Oblivion gets M-rated

[Crazy Gringo]

I spotted this little story at Tacticular Cancer while surfing through.

 

Oblivion re-rated M for Mature

 

Getting an M-rating for things like to much violence/blood/gore and nudity due to the fact that there was discovered a nude skin in the game which a modder used/abused....No code like the legendary Hot Coffee mod .

 

What is the ESRB? Are they the gaming Industry's Big Brother/babysitter or something?

 

From what I read here the ESRB is voluntary and has gained the status of being a 'de facto' standard if you want to sell your game....In USA....

 

So the question is how much of the 'bad' things are needed in a computer game to get it rated M by the three trained ESRB-creatures?

 

Should games be able to become re-rated due to the three ESRB-creatures poor judgement?

 

And just how does one become a trained ESRB-creature?

My guess is that you must never ever have heard or seen a computer game....A Mormon would be a good choice for a future trained ESRB-cretature.

 

My personal choice for a trained ESRB-creature would be a computer gamer with a decent moral compass who is capable of discerning fact from fiction and not go rampaging through the street after having given a game a AO rating....

[Azrael Strife]

Yup, read about this in IGN this morning this rating stuff sure is stupid...

[FullAuto]

Still not as stupid as the PEGI.

[Kernel]

See at least the BBFC get's it right first time by rating Oblivion 15.

They also got the GTA series right by giving them an 18 rating right from the start... not for the "hidden" sexual content... but for the violence.

 

Unlike it seems in the US where violence is considered ok for minors to see but a few flesh coloured polygons are the most evil things ever.

[Azrael Strife]

Bethesda responds to Oblivion rating

[Bomb Bloke]

Reading the first document, it seems the initial rating was based on what Bethesda showed the ESRB. Because Bethesda didn't show them the content that merited the M rating (which they were supposed to do), it started off with a T rating.

 

The new rating wasn't released because the ESRB changed their mind, it was released because they found out about the stuff Bethesda didn't tell them about.

 

The nude textures shouldn't have been released in the final product. Doesn't matter if they were hidden or not, Bethesda should have known better. My copy of Giants has got a MA rating on it, and yes, you need to edit that game to get at the nudity as well.

 

As for the gore, I haven't played the game so I can't comment.

[Matri]

Do you realise the worst part about all this? By making sure no one can "create a nude skin", Bethesda and the ESRB are restricting and crippling the modability of the game.

 

I mean, if someone created a nude skin for Aftershock, you can bet your ass that the ESRB will come down on it and lock its modability, then what?

 

At least they have the brains to not go after Quake 2 and Half-Life. Because then it would be obvious that they're flogging a dead horse. And not even a fresh dead horse. It's a horse that's been dead so long they put up a statue of it.

 

Grr...

[Kernel]

My copy of Giants has got a MA rating on it, and yes, you need to edit that game to get at the nudity as well.

 

You must have the US version of Giants.

The European version had the nude skin straight out of the box. And it was still rated 15 in the UK IIRC.

[Bomb Bloke]

Technically speaking, the nude skin is already in my version of the game. To access it, you delete the bra skin...

 

Dunno if that means I have the EU or US version, but usually EU stuff is what we end up with.

[Crazy Gringo]

Technically speaking, the nude skin is already in my version of the game. To access it, you delete the bra skin...

 

Dunno if that means I have the EU or US version, but usually EU stuff is what we end up with.

 

And that is what the modder did....

 

To check your version of the game you could check the rating on the box....PEGI=EU. ESRB=US.

 

And in the same news....Jack Thompson is back....

 

At least according to these news at Gamefirst:

https://gamesfirst.com/?id=1280

 

And in California the Assembly speaker is outraged:

https://pc.gamespy.com/pc/the-elder-scrolls...n/705451p1.html

 

How long is the rest of the world gonna shake their heads at the American monkey businesses instead of telling them to shut up and start acting like humans instead of naked apes....Maybe spanking those apes would help(Not Osama bin Laden style but something to make them change their ways)? :mad:

[Matri]

Actually, I'm surprised it took this loony this long to make an appearance.

 

On a funny note, notice he never targetted Quake or Doom.

[Praetoris]

I'm pretty sure that most teens have seen a couple of breasts somewhere before, be it a moronic mod or not.

 

This whole issue is just silly if you ask me.

[Pete]

That Game First bit is funny as hell:

 

Thompson also gives antidotes from his new book

 

And that's from a press release form his office? So... he has monkeys working for him with only a passing grasp of English? The whole thing is written badly, but grammar aside, the bit that amuses me even more is that he accuses the ESRB of not playing the game all the way through (bear in mind it's a huge game and to see every part of the game would take years, and an awful lot of tinkering with files to stumble across nude pics unles you know exactly where to look) and has he even bothered investigating himself before getting his facts wrong? Apparently not.

 

Oooh, check out a quote from this article:

 

Currently, Bethesda is working on ensuring that modders can no longer put partially nude figures into its game.

 

How exactly? Nipple Recognition Software?

[Solarius Scorch]

I'd like to point out that in TES 2: Daggerfall [1996] there is full frontal nudity (especially in the character screen), and nobody saw any problem with it...

The electronic entertainment branch in USA is heading for some mysterious, illogical, frightening direction. Luckily, Japan and South Korea become gradually the main source of games... and they have a much healthier attitude to issues like nudity.

[Crazy Gringo]

I'd like to point out that in TES 2: Daggerfall [1996] there is full frontal nudity (especially in the character screen), and nobody saw any problem with it...

The electronic entertainment branch in USA is heading for some mysterious, illogical, frightening direction. Luckily, Japan and South Korea become gradually the main source of games... and they have a much healthier attitude to issues like nudity.

It is not as much where the games comes from. It is those 'voluntary' classification organisations like ESRB and PEGI that have become the 'de-facto' standard. They say if you want to sell your game in this country you have to abide by the classifiactions regulations by those organisations or else you kiss your sales in this country goodbye. And just who might 'they' be?

The retailers and vendors of these games. They don't want to get on the front page and on national and global tv due to a 6 year old bought the most violent game which contained nudity in their store.

'Cool! Great publicity!', some might say. 'What an outrage! That must be stopped!', others will say.

As for emerging companies that makes games. There a lot of eastern european companies/studios that are making some great games some of which are covered on this forum. UFO A-series and the Silent Storm series to mention a few. The new Jagged Alliance is made in South Africa of all places from what I have heard.

I guess we live in unnatural times due to the fact that we don't get to see Mother Nature in all it's glory (nudity).

[Pete]

The bit I'll never get is that when someone kicks off about a game being too violent or adult, sales shoot through the roof, and none of the people buying the games give a flying crap anyway, so it has the opposite affect than the offended person(s) intended.

 

At the end of the day, it's not up to government officials, it's not up to voluntary organisations and it's certainly not up to minors (that's children, not people who extract coal and other ores) whether they should be playing the games or not - it's adults/parents, but since these horror stories you hear are usually about kids playing sio-called "ultra-violent" games and killing their best mate or whatever, you've got to wonder what the hell the parents were doing all this time to not notice a) that their child is a bit psychotic and more importanly b) what kinds of games they play.

 

If they really cared they'd take time to find out - shocking revelation eh? :o

 

As for the governments and the voluntary organisations - yes I know you make money and publicity with each argument and action which is why you stir upa lot of pots once ina while and have no intention of doing anything about any of them, but at the end of the day if a 7 year old ends up with GTA3, it's not the store-owner's fault because it's more than likelyl a friend's game anyway.

 

Y'see these consoles? They have sockets for more than one joypad - that means friends (get out more and you'll know what they are you meddlers you ) come around and play on games they're proabbly not supposed to be playing on. But whilst we live in an age where, and I realise this is a sweeping generalisation - apologies to good parents around the world - parents just don't spend enough time looking at what their kids are doing, there's nothing ANYONE in the whole wide world can do about it.

 

Can I be smug now? I think I can

[FullAuto]

That furore of Rockstar's upcoming Bully made me laugh so hard I squirted tea out of my nose.

 

I don't understand the attitudes a lot of people have towards sex and violence in games. They're obviously not turning normal people into rapists and murderers. No-one except the mentally unbalanced is provoked by them, just like every other media. Think about how many enemies all the members of this forum have killed in games. I bet the numbers are in the billions. We're guilty of virtual genocide. But how many of us have killed someone? I bet the number's pretty low.

[Pete]

I hope it's zero

 

Perhaps we should do a nice, big, collaborative article about this at TLO mate? I'm sure we could gt a few other gaming sites to link to it since it'd be fairly explosive in certain circles

[Solarius Scorch]

It is not as much where the games comes from. It is those 'voluntary' classification organisations like ESRB and PEGI that have become the 'de-facto' standard.

 

Yes, of course You're right. What I meant was that Western (and above all American) companies, to put things short, don't make big budget games which won't sell in USA - that is, games with nudity. But Asian companies have great markets of their own, and they an ignore what's going on on the other side of the ocean. This is also applicable to a leser extent to Europe (including Russia).

 

Perhaps we should do a nice, big, collaborative article about this at TLO mate? I'm sure we could gt a few other gaming sites to link to it since it'd be fairly explosive in certain circles

 

Yes! I strongly support any onformation campaign of this sort. Count me in.

[Matri]

The bit I'll never get is that when someone kicks off about a game being too violent or adult, sales shoot through the roof, and none of the people buying the games give a flying crap anyway, so it has the opposite affect than the offended person(s) intended.

 

At the end of the day, it's not up to government officials, it's not up to voluntary organisations and it's certainly not up to minors (that's children, not people who extract coal and other ores) whether they should be playing the games or not - it's adults/parents, but since these horror stories you hear are usually about kids playing sio-called "ultra-violent" games and killing their best mate or whatever, you've got to wonder what the hell the parents were doing all this time to not notice a) that their child is a bit psychotic and more importanly b) what kinds of games they play.

 

If they really cared they'd take time to find out - shocking revelation eh? :o

 

As for the governments and the voluntary organisations - yes I know you make money and publicity with each argument and action which is why you stir upa lot of pots once ina while and have no intention of doing anything about any of them, but at the end of the day if a 7 year old ends up with GTA3, it's not the store-owner's fault because it's more than likelyl a friend's game anyway.

 

Y'see these consoles? They have sockets for more than one joypad - that means friends (get out more and you'll know what they are you meddlers you ) come around and play on games they're proabbly not supposed to be playing on. But whilst we live in an age where, and I realise this is a sweeping generalisation - apologies to good parents around the world - parents just don't spend enough time looking at what their kids are doing, there's nothing ANYONE in the whole wide world can do about it.

 

Can I be smug now? I think I can

 

 

*salutes* I agree completely with every word you've said.

[FullAuto]

Perhaps we should do a nice, big, collaborative article about this at TLO mate? I'm sure we could gt a few other gaming sites to link to it since it'd be fairly explosive in certain circles.

 

Sounds like a good 'un.