Nudity

[end_boss]

I think the issue is impressionability. Death and killing is a black and white topic. You don't kill, killing is wrong. We know this. We know that no matter how many people we kill in a video game, and how brutally, that we should never do it in real life.

Sex, however, is something that is open, available, and more open to moral interpretation. Nudity is often seen as objectifying women, and/or sexually enticing, and it is through constant moral conditioning that teens are instructed by their strict parentage that sex before marriage is wrong, and it still fails, and anything that is seen to promote sexual acts is therefore adding fuel to the fire.

So, basically, killing is bad. Sex is arguably bad, and therefore at bigger threat for compromising a young player's impressionable morals.

 

[tofulove]

another little fun thing about legality, you can legally let a 13 year old child watch just about any violent movie in the world, but if you let them watch non violent porn you can lose them for child endangerment.

but the former is far more damaging than the latter

 

[Admiral Stukov]

Well, if it adds anything at all to this discussion, I always add the German blood/gore censor to fallout 3, I for one do not enjoy brain bits on my screen.

I really wish that code was available to all gory games or add it in like Gears 2. God bless those germans

This is actually a really good point about the uneven ratio of violence/nudity, simply looking at it from the other side.

 

[Nieroshai]

It's an American thing. We love our blood and war, but sex is taboo(but Hollywood does it anyway). I don't much care for excessive nudity or gore in a game, but neither of these things killed the God of War series to me.

 

[L4hlborg]

The first Mass Effect did it right in my oppinion, it clearly showed that Shepard and the love interest of your choise wasn't wearing anything and having an intimte moment, without showing more than a bit of bare ass an a 0.2 seconds of sideboob.

I sort of understand Bioware with this one. Yes, having sex with your clothes on is a bit stupid, but being burned alive because of a 0.2 second sideboob is even more stupid. If you don't know/remember what happen, you might wanna check it out.

A funny thing comes to my mind on the Mass Effect age rating. In Finland (and probably most of Europe, haven't payed too much attention to it) we use a slightly different rating system. Basically, the ones that matter are 12+, 16+ and 18+ (the numbers meaning age). Mass Effect originally got the 18+ rating. When asked on WTF where the rating people doing they replied "it had burning dead bodies". Most people thought they were trying to just avoid mentioning the side boob. Funny enough, Mass Effect was released on PC as an EA classic title (or some shit like that) and it was rated 12+. Interesting.

I think the answer to this is pretty simple. Children having sex, not cool. Children beating eachother up, not cool, but it happens anyway. You can beat up someone earlier than you can have sex with them. Therefor, you will most likely have experienced some sort of violence before some sort of sex, making it more sensible to rate violence lower than sex.

 

[The_Spirit_of_Epic]

Nudity does not have to be porn, and that's the problem with including it. People who, like you, think the only reason to have nudity is so you can whack off to it.

what i meant in my post was that in games, dragon age is an example, threw in sex just to say 'hey, you can pork the witch' im not saying nudity cant be art. im saying that i havnt seen alot of good examples of nudity used other then just plain sex in video games.

 

[Admiral Stukov]

How many fights were you in before highschool (or age 12 as highschool is different ages in different areas)?

How many times had you thought of sex?

Again nudity != sex.
I bet most people at that age have seen another naked body before.
Shower rooms for crying out loud, it's not just breasts we're discussing here.

 

[Composer]

So this is something that always bugged me, why is it that violence is much more accepted than nudity in videogames?

Because when Uncle Jeremiah goes and cuts the cow's throat back at the farm so we can all have some beefsteak, that's perfectly acceptable and you should watch and learn.

But sex is the devil's temptation and you should be ashamed for doing it. Now go do 1000 Hail Marys and repent for your sins.

Slightly less serious answer, but you can see where i'm coming from.

XD i love your answer

 

[Nieroshai]

Now everyone so far except this one:

Why is nudity sexual in nature, though? Sure you have to get naked to do the nasty but you have to get naked to take a bath or shower too.

have made the conclusion that nudity is always sexual in nature.

To take another example from Dragon Age, you have the point where you and Alistair is captured stripped of your every possesion and thrown in jail... except your underwear.
I guess the point was that you was supposed to be humiliated by beeing robbed of your dignity along with the rest of your possessions, but that doesn't work quite as well if you are allowed to keep your underwear, right?

(assuming you're a straight guy) When's the last time you looked at a naked woman for more than a second and NOT gotten turned on?

 

[Admiral Stukov]

I sort of understand Bioware with this one. Yes, having sex with your clothes on is a bit stupid, but being burned alive because of a 0.2 second sideboob is even more stupid. If you don't know/remember what happen, you might wanna check it out.

A funny thing comes to my mind on the Mass Effect age rating. In Finland (and probably most of Europe, haven't payed too much attention to it) we use a slightly different rating system. Basically, the ones that matter are 12+, 16+ and 18+ (the numbers meaning age). Mass Effect originally got the 18+ rating. When asked on WTF where the rating people doing they replied "it had burning dead bodies". Most people thought they were trying to just avoid mentioning the side boob. Funny enough, Mass Effect was released on PC as an EA classic title (or some shit like that) and it was rated 12+. Interesting.

1)I most certanly remember both the outcry from fox news, the truckload of extra publicity Bioware got and the fact that Fox news came with an apology after a while since they had no idea of what they were talking about.

2)I'm from sweden myself so I'm very familiar with that rating system.

 

[Mechsoap]

its a taboo mostly from America i think, most of Europe who are like that picked it up from American ideology. else violence is more for the general crowds.

 

[Admiral Stukov]

Now everyone so far except this one:

Why is nudity sexual in nature, though? Sure you have to get naked to do the nasty but you have to get naked to take a bath or shower too.

have made the conclusion that nudity is always sexual in nature.

To take another example from Dragon Age, you have the point where you and Alistair is captured stripped of your every possesion and thrown in jail... except your underwear.
I guess the point was that you was supposed to be humiliated by beeing robbed of your dignity along with the rest of your possessions, but that doesn't work quite as well if you are allowed to keep your underwear, right?

(assuming you're a straight guy) When's the last time you looked at a naked woman for more than a second and NOT gotten turned on?

This is part of the problem, by making nudity such a taboo as it is, it becomes forbidden fruit, and as we all know the fruit of the forbidden kind is the sweetest one.
This ultimately ends up becoming an evil circle, if one game developer tries to counter it, everyone will just think they put nudity in the game to sell better, and thus almost no developer will try this, adding to the taboo.

 

[AngelicSven]

If this is strictly on influence of kids and young adults, they are much more likely to have sex and get a girl pregnant or get pregnant themselves rather than rob a bank or kill someone.

 

[Shirokurou]

In Europe and Russia, such things are a lot easier to pull.
I guess the US is just too puritan towards it...

 

[Admiral Stukov]

If this is strictly on influence of kids and young adults, they are much more likely to have sex and get a girl pregnant or get pregnant themselves rather than rob a bank or kill someone.

My examples were on M rated games, kids should not play those to begin with.

 

[manaman]

Nudity does not have to be porn, and that's the problem with including it. People who, like you, think the only reason to have nudity is so you can whack off to it.

what i meant in my post was that in games, dragon age is an example, threw in sex just to say 'hey, you can pork the witch' im not saying nudity cant be art. im saying that i havnt seen alot of good examples of nudity used other then just plain sex in video games.

Sex scenes can be used tastefully, the whole point in say a movie of showing a scene is to evoke an emotional response. It's all part of how they use the medium to tell a story. Narrative in this manner starts to fall apart a bit in a game over a movie because you can't control pacing.

Still that's no reason when they do attempt it to have it boil down to ridiculous manikin dry humping for 30 seconds. Put a little passion into the scene, or fade to black and leave it to imagination.

 

[L4hlborg]

I sort of understand Bioware with this one. Yes, having sex with your clothes on is a bit stupid, but being burned alive because of a 0.2 second sideboob is even more stupid. If you don't know/remember what happen, you might wanna check it out.

1)I most certanly remember both the outcry from fox news, the truckload of extra publicity Bioware got and the fact that Fox news came with an apology after a while since they had no idea of what they were talking about.

I'm pretty sure not all the publicity was positivie. First, huge ammounts of stuff on an EVIL game called Mass Effect. Then they mention, oh we were sort of mistaken. The non gaming public probably hang onto the EVIL part, having never played the game and relying on the news.

I think Bioware handeled the ME2 romance scenes very well. Didn't go to the potentially shocking side boob department and made mostly somewhat emotional and good scenes. You know, apart from the absolutely hilarious Jacob scene (look at thiiiis) and the random sex with clothes on at the place Tali and your engineers work at.

 

[Worgen]

alot of it goes back to the whole boob slip thing during the superbowl, really nudity was getting more accepted but then that happened and the people who hate the human form suddenly had a rallying cry since "alot of children were watching" and they got to impose their hangups on the rest of us as is their want to do, really as I understand it anyway the song they were singing was worse then any boob slip could have been

 

[Admiral Stukov]

I sort of understand Bioware with this one. Yes, having sex with your clothes on is a bit stupid, but being burned alive because of a 0.2 second sideboob is even more stupid. If you don't know/remember what happen, you might wanna check it out.

1)I most certanly remember both the outcry from fox news, the truckload of extra publicity Bioware got and the fact that Fox news came with an apology after a while since they had no idea of what they were talking about.

I'm pretty sure not all the publicity was positivie. First, huge ammounts of stuff on an EVIL game called Mass Effect. Then they mention, oh we were sort of mistaken. The non gaming public probably hang onto the EVIL part, having never played the game and relying on the news.

I think Bioware handeled the ME2 romance scenes very well. Didn't go to the potentially shocking side boob department and made mostly somewhat emotional and good scenes. You know, apart from the absolutely hilarious Jacob scene (look at thiiiis) and the random sex with clothes on at the place Tali and your engineers work at.

Let's face it most of the people that hung on to the idea that Mass Effect was an evil game would never buy a videogame at all in any case. And (sadly) I bet there were a sizable pile of people that bought the game because there was nudity in it.