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Jack Thompson Weighs in on Oblivion
Posted by
Zonk
on Mon May 08, 2006 10:59 AM
from the zonk-smash dept.
from the zonk-smash dept.
Robotron23 writes "Jack Thompson has commenced his attack on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion by seeking appearances on several talk shows. A press release announcing his availability speaks of Take Two not having 'learned its lesson' over the Hot Coffee scandal, before continuing to detail the issues surrounding Oblivion's re-rating, in particular regarding nudity - concluding that the game content will spawn 'an even worse disaster' than occurred during Hot Coffee."
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Bethesda Responds To Oblivion Re-Rating 341 comments
Gamespot has details on Bethesda's response to the ESRB for their (some would argue) knee-jerk reaction to fan-added elements of Oblivion. From the article: "There is no nudity in Oblivion without a third party modification. In the PC version of the game only - this doesn't apply to the Xbox 360 version - some modders have used a third party tool to hack into and modify an art archive file to make it possible to create a mesh for a partially nude (topless) female that they add into the game. Bethesda didn't create a game with nudity and does not intend that nudity appear in Oblivion." They go on to state they submitted a 60-page document detailing the violence in the game. If anyone is at fault here, I think it's the ESRB.
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ESRB Changes Oblivion's Rating to 'Mature' 282 comments
kukyfrope writes "Perhaps reacting based on the debacle that was the 'Hot Coffee' scandal, the ESRB today changed the rating on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion from Teen to Mature. From the article: 'The content causing the ESRB to change the rating involves more detailed depictions of blood and gore than were considered in the original rating, as well as the presence of a locked-out art file or 'skin' that, if accessed through a third party modification to the PC version of the game, allows the user to play with topless versions of female characters,' said the ESRB in a release."
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Somone poke Jack in the eye for me if you see him. (Score:5, Funny)
Video games don't make me fell violent, morons do.
Re:Somone poke Jack in the eye for me if you see h (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Somone poke Jack in the eye for me if you see h (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
What does Take 2 have to do with that? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What does Take 2 have to do with that? (Score:5, Funny)
of course he's only talking out of his rear end without bothering to do any research
Um, dude, I think you answered your own question without realizing it.
Parent
And what lesson should they learn for Hot Coffee? (Score:5, Insightful)
The "Lesson" is that Hillary Clinton is a stooge or at least bottom feeding to get conservative votes and people like Jack Thompson have declared war on an entertanment industy accusing it of erodeing our morals. Media reflects our culture not the other way around, "fix" our culture and the desire for simulated violence will go away on it's own.
Just my 2 cents...
Parent
Re:And what lesson should they learn for Hot Coffe (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the real issue with the 'older' audience is that they've forgotten these key periods in a young boy's life. I say boys because in general people aren't afraid about girls morals being eroded. Its like there's a magical shield around girls that say they can't be violent offenders or mass murderers. Thats another flaw in their logic.
Not only that, they've mistakenly attributed the realism in video games as an increased threat to our childrens morals than the 'harmless' nature of games in the old days, like double dragon (The sole activity of the game is killing people).
If Jack really wanted to solve the problem, he'd come up with a new teenage pass-time that they actually want to do more than games.
Just to end this thought:
"Part of the research challenge is to try to learn what positive changes affecting children born most recently are associated with the reductions in both victimization and offending"
Quote relates to the severe decrease in crime from teenagers recently.
http://www.nichd.nih.gov/new/releases/americas_ch
Parent
Re:And what lesson should they learn for Hot Coffe (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree: I think most people remember *exactly* how they were when they were younger and, now that they're older and more mature, are appalled by their own behavior and want to prevent other people from making the mistakes they made. It's just like stage mothers. One of my best friends is a hardcore Christian who is against drugs, homosexuality, and sex before marriage. Know why? Because when we were in college together she was spending every weekend drunk and coked out of her skull, screwing other girls. I keep pointing out to her that she wouldn't be where she is now if she hadn't done those things -- in fact, if she hadn't she'd probably be more like me, raised low-key liberal Christian with no particular urge to bust loose during college, and now as an adult completely permissive towards other people's rights to do whatever they want and vaguely agnostic, rather than who she became: right-wing Christian woman. Needless to say, she does not agree with me at all, because she, like Jack Thompson, thinks she has the right to tell other people how to live their lives. Which is, fundamentally, what this is all about: people who don't think you should know or live what they know or have lived. Santimonious bastards.
Parent
Re:And what lesson should they learn for Hot Coffe (Score:4, Insightful)
disagree: I think most people remember *exactly* how they were when they were younger and, now that they're older and more mature, are appalled by their own behavior and want to prevent other people from making the mistakes they made.
So now looking for boobies is a mistake? I think they're still in denial about how teenage boys are.
Parent
Re:And what lesson should they learn for Hot Coffe (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:What does Take 2 have to do with that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:What does Take 2 have to do with that? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:What does Take 2 have to do with that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Jack is a troll trying to get publicity and popularity by attacking a scapegoat. It's an old trick, with Adolf Hitler being propably the most famous real example and Emperor Palpatine the most famous fictitive example. That's the peer group Jack belongs to. Joseph McCarthy and Fredric Wertham are other good examples of this morally banckrupt tactic of sacrificing innocents for profit.
For the benefit of Google Spider, let's put it all into a single sentence: Jack Thompson is using the same tactic as Adolf Hitler, Joseph McCarthy, Fredric Wertham and Emperor Palpatine used: victimizing innocents for his own profit.
Jack Thompson, Adolf Hitler. Jack Thompson, Senator McCarthy. Jack Thompson, Fredric Wertham. Jack Thompson, Emperor Palpatine.
Any other way we can make the poor spider link the man to his proper context and peer group ?
Parent
Re:What does Take 2 have to do with that? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hitler claimed that Jews were out to destroy Germans, that there was a huge Jewish conspiracy out to destroy Germany. He then painted himself as the savior of German people, who would exterminate Jews and rid Germans of them.
McCarthy claimed that there was a huge communist conspiracy trying to destroy the USA. He then painted himself the savior of USA, who would exterminate communism and rid USA of it.
It's the same thing. Both destroyed people to boost their own careers. The main differences were that Hitler was a lunatic who believed at least some of his own garbage while McCarthy was just a morally corrupt liar; and that Hitler succeeded in getting supreme power in Germany while McCarthy failed to ascend past senatorship.
True, McCarthy didn't start death camps. However, he did his best to destroy his victims lives, so the lack of camps had likely more to do with lack of power than lack of malice.
Parent
Overrated (Score:3, Interesting)
As people have said already, you might as well rate every single game ever made as Mature, since any game can be hacked independently to show nudity or sex or clones of Jack Thompson for that matter.
Re:Overrated (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Overrated (Score:5, Informative)
The ESRB's response to that was nudity was the real issue. So which is it?
Parent
It was applying a MALE skin to the FEMALE model (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Overrated (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.igniq.com/2006/04/oblivion-nude-mod-al
http://www.oblivionsource.com/?page=modforge&op=v
http://grbeta.bolt.com/download/pc/the_elder_scro
Do you have a source that says it did not ship with the game?
Parent
Re:Overrated (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, no, it was a female mesh with a female texture. I don't have the data here at work, but it was like 'meshes/character/femalebody.nif' and 'textures/imperial/_male/femalebody.dds' (Yes, the second path says _male, but the actual file says female.) Those are not the exact file names, but they aren't far off and both DID say female. That's hardly an accident.
The mesh was not actually used anywhere in the game.
I Googled and found the instructions to mod it yourself, without a download. I'm too lazy to change the above text.
From http://rome.ro/2006/05/oblivion-re-rated-bad-news. html [rome.ro]:
Parent
Re:Overrated (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, not quite.
What really happened is that Bethesda modeled the character models as naked 3D human models, then superimposed clothes in them when displaying the characters in the game. The modder then found the "naked" 3D models and "removed" the clothing.
This is not an unreasonable way to implement 3D modeling especially if you're about to do some advanced clothing physics type of stuff which would require the clothes to be modeled separately. I would suspect every m
I think... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I think... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:I think... (Score:4, Funny)
PS. Don't get your hopes up; they are all fat, pimply boys sitting in their mother's basement.
PPS. That includes the hot druid you were cybering with last night.
Parent
Re:I think... (Score:5, Interesting)
Online games that include user-generated content (e.g., chat, maps, skins) carry the notice "Game Experience May Change During Online Play" to warn consumers that content created by players of the game has not been rated by the ESRB.
http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.jsp [esrb.org]
Parent
Best Course of Action (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Best Course of Action (Score:3, Insightful)
Well there's a surprise. (Score:5, Interesting)
All that being said, W. T. F. was the ESRB thinking giving that game a goddamn Teen rating? DIABLO II got a goddamn M rating. Any moron would know that a first person game with fricking SWORDS is going to rate an M. Didn't Morrowind rate an M?
Really, does it weight that heavily on the sales if it ends up rated M?
How about this, then? (Score:5, Informative)
But also try stuff like this:
- decayed corpses in cages, corpses hanged over a flame, corpses hanged from ropes (sometimes with a kicked chair underneath, meaning the bugger was alive when he got hanged), a burning corpse looking like he tried crawling out of a lava pool right in the very first oblivion gate. Skeletons in spiked cages. I'm told there's even one with a tiny skeleton inside it, presumably a pregnant woman was left to die in that cage. People or corpses in cages whose bottom you can open and let them fall on some spikes below. Etc.
- the end of the Dark Brotherhood quest arc was already mentioned, so lemme detail a bit more: they hanged the bugger upside down and gutted him like sardine. Alive. Literally. The fresh corpse is basically hollowed. They'll even talk about it.
- towards the end of the Figher's Guild quest arc you get to experience getting drugged out of your mind, and in that hallucinating state going and slaughtering a whole village of innocents, including going in each and every single house and slaughtering every single villager.
- heck, if blood was bad, you can also set people on fire and watch them running around burning. (Try enchanting your bow for maximum fire damage, for example, watch people bursting in bright flames every time they get hit by an arrow. Or make a potion of fire damage and "poison" your arrow with it, same effect.)
- torturing people. Spoiler warning, btw. In one quest along the main line you get to explore a madman's "paradise". In fact, it's closer to our idea of "hell", and one section has people in cages in or over lava. And you can play with the levers to lower them into the lava, or raise them out of it. In the previous section you get to watch people be hunted by demons for sport, and you get one quest to free an even nastier demon and sic it on them.
That's just off the top of my head. Basically I'd say it's a _very_ gruesome game at times, not a super happy fun escapade through flower-filled meadows where deer bounce around.
So _if_ violence is considered a reason to keep kids from playing a game, then, yes, I fail to see why this game wasn't M to start with.
Parent
Re:How about this, then? (Score:4, Insightful)
The violence has to be truly obscene for an M rating. Of course, show a couple boobs, and it gets slapped on right away. I really can't figure out why ripping someone apart is less damaging to a child then seeing breasts, but maybe that's just me.
Parent
Why do we bother? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why I like the tags function (Score:5, Funny)
Even if it doesn't accomplish anything it makes me feel better
What? (Score:3, Insightful)
You have to be kidding me. I hope this guy appears on a few call-in shows. I'd love to ask him some questions.
Re:What? (Score:4, Funny)
you seem to be trying to apply logic to jack's claims. your attempt is destined to fail.
Parent
Oh god, not another one... (Score:3, Funny)
Sorry (Score:3, Insightful)
Clearly, Mr. Thompson does not understand the technical nature of the problems he addresses with his hellfire and brimstone approach. In both the Hot Coffee and this new Oblivion case, the consumer must have the desire to modify the game in order to access content which the developers did not intend for the consumer to see. Sure, in the Hot Coffee case, the "questionable" content was there but inaccessable in any way through normal operation of them game. In the Oblivion case, the "questionable" content isn't even in the data of the game!
Mr. Thompson should turn his efforts elsewhere. My suggestion would be the consumer instead of the manufacturers, because they are far more likely to listen.
SHOCKING: People are nude under their clothes (Score:5, Insightful)
I can understand people getting offended at "Hot Coffee", which was explicitly sexual, but this is just silly. People are naked beneath their clothing. It's true! Take-Two showed more no skin than you'd see in the world normally, but they made the horrible sin of starting from anatomically correct base. You might as well ban mannequins.
Re:SHOCKING: People are nude under their clothes (Score:5, Funny)
People, under their clothes? Nudity!
Birds, under their feathers? Nudity! *looks down, slinks off*
Parent
Re:SHOCKING: People are nude under their clothes (Score:3, Interesting)
And a parallel might not require banning mannequins wholesale. What about banning mannequins with unnecessarily graphic details. For example, do mannequins require coloration of the nipple?
Antidotes? (Score:4, Funny)
During your interview, Thompson also gives antidotes from his new book, "Out of Harm's Way" (Tyndale House Publishers).
I wish someone would give me an antidote [reference.com] to Jack Thompson...
Sure... (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, as nuts as this guy is, are you kidding me?
A little bit of topless-ness in a game rated T which was sold to kids of all ages is worse that a full sex mini-game, complete with sounds and visuals which was in a game rated MA which was sold to kids of all ages?
Remember kids: Jack Thompson says sex mini-games are better than topless-ness. Just make sure the female isn't topless.
I propose an experiment... (Score:5, Insightful)
First, get a bunch of gamers together. Give half of them the most violent video game you can think of, and give the other half a bunch of articles/rants by Jack Thompson, and tell each group to play/read for an hour. At the end of that hour, administer a few tests to see how violent each group is.
I guarantee you that the Thompson group will be much more prone to start bashing in heads, particularly Mr. Thompson's.
Just makes you realize... (Score:4, Insightful)
I WANT to call this guy an idiot (which he is) and say that there's NO WAY that the publisher should be held responsible for a user-made mod. But last time I did that, it turned out Rockstar actual HAD included the "offending" content, and HAD lied about it. All us gamer types were calling Jack a moron for confusing "official" content with user mods, but he turned out to be right.
So thanks, Rockstar, for being idiots and forgetting to delete the mini-game you had to disable at the last minute to keep your "M" rating. And thanks even MORE for lying about it, making US look like jerks for defending you.
Illegal?! Ourageous (Score:5, Insightful)
Illegally imbedded? Since when is depicting nuidity in a work of art/literature/film/video game illegal? Pretty sure we can do that given the first amendment. The rating system is not law either, so not showing the ESRB all content is no more illegal. Seems his attitude is a bit skewed.
"It is also clear that Take-Two corporately and its senior officers, including CEO Paul Eibeler, individually, must now be prosecuted criminally for the knowing distribution of "sexual material harmful to minors" which is a felony in most states and nationally. The undersigned intends to work toward that end immediately"
Again, the ratings system is not law. Because a game is rated teen does not mean it is intended to be marketed towards kids. If anything, get on the ESRB for misrepresenting the game. Why not sue every publisher who puts out sexually explicit books. It's not the publisher's responsibility to dictate who should buy their material. His statements are outrageous.
Could we send this to ALL talk shows (Score:5, Informative)
It changes the male bare chest texture for the female bare chest (which has a bra)
Theres no "hot coffee" no hidden sex scenes, games, or anything, just some kid who realized in our culture is ok to show male breasts not female breasts you can do this "MOD" in ANY game.
Case closed.
Is there a way to send this info to ALL the talk shows this moron is presenting hilself on? (seriously)
p.s. IMO Oblivion does desserve an M rating theres quite a bit of blood, realistic violence, you can create an "evil" character, and theres some innuendo here and there, worst of all Oblivion (the land) does look a lot like hell. I have no idea why the ESRB didnt rated it "M" in the first place. My guess is they didnt played it at all. ( in which case is the ESRB the one who should be sued)
boobies in Oblivion? (Score:3, Funny)
Speaking of Nudity (Score:5, Insightful)
On one show someone called him to the carpet... (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh and that show has an mp3, here's the link for it: http://media.gospelcom.net/kln/sbetc/050606sbe.mp
Re:Clarification: (Score:5, Insightful)
[1] Or like the pictures and videos we've all seen, for those of us who lack a basis for comparison
Parent
Re:He must play much computer games (Score:3, Interesting)
Nah. From what I can tell, he just jumps on the stories after they hit media sources. As soon as it's on GameSpot or Slashdot, it's fair game for him.
Of course, I've only got recent memory to go off of since I was too youn