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Games Entertainment

Are Game Industry Pros Failing To Fight for Freedom? 57

Posted by Zonk from the they'll-never-take-our-braveheart dept.
Gamasutra's most recent Question of the Week feature deals with the extremely quotable final speech given by Doug Lowenstein at D.I.C.E.. The article queries individuals within the games industry for their opinions on the 'freedom' that the industry allows itself, and its convictions on fighting for that freedom. The article prompted numerous, polarized comments. Many of them followed the gist of this Anonymous submission: "With regards to censorship the biggest worry for me is developers and publishers self-censoring and avoiding any kind of contentious issue or subject matter in case they offend anyone. Video games for me are a powerful medium capable of equaling the emotive and informative weight of cinema if used correctly, but they rarely are. If we refuse to tackle issues and remain purely a thing of fluff and fizz then interactive entertainment will never have the gravitas of its cousins."
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Are Game Industry Pros Failing To Fight for Freedom? More

Are Game Industry Pros Failing To Fight for Freedom?

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  • Is $RANDOM-NON-GUERILLA-GROUP failing to fight for freedom? Maybe they are, but so what?
  • Just look at Bush. Whatever else the war on Iraq did, it created freedom for the Iraqi people. As much freedom as there is to be had in the islamic middle east, at least.

    And yet he is constantly blasted for it. So is Blair, and to a lesser degree Australian politicians. Yet political and religious mass-muderers like khatami of Iran, are constantly glorified as the voice of reason.

    I am amazed at how people here who never fail to blast any attempt at safeguarding freedom, can complain about this. You never fa

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by redelm ( 54142 )
      In addition, the established media sees itself as tthe primary defender and guardian of the First Amendment's Freedom of Speech. The resent and depracate anyone else assuming that role.

      After all, media is all about publicity. They aren't going to build up their competitors.

    • Just look at Bush. Whatever else the war on Iraq did, it created freedom for the Iraqi people. As much freedom as there is to be had in the islamic middle east, at least. And yet he is constantly blasted for it.

      This is a specious argument, and if you believe it... well, let's just say you're not playing with a full deck.

      Bush is not being blasted for bringing freedom to the people of Iraq, which is also a highly suspect argument; until we have left it is unclear if they really have achieved freedom or no

      • Re:The media fucks over people who fight for freed (Score:4, Insightful)

        by OeLeWaPpErKe ( 412765 ) on Thursday February 22, 2007 @04:20PM (#18113034) Homepage
        Let's contrast your "full deck" with mine, shall we ?

        This is what the muslim god demands :

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Sadda m_Hussein's_Iraq [wikipedia.org]

        Let's quote some highlights, shall we ?

        "The report spoke of public beheadings of women who were accused of being prostitutes, which took place in front of family members, including children."

        This sentence uses the word ACCUSED, in case you can't read, not convicted.

        "The report also describes human rights violations directed against children. The report states that children, as young as 5 years old, are recruited into the Ashbal Saddam, or "Saddam's Cubs," and indoctrinated to adulate Saddam Hussein and denounce their own family members. The children are also subjected to military training, which includes cruelty to animals. The report also describes how parents of children are executed if they object to this treatment, and in some cases, the children themselves are imprisoned."

        "Iraqi citizens were not allowed to assemble legally unless it was to express support for the government."

        Is this the freedom that the US has taken away that you are talking about ? Because I'm mighty confused.

        The US is a LOT better than any muslim. And it's a LONG way down before the US arrives at the average islamic level of "freedom". Saddam killed nearly 5% of his population. That is, the killings we know of.

        The translation of the arabic word "islam" is "oppression" or "submission" depending on intonation. That's not a coincidence.

        • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

          by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

          This is what the muslim god demands

          The Muslim version of Jehovah specifically states (like the Christian version) that vengeance is his and that the unbelievers shall suffer, not that you should MAKE them suffer.

          "The report spoke of public beheadings of women who were accused of being prostitutes, which took place in front of family members, including children." This sentence uses the word ACCUSED, in case you can't read, not convicted.

          And in this country we have a higher conviction rate against minoriti

          • The Muslim version of Jehovah specifically states (like the Christian version) that vengeance is his and that the unbelievers shall suffer, not that you should MAKE them suffer.

            Oh, if you say so. Personally I would interpret the "literal words" of the muslim god a bit differently :

            Quran 8:12 "I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them."

            Personally, I wouldn't go with your interpretation. The muslim god specifically calls

            • Shit. Mod points, and instead I decide to reply. I guess I'm in a "Feed-the-troll" mood today.

              Quran 8:12 is not a verse. I'm guessing you simply copied and pasted that info from the vast sea of Christian blogs who throw out verse numbers and quotations to support their position that Islam is evil. Not to mention that the first page of Google search shows about half a dozen different locations (and quotation methods) for that quote. So I'm gonna go out on a tangent and say that you have no clue about the Kor
              • Then why don't you read the whole chapter ? Or the whole book ? You will find it full of cruel ruthless commands to kill.

                Then "you need to interpret this". Great. There are lots of books published about this interpretation stuff. Trust me you do not want to turn to them either. They directly state that muslims should massacre jews, beat their women and children, etc. That muslims should conquer by force any non-muslim government and make non-muslims pay a 50% income tax, and refuse their entry into police o

            • Quran 8:12 "I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them."

              The Tanach and Qur'an are written in Semitic languages [wikipedia.org], whch tpclly us wht we nw mght cll a shrthnd wrtng sstm tht omts th dicrtcs tht dnot mst of th vwls. Therefore, some interpretations of the texts by mortals into English screw up verb inflections. Ideally, one should compare any human interpretation of holy texts [wikipedia.org] to the original Semitic texts. The second-best way, as shown in Christian comparative study bibles, is to compare several translations and understand the imperfection of one's own understand

              • That would be your stupidity and judgement. You directly assumed I haven't asked a native arabic speaker. I have. And he assures me the sentence calls for beheadings.

                I would like to point out that you do not look at the original arabic either. You just say that I "must" have made a mistake, and directly assume I haven't done my homework.

                You're argument basically boils down to "but everybody knows that islam is peaceful", well, as they say. A 1000 years ago everybody knew the earth was flat (as the quran cla
        • Would this be the same Saddam that we propped up for twenty years plus? Even while he was gassing Iranians and Kurds? Noooo, couldn't be. We would never support a man like that. A great analogy posted a long time ago: If you lock somebody up in a room with an insane man for twenty years, do you expect him to be grateful when you finally let him out? I suspect you're just having fun with a little bit of trolling. If you actually believe what you posted, then you are delusional, or evil.
        • You have GOT to be fucking joking me.

          The good ol U.S. of A. foreign policy is responsible for FAR MORE DEATH than Hussein ever committed. Read some history books, you ignoramus.

          Installation of cruel dictators who kill thousands of their own people - check.

          Sale of the weapons to them and others so that they go about it in the most "efficient" manner - check.

          Killing thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians (who exist in a televised fantasy land that doesn't actually exist in the minds of most Americans b

        • you seem to be saying.

          Anarchy is only wonderful when you have the bigger guns.

          You speak of Bush fighting for freedom. Where was he in dealing with the Darfur tragedy? Where were the US armed forces when East Timor was taken over?
          Why aren't we in Burma restoring the democratically elected president?

          Study some history and you can see the US foreign policies have always been dictated by national interests mixed in with some bloated egos. Human rights and freedom
          are applied when they're convenient, but almos

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dash2 ( 155223 )
          "This is what the muslim god demands :
          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Sadda m_Hussein's_Iraq [wikipedia.org]"

          Saddam Hussein was a secularist. He came out of the Baath (renaissance) party. The idea that the Muslim God demands human rights violations makes as much sense as the idea that the Christian God demands them (think of all the juicy bits in Leviticus).

          Saddam was a thoroughly evil man, and Iraq under his rule was a pretty horrible place. But the US has made it worse, by any reasonable standard. Here are s
    • Bush's priority was never to "liberate Iraq." His original arguments for invasion were (off the top of my head):
      1. Iraq (i.e., Saddam Hussein) was responsible for what happened in Sept. 2001 (which is untrue)
      2. Al Qaeda was in Iraq (also untrue - and Iraq is mostly Shiite Muslims, Al Qaeda is comprised of mostly Sunni)
      3. Iraq had WMDs (also untrue)

      Only after these attempts failed did he change his argument to include those you are thinking of, although I don't remember the exact order (it might have b
    • OeLeWaPpErKe has made probably one of the worst posts I have ever seen on Slashdot, ever. The fact that it has a +3 Insightful modifier is incredibly disheartening to me.

      "Whatever else the war on Iraq did, it created freedom for the Iraqi people." What a ridiculous statement. We went to Iraq on false intelligence to knock off Saddam so that his non-existent "weapons of mass destruction" would not be a threat to America. That was what the American public was sold on by irresponsible media and duplicious poli

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kelbear ( 870538 )
      I need some links to Bush getting blasted for spreading freedom. I have yet to see this happen.

      What I do see, is criticism of Bush for going to war. I haven't seen anyone arguing that giving Iraq freedom is bad; what they're arguing is that the cost is not worth it to the American people. The price of their freedom is high, why are we the ones footing the bill?

      Is it our duty to impose it? That's a moral argument and jury is still out on that one. Is it economically adviseable? We'd have to look at the oppor
    • Since I already replied to the second of your idiotic rants, I might as well go the full distance.

      1) Define Freedom in iraq. Freedom to vote? Or freedom to be tortured by death squads from the other religious/ethnic groups?
      2) Show me a quote of someone blasting Bush for wanting to remove a known dictator or bad man. Oh, wait. That didn't happen. He gets blasted for lying about why he wants to go to Iraq and about completely botching the job once there.
      3) Show me a quote of someone calling Khatami a voice of
    • Surely you must be joking. Your insane rambling simply makes too little sense (as in: none at all). Are you truly suggesting that the people in Iraq are more free now than they were before the war? Are you truly suggesting that "all people in guantanamo" want to "fight and murder innocent people"? Do you realize that most people imprisoned in Guantanamo are very likely innocent and have never had a fair trial? Does that sound like freedom to you?

    • Just look at Bush. Whatever else the war on Iraq did, it created freedom for the Iraqi people. As much freedom as there is to be had in the islamic middle east, at least.
      And yet he is constantly blasted for it.

      nice fallacy there .. criticizing bush is NOT the same as criticizing Freedom!!! .. and definitely NOT the same as joining the terror-side.
      first and foremost, bush is not a FreedomFighter, he is a low-IQ Retard... and that's what he is blasted for.
      i have nothing against Freedom and i have nothing pro Terrorism...but that guy is the kind of person i wont even trust with my car keys.
      however, you and others gave him your country and your future .. and you will pay the price for that .. because you fully

    • Bush isn't blasted for fighting to free people. He's blasted for being an incompetent boob. He didn't really free Iraq. He eliminated a dictator and plunged the country into a religious civil war. You can't be free when you're afraid to go outside because someone might shoot you because you either worship the wrong god or worship the same god but in the wrong way.

      That ain't freedom. That's anarchy. Ironically, you need to sacrifice some freedoms to actually be able to use the rest of them. There's no
  • As I see it, games self-censor when they want to get a particular rating from the ESRB. But the same is true of films. Crazy Man Lucas will not make his films R-rated because he doesn't want them to be. Though, that's not so much self-censorship as it is ... self-restraint I guess.

    Otherwise, I don't really see much self-censoring at the expense of the final product. Gears of War has its share of bloody violence and vulgar language. Same goes for F.E.A.R. Games that want it in there, put it in there.

    Well

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by grumbel ( 592662 )

      As I see it, games self-censor when they want to get a particular rating from the ESRB. But the same is true of films.

      One of the differences is that having a little bit of sex in a video game gets you an almost instant AO rating, thus making the game almost impossible to sell, while movies get away with quite a bit more. So the self censorship isn't limited to toning things down a bit, but for most part game developers completly avoid anything involving sex right from the very beginning.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Sciros ( 986030 )
        Yes that's a very good point. Game standards are completely different from movie standards when it comes to what determines a "mature audience" rating. Movies can "get away" with a lot more and stay within their target rating category. The PG-13 Bond movies would, if translated directly into games, be rated M with 100% certainty.

        Personally I see all of these ratings as absolute rubbish and if I could I'd do away with them altogether (it's not like books have a rating -- the typical Stephen King novel is a
  • I'm sorry, but I'm not sure why anyone expects commercial software [vidgame] producers and vendors to fight for freedom in the abstract. They are required by law to look out for the interests of their owners.

    Sure, this may mean for a given project, they fight censorship. But it is far from certain that fighting pays in general. It costs, and what revenue does it bring in?

    Freedom always has to be defended by the people. Their proxies cannot do it for them. At least, not well or thoroughly. It's a que

  • Abortion (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ObsessiveMathsFreak ( 773371 ) <obsessivemathsfreak.eircom@net> on Thursday February 22, 2007 @03:43PM (#18112476) Homepage Journal
    We need a game on abortion, where you can choose to either be a pro-life activist blowing up clinics or a pro-choice activist force aborting fetuses!!

    Seriously, people play video games to get away from all the horseshit of real life. No one is censoring controvertial issue from video games, they were never put there to begin with. People plays games to have fun, not digest a hyperbole laden message.

    About the closest video games ever get to addressing real world issues is by metaphor and allegory. The Gulliver's Travel's model works well in the game setting, but again the primary purpose of games is to play them, not get a poor mans plot along the way. Developers should stick to addressing real world issues by subsituting aliens and fantasy realms for real world events. The moment some explicit moral message begins flashing on screen to a dramatic score, is the moment I regret the hours of play I've put in.

    There is one exception to this. If your game is really, really, really good, and you can integrate the concept without fundamentally altering the setting, then you can start to preach. Just not too much thanks. A game that did this rather well was the original Metal Gear Solid, which had a very clear anti-nuclear proliferation message that fitted smoothly into the entire game.

    The real issue of censorship in video games is not the messages they convey, but the actions they still consider taboo. The greatest addition that could be made to a game like GTA would be to put children in as pedestrians, because we've all felt that urge to strangle some screaming brat at least once in our lives. This will never happen because if it did, exaggerated public outrage would quickly follow from people who've never even seen the game.

    Let's face it. Taboos still exist in our society and moreover we still do not have the freedom to challenge them. We've let our fear and other people's outrage, continue to keep the status quo.
    • It's interesting that you mention Grand Theft Auto, which makes a strong political statement itself. These themes are prevalent throughout the series, but I'm talking about GTA:SA The cops are crooked and involved in everything. Our main character left the 'hood to try to escape the horror of urban life and was drug back into the system only to become a toady of a government stooge. (That's where I am in the game so far anyway. Currently I'm discovering that it's horribly hard to fly a plane with a thumbsti
    • The best message I've seen in a game was in Hostile Waters.

      The line? I can't find the script.. but the scene is just simply a bunch of national flags flying toward the camera and burning, and the gist of it is that at some point in the future, everyone realises that all the fighting is a bunch of shit and that if everyone would just get along with each other it would all be much nicer. The game is spent fighting against a cabal of the old power-brokers who want things back the way they were before (artifici
  • I can't wait for the next Postal game by Running With Scissors. That studio really knows how to exercise their freedom of speech. In Postal 2 you had the option to deal with many situations however you saw fit, with violence, stealth, by conforming to societal expectations, or by running like a coward. It's a first person shooter you can win without firing a shot (and can't win without pissing on your own father's grave).

    One of the first missions in the game pits you against militant protesters picket
  • "If we refuse to tackle issues and remain purely a thing of fluff and fizz then interactive entertainment will never have the gravitas of its cousins."

    Does anything really have gravitas anyway? How many really important films have come out in the last 30 years (arguably as long as video games have been around)? Ok, more than just a few. What percentage of all produced films did they consist of? Wow, that low, huh? I mean, take The Matrix. Lots of philosophy based discussions: but would it have been succ
  • Since when does an industry that pioneers the use of DRM care about freedom? The gaming industry is only following in the footsteps of the film industry; only the smaller artists will fight for their freedom of speech, because they're more interested in saying something worthwhile than making big bucks.
  • This is the price one pays to sell a game to the mainstream public, as opposed to the behind the curtain of the back of your local comicbook/hobby or porn shop. Believe it or not, in the "real world", people don't necessarily want their children just buying any random game they get at Walmart only to find 3d enhanced silicon boobs or whatever strikes your offend-o-meter--or they at least want to be warned it's in there.

    Game developers know that in order to get good distribution they have to have a product t

  • if you look at sims games, particularly sims2, you'll notice that while the designers fought for the possibility of homosexual relationships, there aren't any gay sims that actually ship with the game.

    it's not as much of a statement as would be nice to see in games, but it's as close as it can come to outwardly being pro-gay without actually pissing people off and getting pulled from walmart.

    i think a lot of games can improve the world without actively and blatantly fighting for freedom. it was a long t

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