2404 - PC Gaming - Pioneering in 2005: Sex & Violence in games

Pioneering in 2005: Sex & Violence in games

Posted by twonha October 13, 2005

The following was originally intended as a reply on another article covering some of the same basic topics. I turned it into this article, hoping it'll be read by more people, perhaps spark some discussion and provoke some thoughts that would otherwise remain hidden. I express my personal opinions and views, and occasionally I do so without saying it's just my own opinion - keep this in mind while reading. Hope you enjoy it though!

Pioneering in 2005, how developers are handling sex and violence
The videogames industry started as something to toy with, test your reflexes, discover worlds on your own instead of watching others do it on the big screen. As time went by graphics have become more realistic, and games are right now heading for parts the movie industry, a comparable industry, has already nailed down a couple decades back. I think right now within this incredibly young, underdeveloped industry game developers are just experimenting and toying with what is and isn't good, what can and cannot be done, what does and what doesn't make sense. Some make steps in the right directions, some make a couple of wrong turns. Emotions and interaction are key words in this next generation of videogames, but it's old stuff compared to written or movie entertainment. But for now, sexual content and violence are the topic of the current generation, and coupled with ratings they've become somewhat of a problem. What's the right way to go?

Personally, I feel that the problem has many different sides. On the game (development) side we're trying to find the right way, but in this new industry everyone's pioneering at the same time, and a lot of people are pioneering in different directions:
- First, developers just keep putting violence in games where it's not really needed. An example would be the headshots in Grand Theft Auto 3: limbs being blown off in games that are not of a mature level seems over the top to me. There is often no need for such a display of gore and it only adds to actually rewarding the player for using excessively violent behaviour. Games are violent because violence is something we enjoy, it ties in with our basic instinct of hunting, and many games display graphical violence in an effective way, as something to reach for emotions - think Call of Duty, or DOOM 3 - where the violence is supposed to make you afraid, fear for your buddies' or your own lives even. Effective violence goes for an experience, it belongs in something that stimulates our survival instincts, but in my personal opinion excessive violence does nothing but promote excessive violence. I'm not drawing a line here - I'm not saying games shouldn't feature limbs being blown off, what I'm arguing is that the level of violence depicted in the game should actually fit with the rest of the game.
- Second, sexual content is also often not at all needed yet put in by developers. God of War, San Andreas and Fahrenheit contain nudity that not only looks incredibly fake (technical constraints, but it draws the player out of the game), it is in fact almost comedic in execution and often useless as well. Fahrenheit for instance shows full frontal nudity (albeit very briefly), it shows elaborate sex scenes, but the game would have been just as good - if not even better - had it covered up these scenes in a tasteful way. Sex and nudity are, in my opinion, not something you throw around lightly, they're things we should be careful with in our society. The human body is beautiful, sex is a thing of love, if the videogame industry turns it into a minigame then that's just atrocious if you ask me.
- And so I come to a third point. Many a videogame is of such awful quality in the sense of storytelling and character interaction / development that sex, as an emotion-driven experience, just doesn't make sense in a videogame. In San Andreas for instance you have sex because it's a minigame - not because you actually care about the characters (unless there's something wrong with you!). Games like Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne on the other hand contained sexual scenes that were perfectly written and built into the storyline, and Fahrenheit also does its best to at least have the sex scenes make some sense, offer a reason, a belonging for them in the game.

I think the industry should take note of the games that do it well, and build on that. At the same time it should take note of the games that do it badly, and keep that out of future games. I just mentioned Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne, both of which handle sex and violence absolutely perfectly on all accounts (no senseless excessive violence, sex displayed as a thing of love / beauty, human body is honored as such and the storyline builds up the world instead of it being the other way around), with on the other side being games like God of War and San Andreas, which turn sex and violence into silly minigames.

Those are some things the videogame industry as a whole should take a look at, should think about and should develop on. Now, accepting that games are broadening their content as storyline becomes a more intricate part of the experience, I move on to the consumer side, the ratings.

Pioneering in 2005: how ratings are handling sex and violence
The ESRB thinks 16-year olds can handle their violence, 18-year olds can handle a lot of blood and gore. But only of those 18 and up can handle a slight bit of nudity. Personally, I think the ratings for violence should be slighty stricter in the upper spectrum, while the ratings for sexual content should be looser.

Excessive violence should, in my opinion, be removed from the industry altogether. If game developers won't do it, then give ratings a try - excessive violence either for no-one, or for the highest tiers (AO) only. The excessive violence doesn't suit games, doesn't suit our morals and values in any way, doesn't suit society or humanity.
Slight nudity on the other hand, or covered sexual content as in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, is not something to be frowned upon. Such scenes are fine. Fahrenheit, then, is pushing the limits with its sexual content, but it's still a far cry from porn, especially when taken in its context. Something for 16 and over, then. Lastly, the downright tasteless minigames with nudity, such as in San Andreas and God of War, are much like excessive violence - they do not make games a more mature entertainment platform, they turn something adult into something childish. Not the way to go.

Closing comments
As said before, this is a young, quickly developing industry we're talking about and everyone's still experimenting and toying with all sorts of content. I think that, with several topics being covered and giving trouble, now would perhaps be a good time for the rating system people and consumers (ESRB, for instance, and consumer-representing groups) and the developing industry (game developers and publishers, retail market) to come together and figure out where they want games in general to go, and how to accurately rate that for the society the games are released in. Sex and violence aren't things we should shun altogether, for videogames are heading towards becoming a mature form of entertainment for all ages - including older people who don't get much of a kick out of jumping on turtles - but they're also not things we should turn into games void of meaning and emotion. Our children should not go about thinking a headshot and a f#ck are as normal as jaywalking and buying a carton of milk - if games are going to give us alternate worlds to live in, at least make sure those alternate worlds don't alienate gamers from the one that matters most, the real world.