important than the other. It's just that violent games are produced better or they are easier to produce when a developer is trying to justify the reason behind violence. We rarely see games that try to focus on 'nudity', build a game around them or find a way to use them in a story. A great example of nudity done right would probably be Catherine. Story is about a guy being in a relationship and coping with important decisions.

Personally, I hate when games become too violent. I avoid most of them. I don't play many of them. Usually I go for lighter ones, or ones that involve fantasies, monsters and ones that have less gore.

About this being only a US problem. Bullshit. Remember when Square Enix had a survey about Final Fantasy XV? Remember the EU response? The biggest response was about Cindy's outfit! Fans from EU wanted a more moderate outfit! US gamers' response was not related to Cindy or too much eye candy.

That's just an example. I would just like to point out that it is not exclusive to US. I myself am also from EU, in one of the most open countries when it comes to sex (guess which). That kind of answer is a very simple way of looking at the situation.

 

[TC McQueen]

The only time games seem to be censored for America, is when Japanese developers release their games in the states. That isn't us asking for that, that's them thinking we aren't ready for it yet ( just like in the 80s/90s when most Japanese games had all religious content removed ). Same thing happening with DOAx now. We aren't banning the game in the states, there is a vocal minority who want the game even! But Tecmo doesn't want to release it for us.

I think it's more "some of that stuff is really creepy because the characters look/are underage and would cause problems if we left it in."

The DOAx thing is Tecmo saying "the amount of shit we'll get for releasing this game in the US is absurd, so we won't bother," which I can respect, because the game's existence results in shit being flung their way no matter what.

 

[nakedeyes]

I think it's more "some of that stuff is really creepy because the characters look/are underage and would cause problems if we left it in."

The DOAx thing is Tecmo saying "the amount of shit we'll get for releasing this game in the US is absurd, so we won't bother," which I can respect, because the game's existence results in shit being flung their way no matter what.

You are right. I didn't bring up the whole underage aspect cause my post was already getting too long.

Honestly though, Tecmo could release DOAx digitally and they would probably be fine. I honestly think it might be more of a localization cost thing, as the first 2 games came out here and the only "outrage" was some cheeky comments about it. They just sold like shit ( as other have pointed out, they sold like shit most everywhere, not just US ).

 

[EvilAlPacino]

I welcome it and see nothing wrong with it.

 

[xRaizen]

I went to Venezuela for a couple months a couple years back, and the difference over there was night and day. Seeing a beer advertisement with a woman wearing almost nothing is a regular occurrence there, one of the buildings in the downtown district of Maracaibo even had a huge poster of a very hot girl promoting a beer. TV shows and commercials were also very, um, "sexy" (?).. I don't know how to really say it xD but yeah it was very different than from the US. But, ironically, I didn't see much violence on TV until late at night on movie channels.

 

[Dangansona]

There's a lot of good posts on this page, but I just wanted to point out that mainstream media in America still hates the violence in the games just as much as the sex. And other countries actually censor shit in games.

This is what happens when adults who don't play video games run the government. They let lobbyists and news scare them into banning everything.

 

[Zaptruder]

I feel parts of this thread are trying to equate the situation in 2005 with the situation in 2015, when they're actually very different.

In ~2005, we were having debates around topics like Hot Coffee, Jack Thompson/Leland Ye, and Mass Effect, where the question was clearly "Why is there sex in these toys for children!!!"

That era has long since passed in the West and having nudity and sex in games is a completely non-issue on that basis.

For example, let's take The Witcher 3. It's a game where you can have graphic, full nudity sex scenes, can sleep with multiple women, and can even sleep with multiple women at the same time. There was no real controversy around this. If you look at the only "sexy thing" controversy the game actually had, it was that people felt Ciri's heels were impractical for Witcher fighting.

As you may notice from this, the debate in the West in 2015 revolves around the context of sexuality rather than sexuality itself.

This is why the whole Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 scenario is ridiculous. Feel free to go through this 365 post thread entitled "Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 (PS4/Vita) - Debut Gameplay Teaser Trailer & Screenshots" and point out all the times people complain about the game. If you don't want do, I've already done so and can tell you there are none. Someone mentioned that there was one other lengthy thread where they saw a couple of complaints, but we're looking at a very low ratio of complaints happening here if at all. The reason is that the context of the game is clearly to gawk at women in swimsuits who are at the beach, so there's nothing about mostly naked women that actually seems out of place here.

Now let's move on to a character who generated a lot of controversy: Cindy from Final Fantasy XV. So the premise of Final Fantasy XV is that you're going on a brotastic road trip on your way to an arranged marriage.

Let's imagine that FF15 was a modern WRPG instead and the developers wanted her to be a sexual character. When you first meet her, she'd likely be fully dressed, maybe with her regular mechanic's jumpsuit somewhat unzipped. You'd then be able to flirt with her, go on a date to a nearby restaurant, and then have sex with her. In the sex scene, she'd wander out in the outfit she has now and make some terrible pun about how "I'm dressed to fix a different kind of problem today." and then she'd end up stripping off the top and you'd see boobs and an actual sex scene. This is the type of thing that would go unnoticed in 2015, because it's fully contextualized and generally expected.

However, this is a T-rated Japanese game where they actually view their audience as potentially having lots of children, so instead of putting that in or even having implied sex scenes when a guy is on his way to get married, we just have her sitting there mostly naked as part of her regular work attire. There doesn't appear to be any attempt to actually contextualize this either beyond the game just going "LOOK!! BOOBS!!!". When Tabata was asked about her character, it's not like he sat down and went "Well we're making a T-rated game, but it's in the style of R-rated road trip movies, and thus we're attempting to get into that raunchy nature while still keeping it appropriate for younger teens. As such, Cid runs a series of mechanics shops called 'Tube Lube' that are essentially like Hooters. This is why Cindy is dressed this way. It will be clear in the full game." Instead, his answer was basically "Our artists wanted to make a hot chick and I didn't want to bother coming up with a reason for it."

The defense of nudity/sexuality in the 2005 era and the complaints about arbitrarily sexualized outfits in the 2015 era are actually coming from the same place. It's about people not wanting to be treated like children.

Great post. I can totally get behind better contextualization to sexualization in media.

But I'm also very skeptical that most people would have this as their main thrust of why sexualization in modern games is bad.

 

[LifeBrandRobot]

It's an American thing, I think. Which sucks because they are the biggest western market so whatever they say pretty much goes.

 

[MikeyB]

America.

 

[Shenmue]

Like many people have said it's a dumb American thing that's ingrained.

That said, games should definitely do more nudity and sex, but it should include both sexes. So not just tits and ass but also dicks and abs. There should be more mature sex scenes with couples going at it and not just what usually boils down to a striptease by the female character.

 

[Sai-kun]

I think we're okay with nudity/sex when done well, but I know I'm pretty bored of nude/nearly naked women and the (straight) male gaze in games because there's so much.

Bring on the gay male gaze.

 

[SomTervo]

It's an American thing, I think. Which sucks because they are the biggest western market so whatever they say pretty much goes.

No.

 

[Lime]

I feel parts of this thread are trying to equate the situation in 2005 with the situation in 2015, when they're actually very different.

In ~2005, we were having debates around topics like Hot Coffee, Jack Thompson/Leland Ye, and Mass Effect, where the question was clearly "Why is there sex in these toys for children!!!"

That era has long since passed in the West and having nudity and sex in games is a completely non-issue on that basis.

For example, let's take The Witcher 3. It's a game where you can have graphic, full nudity sex scenes, can sleep with multiple women, and can even sleep with multiple women at the same time. There was no real controversy around this. If you look at the only "sexy thing" controversy the game actually had, it was that people felt Ciri's heels were impractical for Witcher fighting.

As you may notice from this, the debate in the West in 2015 revolves around the context of sexuality rather than sexuality itself.

This is why the whole Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 scenario is ridiculous. Feel free to go through this 365 post thread entitled "Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 (PS4/Vita) - Debut Gameplay Teaser Trailer & Screenshots" and point out all the times people complain about the game. If you don't want do, I've already done so and can tell you there are none. Someone mentioned that there was one other lengthy thread where they saw a couple of complaints, but we're looking at a very low ratio of complaints happening here if at all. The reason is that the context of the game is clearly to gawk at women in swimsuits who are at the beach, so there's nothing about mostly naked women that actually seems out of place here.

Now let's move on to a character who generated a lot of controversy: Cindy from Final Fantasy XV. So the premise of Final Fantasy XV is that you're going on a brotastic road trip on your way to an arranged marriage.

Let's imagine that FF15 was a modern WRPG instead and the developers wanted her to be a sexual character. When you first meet her, she'd likely be fully dressed, maybe with her regular mechanic's jumpsuit somewhat unzipped. You'd then be able to flirt with her, go on a date to a nearby restaurant, and then have sex with her. In the sex scene, she'd wander out in the outfit she has now and make some terrible pun about how "I'm dressed to fix a different kind of problem today." and then she'd end up stripping off the top and you'd see boobs and an actual sex scene. This is the type of thing that would go unnoticed in 2015, because it's fully contextualized and generally expected.

However, this is a T-rated Japanese game where they actually view their audience as potentially having lots of children, so instead of putting that in or even having implied sex scenes when a guy is on his way to get married, we just have her sitting there mostly naked as part of her regular work attire. There doesn't appear to be any attempt to actually contextualize this either beyond the game just going "LOOK!! BOOBS!!!". When Tabata was asked about her character, it's not like he sat down and went "Well we're making a T-rated game, but it's in the style of R-rated road trip movies, and thus we're attempting to get into that raunchy nature while still keeping it appropriate for younger teens. As such, Cid runs a series of mechanics shops called 'Tube Lube' that are essentially like Hooters. This is why Cindy is dressed this way. It will be clear in the full game." Instead, his answer was basically "Our artists wanted to make a hot chick and I didn't want to bother coming up with a reason for it."

The defense of nudity/sexuality in the 2005 era and the complaints about arbitrarily sexualized outfits in the 2015 era are actually coming from the same place. It's about people not wanting to be treated like children.

Sogood.gif

Totally agree with this and the clearing up of how to understand the topic of sexualization. Context is so important. Great post, Nirolak.

 

[SomTervo]

Wait a second. Why is OP banned?

 

[Dangansona]

Guys, it's not just am American thing.

 

[Corpekata]

Wait a second. Why is OP banned?

Shit posting in another thread.

 

[Karkador]

People tried opening the discussion of violence in games again a few years ago, when the E3 presentation of the year (I think it was 2012?) seemed like reel after reel of brutally violent games - much of it with little else to show than "hell yeah, you can viscerally beat the shit out of a guy in this".

But the modern discussions about violence in games gets shouted down by canned "Shut Up, Jack Thomspon" responses, as if we're still really stuck on discourse from 1999.

So then how can you indict socially-minded gamers for "not caring about violence in games" when other people try to shut those conversations down even faster than the ones about sexism?

 

[SomTervo]

Guys, it's not just am American thing.

This.

Shit posting in another thread.

Cool.

Spoiler

As in, not cool at all.

 

[Uthred]

No.

No to your No, while Victorian sensibilities may arguably have been the genesis of some of it it has a lot more to do with a combination of American puritanism and America's cultural imperialism giving it a position of media dominance in the western world. This can be seen in that the oddly schizophrenic treatment of violence and sex is mirrored in other mainline American media whereas in continental Europe and the UK their mainstream media has a more balanced mix. You can see the same thing in several EU countries censorship laws and rating systems. In short, while its origins may have been British its now enshrined in American moral values. So yes, its "an American thing".

 

[muteki]

I feel parts of this thread are trying to equate the situation in 2005 with the situation in 2015, when they're actually very different.

In ~2005, we were having debates around topics like Hot Coffee, Jack Thompson/Leland Ye, and Mass Effect, where the question was clearly "Why is there sex in these toys for children!!!"

That era has long since passed in the West and having nudity and sex in games is a completely non-issue on that basis....

In general I would agree this is the mindset of most of the people that would post on a specialized internet forum about games. I still think the public at large is incredibly critical of sexual content in games, just that for most of them, they are entirely clueless to a games content when the game itself isn't upfront about it.

People buy random shit for their kids all the time that they shouldn't, like Witcher 3 or GTAV, both with explicit sex scenes. But that makes up what, 1% of game time? If they actually advertised that more, there would be more backlash. But largely uninformed people have no idea what the content of the media is they are buying, even if the rating label explicitly states it.

In the grand scheme of things that may be a smaller % of the overall sales of a game, but if GTAV or Witcher 3's more risque scenes ended up on network morning news shows, there would be just as much outrage as Hot Coffee.

 

[DICKS AHOY]

Guys, it's not just am American thing.

One of the few times censorship (arguably) made a game funnier.

Still a tad bizarre since I think we get the actually show uncensored here regardless.

 

[cosmicblizzard]

Not all forms of sexualization are equal.

Sexual objectification is a bad thing.

Sexualization in itself is not a bad thing.

Jack Thompson's campaign was focused on GTA, a series that gives little to no context towards violence against civilians. And gamers and the industry as a whole laughed at him.

How is that any better than sexual objectification?

 

[AtomskEater]

I love sex in games and I love sexy games. Most devs, however, don't really explore sex much beyond sexy costumes or titillation. That's fine, but there's so much complexity involving the act and everything around it that I'd like to see someone take a stab at making a sex game that's not entirely focused on spank bank material. Make me uncomfortable, make me think.

I actually had this in mind when I entered the thread. A game focused entirely on the discovery of sex, and it's completely unsexy. It is a charming, somewhat silly exploration of the nearly universal experience of being a little kid trying to figure out how things work. This is one way that sex tends not to be explored in games. Give me Parent Simulator 2016, where your kid asks uncomfortable questions and you're torn between being honest of going "how the hell did you learn that word?!"

Possibly because sex is extremely complex ( short of the actual mechanics ). It has major physiological effects, health consequences (std), huge life consequences (children) for the individuals, it changes the relationship the two parties have, etc. All the above comes with sex unless you want your video games to just "bang hoes bro". So that is probably why it hasn't been done well in games.

I would actually really love to see a game that deals with even some of this. We're seeing more and more games where you can get into relationships with various support characters/party members/NPCs, but for the most part the romance is pretty rose-tinted and even if it's something like interspecies sex they don't really discuss the mechanics of how two different lifeforms supposedly with differing genitalia really... do it. Don't they have differing bacteria and immunities? Call me a perv but the mechanics of alien sex would be really interesting to study IMO, so I kinda hate when media with aliens and relationships with aliens kinda just glosses over that.

...I feel like I've spoken too much. Maybe my ideas in general are childish, but this is the kind of stuff I'd be interested in doing if I had the skills to make games.
This and Senran Kagura with a mostly male cast.

You must have reeeeally bad sex if you compare ot to poop.

Pooping feels pretty great, though. As does using qtips on my ear, even though apparently you're not actually supposed to do that. Heck the police.

 

[Enigmatic Rainbow]

Same thing on GAF. Post gif of Kratos ripping some dude's head off: no problem. Post boobs: banned.

What if you Photoshop male nipples over the female ones.

 

[twobear]

Personally I don't see the cultural status quo as being relevant anyway. If no evidence exists that sexist media promotes sexist behaviour, then what is to be gained by pushing for the removal of said media? Restricting what media can portray doesn't result in a better society, it only results in media that never shocks or challenges -- and while shocking/challenging people is not necessarily 'good' by default, it's certainly something that media should be allowed and expected to do.

This is a bit of a non sequitur, because there's nothing shocking or challenging about something like DOAX. It's cheap pandering and little else. And I don't think that modifying our expectations of games lowers the amount of shocking and challenging that the media is capable of doing either. By fairly tacit agreement, for instance, we've decided that use of the word 'negro' is unacceptable in casual social settings. Has the capacity for art to shock declined because of that?

 

[udivision]

How come every random thread about something potentially negative in another country ends up as a discussion about sex v violence in the US? Never understood that either.

 

[SomTervo]

No to your No, while Victorian sensibilities may arguably have been the genesis of some of it it has a lot more to do with a combination of American puritanism and America's cultural imperialism giving it a position of media dominance in the western world. This can be seen in that the oddly schizophrenic treatment of violence and sex is mirrored in other mainline American media whereas in continental Europe and the UK their mainstream media has a more balanced mix. You can see the same thing in several EU countries censorship laws and rating systems. In short, while its origins may have been British its now enshrined in American moral values. So yes, its "an American thing".

Where did Puritanism come from?

Oh yeah, the Church of England.

Where did the most historically recent giant empire come from, which enforced its culture on nations around the world (inc. bringing it to America)?

Oh yeah, Britain.

Which nation at which time formulated the most gender-normative, stereotyping publications and pamphlets about women and sexuality, which were widely read and still broadly adhered to today?

Oh yeah, the Victorians in Britain (coinciding with point 2).

 

[Lime]

Jack Thompson's campaign was focused on GTA, a series that gives little to no context towards violence against civilians. And gamers and the industry as a whole laughed at him.

How is that any better than sexual objectification?

Jack Thompson was campaigning for literal censorship of video games. I am not seeing why you bring him up here?

 

[cosmicblizzard]

Jack Thompson was campaigning for literal censorship of video games. I am not seeing why you bring him up here?

The post you responded to brought it up.

But you're right, no one is campaigning for censorship here except when it depicts minors, and even that's failing. Doesn't stop people from being happy when censorship does happen though.

 

[AndreH121]

This reminds of of that Hot Coffee mod in Grand Theft Auto where you could mass-murder countless innocent people but 2 adults having a relationship caused the biggest uproar.

 

[igordennis]

I feel parts of this thread are trying to equate the situation in 2005 with the situation in 2015, when they're actually very different.

In ~2005, we were having debates around topics like Hot Coffee, Jack Thompson/Leland Ye, and Mass Effect, where the question was clearly "Why is there sex in these toys for children!!!"

That era has long since passed in the West and having nudity and sex in games is a completely non-issue on that basis.

For example, let's take The Witcher 3. It's a game where you can have graphic, full nudity sex scenes, can sleep with multiple women, and can even sleep with multiple women at the same time. There was no real controversy around this. If you look at the only "sexy thing" controversy the game actually had, it was that people felt Ciri's heels were impractical for Witcher fighting.

As you may notice from this, the debate in the West in 2015 revolves around the context of sexuality rather than sexuality itself.

This is why the whole Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 scenario is ridiculous. Feel free to go through this 365 post thread entitled "Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 (PS4/Vita) - Debut Gameplay Teaser Trailer & Screenshots" and point out all the times people complain about the game. If you don't want do, I've already done so and can tell you there are none. Someone mentioned that there was one other lengthy thread where they saw a couple of complaints, but we're looking at a very low ratio of complaints happening here if at all. The reason is that the context of the game is clearly to gawk at women in swimsuits who are at the beach, so there's nothing about mostly naked women that actually seems out of place here.

Now let's move on to a character who generated a lot of controversy: Cindy from Final Fantasy XV. So the premise of Final Fantasy XV is that you're going on a brotastic road trip on your way to an arranged marriage.

Let's imagine that FF15 was a modern WRPG instead and the developers wanted her to be a sexual character. When you first meet her, she'd likely be fully dressed, maybe with her regular mechanic's jumpsuit somewhat unzipped. You'd then be able to flirt with her, go on a date to a nearby restaurant, and then have sex with her. In the sex scene, she'd wander out in the outfit she has now and make some terrible pun about how "I'm dressed to fix a different kind of problem today." and then she'd end up stripping off the top and you'd see boobs and an actual sex scene. This is the type of thing that would go unnoticed in 2015, because it's fully contextualized and generally expected.

However, this is a T-rated Japanese game where they actually view their audience as potentially having lots of children, so instead of putting that in or even having implied sex scenes when a guy is on his way to get married, we just have her sitting there mostly naked as part of her regular work attire. There doesn't appear to be any attempt to actually contextualize this either beyond the game just going "LOOK!! BOOBS!!!". When Tabata was asked about her character, it's not like he sat down and went "Well we're making a T-rated game, but it's in the style of R-rated road trip movies, and thus we're attempting to get into that raunchy nature while still keeping it appropriate for younger teens. As such, Cid runs a series of mechanics shops called 'Tube Lube' that are essentially like Hooters. This is why Cindy is dressed this way. It will be clear in the full game." Instead, his answer was basically "Our artists wanted to make a hot chick and I didn't want to bother coming up with a reason for it."

The defense of nudity/sexuality in the 2005 era and the complaints about arbitrarily sexualized outfits in the 2015 era are actually coming from the same place. It's about people not wanting to be treated like children.

Excellent post.

 

[@Wreck]

its a matter of perspective

 

[Famassu]

I don't know. I see plenty of muscular, modelesque, handsome hero type males in videogames that are the kind of guys that women would go nuts over in real life. But yes, there is certainly a larger focus on sexualized women in games that are made to cater to the large male audiences who naturally like to see such things. I just don't have a problem with it because men enjoy seeing sexy women. It is simply that cut and dried for me. It is what it is.

It's not just the looks. It's the way the camera often focuses and/or lingers on tits & ass, how the female characters are put in sexy poses (for the camera to focus on their tits & ass), how women are treated when there is nudity & sex involved, how some female characters sometimes sound like they were doing porn with all the exaggerated oohs & aahs, it's the role of the women when there is sex etc.

And I'm sorry, but your whole "men enjoy looking at women and that's that" argument is pretty dumb. I'm a man. I enjoy looking at women, but men tend to go totally overboard with it (creepily staring at women in public & obsessing about some celebrities). Men do have self control and not anything & everything needs to cater to our enjoyment of the female body. I still find some of the portrayals of women in media so horribly done that I'd rather be without it than have it ruin an otherwise (more or less) enjoyable product. I can enjoy sexy scenes, sexy women and sex in fiction when it's done well (somewhat surprisingly, Jessica Jones, a comic book tv adaptation, most recently had some fairly well handled sex & female sexuality that didn't boil down to MEN LIKE TITS AND ASS AND FUCKING WOMEN). But when it's done ridiculously horribly like Quiet in MGSV, then it does bother me. I enjoy women, bud DAMN I'm not that pathetic & desperate that they need to do that kind of pandering in a game about war & shit just for my enjoyment as a man.

 

[Freeman]

I don't get why you are all so repulsed by the female form.

When Blanka is revealed for SFV slapping his own green ass the world will finally know peace and Capcom will make bank selling it as DLC.

 

[Imperfected]

A story generally involves a conflict of some sort. Violent conflict is very primal and easy to understand. Furthermore, it's often difficult (from a suspension of disbelief standpoint) for people to understand other forms of conflict not becoming violent when they are taken to a dramatic extreme, which is often the case in game narratives, for obvious reasons.

Under normal circumstances, sex and nudity aren't forms of narrative conflict. (They can be, though this often gets into problematic territory itself, such as possessive sexual behavior and objectification.) Sex and sexuality can still be a part of narrative, and even be useful narrative tools, but it's much easier to construct a story with a traditional dramatic conflict without them than it is without violence.

 

[Lime]

The post you responded to brought it up.

I'm sorry I'm tired today :lol

But you're right, no one is campaigning for censorship here except when it depicts minors, and even that's failing. Doesn't stop people from being happy when censorship does happen though.

Yeah, I don't think the initial Jack Thompson equivalence to criticism of sexual objectification is applicable at all here. He was laughed out because of his extreme claims (video games directly make you violent) and his extreme crusade for censorship. That doesn't mean that there isn't a discussion to be had about violence in games (there is!), it just means that this guy was a nutjob working to damage the games industry.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

Where did the most historically recent giant empire come from, which enforced its culture on nations around the world (inc. bringing it to America)?

Oh yeah, Britain.

Russia?

 

[twobear]

It's not just the looks. It's the way the camera often focuses and/or lingers on tits & ass, how the female characters are put in sexy poses (for the camera to focus on their tits & ass), how women are treated when there is nudity & sex involved, how some female characters sometimes sound like they were doing porn with all the exaggerated oohs & aahs, it's the role of the women when there is sex etc.

And I'm sorry, but your whole "men enjoy looking at women and that's that" argument is pretty dumb. I'm a man. I enjoy looking at women, but men tend to go totally overboard with it (creepily staring at women in public & obsessing about some celebrities). Men do have self control and not anything & everything needs to cater to our enjoyment of the female body. I still find some of the portrayals of women in media so horribly done that I'd rather be without it than have it ruin an otherwise (more or less) enjoyable product. I can enjoy sexy scenes, sexy women and sex in fiction when it's done well (somewhat surprisingly, Jessica Jones, a comic book tv adaptation, most recently had some fairly well handled sex & female sexuality that didn't boil down to MEN LIKE TITS AND ASS AND FUCKING WOMEN). But when it's done ridiculously horribly like Quiet in MGSV, then it does bother me. I enjoy women, bud DAMN I'm not that pathetic & desperate that they need to do that kind of pandering in a game about war & shit just for my enjoyment as a man.

Quiet is just ridiculous. I know that Kojima has a side that indulges in this kind of nonsense but the amount of gratuitous camera shots lingering on her cleavage or watching her splay herself out like a cat is eye rolling. I'm almost tempted to say that he does it on purpose to make you feel uncomfortable but I'm not completely convinced.

 

[SomTervo]

Russia?

Yeah I was being a bit facetious on that point - Britain certainly weren't the only empire around and I just said 'historically recent' so that's a pretty big net which includes Russia's impact. Britain had a pretty big impact on the USA though, with lots of immigrants going there.

 

[Kirye]

I'm not completely against nudity and sex, but only in certain aspects. Similar to movies, i'm bothered if nudity is thrown in just for the sake of nudity. If an event involving sex could have been avoided but was thrown in anyway for flavor it basically kills the point.

That said, games just don't have the tastefulness for either to be regarded well.

 

[SomTervo]

Quiet is just ridiculous. I know that Kojima has a side that indulges in this kind of nonsense but the amount of gratuitous camera shots lingering on her cleavage or watching her splay herself out like a cat is eye rolling. I'm almost tempted to say that he does it on purpose to make you feel uncomfortable but I'm not completely convinced.

The worst thing about her is that if you strip away all the tit/ass shots + cat play and clothe her normally (your imagination for the former, mods for the latter) her character development, motives and actions are actually mainly decent.

Quiet is the kernel of a solid character, utterly ruined by terrible art direction and cinematic direction.

 

[Familienoberhauptvogel]

Yeah I was being a bit facetious on that point - Britain certainly weren't the only empire around and I just said 'historically recent' so that's a pretty big net which includes Russia's impact. Britain had a pretty big impact on the USA though, with lots of immigrants going there.

I'm not really involved in the discussion just the "most historically recent" made me scratch my head a bit.

Britain did have a big impact on the USA but the pilgrim father left because they were unwanted in Britain. I'm not well versed in the whole thing beyond that so I won't try and refute anything else.

 

[Seven4sses]

To be fair, the only game recently to do sex in a decent matter was Wolfenstein: The New Order. Maybe I'm wrong, but the scene wasn't trying to come off like it was straight out of a brazzers porno. That's what made it okay for me.

Most of the time, sex is shown like it's just a minigame. God of War did it, then the whole Hot Coffee thing happened, and even after that, the act of sex is not a major focus unless it's for instant gratification. We have a long way to go before this gets better and people decide to finally complain about something else.

 

[SomTervo]

To be fair, the only game recently to do sex in a decent matter was Wolfenstein: The New Order. Maybe I'm wrong, but the scene wasn't trying to come off like it was straight out of a brazzers porno. That's what made it okay for me.

Most of the time, sex is shown like it's just a minigame. God of War did it, then the whole Hot Coffee thing happened, and even after that, the act of sex is not a major focus unless it's for instant gratification. We have a long way to go before this gets better and people decide to finally complain about something else.

The Order had a pretty realistic sex scene, and The Witcher 3 has great sex scenes from a context/equality perspective, even if they are woefully directed in themselves.

 

[cosmicblizzard]

This is why the whole Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 scenario is ridiculous. Feel free to go through this 365 post thread entitled "Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 (PS4/Vita) - Debut Gameplay Teaser Trailer & Screenshots" and point out all the times people complain about the game. If you don't want do, I've already done so and can tell you there are none. Someone mentioned that there was one other lengthy thread where they saw a couple of complaints, but we're looking at a very low ratio of complaints happening here if at all. The reason is that the context of the game is clearly to gawk at women in swimsuits who are at the beach, so there's nothing about mostly naked women that actually seems out of place here.

I don't disagree with your premise at a base level, but I don't think threads here are necessarily a good thing to go by as far as controversy goes as it attracts the kind of posters that don't care. You can see it in announcement threads or even import OTs. The original Dungeon Travelers and Criminal Girls threads had little to no complaining. Only when threads were made about the controversy did it become controversial here.

 

[Freeman]

I'm not completely against nudity and sex, but only in certain aspects. Similar to movies, i'm bothered if nudity is thrown in just for the sake of nudity. If an event involving sex could have been avoided but was thrown in anyway for flavor it basically kills the point.

That said, games just don't have the tastefulness for either to be regarded well.

GoT constantly bothers me with it, the way it does it is weird, usually mixed with violence in a sick way. Every change they make to the book is to add more violence and nudity.

Games do it in a more juvenile way to me, most of the time its just dumb, why would anyone care if the girl in DoA have big boobs or that Mika slaps her ass as a joke?

There are plenty of entertainment out there with shirtless guys with huge abs, all Marvel movies have that for example, never bothered me.

 

[weshes195]

Sex is the most beautiful thing on earth

Um, lol what? I am guessing you only watch the best of porn? Cause not only is actual sex not the most beautiful thing on earth, it is pretty gross. Now, the two people (or more lol) having the sex probably think it is, but if you're the one watching it, no it isn't.

 

[Mesoian]

To be fair, the only game recently to do sex in a decent matter was Wolfenstein: The New Order. Maybe I'm wrong, but the scene wasn't trying to come off like it was straight out of a brazzers porno. That's what made it okay for me.

Most of the time, sex is shown like it's just a minigame. God of War did it, then the whole Hot Coffee thing happened, and even after that, the act of sex is not a major focus unless it's for instant gratification. We have a long way to go before this gets better and people decide to finally complain about something else.

The bigger problem is games that use the act of sex as some sort of bizzare minigame reward like mass effect. It really deflates whatever emotional connection you're supposed to form with these characters when eventually you ding out on their emotional meter and you're "treated" to a terrible sex scene which looks more awkward than loving, or even physically pleasing.

It works in wolfenstein because it's not some hamfisted extension of gameplay. The relationship is a concrete one, so they can play up the romance and have sex simply be an element of it instead of being the end all be all of what their relationship is supposed to be. It sort of works in fallout 4 because the bonding feels more natural as it's based on your acts in the game and not on some predetermined list of prerequisites (although the like/dislike system in fallout makes no sense at times). Games don't normally do this because, let's face it, most game developers don't give a shit about building emotional bonds.

But you're right, no one is campaigning for censorship here except when it depicts minors, and even that's failing. Doesn't stop people from being happy when censorship does happen though.

Honestly, I would have 0 problem with the weird slightly creepy anime gal games if the girls weren't so very obviously under 16. That's not okay.

When Blanka is revealed for SFV slapping his own green ass the world will finally know peace and Capcom will make bank selling it as DLC.

Spoiler

I won't lie, as someone who was really enjoying Mika and planning to main her, I'm disappointed by the changing of her ultra.

 

[petethepanda]

The "violence and sex & nudity" debate kind of suggests more mature (or at least less immature) material than Japanese Boob Games like DOAX. I'm all for sex and nudity to be less stigmatized in games but I can see why the JBGs would still stir up controversy. (Edit: And I'm not necessarily saying said boob games shouldn't exist, I just wish people would treat them like what they are.)