Nudity

[Admiral Stukov]

Have you seen The Witcher 2 trailer? One of them you have Triss and uh... the dwarf... recounting stories of Geralt, and in the dwarf's version there's a woman being tortured and she's topless, anyway. Full frontal!

...Uh.. I'll excuse myself out

Topless =/= full frontal.
Anyway, I have also heard an interview by Totalbiscuit, which can be found here: http://www.cynicalbrit.com/news/the-witcher-2-interview/
In this interview the developers get the question about just this, and says that it wasn't really done right, and as such they are going back to that scene and rework it.

 

[zehydra]

I guess (most) people don't masturbate to violence.

 

[Umwerfer]

I guess (most) people don't masturbate to violence.

My eyes! >.<

What's acceptable changes with every decade. Just wait, and society will take a short dip into the gutter for a few years before straightening up again.

 

[Mcface]

As in a mature(I hope) discussion about it, not examples of it, you have google for that.

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

If you have a shooter without any blood gore, or very low levels of it, the game is going to be rated T.
But if you have a 0.5 second glipse of a female nipple it's instantly a M rated game.

Consider for a while Dragon Age: Origins.
You have decapitations complete with bloodsplatter, but in the so called sex scenes the characters are wearing underwear, for some characters (read Morrigan) the bra covers more of her breasts than her default robe.
...seriously!?

To be clear, I absolutely do not want every woman in the game to run around with their breasts uncoverd all the time, but rather have nudity where it actually makes sense. It wouldn't even be that hard to do the cutscene in a way that doesn't show any actual nudity without adding a bra to Morrigan that clearly wasn't there before. 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.

Of course Dragon Age is far from the only game that does this, but it was the first that came to mind.
It seems to me that the US is most guilty of this, to take another example the US version of The Witcher is censored while the EU version isn't. I can't help but wonder why nudity would be thought of as harmful in a game that is already marked 18+.

That was my outburst of ranting in any case, please feel free to share your own oppinions on the topic. In fact please do, I'm curious as to what the rest of the escapist thinks of this.

Violence is pretty necessary for a game to be even remotely entertaining. Sex is not.

all of the other points have been made 50 times, so im just going to leave it at that.

 

[zehydra]

I guess (most) people don't masturbate to violence.

My eyes! >.<

What's acceptable changes with every decade. Just wait, and society will take a short dip into the gutter for a few years before straightening up again.

Nudity in video games will be acceptable when you're able to see topless women on public tv, or on the news.

 

[eyedonutkair]

I didn't read the topic, just the headline. Noodity? I'm for it.

 

[feeback06]

Nudity is associated with sex, which is taboo here in the states. I think nudity in games can work (Dragon Age,Red Dead Redemption) however I'm kinda afraid that it could lead to exploitation. "Here's two busty blonds in the shower....because..."

 

[Admiral Stukov]

Violence is pretty necessary for a game to be even remotely entertaining. Sex is not.

all of the other points have been made 50 times, so im just going to leave it at that.

Oh? How about The Sims?
There is a fairly large heap of people that find that game entertaing without any violence, and for the most part the family will grow via procreation. Sure the game might call it WooHoo but anyone with a grain of sex ed could figure that out.

 

[Xanadu84]

Its wrong, but the reason could be, in part, that violence can be very necessary for the story, the game play, etc, while nudity is almost never necessary.

Its just awesome.

Priorities seem to be backwards. Content wise, we seem to worry about Nudity and sex first, then swearing, then violence. In reality, Violence is the worst, followed by swearing as merely inappropriate, and last, nudity, which is a good thing in the right context.

 

[Furious Styles]

Really? How about some news segments from warzones where dead bodies can be seen from time to time?

Seeing a dead body isn't necessarily taboo, seeing a violent death is. it very much is. I think I've seen one in the entire time I've watched Tv.

 

[Admiral Stukov]

Nudity is associated with sex, which is taboo here in the states. I think nudity in games can work (Dragon Age,Red Dead Redemption) however I'm kinda afraid that it could lead to exploitation. "Here's two busty blonds in the shower....because..."

Which is the exact same thing movies have to keep in mind so they don't turn out to be a porno with a plot. It's not really a new problem and it's one easily avoided by people with actual brains instead of CPUs programmed to make money - like Bobby Kotick

 

[mageroel]

I seriously don't know and I totally agree with you on this one. They also made San Andreas 18+ because of some mod that could make all characters walk around nude if you downloaded it from some shady site... not because you could of course chop off someone's head with a katana or there was organised crime in it... So yeah, I'm totally in favour of having nudity become less of an obstacle in video games, and in the sense of Mass Effect I.

 

[Furious Styles]

Well, in movies and TV at least, the violence isn't real, the nudity is. That's the difference when it comes to censorship. Real violence is even more taboo, especially deaths and whatnot

So nudity in games is real but violence ingame isn't.

Hence my including the phrase "in movies and Tv at least"

 

[kouriichi]

Amarica just has a lead pipe stuck up its *ss, and the poisoning is already in the blood stream.

You can go to japan, where theyer open about there sexuality, and you can flip to free cable porn. And theyer crime rates are basically in the negatives when compaired to amarica's.

"Adult Games" showing any nudity are basically outlawed, because of every religious idiot in goverment pushing theyer ideas onto the people. The idea of "Seperation of Chirch and State" is one big lie when your president is christian.

I see no problem with nudity in adult video games. If a mother or father doesnt want theyer children exposed to it, dont purchase it for them. Thats what the ESRB rating is for. The game clearly marked "Blood and Gore", with the lable, "18+" means your 13 yearold spazoid of a child shouldent own it.

 

[k-ossuburb]

I suppose it'll go that way eventually; we've already seen glimpses of nudity creeping its way into gaming. Sexualization has been used to great effect in games, Bayonetta for example, and I've heard of other examples in other games that show nudity in various settings in some form or another. Eventually it'll be as widespread in games as it is in movies, it'll just take time for people to get used to the idea. That's my prediction anyway.

Personally I'd like to see nudity in a horror game. That feeling of total vulnerability would surely add some tension to a scene; like if your character was escaping a hospital after waking up on an autopsy table. I've never seen an autopsy or surgery where someone is fully clothed, and imagine how tense things would get if you knew that you had absolutely nothing to protect your frail body with against whatever horrors await you in the unlit corners of the winding corridors you pad down barefoot in hopes of salvation.

Sorry, I got a bit carried away there, NaNoWriMo is coming up and I need to exercise my inner novelist.

 

[Admiral Stukov]

Really? How about some news segments from warzones where dead bodies can be seen from time to time?

Seeing a dead body isn't necessarily taboo, seeing a violent death is. it very much is. I think I've seen one in the entire time I've watched Tv.

But, in my mind at least, a violent death would be comparable to rape, thus it's still very much disproportional where the threshold for what's accepteble to put opn air is.

 

[Iron Lightning]

Just name a point in a video game where nudity is omitted when it really needs to be there.

And this, no video game REALLY needs nudity, one of the reasons why i think duke nukem was so popular though is because it had it for all those kids who ... supposedly couldn't go out and find that porno

To both of you fine people: check out The Void. It has the most mature, nonsexual, artistic use of nudity that I've ever seen. The Void uses nudity to ascribe a necessary sense of vulnerability to some of its characters. I find it difficult to describe, it's certainly something that needs to be experienced. The Void would truly suffer without nudity. I am a citizen of the United States, a culture where nudity is equivalent to sexuality, and I did not find anything sexual about the aforementioned nudes. This isn't for some shallow reason, the nudes are not ugly, they are simply expressed so well that they are simply not sexual.

 

[Furious Styles]

But, in my mind at least, a violent death would be comparable to rape, thus it's still very much disproportional where the threshold for what's accepteble to put opn air is.

So how many real-life rapes have you seen on TV? Like actual rapes? Its just as rare as a death, if not rarer.

 

[Firia]

In the states, where at least a quarter of the target audience lives, and probably 1/3rd (guessing on these numbers) of the coders are employed, it's a culture based thing. To an extent, that very culture extends to (some places of) Europe. It's very much based in the bible. Teachings based on feeling ashamed of our naked body are indoctrinated into our society, and make its way into our subconsious. We operate this way because it's coded to be this way. Hundreds of years of biblical doctrine have taught us; be shamed of your naked form.

Now, some people like myself are not ashamed of their naked form. (No, I'm ashamed of the splotches on my skin, the 2 pack abs, and thighs that scream, "No, not the bathing suit!") I draw naked people all the time for my studies in art/design. The naked body is both beautiful and repulsive at the same time, but nothing to be shamed about. I also abandoned my religious upbringing.

There are many evangelicals (not sure that's how it's spelled) that get offended at the sight of nudity. It's a moral depravity saved for the privacy of ones own residence. These guys are tuned- not into the subconsious indoctrination biblical influences have had on us for centeries. No, these guys are hooked into the source!

Between biblical indoctrination and people who actively practice the teachings of the bible, we're kind of stuck in a place that frowns on nudity. Culture is shifting in the west, as it often does. We can swear more liberally on TV, and sexual themes aren't quite as taboo as they were say, 30 years ago. But for the time being, anything that tries to break pace of social shift will be shocking.

To address what the bible says about violence; in a nutshell, it's bad. But war is necessary at times... but it's bad. It's a violent book that contradicts itself a lot, but that's a highly volatile discussion for another day.