Someone please explain to me what’s so bad about sex and nudity in video games.
So I was watching one of those shitty “top ten offensive things in video games videos”, you know, the ones that are obvious click bait. This one was by a channel that I vaguely like because one of the people there sounds like that guy from the IT Crowd and their older gaming videos aren’t that bad. And one of these things was a South Park anal probe scene. I really couldn’t work out why it was outrageous, because if anyone’s seen an actual episode of South Park, shit like that is the norm.
Another entry in this shitty top ten list was the scene from Hotline Miami 2, where after killing everyone in the room, your character is taken out of your control and to rape someone, before it all cuts away and says it’s just a bunch of people filming a movie. Apparently rape is out of the question, even after you’ve turned every other NPC in the room into a bloody stain.
After the video, I felt that it was all a little hypocritical but didn’t think any more of it.
Later that day, aabicus pops online and asks me if I know of any free to play games with nude mods. I didn’t really know, but I wanted to mention a particularly angry kitty’s super nice butt. I suggested Daggerfall, then realised that everyone in Daggerfall was naked anyway and didn’t need any mods for that. I went and did some quick searches and realised that I’d instinctively gone into Incognito mode.
Why? Why did I do that? It’s just naked people in video games. What the hell is wrong with that? It’s like I’ve been conditioned to shy away from nakedness and sex and all that stuff. It’s not like using a Private Window does much anyway, all it does is stop stuff from appearing in your recent history. Bookmarks and downloads are saved, and at the very least, your ISP can see whatever you’re doing.
I know I’ve mentioned this in an article before, but the problems people have with nudity in video games confuses the hell out of me. To the point that I feel a lot of this is worth repeating. Why do we shy away from these things? What’s so wrong about tits? Or butts? Or sex? Maybe not dicks because they’re kinda ugly, but you get what I mean.
Well, I can’t speak for everyone, but having been brought up in a religious environment, even though my parents are atheists, that has still managed to make me a bit of a prude. It’s one of the many things I dislike about myself, especially when I consider the fact that I really don’t care what you do with your body as long as everyone involved is consenting. But if I’m so accepting of what people want to do to pleasure themselves, why does a small part of my brain think it’s all so taboo?
But at the same time, why does my brain think that going around killing people in video games is fine? On the one hand, it’s hard to have a problem killing the Infested in Warframe, or Draugr in Skyrim, because they’re definitely not human. It’s easier to kill Grineer and Bandits because they act inhumanely – they have no problem killing you. But killing more normal people should bother me.
That being said, I go around setting everyone on fire as a big ass dragon on a regular basis. But I can do worse than that, I can go into Saints Row the Third and go on a killing spree. Or do the same in a Grand Theft Auto game. A player could beat a prostitute up, but visually sleeping with one (rather than a fade to black or just noises) seems to be too much.
Alright, all things being said, I ‘censored’ the images on this article. But the thing is, this article is meant for people of a general audience. I assume you’re all adults, but just in case, I censor these things. That being said, if you want to write an article about your favourite sex scenes in gaming, go ahead. As long as you put a big warning at the beginning telling people that 18+ stuff is coming up, I don’t have a problem with it.
That brings us onto ratings, like the Entertainment Software Ratings Board ESRB, and PEGI, Pan-European Gaming Information, which gives ratings to video games. These content rating systems give arbitrary certificates to games. For example, ESRB uses a system starting from Early Childhood (EC) to Everyone, to Teen and Mature, ending with Adults Only. GTAV has a rating of Mature. After reading the synopsis from the GTAV ESRB page, an actual sex scene seems to be the only thing GTAV is missing. Chances are, if it had a sex scene in it, rather than just sex noises, it would have been pushed into Adults Only, which makes it way harder for a game to be sold.
To be fair, nudity does seem better off these days, but sex is still a massive no-no.
I don’t know where I’m going with this. It just seems so insane that we’re all so scared of sex in video games, and not particularly fond of nudity. Maybe someone can explain this all to me in a way I understand and in a way that doesn’t make me angry because everything seems so hypocritical these days.
Meanwhile, people are happy to watch TV where people fuck and kill each other all the time.
Games are for both kids and teenagers. they should be made by keeping the things in mind that who should play this game etc. nudity for a limit is okay but if the games are full of this then they should not be allowed for the kids.
Actually, games are for people of all ages. Same way you don’t let a kid see Deadpool, you shouldn’t let a kid play Saints Row.
Why are nudity and sex censored in video games?
Why is pornography 18+?
Why does statutory rape exist?
Simply put, anyone underage is considered immature and not emotionally developed enough to have sex safely and smoothly. And thus, gosh forbid an underage person actually see sex and try to imitate it.
But why violence?
To be honest, this is an extremely popular and controversial debate question, so I’m not gonna pretend this comment contains a creative and unique answer to all your questions. There are these, though, just to consider:
“People still think of games as being for kids. And it’s okay for kids to see violence, but not sex. Because they’re more likely to actually imitate sex (or so the argument goes). Also there’s the gender reinforcement roles thing. Boys still get water guns, and girls still get Barbie dolls. Water guns are okay for boys because fake guns reinforce dominance and protection roles. Dude mght honor the family by joining the Marines or something. But sex is out, because then the dude might grow up to be a pornographer.” -Reddit
“The threat of relevancy. Violence is fantastical to most people. Boxing, Torture Horror, Shoot Em’ Ups, those all feature categories of violence that 95% of people are never going to experience, nor could they ever imagine experiencing it. It’s completely inaccessible.
Sex, on the other hand, doesn’t seem have quite the same barrier to it. Sex is temptation. And that makes showing it seem to have a dangerous allure that violence can’t possess. People much more worried about a kid seeing a sex scene and falling into a lascivious or “dirty” sex life than they are about them seeing Oberyn vs The Mountain and joining a gladiatorial ring. Sex is everywhere in real life in a way that violence isn’t.” -also Reddit
“Perhaps our thick skin to literary violence is simply because we’ve become immune to it. Our minds don’t have to wander far when we read a slasher scene. We know what that looks like, the spray of blood, the face of a woman screaming. We are used to it that it loses its shock value. Sex, due to society’s restrictions on exposure, is still a coveted image.” -Huffington Post
At least for the U.S., one reason for this censoring might just be because of old-timey values. Back in the day, sex was taboo, and violence was less taboo because it even happened in the streets. Something about Puritan values there. Now, time has progressed, but the people from those old times passed on their “sex = taboo” values to their children, who passed it on to there’s, and more. Society at one point thought sex = taboo and it’s hard to change.
Yet why are things like “homosexuality = taboo” changing, while this not so much? Admittedly, some stuff (e.g. Fifty Shades of Grey) have reduced the sex taboo, but it’s still there. Maybe one reason is that it hasn’t been given as much attention as other outdated taboos? Because sex is taboo, and defending sex is taboo. Then why did homosexuals defend their sexuality? My guess is that the taboo for homosexuality is worse than the taboo for sex. Homosexuals had to hide it in the face of discrimination, and that made them want to kill the taboo even more. And they did so, successfully, showing that great people can be homosexual too. The taboo for sex? Well, it reduces a lot of nudity, mostly discouraging underage kids, but who’s gonna defend the fact that they aren’t seeing explicit sex on TV and in books? If the kids tried to defend it, people would probably just go “kids…” while shaking their head meaningfully and ignoring everything they say because underage people can’t possibly have any reason in their hormone-addled heads, right??
And as for the adults, it doesn’t affect them as much. Why risk all that for something that, when compared to many other issues in the world, doesn’t matter as much, and only affects a certain demographic?