Sex in Games:G4 Special Report Talkback

[Nin-Nin69]

Airing 8/23/2005 11pm ET / 8pm PT

This G4 Special Report takes an in-depth look at the history of sex in video games, starting from the Atari 2600 in the early 80's and ending with the state of the industry today. Find out how sexy games have shaped the way we play games in general and how the "Hot Coffee" scandal in the already controversial title Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has made an impact on the industry as a whole. With special commentary from Hugh Hefner.

The Special Report will be followed by a 30-minute panel of experts hosted by Adam Sessler including:




Hal Halpin, President of the Interactive Entertainment Merchants Association
Ed Fries, Former Vice President of Microsoft Games
Melissa Caldwell, Director of Research and Publications at the Parents Television Council
Seth Schiesel, Culture and Technology writer for the New York Times
Patricia Vance, President of the Electronics Software Ratings Board
California State Assemblyman Leland Y. Yee, 12th Assembly District
I'll be watching tonight. So will people from the government who will try to catch anything they find wrong. G4 better choose their words correctly. Then again us gamers should be panicked because it's G4 after all. Having Hugh Hefner try to explain the ESRB rating system and why parents should be parents is most likely not going to take place. The most I expect out of his mouth is "Sex sells and that's how the game industry works."

My best suggestion is to think of any great game out there that may be in threat if mentioned that could be edited down. In short, if you haven't picked up a copy of God of War I suggest you go to the store ASAP and pick up one in case stuff goes down.

[LordByronius]

And thus, G4 attempts to take one bold step forward. Unfortunately, shows like "Fastlane" and the general crappiness of the network in general have them already about ten-thousand steps behind, so.

[krazymed]

This show will promote sex and violence, not fight it. It makes no sense to openly allow fanatical opposition on everything the network built itself on. The increase in video game popularity, and why people bother with G4 in the first place, is directly related to the games at issue here.

At least that Sessler panel will give some indication of what Meet the Sess could have been, but without the funny bashing (because he is dealing with people that can basically ruin his career if he does it).

[Nin-Nin69]

OK the first half of the show had a nice history of sex in video games. Having Nolan Bushnell talking about Gotcha was a nice touch because I was afraid that would've been forgotten. However I wasn't surprised at all that Hugh Hefner saying sex sells, God of War being shown only as a sexual reference, or the undeserved attention surrounding Custer's Revenge. If they had to censor the pixelated Atari characters in magazine, then why not on TV until they actually made human contact? That confused me.

The downside was G4 once again limited to the US market and never talking about the video game industry outside of the US. Sure this issue is about the game sales in the US, but a comparison to other countries that expose it even worse than us should take off some of the heat we get here. Europe made sex compalation games since the PS1/Saturn with people like Pam Anderson. Japan has a ton of arcades even worse than Gotcha which had many sequels over the years such as Boing-Ga Boing-Ga or Gals Panic. Plus the 100,000 of Hentai games that are brought to the US that can be purchased at a few retail stores like Micro Center.

Another thing that bothered me was G4 jumping from 1990 to 1996. They completly skipped over Plumbers Don't Wear Ties and Duke Nukem 3D which brought up some controversy. It was a small gripe I held since they bothered to mention Golgo 13 Top Secret Episode and Night Trap. Speaking of Night Trap, I don't care what people say it wasn't a softcore porn game. It was supose to make fun of the idea for bad 80's horror movies and your mission was to save the people in the house from these vampire like killers. There were a ton of guys in the game and I believe there was a kid somewhere in the mix. Besides Double Switch was made by the same company and that was only rated T because there was less brutal death scenes in that and wasn't about horror movies.

Finally the last thing that bugged me was the fact that G4 misleading info that Lara Croft was the inspiration for Claire Redfield and Aya Brea. What? Resident Evil was released March 22, 1996 while Tomb Raider was released the week before Thanksgiving in 1996. Resident Evil's motivations was towards Romero movies and other big budget Hollywood horror/action movies. Claire was created after Biohazzard 1.5 was scrapped because they wanted to make a family member tie in with the original cast. Claire just had the same attitude as her old counter part Elza Walker who was already created before the official release for Tomb Raider.

Aya Brea in fact was more related to Resident Evil than Tomb Raider. First and formost Parasite Eve was a sucessful novel in Japan written in 1997. The game was being developed shortly after the novel being released, but was supose to be a continuation of the novel. Squaresoft was trying to tackle the Survival Horror market that RE rose from the grave after Alone in the Dark. So they created a female hero that people would relate to who knew Jill Valentime. Thus the masterpiece was born.

My second half of the review for the second half of the special will continue in my next post.

[Nin-Nin69]

The second half consisting of the discussion with Adam Sessler both made me think more about the ESRB and made me turn my head in disgust.

First off they gave me a better inside as to how the ESRB rate their games and there are 2 huge flaws here. The first one was there were only 3 people rating this game. And they're judging it from a form filled out and a video clip? Wow there is really something wrong there. That would explain as to why games don't deserve E or T ratings. We need a group of atleast 9 people to do this job.

The second flaw was that there isn't a real tech demo of the game necessary for the people at the ESRB to play. Here is something I found to be very intresting about employment opportunities:

The ESRB is looking for adults with flexible hours that would be available to come to our office in midtown Manhattan on a freelance basis (1- 4 times a month) during normal (9-5) business hours to rate video games. Experience with children is preferred. Prior experience playing games is not required and training will be provided. You heard that folks? No experience with video games is necessary. So why are people that don't play games telling us the ratings? Well according to t Patricia Vance it's supose to be the people's rating and not the companies. So why don't real people give out better ratings while having some real experience with games under their belt? If movie goers work for the MPAA, then why can't the ESRB consist of gamers? The ESRB does infact affect certain games due to this crap like Sonic Gems Collection. We don't get the Streets of Rage series because Sega wants the game to be listed as E, but goes against the new image they're making with Shadow the Hedgehog.

Besides all of that, there was a ton of debate going on at the table I've heard time and time again on the internet and I've heard better questions brought up by other friends of mine and myself. None of those hard hitting questions even were mentioned which would've given the gaming community and the government some things to realise.

1) What is the real difference between the M and AO rating to be just one age? Also are 18 year olds really the target auidence for AO games?

2) Why are games with extended periods of violence never rated AO, but when it comes to sexual content it's a different story?

3) How come games that are all about sex like Playboy Mansion or The Guy Game get away with more lude content and are sold in major retailers while games like GTA:SA that have a ton of development and free roaming which almost have no sexual content are punished?

4) Why should we dump more money into the ESRB so parents understand it instead of teaching parents to be parents and be more responsible about what their kid can and can not do?

5) Did you know that even if GTA:SA was never hacked to find that mod that people in the mod community make 1,000 of similar mods a day with other games that are rated E to M? Why are these people not being delt with?

How do you think Patricia Vance or Leland Y. Yee would've responded to these questions? How fast do you think the ways the government looks at video games would've changed focus from the problem of developers towards the ESRB and parents themselves? A ton of things could've been cleared up with this great oppertunity that G4 created and was wasted no better than the intreviews on Crossfire and Hardball.

[BrendaBat]

My review of the first half:
I didn't like the first half very much. Partly because it used a lot of the same comentators as Filter (and I don't like being reminded of Filter :p ). But mostly because the overall message was "sex sells, its in games, and game companies will keep pushing the envelope so just shut up and get used to it". I understand that, since the comentators were made up of people in the gaming industry (and Hugh Heffner), they'd have this attitude. But the first half of the special didn't make much effort to present the opposing side of the debate. The only comment that anyone made that went against sex in video games was the unanimious agreement that rape sims are bad. :rolleyes:

And Nin-Nin69, I agree with the points you made about only limiting the special to western games and mainstream Japanese titles like DOA. The general public may be unaware of the sick porno games that come out of Japan; but most gamers are aware of them and the special really should have touched on that. Like you said. It might have helped take some heat off the American gaming industry.

Finally the last thing that bugged me was the fact that G4 misleading info that Lara Croft was the inspiration for Claire Redfield and Aya Brea. What? That bugged me, too. Lara Croft made sexy female game protaginists popular in the US and Europe. But she wasn't the inspiration for every single one that came out at the time. I'm far from the most knowledgable, die-hard gamer in the world; but even I knew that!

My review of the second half:
I liked the second half a lot better because it tried to be fair and present both sides of the debate. And Adam Sessler did a fantastic job as a moderator. I was a little worried that G4 would hire some Falwell-esque lunatic to defend the parents' groups. Thankfully, they didn't.

You heard that folks? No experience with video games is necessary. So why are people that don't play games telling us the ratings? Well according to t Patricia Vance it's supose to be the people's rating and not the companies. So why don't real people give out better ratings while having some real experience with games under their belt? To be fair, Patricia Vance did explain why they use forms and video clips instead of having people play the games. She said that, "It would be near impossible to play through every video game that comes in". The ESRB has to review hundreds of games each year and, if they played through entire games before attaching ratings to them, new games would take forever to hit the shelves (especially sandbox games like GTA and 100+ hour RPGs). Its not a perfect system. But I think that they do the best they can under the circumstances.
2) Why are games with extended periods of violence never rated AO, but when it comes to sexual content it's a different story?
'Cause thats the American way! *waves flag* :p
3) How come games that are all about sex like Playboy Mansion or The Guy Game get away with more lude content and are sold in major retailers while games like GTA:SA that have a ton of development and free roaming which almost have no sexual content are punished?Because you know what to expect from a game called "Playboy". The arguement from the parents groups is that, since the sexual content wasn't clearly spelled out on the GTA:SA box, that they were mislead.

Yeah, its a stupid arguement when you consider that you have to hack the game to see the sexual content (which isn't really very explicit). But its enough send in the witch hunters.
4) Why should we dump more money into the ESRB so parents understand it instead of teaching parents to be parents and be more responsible about what their kid can and can not do?Because its not the ESRB's job to teach parents to be parents. Its their job to rate games. And game ratings are useless if people don't understand them.
Most parents didn't grow up with video games, don't follow the gaming industry, and are unaware of the adult turn that video games have taken. So a parent may pick up a game for their kid that looks innocent enough; but then be horrified when they realise its something like Conker's Bad Fur Day. That wouldn't automatically make them a bad, stupid, or negligent parent.
Honestly, I don't see why the idea of the ESRB spending money to educate consumers about their system makes you so angry. It would save a lot of trouble (and prevent a lot of lawsuits) in the long run. Whats wrong with that?

Overall...
I do have one major beef with the specials overall. Neither of them touched on the impacts (both real and hypothetical) of women being so crudely objectified in a lot of modern games. Its something that has always bothered me (and a lot of other girls I know who play games) and its something that the special really should have touched on (no pun intended).

[Nin-Nin69]

To be fair, Patricia Vance did explain why they use forms and video clips instead of having people play the games. She said that, "It would be near impossible to play through every video game that comes in". The ESRB has to review hundreds of games each year and, if they played through entire games before attaching ratings to them, new games would take forever to hit the shelves (especially sandbox games like GTA and 100+ hour RPGs). Its not a perfect system. But I think that they do the best they can under the circumstances. Well they can atleast get a tech demo. Meaning they can play though parts of the game that they atleast describe in those documents. Either way 3 people isn't enough.

Because its not the ESRB's job to teach parents to be parents. Its their job to rate games. And game ratings are useless if people don't understand them.
Most parents didn't grow up with video games, don't follow the gaming industry, and are unaware of the adult turn that video games have taken. So a parent may pick up a game for their kid that looks innocent enough; but then be horrified when they realise its something like Conker's Bad Fur Day. That wouldn't automatically make them a bad, stupid, or negligent parent.

Honestly, I don't see why the idea of the ESRB spending money to educate consumers about their system makes you so angry. It would save a lot of trouble (and prevent a lot of lawsuits) in the long run. Whats wrong with that? Parents understand the ratings of movies, but why not games? It sounds very unlikely, but the statements people make that parents don't know how the ESRB system works is a complete lie. Parents understand what M and AO mean in today's world thanks to the media during the early 90's. The problem is they believe in the same things they did when people screamed about music and movies when they were younger. So they let their kids play what they want. After all they don't want to feel like they're over powering their kids on what they must play because it would feel like a waste of money for them.

Some of them however are ignorent who don't bother with anything involving ratings and realise it too late. And because of this the content in those games put their children in danger. Which goes back to the whole "Games are ment for kids." Just because the parent of the child who plays games won't get into them doesn't mean that all games are for kids. Parents say it's too complicated and that's a damn lie to. It's the question of how long they can handle using their brain or reflexes. They do that enough in their busy days and think that games will make it harder on them.

All parents need to do is learn how to say "no" and acutally lissen to what the guy behind the counter might have to say. Sure those guys who work at EB and Game Stop are not all on the level since they want the money, but it is a regulation for them to explain the ratings system to parents when they ask. If you looked at the footage shown or been to any place that sells video games, the signs for the ESRB are huge and clearly list what they all mean.

I do have one major beef with the specials overall. Neither of them touched on the impacts (both real and hypothetical) of women being so crudely objectified in a lot of modern games. Its something that has always bothered me (and a lot of other girls I know who play games) and its something that the special really should have touched on (no pun intended). Good point. Melissa Caldwell was being very negative about the subject towards the end and my guess was that nobody wanted to make a personal attack against her during the session to bring this up.

[BrendaBat]

Parents understand the ratings of movies, but why not games? It sounds very unlikely, but the statements people make that parents don't know how the ESRB system works is a complete lie. Parents understand what M and AO mean in today's world thanks to the media during the early 90's. Its unfair to assume that everyone remembers the big controversy that Mortal Kombat sparked in the early 1990s. Also, I remember the ESRB rating system used to be different (they were more similar to the movie ratings when the ESRB started). I'm pretty sure they've changed it at least twice since then. So I can understand how that might cause some confusion.

Just because the parent of the child who plays games won't get into them doesn't mean that all games are for kids. Parents say it's too complicated and that's a damn lie to. It's the question of how long they can handle using their brain or reflexes. They do that enough in their busy days and think that games will make it harder on them. Not being interested in playing video games doesn't mean someone is unable to handle using their brain or reflexes. Some people just don't like them and/or don't have a knack for them. Doesn't make them stupid or liars.
Besides, a parent shouldn't have to waste time actually playing the damn game to get an idea of what its like. That just isn't practical.

[LordByronius]

I do have one major beef with the specials overall. Neither of them touched on the impacts (both real and hypothetical) of women being so crudely objectified in a lot of modern games. Its something that has always bothered me (and a lot of other girls I know who play games) and its something that the special really should have touched on (no pun intended).
Women don't watch G4. And I'd be ashamed of any that did.

[Duke]

Women don't watch G4. And I'd be ashamed of any that did.I'm willing to bet at least a few women watch Anime Unleashed. And I know a few moms watch X-Play.

My biggest problem with this whole thing is the "educate the parents" arguement. IT WON'T WORK. Seriously, nothing short of surgically implanting the information into each and every parent's brain is gonna make them understand the ESRB's rating system (even though it's as clear as day ON THE FRIGGIN BOX). Remember, there are still people out there who still think a CD-ROM tray is a coffee cup holder. And have no idea what screen savers are. And who still believe all video games are exactly like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong from years past. I remember watching a special on some news show years ago on VG violence, and they showed footage of Street Fighter II set to Pac-Man sound effects.

[Zach]

I forgot to watch last night. I hope there is a rerun tonight.

[Nin-Nin69]

The next airing is going to play at 1:00 AM tonight.

[Demonic Raven]

The first half was good, which showed us (nearly) the entire history of sex in games. It was just like an episode of Icons, only this sort of thing isn't to be celebrated. :p

The second half wasn't nearly as good, but it was okay. It didn't bring anything new to the table, they just talked very in general about the issue. Nin-Nin69 brought up a good bunch of questions, ones that REALLY would have made the second half much more worth it.

One thing that has me scratching my head is why parents don't understand the rating system. It's pretty basic..."E for everyone" is games for.....everyone. "T for Teen" is for.....teens. *cough* Is this a joke? Not to mention that everything is clear as day right on the box. If it is rated M and it says "Extreme Violence" and "Lots-o-sex" (note: not totally accurate ;) ), don't buy it for your kid!

As a funny side note...they were playing some ads for their new block "Barbed Wire Biscuit" and promos for Fastlane throughout this. Not to mention with the shadow of Video Game Vixens looming behind them...does G4 expect to be taken seriously?

[Nin-Nin69]

Of course not. It's G4. If they need Hugh Hefner to tell people that sex sells, then they're wasting dead air. That's like Will Eisner telling people that Mickey Mouse is a popular cartoon figure around the globe. G4 constantly wastes great oppertunities to bring up the questions people want answerd and they always take the low road due to the fact that over 50% of their audience don't understand what the real gamers are talking about.

Recently I've sent out an e-mail to the ESRB Consumer Hotline and I doubt I'll recieved any feedback. If anything I want to find out the actual address for Patricia Vance and ask her some of those questions listed above. Only then can we clear up some other issues in the industry. Also I'm in the middle of sending something off to Adam for his extreme lack of hard hitting questions.

[Shnay]

Recently I've sent out an e-mail to the ESRB Consumer Hotline and I doubt I'll recieved any feedback. If anything I want to find out the actual address for Patricia Vance and ask her some of those questions listed above. Only then can we clear up some other issues in the industry.If you don't have any luck with the e-mail, you might want to try writing a regular letter. Organizations usually take these more seriously, as the more formal nature of a letter and the effort it takes to send it through the mail makes the opinions you express more legitimate in their minds.