An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from an article about
how obscenity laws and the first amendment relate to modern games:
"This question is a tough one, for the very good reason that no video game developer or publisher has ever been prosecuted for obscenity related to video games. As we have seen, if the medium of video games are held to the same standard as literature and film then, presumably, they can also be held to be obscene. One of the reasons for the lack of obscenity prosecution against video game developers and publishers is that the courts have limited obscenity to sexual content only. In fact, the courts have gone so far as to specifically reject calls to alter the definition of 'obscenity' to include violent content in video games. The other major reason is the vast majority of video games sold in the United States have only small amounts of sexual content thanks to the Electronic Software Rating Board."
The main reason games don't have obscene content (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:5, Insightful)
The lack of sex has little to do with first amendment as its pretty much all based on the self censorship the industry is doing via the ESRB.
A game that contains sex gets rated AO by the ESRB and AO means that it won't be allowed to make it on either Nintendo's, Sony's or Microsoft's console. There is still the PC market, but Walmart and other shops won't carry AO either. So AO pretty much results in a game that you can't sell, so everybody avoids it as good as they can, meaning no sex in games.
Parent
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That ratings board is stil voluntary, right?
What's to stop someone from making such a game, that will work on some or all of the platforms, and marketing and selling it independently?
Sure, you may not get offical blessing by Sony, Nintendo or MS, and you may have to omit their trademarked names, but, surely there is no law about what you can plug into your own game unit that you own, is there? Hell sell it
Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:5, Insightful)
What's to stop someone from making such a game, that will work on some or all of the platforms, and marketing and selling it independently?
The fact that it won't play on the vast amount of consoles that aren't unhacked?
Sure, you may not get offical blessing by Sony, Nintendo or MS, and you may have to omit their trademarked names, but, surely there is no law about what you can plug into your own game unit that you own, is there?
Are you completely unaware of the DMCA?
If the companies start bitching, just throw out the 1st amendment rights and the fair use doctrine.
And you'd lose on the grounds that circumventing copy protections in such a manner as you described is clearly against the law.
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Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:5, Informative)
The Japanese seem to have no trouble delivering on this...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eroge [wikipedia.org]
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And the thing is that for a disc to be recognized by a game console, it usually have to include material copyrighted by the console manufacturer, usually a picture of their logo (compared against a copy located in the firmware) and sometimes some proprietary bootstrap code, so if you're pretty much forced to have a license to be legally able to make a game running on their console.
Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:5, Informative)
Actually the part about the proprietary bootstrap code isn't an issue as was decided in Sega v Accolade [wikipedia.org] in which Accolade reverse engineered code to load their games for the Genesis as they weren't a licensee of Sega. Basically that code wasn't covered by copyright because it was considered "non-expressive" and as such didn't get copyright protection. The issue for what the GP is talking about has to do with the cryptographic key signing that is used by the consoles. That is illegal to circumvent.
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Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:5, Interesting)
You Americans need to relax a little bit concerning sex. I think violence is a lot worse than sex.
It's OK for kids to see people being machinegunned into pieces, blood and flesh everywhere, but a boobie is simply too outrageous. WTF!?!
Here in Europe, most movies have nudity in them but in a Hollywood movie, if you see some boobs for a fraction of a second, it's outrageous. The leg-crossing of Sharon Stone in Fatal Instinct was deemed as the sexiest thing on cinema, but truly, it's pretty standard in European movies. Of course, in American movies and series, violence is rampant, even in family-rated stuff.
On American TV, I've seen boobs blurred out in movies, music videos, etc. I've even seen something incredible, Naomi Watts was masturbating in Mulholland Drive, but she was only filmed from the waist up, so you could only see her arm going up and down, suggesting what she was doing. They fucking blurred her arm! How stupid is this?
Parent
Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude, WE KNOW.
We're waiting on the AARP crowd to die off so we can take control. There's a shit-ton of baby boomers out there, they're active and they vote.
Once they're all dead, we'll "relax" more as a country.
But yeah, I agree, I'd rather see a delicious breast than some dude get blown to pieces by a gun in a movie.
Don't kid yourself though, Europe is just as screwed up as the US is, just in slightly different ways.
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Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude, WE KNOW.
We're waiting on the AARP crowd to die off so we can take control. There's a shit-ton of baby boomers out there, they're active and they vote.
Once they're all dead, we'll "relax" more as a country.
I bet you don't. You'll be their age then, and I bet you'll be pretty much the same. Remember that those baby boomers were the "free love" and "turn on, tune in, drop out" generation!
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Actually, the problem generation is 65+.
Until two years ago, we had to wear dress shirts at work (in 95 degree weather at lunch) because of some ancient guy. The second he retired, polo shirts were finally allowed.
Sexual and racial attitudes have a very sharp line generationally currently at about the top of the baby boomer age.
Violence is a different thing-- since we grew up with it- it's cool at all age levels.
But, considering it- you do have a point, there was a ton of nudity in the 70's in films (inclu
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The boomers may have had their hippies for a brief period, but I think in reality most of them grew up with Ward and June Cleaver as role models for what's "normal" and "acceptable". By contrast, my generation grew up with Peg and Al Bundy.
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Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:5, Funny)
What movies have your generation produced like that? NONE.
Watchmen had a faithful reproduction of the amount of sex from the book. I seem to recall there were a run of movies like Zack and Mimi and others which were even more raunchy than Total Recall. To be more to the point though, I don't think censorship is necessarily the problem here. I think that the problem is that there is very little content being produced with anyone over the age of 20 in mind. Back in the old days, kids had cartoons and they had disney movies. Now that people realized that kids are the only demographic worth catering to, that's all that's made. Don't hate the baby boomers. Don't hate the "pepsi generation". Hate all those overbearing marketing assholes who decided to prey on children with their inability to differentiate content from advertisement. Now that this is the standard operating procedure for anyone looking to make a buck, that's all you'll see anymore. Me personally, I just solve the problem by downloading kids movies, splicing in individual frames of sex scenes, and then posting them back out there for download.
Parent
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Us young folks ain't censoring your generation. This isn't a generation thing. This is a regional thing. The United States is split into two (really three, but we're simplifying) cultures heavily based on region: the really-laid-back West Coast urban culture, the businesslike but still liberal East Coast urban culture, and the rural, moralistic culture of the Midwest and South. Unfortunately, somehow people from that last group seem to come to disproportionate prominence in the entertainment industry's
Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:5, Interesting)
However, you can't directly compare it to violence. Explicit sex is media is frowned upon for entirely different reasons than violence. I'm not worried about my son, my daughter, or 99.9% of anybody else's kids wanting to go out and commit murder because they see it in a game. However, sex is a temptation. The kids would be weird if they DIDN'T want to go out and have sex... or lock themselves up in their bedroom and watch sex all day.
Yeah, I think it's too restrictive. I don't see anything wrong with a child seeing a breast. But in fairness, the current stigma is not because sex is considered WORSE than violence. It's considered more SEDUCTIVE than violence.
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Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:5, Informative)
I guess that openess and explanation works better than obfuscation, as always.
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Kid's need to be exposed to sex and along with the good, show them the bad, like how sex will never last as long as a woman's ability to nag and spend money like it grows on trees.
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This is marked as interesting, but isn't this the exact line of thinking that we endlessly mock? Violence doesn't bother you because, well, no one is going to kill anyone hurr, that never happens.But OMG KIDS MIGHT WANT TO HAVE SEX THIS IS TERRIBLE WE HAVE TO STOP THEM SEEING THIS.
It's still about control then, surely. Sex is considered more 'seductive' than violence because it's not overtly illegal. Yet. You can't go out and hit/shoot/kill someone because that's against the law, so sure, let people watch p
Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:4, Informative)
No, it wasn't. Mass Effect was rated "M" and can be purchased just about anywhere that sells video games.
The controversy that surrounded that game alleged that there was rape and other sexual disturbing scenes, which was completely false. There exists one (1) "bed scene" that is more tame than what you see on TV.
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Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:4, Informative)
There are a grand total of four possible sexual encounters. One is optional for all characters in all playthroughs (and happens or not depending on conversation responses). The last three are optional depending on which (if any) crew member you decide to romance - at most one of these will happen per playthrough. All of them are consensual and between adults.
The first doesn't show anything even remotely considered nudity, and is mostly implied. It's with an Asari (a mono-gendered, but female-looking/acting alien race) consort. It's a 'reward' for you if you don't think her gift of advice is enough for completing her sidequests.
The other three are very similar in style, and are between a male PC and a female human, a female PC and a male human, and a female or male PC and an Asari (female-looking/acting) scientist. They show, at most, mild nudity from the characters (showing rear nudity, with full nudity implied), and are indeed tamer than what you can see on network TV in most ways, and certainly tamer than some things you can see on cable TV. They also only occur after a fairly significant romance sideplot, advanced in conversations with the chosen NPC between missions, and only occur near the end of the game (which is, attempting 100% completion, a longer-than 20-hour game, and probably could not be completed in much less than 8 hours, even with skipping all non-plot related events or quests).
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I'm in the middle of replaying the game - my memory of it is fresher than most people's would be. If you'll notice, most of the detail is also about the occurrence of them and not detail about the sex scenes themselves. Useful stuff to know when going for 100% completion in a game.
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Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a different theory on old married couples.
I think they are a classic skinner box type training.
Every time you ask for sex, you had a good chance of being rejected so you ask less over time and have less interest and desire to avoid the pain of rejection.
I say this because I was in a long relationship with a lady where six times a month we got together and it was always a "sure thing" and the sex got better over time -- just walking in the door we would both be ready and we felt "safe" that it was going to happen and we were not going to be rejected. Other times were a "sure thing" that nothing would happen and that also felt safe and relaxed in a different way. People talk about liking spontaneity but it brings with it a risk of rejection and the subsequent ego hit.
I could ask him/her, but I have a 75% chance of rejection-- never mind. besides he/she rejected me and made me feel unattractive last time I asked.
OTH, a lot of affairs are smoking hot because-- the people know they are getting together for hot sex (tm).
Plus, then there are the bonus rejections for "I don't want to have sex because you didn't take out the garbage", "I don't want to have sex because my boss chewed me out and I'm worried about getting fired", "I don't want to have sex because you embarrassed me in front of the Jones."
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As far as the watchmen went-- I felt the violence was beyond the book. And even where it was the same, it seemed more extreme because you could hear it and see it at the same time.
I think the watchmen was ruined by lacking a good soundtrack. It had a good score, but the soundtrack was weak and, at times, misleading. A good sound track cues your emotions appropriately for what is on the screen. The watchman soundtrack failed in that regard.
Parent
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It is interesting that we are ok with violence, but fret over sex (At least in the US).
It's not just interesting, it's mind boggling.
Violence is bad, murder is generally considered to be the worst thing you can do. Sex is great, and actually required for human survival.
And which of these do we freely display in movies, while the other is only hinted at or avoided?
Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:5, Insightful)
You are quite right about a chilling effect. That tells me we are doing things the hard way. Rather than censorship, I'd much rather we teach people that fictional depictions like video games can be appreciated for what they are without also being idolized and emulated. Any adult who can't understand what that means is not really an adult but an overgrown child. So I assume this must be about children. If parents are worried about their children being exposed to the more severe video games or movies or any other media, I fully support their right to act as the "benevolent dictators" that they are and control what their children have access to. However, I expect them to actually be parents instead of relying on institutional censorship to carry out their responsibility for them.
Parent
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I think this is mostly because most parents feel that their kids having sex is more likely than them becomming violent killers.
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I think this is mostly because most parents feel that their kids having sex is more likely than them becomming violent killers.
And they also seem to believe that the two are morally comparable.
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I wouldn't say that. Its an application of expected value.
M = Lets call this immorality, with higher, positive numbers being more immoral.
P = Probability
M-total = P-sex * M-sex + P-violence * M-violence
In a lot of parents' eyes, you'd probably end up with 0 > P-violence, so you end up with P-violence * M-violence P-sex * M-sex, simply because sex is far more likely.
Along other lines, you have issues like teen pregnancy, which is far more likely to negatively impact a kids' life than violence.
Now, I don
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It's not even "a single breast being exposed during a Superbowl half-time show" but a single nipple. You can show much of the breast on TV and in print without being called porn. Just look at all of the bikini shots that show nearly the entire top of the model. But show one female nipple and you're in "won't someone think of the children" territory. I still haven't quite figured out how that small patch of skin on a female qualifies as obscene while the same patch of skin on a male is mundane. I keep e
Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, part of parenting is teaching your kids how to react to things that you don't usually allow. If you'd rather your kid not look at nude photos of women or play extremely violent video games, you don't just keep them out of your house and pretend that they don't exist. At some point, your child will discover them. Instead, you have a talk with them about why you consider those things bad (kids aren't too fond of "because I said so") and how to react if they should come upon something like that. It's what I do with my five year old son (and will do with my two year old son when he gets older).
Parent
Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:4, Informative)
This applies to retailers as well, the same retailer will accept the content in a movie but not in a game. It's not just chilling, it's deadly to a game.
Parent
Re:The main reason games don't have obscene conten (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm kind of failing to see what the loss to humanity is if some commercial sex games aren't made.
I can definitely see that a game with strong sexuality can have artistic merit, that's not what this is about. On the other hand, I think most games like that would never, ever be made by anything other than an individual or small group that would make it regardless of whether it would be commercially viable.
What humanity could stand to lose is the "we know what's best for you" mentality. Humanity could stand to lose that, the same way that a cancer patient could stand to lose a tumor.
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Obscene (Score:4, Informative)
I can't remember off the top of my head what the case cite is, but the SCOTUS decided that each local has the choice of deciding for its self what is obscene and what is not.
For example, what might be obscene in Kentucky may be par for the course in California and so on.
Re:Obscene (Score:5, Informative)
That would be Miller v. California and is know as the Miller test. For something to be considered obscene, it needs to meet 3 criteria.
1. The average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest.
2. the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state law.
3. the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.
Parent
Re:Obscene (Score:5, Interesting)
2. the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct or excretory functions specifically defined by applicable state law.
I've always found it kind of amusing that it's basically all about sex and pooping. Of all the forms of speech that can be censored due to being offensive, of all the activities which we can't tolerate because they're too objectionable, we've picked out sex and pooping.
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Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Life, Liberty & the Pursuit of Happiness (Score:5, Informative)
Unless I'm mistaken, the Declaration of Independence has no legal standing.
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"Obscenity"? (Score:5, Informative)
Do keep in mind that the legal definition is really, past all the smoke and mirrors, whatever the judge personally finds distasteful. Deciding what the population doesn't need or want to view for them has no place in a free society.
Then of course, we're not a free society.
The law often makes up legal principles (usually giving them Latin names to try to make them seem magical and justified) to override other legal principles. Obscenity is a great way to override freedom of speech by taking speech, labeling it "obscenity," and then claiming that it's "not really speech." A problem with the constitution colliding with the rights of minors and school? No problem! "En loco parentis," is right up your alley (whether you agree with the concept or not). The "community standards" excuse is, even if it is applied as per the name, is a violation of individual rights which the legal system has been more than happy to sacrifice in the name of a sort of vicious populism. Why community standards in obscenity, and not political opinion? Obscenity, political opinion, all of it is simply how one takes it. Personally, I find Nazis more distasteful than goatse, but we're not at silencing them (yet...).
This also extends into the domain of politics, where wars become "police action."
Don't think freedom means a damn thing if the government gets to play with the meaning of words, or if whatever is popular reigns over individual rights.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it [wikipedia.org]
Obligatory Tom Lehrer (Score:5, Funny)
"I do have a cause though. It is obscenity. I'm for it. Unfortunately the civil liberties types who are fighting this issue have to fight it owing to the nature of the laws as a matter of freedom of speech and stifling of free expression and so on but we know what's really involved: dirty books are fun. That's all there is to it. But you can't get up in a court and say that I suppose. It's simply a matter of freedom of pleasure, a right which is not guaranteed by the Constitution unfortunately."
(at which point he launched into this jaunty tune: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pva35TFiBfI [youtube.com])
Still more "progressive" than most countries (Score:5, Interesting)
Many countries, even in the English-speaking world, still have official censorship bodies which won't let you publish content without state approval. That's general content, not particular content niches like pornography. Games have been effectively banned in Europe or Australia from being sold for being too violent or "mature." By comparison, the United States has no effective apparatus of censorship. The most that can happen is that a prosecutor brings you up on charges of violating local obscenities laws, but then the prosecutor has to show that your sexual content is gratuitous and has no independent (artistic, literary, etc.) merit. If you had a map where a character walks through a realistic strip club, and gets into a shoot out, that content is likely to be protected under the same precedents that protect R-rated movies with similar content.
Now, if you create a sex simulator, even one like Hot Coffee, well, you're up shit creek. That aside, our system is significantly freer and more in line with "let adults be adults and let parents be responsible" than the majority of the industrial world on content in general.
There is good reason it hasn't happened (Score:3, Interesting)
And not just because Jack Thompson keeps failing on the civil side.
Getting video game violence declared obscene is well prevented by the movie/tv industries' efforts in the motion-picture realm. They've been working for decades to keep visual depictions of violence in the "OK for young children" realm. You can punch somebody on television and it'll be ok for anyone over the age of 8. Add some blood and it pops you up into the low teens, on par with a bit of side-boob.
The interactive aspect is too narrow a distinction for the rest of the entertainment industry to risk getting drawn in and censored, so it'll never happen until somebody comes up with a .9 r^2 correlation [wikipedia.org] between violent games and homosexuality.
Integrating sex into gameplay (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is that sex in games usually doesn't provide good gameplay. If you just want to watch porn, that's easily available. Besides, simulated porn doesn't look that good.
That said, the big flap about the "hot coffee" scene in GTA was sort of silly. The GTA world ought to have sex in it. In fact, it's inconsistent that a game with strippers and hookers doesn't have sex in it. There's so much unrealized potential there, for seduction, power games, devious girlfriends - all the basic male/female drama elements.
The key is integrating sex into gameplay without having the sex dominate the game. That's a design challenge. It's not impossible. Second Life has sex, but it's not primarily a sex-oriented MMORPG. What we need are R-rated video games, dramas where sex plays a role in the plot. That could be fun.
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Anyone know of any court cases involving Japanese sex games? I know they get pretty obscene..
There's been a lot of talk [current.com] and grandstanding for banning games like "RapeLay" [slate.com] but I don't think there's been a court case or decree. It's pretty difficult to get a hold of through a major outlet though. And I think Japan's version of the ESRB is passing new standards [slashdot.org] preventing the publishing of games like this. No court cases on US soil regarding this title to my knowledge. From what I've read, it seems to be the most explosively controversial title out there right now.
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Hm. And, while we're on it, there's nothing wrong with me setting up in public and warning people about how awful homosexuals are, is there? After all, it's free speech. It's not even obscene. Oh, wait, you call that "hate" speech and have decided that "hate" is wrong, whereas "immorality" or "obscenity" is not, thus you want free obscenity and bridled hate.
That is in fact perfectly legal. The Westboro Baptist Church has become famous for doing exactly that, in contexts where it's generally considered to be in very poor taste (such as funerals for fallen soldiers). The point where it becomes illegal is when you start telling people to beat up gay people.
Re:Isn't it about PUBLIC obscenity? (Score:4, Informative)
Hm. And, while we're on it, there's nothing wrong with me setting up in public and warning people about how awful homosexuals are, is there? After all, it's free speech. It's not even obscene. Oh, wait, you call that "hate" speech and have decided that "hate" is wrong, whereas "immorality" or "obscenity" is not, thus you want free obscenity and bridled hate.
You have failed: It's only hate speech if you say "The Queers are ruining the soil, and we should do something about them." It's still legal to say that the Queers are ruining the soil to make landing strips for Gay Martians... unless you're actually harming someone. Actually, it has to be a direct incitement to violence to even be prosecutable in most cases; a sort of vague, general "someone should do something about those damned queers" is usually not actionable, even if you find it objectionable.
Anyway, libel, defamation and slander are illegal, so if you want to put up a stand and hand out pamphlets that tell lies about fags, it's against the law. However, it's against the law for them to put up a stand and tell lies about you... under the same laws.
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Re:BF Skinner was right (Score:5, Interesting)
Skinnerian radical behaviorism has all but been completely thrown out the window in modern psychology. These days, cognitive psychology is all the rage. Even more modern post-Skinnerian behaviorists like Tolman [wikipedia.org] had began thinking along more cognitive lines.
Thing is that I, along with many others, including my wife who self-identifies as a bevaviorist, believe that Skinnerian radical behaviorism is far too simplistic a view and that with advances in modern technology we have to look beyond simple operant conditioning as causes of human behavior, because at this point, quite frankly, we can.
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