Thompson Goes After Sims 2 Nudity

magicbond_007 writes "Miami lawyer Jack Thompson is at it again, this time with something above and beyond absurd. Gamestop is reporting that Thompson has accused The Sims 2 of contain obscene material. From the article: 'In the statement, Thompson says, "Sims 2, the latest version of the Sims video game franchise ... contains, according to video game news sites, full frontal nudity, including nipples, penises, labia, and pubic hair."' At this rate kids won't be able to play Mario because Princess Peach is dressed too slutty."

In the wake of Hot Coffee

[darkmayo]

Who didnt see this coming.

Hmmm

[kenp2002]

Wow and after how many seasons of NYPD, Nip and Tuck, Sopranos, Hill Street Blues, The Shield, South Park, anything ever made by Aaron Spelling, Buffy, OC, and 90% of network prime time, and the News I nearly forgot about the evil Sims game poisoning the minds of our youth as the grade school cheerleaders are fucking bump-and-grinding in competitions with songs Like BARBIE GIRL and role models like Spears and Aguleria. Jebus Fucking Rice man I almost forgot about stories of incest, pedophelia, suicide, demonic possession, homosexual identity crises, and murder from that sick pervert fuck Shakespeare. Thank God we censored such static works as Milton's Paradise Lost and Dante's Inferno from tainting our children with such sick visions of people with their head up their asses. THANK YOU GOVERNMENT FROM SHIELDING US FORM OBVIOUS LAZY FUCKING PARENTS THAT ARE SO ILL EQUIPPED TO DISCIPLINE THEIR CHILDREN FEAR THEY'LL GET SUED BY THEM FOR DEPRIVING THEM ACCESS TO SUCH OFFENSIVE CONTENT.

Oh I can solve the problem....

TURN THE FUCKING TV OFF!

Re:Hmmm

[Punboy]

While I agree with you in the fact that a majority of these parents who are complaining need to take things into their own hands, you should really try approaching the way you say things in a calmer, less... abrasive manner. For example: Its funny how after so many season of high-rated TV shows (NYPD, Nip and Tuck, Sopranos, Hill Street Blues, The Shield, South Park, anything ever made by Aaron Spelling, Buffy, OC, and 90% of network prime time, and the News), they seem to be attacking video games. These are the things that seem to be "poisoning our youth". Things have gotten so bad that cheerleaders in gradeschool are actually being taught to dance suggestively. The parents actually ENCOURAGE this sort of behavior. The parents are also buying their kids video games (like San Anreas) without even paying attention to what it is. It seems to me that parents today want the government to raise their kids, and want no part in their upbringing whatsoever. I personally think that the government needs to lessen restrictions, and put some responsibility on the parents for a change.

... But Graphic Violence is just fine.

[Mr.Phil]

What a great society we Americans have these days. I can watch what is basically Crime Scene Porn on the major networks any night of the week I want, see countless murders happen on TV, and basically dismember characters in pretty much any video game I want to, watch more than simulated sex acts on cable, and listen to some pretty graphic swearing on television.

But God help us if little Bobbie might have seen a blur on some "sim" in the tub. We already know if s/he wants to see anything of the sort, their hitting all the free super link porno sites anyway.

What is behind this outcry is the fact that most kids have these games and parents are finding that "Gee, I must be a lousy parent because I didn't know that my kids could do this and frankly didn't care because the distraction kept my kids quiet. I'll pretend to be horrified at this so that other people don't think I'm a bad parent, while I really couldn't care less."

Let's put it this way. My son saw more graphic sex in the gorilla house on a recent visit to the zoo than is possible in these games. Quick, let's make the zoo "AO" and fine the zookeepers for not having warnings that the critters might get jiggy.

Can't wait for the next "important social issue" to come up. It's going to be the horrors of chunky peanut butter or some such tripe.

*sigh*

OMG BAN MODS!!!!

[darkmayo]

So on one hand we have GTA:SA a previous M rated game that involved various criminal acts and whatnot which had in its code a game where there is "OMG SEX" and badly simulated at that but was disabled and not available for whatever reason until some reasourceful people who where going through the PC version discovered it and using a patch, re-enable it.

(you can wax philosphy all day long about if it was meant to be found yadda yadda)

and then you have the SIMS2 which has various acts of living in your house flirting baby making and alien abductions.. which resourceful people can create various household items such and decorations outfits and skins for which may or may not have giant throbbin cocks or whatever on them.

One had the content and skins already in

The other has the skins and content created by the player..

We know the differences between the two, but who wants to guess which way the media, politicians and other twats like Thompson are going to go.

Ban Ken and Barbie

[LightForce3]

If we're to follow Thompson's reasoning, won't the actual Ken and Barbie dolls (and others like them) have to be banned? If a human figure without genitals can't be shown on a computer screen, then why are we allowing our children playing with actual physical representations?

And what about dolls of Barbie's little sister? Also a dirty tool for the pedophile that probably lives next door!

Thompson is a Grade A Moron.

So you want to protect the children, huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you want to protect the children, is that what you're saying? Are you saying that children are protected by being taught that sex and sexual organs are morally wrong?

This kind of skewed view of life just kills me. Ultimately, this will just do more damage to children. They'll feel guilty about their bodies! That is just plain twisted.

Fuck these politicians. Revolt.

Jeez, I'm not sure what you mean...

[Irish_Samurai]

In the past, he's represented defendants who have been the victims of GTA-inspired crimes, including the triple homicide of three police officers by an 18-year-old boy in Alabama.

What does this mean? He thought the killer was a victim because he played GTA and then killed officers? Or were the officers sued postehumously?

"much to the delight, one can be sure, of pedophiles around the globe who can rehearse, in virtual reality, for their abuse."

WTF? You don't seem to be fighting this. [yale.edu] You are an ambulance chasing asshat.

I'm rooting Thompson

[Anm]

...to make an ass out of himself. I'm hoping an attack like this gets some public attention and >>hopefully the public is smart enough to realize the claim is baseless and he looses credibility and support for all future claims.

I can hope, can't I?

Anm

I think I speak for everyone...

[Soul-Burn666]

when I say:
FOR FUCK'S SAKE, WHAT'S YOUR DAMN PROBLEM?!

Yes i'm yelling. What's wrong with people?! How the fuck will banning the sims "protect the children"?!

In Europe nudity is not considered "bad", in Japan it's not considered "bad".
Hell, I saw some European commercials showing full nudity, in not too late hours.
In Japan the whole genre of adult games is a huge business and they sell for PC and consoles.

Only in the US and Muslim countries nudity is considered a really bad thing.
And what do we get? The population explodes, full of STDs, unwanted pregnancy and so on.

So. GET A FUCKING GRIP ON YOURSELF! SEX IS NOT BAD. NUDITY IS NOT BAD. IT'S ONLY THE NATURAL THING.

Google Images + Radio Button = Nudity | THE KIDS!!

[flowerHercules]

Television commercial's and programs alike have been blurring out (or black boxing) explicit nudity for ages without getting much attention in the sake of children, but nobody is throwing around lawsuits to stop them.

You put those blocks in to keep the content from being seen, if someone created a modification that allowed your TV to remove those blocks and blurs and fill in what was really there, would it be the fault of companies like Ventura for having that content in originally?

Instead of attacking the programmers or producers for, rightfully, removing or blurring the explicit content, why aren't Rockstar and Electronic Arts suing the people that made the patches? Why aren't people like Jack Thompson filing suit against them? After all, the material wasn't meant to be seen by the consumer.

Neither Rockstar nor EA deserve to get sued for filtering the content in question and not sufficiently protecting against malicious (not to mention perverted) modders from exposing the code for what it was . As far as I'm concerned, both the Sims and GTA were hacked, slandering the name of legitimate, trustworthy companies. GTA wasn't trying to sneak anything past ESRB against 'moms' will. EA wasn't trying to expose children to explicit nudity...as far as the allegations go: the labia was not visible.

Re:Wait a sec..

[sgant]

But you don't see anything like pubic hair or nipples or anything with this cheat, you have to go out of your way to download a skin that has all these things...much like a nude skin for UT2004 or Quake or whatever.

This isn't a secret cheat or anything that was left in the code like San Andreas.

Re:Attack on barbies?

[thegrassyknowl]

This author is a twonk.. first GTA then The Sims2. I mean, really... The GTA Hot Coffee thing was probably in the game, but it was never intended to be accessible. I bet they just plain forgot it was there anyway. If twonkbrain hadn't made such a fuss about it then a good many people would never have known about it.

It can't be the game maker's fault if people hack their software to make it do things they didn't intend.

Now to attack the Sims 2. This guy is sad. Does he not have a girlfriend? What other possible reason could he have for going looking in videogames for nude people?

And for the comment about paedofiles being able to "rehearse in virtual reality". Bah... that is a throwaway line put in there to prove that he diesn't have a clue and he only wants to invoke the fear response to make people do what he wants them to.

You can make anyone do anything these days by mentinoning the kiddy fiddlers or the terrorists.

What's next? Pick on some of the war games becasue you can join the "enemy" and play against the US players? Does that encourage terrorism? It must. We should ban all those games too because they teach tactical bombing skills that can be used against the US.

The world is really a sad place. Where's my BFG and a nice solid wall... it's time to respawn!

Re:Wait a sec..

[Khakionion]

And we all know that going out of your way to download a modification [gamespot.com] doesn't qualify as being part of the game. Oh, wait...

Groundless Bullshit

[Rie Beam]

Please, The Sims is a tame as milk. I can almost agree with him on the GTA thing (although I enjoy the series), simply because it's obviously designed and left in the game, even though I find it hypocritical that he wouldn't seek a lawsuit before the mini-game was common knowledge (as if the violence and the hooker-in-a-car from the original weren't enough). But The Sims / The Sims 2 (the "blur" occurs on both version, if you remember)? Has this man ever seen a Barbie or Ken doll naked? That's about the extent of it. I especially love this line:

"Sims 2, the latest version of the Sims video game franchise...

contains, according to video game news sites, full frontal nudity, including nipples, penises, labia, and pubic hair."

No, no it doesn't, and "video game news sites" are not a source to base a lawsuit on, especially if you can't name the site or sites in question. The only thing that might make for evidence in anything whatsoever is the following site I ran into on the way to look for "proper" screenshots:

http://www.adultgamereviews.com/nudesims.shtml [adultgamereviews.com]

Now, this is not what he is accusing EA of - this is a skin patch, which should tell you right there what the deal is - if you want to see nude Sims with details, you're going to need a patch, because they're little more than mannequins under the blur. This would not exist if they had full-frontal nudity, penii, etc.

Groundless lawsuit by an ignorant man. Sick of this shit.

This could be a good thing

[Fr05t]

"We know the differences between the two, but who wants to guess which way the media, politicians and other twats like Thompson are going to go."

Yup, and this garbage lawsuit is going to helpfully undo some of the harm to the game industry and expose these idiots as just that.

Here is what will happen: Hype - a week from now there will be a story about this on every blog, paper, tv station, and radio station.

Eventually this thing will either make it to court or not even go that far before it is thrown out. It will clearly highlight how ridiculous these zealots are.

Then next time someone starts crying wolf media outlets will hopefully take things with a grain of salt after being made to look so foolish. (I'm not sure if that will get me +1 insightful, or +1 funny)

Re:This just in

[Anonymous Coward]

You make a very good point, actually.

Go back to the GTA:SA thing. The problem was they found out that between psycopathically antisocial mass murdering rampages you can have consensual sex. SEX....the reason we are all here on this earth! It will corrupt the kids....the sex that is, not the senseless violence and mass murder of police and bystander alike.

It's all so freaking absurd.

Re:Wait a sec..

[sgant]

But the difference is THAT was in GTA:SA no matter what the developers said. This is different as Sims2 has been out for quite a while now and everyone knows that this isn't something that you can just unlock and automatically get nipple rings and pubic hair.

I mean, there was a mod in the original Sims too that does this exact same thing.

Should we also put warning labels on Poser too? I mean, those are totally NAKED people with genitals and everything on that! And you can...gasp...use them to draw dirty pictures and paintings!

Faints...

Re:In the wake of Hot Coffee

[MasterofUnlocking]

Make sure you differentiate between patches and mods. Patches are officially released, mods are created by the community. I doubt that EA would release patches which remove the blurring and add explicit textures.

Re:Wait a sec..

[Anonymous Coward]

And the original Hot Coffee code had two fully clothed people dryhumping until the nudity was hacked in. The Sims has barbie dolls dryhumping until someone used the skin editor that comes with the game to draw nip's and pub's. What's the difference, really? Other than GTA being everyone's favorite scapegoat.

If one follows this "but it was already there" logic to conclusion, why not automatically rate a pg13 film with brief nudity XXX once it hits DVD. I mean, a kid could always pause a nudie scene so it lasts longer then what's acceptable for an R movie.

Absurd? Totally, but no more so than worrying that kids might see some pixel bewbs in a game where you can shoot cops in the face after banging a hooker. Anyhoo, I belive the term I'm looking for is "slippery slope".

Re:Hmmm

[Thangodin]

Oh, and there's a really offensive book out there that has all kinds of violence and sex, incest, even the ritual sacrifice of children. It exhorts people to "dash little children against the stones", condones torture, genocide, slavery, mass rape and slaughter, and all kinds of other horrible things.

It's called the Bible. Take a look at it. I can't believe they leave this stuff lying around where anyone can get a hold of it. The first time I read it, I couldn't believe that people would actually want their children exposed to this. Subsequent readings have not changed my opinion. By comparison, GTA is light sentimental fluff.

One of these days this censorious bullshit is going to come home to roost.

Each new medium stirs up a hornet's nest of doom criers who denounce it as the corrupter of youth, and this has gone on for over 2500 years. Plato called for the pan-pipes to be banned because they aroused unwholesome excitement, and it's been going on ever since. Epic poems, romances, the printing press, Beethoven, prose fiction, radio, television, rock and roll, Dungeons and Dragons, the internet, and now video games have each been attacked in turn. They arouse the wrong emotions, or people cannot tell fiction from reality, it seems.

But the political speeches of a demagogue can arouse emotions worse than any form of entertainment, and for those who can't tell fact from fiction, entertainment is the least of our worries. The world is now troubled--yet again--by the fantasies of religious fanatics, who have the courage to die simply because they lack the courage to live. Fantasy isn't the problem, nor religion. It's the dim-witted confusion of those who are so inexpert in navigating the worlds of imagination that they get lost. Magic is all around us, in brilliant stories that distill the wisdom of generations, in the work of scientists who distill a simple law from a mountain of data, or in that piece of code that tells a computer how to do what only a human mind could do before. This is the imagination honed to a laser's intensity. Against this stand the real muggles, who would end the magic, and end the world.

If there is a God, may he protect us from muggles.