I'd love to see a remake of "BomberHehhe!" - (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDFbFmZCsHY). An option to play as evil and destroy ancient monuments (or cause as much damage to non-target buildings as possible) would be funny.
Or: "Contains no represetation of people from the following minitories: [ ] Asian [X] Homosexuals [ ] Black [ ] Jews, maybe give skewed one-sided view of society"
One minor quibble: "sexual content" is a set that most definitely does include "homosexual content". There's no need to grant Happeh the idea that they weren't properly warned.
It seems to me that we should not feel any compulsion to cater to those who think that there is inherent moral difference in non-heterosexual behavior.
Orthogonal to everything brought up in the article: I'm still stunned by how many parents have no problem with depictions of graphic violence but go nuts over sexuality and nudity. Arab culture is the most sexually repressed I've ever encountered, but we here in The States are not that far behind.
Parents are usually wary of exposing their kids to violence when it's emotionally realistic. They may let their preteens play the latest Explode The Bad Guys game, but are less likely to let them watch surveillance footage of somebody being beaten to death.
Most of us want our children to grow up to have a positive, healthy sexuality. That means developing certain attitudes and emotions. Sexual content in media tends to distort or completely lack those emotions and attitudes; the same is true of decontextualized nudity.
Most of us don't want our children to grow up to have the attitudes that come from a life of violence. Adults who train to do violence (soldiers, police, etc.) often need help to deal with the emotional scars. That's not something we want to expose our children to. But "graphic violence" in movies and games tends to distort or completely lack that emotional content.
The unrealistic or disconnected nature of media violence makes it more acceptable, while the unrealistic or disconnected nature of media sexuality makes it less so.
I think "I can single handedly kill all the bad guys with poor aim" is more easily recognized as fiction than "I get to fuck all the girls because that's what studs like me do". Action movie directors responsible for the former are (I hope) at least kind of in on the joke, but I have my doubts as to how much sexual fiction is recognized as realistic or not by the author.
As a culture, we generally criticize real life violence. The message is fairly clear (ok in fiction, not ok in reality). However, sex is celebrated in real life, meaning it's a lot less black and white deciding what's ok.
I think "I can single handedly kill all the bad guys with poor aim" is more easily recognized as fiction than "I get to fuck all the girls because that's what studs like me do".
Not sure what else to say other than: Huh?
That doesn't remotely make sense to me. We are talking about kids, not about mental retards in the medical sense, are we?
As a culture, we generally criticize real life violence. The message is fairly clear (ok in fiction, not ok in reality). However, sex is celebrated in real life, meaning it's a lot less black and white deciding what's ok.
Again: Huh?
When reading such arguments I can only wonder what kind of kids the author is around, and whether he has lost all memory of his own youth (sorry, not meant as personal attack).
Obviously a minor below a certain age should not be exposed to either. However, by the teen years, when boys commonly gain access to both and consume large quantities of both, most seem to handle it really well.
Making an artificial distinction there just doesn't make sense to me.
If a kid develops behavioral patterns based on "because that's what studs like me do" (either in a sexual or a violent way) then that kid has deeper problems entirely unrelated to the kind of content that he prefers.
It's really hard to explain without just restating the same thing. From my soapbox, it appears as if fictional sex is more likely to be portrayed as representative.
I apologize if I was insufficiently clear. It has nothing to do with distinguishing reality from fiction. What matters is how the emotional content can affect a child's development.
Some fictional violence, even very graphic, simply has no emotional content of note. This means many parents are OK with it.
Other forms of fictional violence, as well as most real violence, has possibly traumatic emotional content (even for adults) and therefore parents are cautious about exposing their children to it.
Both fictional and real depictions of sexuality can carry emotional content which is likely to be inaccurate or unhealthy, often in very subtle ways. Therefore, parents are cautious about exposing their children to it (even if they have no particular sexual hangups.)
What you've said is incredibly vague. You mention "emotional content" in regards to violence and sexuality depicted through media, but there is no way to know what that means and you offer no way to define it. In my experience, this kind of rationalization comes from those who have their own discomfort on these issues and using non-specific language is way to avoid making definite statements while still affecting the outcome of a discussion.
I don't mean to be harsh, but perhaps you could explain, in clear, concrete terms, why depictions of sexuality in media are of special concern compared to other depictions in media, unrealistic or not.
Depictions of sexuality are of special concern (though certainly not the only area of concern) because sexuality is a deep thing, which most of us will deal with a lot in our lives, and which is easy to screw up in subtle ways. The difference between a great sex life and a mediocre one is often just a subtle shift in one's attitude in any of a multitude of ways.
We form our expectations about sex partly from our own experiences and partly from exposure to others' real or fictional experiences. We may not even realize we've formed an expectation; we may simply think that we're responding in the "natural" way and our partner is responding in an "unnatural" way. Consider how you interpret your partner undressing before bed -- to what degree does that signal desire or readiness for sex? Is it an invitation to a particular level of foreplay? If there's a small disconnect in expectation between you and your partner, that can cascade into an attitude of "he always wants sex when I want to talk first" or "she's always leading me on and then turning me down".
Every couple is going to have issues, disagreements, and disconnects large and small, which they will have to work through over the course of their relationship. Parents have the ability to make this better or worse for their children depending on what content they expose them to, under what circumstances, and what context they provide.
(For the record, my parents started teaching me about sex at around age 3 and were fairly explicit as I got older. I plan to do the same with my son.)
You keep making that hand-wavy distinction, without any backup or precision.
Quote (emphasis mine):
You say: Some fictional violence [...] has no emotional content of note
You say: Both fictional and real depictions of sexuality can carry emotional content
I'll assume you're trying to make the point that fictional sex is worse than fictional violence. I further assume you don't really know why (hence your imprecise wording) but have this diffuse belly-feeling that this is how it must be, because that has always been your belly-feeling.
Sorry, I didn't mean to attack him personally but tried to point out the reasons that I suspect behind this kind of lazy arguing.
These "belly-opinions" are very widespread, a more verbose description would have been: "I can't give exact reasons for my opinion but it feels like that's what my parents|peer-group|church|society|... would agree with".
I felt that the verbose version would have been even less polite.. but oh well.
Sexuality is such a taboo in American culture that kids don't know what realistic sexuality is. In some cultures, parents talk frankly and openly to their kids about it, and teach them how to respect and listen to their partners and protect themselves from unwanted pregnancy and STI's. American parents uncomfortably change the subject whenever they ask where babies come from.
For most middle-class Americans, sexual misconduct among youngsters is a more pressing issue than violent misconduct. Kids having sex and getting pregnant is fairly common while kids going on shooting sprees is very uncommon.
I can tell you though, that back in the 90's when there was a string of shooting crimes by middle class kids, there was a big outcry against violent cinema. Tarantino films, which were seen to glorify violence and some of the kids imitated to some degree, took an especially big backlash. For the most part though, that was just a passing panic.
Violence is essentially fictional to the vast majority of Americans. It's something you see on television. Sex really happens. There is an awful lot of this [sex], largely because of the total lack of anything else to do.
I think what the parent poster meant is that, for most first-world citizens, violence happens to "other people," making it seem less threatening or tempting than something that is an essential element of everyday life.
I keep wondering about this. The argument comes back all the time, and yet sexual repression continues unabated.
I wonder if it's because violence doesn't provoke the same copycat response as sexuality does. After all, the whole existence of porn is based on it being a stimulant for sexuality. However seeing a violent scene doesn't stimulate you to go beat something up. Or at least any human that I know of ;)
I thought the way these things were handled in the Mass Effect series was good. You really do have to go looking for these sorts of things, they don't force it on you in any way.
It's like paying cover at a strip club, going to the back room, and being offended by nudity.
This isn't a case of not reading the box. It's a case of getting your pitchfork because you heard a rumor.
> It's a case of getting your pitchfork because you heard a rumor.
Completely disagree, it's a case of using an argument that isn't exactly what you think because you think it will serve your agenda better. The people complaining here want to get rid of gay content, they don't want themselves to be warned about it - just happens that saying the latter makes them sound more reasonable (well: slightly less unreasonable).
Of course, the overall homophobia thing is roughly speaking a case of pitchfork/rumour, people who become bigots through hearing that they ought to be, not any logic at all.
No matter how clearly labeled, common-sense, or standard practice something is, people will always find a way to rationalize not knowing or push their dislike of it on to someone else, usually an undeserving person. It is a simple lack of personal accountability, and happens everywhere.
I worked for years at a bar, the number of people who tried get more scotch put in the glass when they ordered it neat (no ice), because it didn't look as full as their friend's on-the-rocks was astonishing (poured via shot glass, simple displacement effects here). These were ph.d level people who should know better. Of course the on-the-rocks people tended to complain about it tasting "watered down"... sigh.
Anyway, there is a highly amusing website: http://notalwaysright.com/ that will probably provide insight into this phenomenon. I believe most of those stories have happened, having witnessed most of the scenarios (albeit with my own customers...)
Point being, excusing people for not noticing the big rating that is on the front of the box is probably the wrong answer, at some point we have to accept that someone needs to be responsible. Otherwise, we just keep passing the buck, I mean how long until we can just claim "oh I didn't understand the rules for labeling, it is obviously too much to expect me to read all those rules, we need a better rule system from $oversight_org", and then the org says, "oversight is too hard, how were we supposed to know that those naked people actually meant nudity"... and on and on
ToS agreements are long, convoluted, and full of confusing legal verbiage. Sentences like "Contains violence, sexual innuendo, and some nudity" are short, direct, and easy to read, if a bit vague. That's a pretty big practical difference.
See: The internet's response to Twilight or Justin Beiber. Or the book burnings and bannings of Slaughterhouse Five or Huck Finn.
Even going all the way back to the Salem witch hunts, it seems it's human nature for us to attempt to unexist anything we disagree with, don't like, or are scared of. I wish I had an answer to make that problem subside, but I'm not sure it's a solvable problem.
I'm not hugely privy to the storyline, but it is my understanding a loose group of forum-goers from reddit, 4chan, neogaf, and probably other communities banded together to vote EA into the #1 status of worst company in america for various legitimate reasons. EA then very shortly after (like within a week) introduced this idea that they received the designation in part because of backlash regarding homosexual content in one game (of a series that has been featuring such content since '07). Now no one cares about why EA was really voted into this honor, but rather all the issues related to this (seeming) misdirection. This article is a perfect example.
Oh yes of course, there are no people who oppose gay rights. There is a complete equality, legally and socially among people of different sexualities. No sir-ee, completly impossible that there are people opposed to gay rights,
The "consumers hate us because of homosexuality in our games" is a PR move from EA to cover the fact they were voted worst company in America for reasons that have nothing to do with sexuality.
They were voted worst company because of their spyware distribution service, anti-consumer DLC practices, and ruining otherwise great developers by buying them and forcing out lackluster sequels designed for profit over all other considerations. I'm not saying that's wrong for a company to do, I'm just saying that's why online communities are upset.
But as long as they keep claiming the people who don't like their company are homophobic, they draw attention from these things in the media.
I find it intriguing that, in the Sci-Fi genre, for so long nobody has really taken issue with the idea of inter-species romantic relationships, but yet when homosexuality is thrown into the mix, some people who probably wouldn't care about humans in relationships with robots or aliens really get bent out of shape.
I guess the upshot of my comment would be: If you're so worried about a child bumping into deviant views on anything, why are you exposing them to science fiction?
I'm sure there's sci-fi written to abide by current moral bounds, but I find it somewhat less "believable" than sci-fi that leaves all options open.
The funny part of all of this is that games like Mass Effect barely brush the PG-13 barrier in terms of depictions of sex. What people are the most upset about is the frank and open acceptance of homosexuality. To which I say: go crawl back under your rocks, and good on EA/Bioware for not being bigoted asses.
I am still a bit shocked that this is an issue. As clearly pointed out, if you don't want to see homosexual content it is not forced upon you.
The fact that homosexual content is in the game is great because it allows the user to direct the relationships as they see fit. This is a huge selling point for the Mass Effect series in general.
Corin_11 hit the nail on the head though, they are not surprised because they were not warned about the content. They are using that argument to mask the fact that they don't want any homosexual content in the game at all.
I resonate with the rant (not so much the light grey text on white theme but that's something else) which is that many parents are not proactive in their kids upbringing with regard to morals or societal expectations. But lets look at that part of it for a moment.
Parents are really busy these days, most often they both work, a depressing number are single parents, they have a certain amount of 'parent/child interaction' time available when they are both in the same place as their child and they are not asleep. Further, the normal foibles of kids consume some of that time uncontrollably (you have to go to the doctor to get that bean pulled out of your nose, you have a history project due tomorrow that needs help, going to and from soccer / band / daycare / school Etc. Parents also need times for themselves to process work stress, spouse stress, family issues, etc.
Now in that environment your kids like to play computer games (seems pretty common) and the friction of getting games is fairly loose, but games (like books) can introduce your kids to concepts before you as a parent have had a chance to put some structure around it. That will lead to questions and discussions that really do have to happen 'right now' because not giving kids any guidance when they encounter those questions is really bad parenting. My personal opinion is that 90% of a parent's 'job' is to prepare your kids for the society they are about to enter, poor preparation reflects badly on them, on you, and is generally a losing proposition for society in general.
So 'read the box' as an indicator for 'good parenting' is not sufficient.
We always made dinner time a time when everyone got together, had a meal, and talked. We have an old copy of the World Book encyclopedia, a dictionary, the CRC Handbook of Physics and Chemistry, a world atlas (post USSR breakup) and the desktop science reference all to settle arguments of fact :-). But more importantly as our children aged we talked about money, violence, relationships, crimes of intent, crimes of passion, morality vs legality, responsibility, politics, civics, religion, and books. The goal was to have the conversation about a topic started before it came up as a question so that when it did come up they would bring it to the table and we'd talk about it.
So exhorting someone to do that, embrace parenting as your primary responsibility to your children, its a good thing. But I totally understand when folks are so exhausted from the rest of their life that it takes a back seat.
So read the box, talk about 'cartoon violence' versus 'real' violence, go sit in the local ER some time if you're in a major metropolitan city to see what 'real' suffering looks like rather than on screen, add a med kit and blam back into the action. Most kids can separate imaginary from real at a pretty young age. Personally I don't think it is inappropriate to understand reproduction and sex fairly young, it's probably not worth trying to explain the impact on ones brain until puberty since it's really hard to convey that the chemistry of your body can work against your judgement.
Understand that when you have kids it is a bigger commitment than just saving money for them to go to college. :-)
You make good points. As a busy parent, I certainly sympathesize with people that feel like they have too little time to monitor what they're kids are exposed to.
I think one very significant factor is making sure that they can come to you, as a parent, when they come across a new concept. Of course, as you said, I would prefer to introduce the concepts on my timeline, but I also need to be ready to deal with them whent he come up. More than that, I need to make sure my kids feel comfortable coming to me when they come up. Otherwise, it won't be a discussion I need to have "right now", it will be a discussion that happens with other friends that are probably just as confused and unprepared as mine are.
For those that think they can control EVERYTHING their children will ever see, hear and experience - I have news for you, you're going to fail. Not only will you fail in your attempt, your children will most likely be handicapped living in your bubble that lacks critical thinking.
Also, while you may be a Christian/religious person here on Earth, I don't see how that applies to a future with aliens, other planets, etc. With the way things are going, it's almost guaranteed that religious power will be a thing of the past as soon as we can prove other life/civilizations exist besides the one here on Earth.
One obviously does not need religion to have good morals or good values. Different doesn't mean wrong, and certainly not in this case. Homosexuality, polygamy, asexuality, and natural gender change (clown fish) already exists here on Earth in one form or another. It's not hard to conceive that these behaviors also exist on other planets even if we don't get to witness it firsthand today.
Anyway, if you want to live in a bubble, make yourself blind and deaf and just don't buy anything. If you choose to interact with the growing, ever changing world, expect to learn something new when you do it.
> With the way things are going, it's almost guaranteed that religious power will be a thing of the past as soon as we can prove other life/civilizations exist besides the one here on Earth.
Agree. They've so far been able to reinterpret religious writings to encompass pretty much any development, regardless of how illogical it sounds. I don't think the discovery of life elsewhere would break this trend.
I don't get the whole "aliens are incompatible with religion" bit. I was raised in a Southern Baptist church (yes, I got out as an adult) and AFAIK there's nothing in the Christian Bible that says we're the only planet in the universe with life. Please post book, chapter, verse if I'm wrong.
You're right - they have been able to spin things to their advantage. However, to my understanding, many are still based on the geocentric view of the universe and that we are a very special exception to every other planet we've observed w/o life.
We are just now discovering that planets are actually abundant and are all around us. A thought that seemed alien just years ago when we thought every other star lacked planets.
While I can't predict what aliens will be able to teach/tell us when they arrive (or when we find them), I do feel that a real "first contact" will change or make a lot of people rethink what they really think they know.
To provide just one example, at least one branch of Christianity (Mormons) believes in human-like aliens as a matter of doctrine. If first contact is made with an intelligent species that doesn't believe in the Christian God, they'll probably just send missionaries on an interstellar journey rather than change their faith.
> many are still based on the geocentric view of the universe
And others are not. Individual religions may rise and fall--ironically, the way this happens isn't that much different from biological evolution. But humans have always been religious, and there's no reason that would change, at least not as a result of extraterrestrial life or intelligence.
From a theological perspective, you have to actually make an argument that extraterrestrial life conflicts with doctrine. If you can, I'd like to see you make that argument, because it would be pretty interesting. Plus, theology has a trump card--dogma is always true. And as Quine taught us, it's possible to believe anything as long as you rearrange the rest of your belief system to accomodate it. A man cannot survive inside the belly of a whale, pi is not exactly 3, and the Big Bang and evolution happened--but theologically and philosophically sophisticated religions reconcile these facts with their dogma somehow, and unsophisticated religions pretend the facts are false.
Finding life will be the prequel to finding intelligent life. You're right that finding life itself won't change the views of people who choose to close their minds, but it will be the start of many realizing we're nothing special, but rather, something very common.
Also, I'm almost certain there are life in other planets in our solar system. It'll just take a few (relatively speaking) more years to prove it.
> With the way things are going, it's almost guaranteed that religious power will be a thing of the past as soon as we can prove other life/civilizations exist besides the one here on Earth.
I'm not so sure about that. Buddhism in particular goes to great length to emphasize it's teachings apply to all sentient beings in all universes past and present. We may be hard pressed to escape it's presumption.
I believe most faiths take a similar approach even if they aren't quite as explicit about it.
Most people who practice religion don't do so primarily because of factual belief in some mythology. Rather, it is motivated by deep human social and psychological needs. Many atheists get this wrong, especially if they spend too much time on the internet only mingling with their own kind.
If we meet aliens, theology will adapt and evolve. It won't disappear.
"one would think the presence of any sexual content at all (to say nothing of “partial nudity”) would convince most parents that Mass Effect 3 isn’t right for their children"
Fun. Dismissing weirdo homophobic comments and ending with weirdo "nudity is certainly bah and not for kids".
For me, both is a reason to shake my head in disbelief.
I hugely disagree with this. I'll give 3 examples and some more explanation:
I'm not sure about others, but playing GTA 1 at 10 years old didn't make me a serial murderer as far as I know, nor did it offend me to shoot people's heads off on the PS2 with GTA III later. My parents did actually return this game though, they thought it went a bit far. Or my father did, my mother never got to see it, probably for the better.
Earlier, I think at about 7-8 years old, I played Command and Conquer 2: Tiberian Sun. I think it was 16+, might have been 18+. Yeah you really could see a few pixels blood for like two fifth of a second. Now that made me a real dictator, and afterwards I was screaming under the table. Sure...
Then the last game I really played a lot is OpenArena, mostly a Quake 3 copy. So with real pixels resembling some 90's version of blood and gore. Must say I never noticed it until I started playing a bit more pro, and I noticed the gore was actually in my field of sight. Then I set com_blood 0 and my visibility was improved... I was about 15 when I started playing. The game is 17+ but I only noticed that when I was 17 (I'm 18 now). That, too, didn't quite offend me.
So WHY do I ask? Why are we even bothering to print these things on the covers anymore? It is a very slight indication of what age category the game is for, but much more useful would it be to put on the covers something like "Blatant sex" or "Dull game good for children under 10". Now that won't happen, but the equivalents wouldn't be such a bad idea. Then they could stop making judgments of which size fits all (since you can hardly put up a personality test in the shop before getting an age recommendation).
Also something people apparently fail to notice how it's called an age recommendation. Here at least. Still though, as 15-year-old you won't be able to buy a 16+ game. Like the expansion pack for Command and Conquer 3. It doesn't even contain blood or sex or anything! Maybe in the cut-scenes of the campaign, but I never even played that (skirmish and online ftw). How could they know? They can't! So why make anymore judgment than a recommendation?
Moral of this rant: Parents: Don't you dare looking at the age rating! If it says what's in the game, like drugs or violence, that might be of some use. Best would be to just watch a gameplay trailer someone put on Youtube, then make the best decision for your child. Can you really trust other's to make the best decision?
Some of the video game ratings here used to include a more detailed summary of the content, with meters indicating the level of language, violence, sexual content/nudity, etc. in the game, making it easy to decide if a game had too little or too much of a particular category of offensiveness for one's tastes. These days, though, all I see is the unhelpful letter "M", or maybe the occasional "T".
Those letters are helpful in making the snap decision as to whether to even bother investigating the content further. I can't give every game/book/movie/whatever proper review, so it helps to know that some sane adult marked it with an easily-understood cue. If there's an "M" or "T" on the box, I don't want to waste another second wondering if it's suitable for my toddlers.
Example: "Happy Tree Friends" is advertised & starts with cute forest animals in simple & colorful renderings; an appropriate parental cue helps prevent having to explain other definitions of "rendering" to a kid who can barely talk and is wondering why seconds later that cute squirrel is shrieking, spewing red, and has a bad case of the ouchies. A prominent "T" would be helpful to those adults who don't know the show and are being pestered by a 3-year-old to watch it on Netflix.
True, an indication of recommended age may help in the Happy Tree Friends case. But I think some 10-year-olds might also not like it very much, and they are teens already. If it said "strong violence", that probably works even better.
Of course the best thing is watching a trailer on Youtube, but you can hardly do that for every series the children ever watch. This is more realistic with games, at least until they start buying or downloading their own games.
His point isn't that parents should follow the box ratings, its that parents should be proactive in choosing the content that they expose their children to. Especially if they are going to complain about it later.
Well, then, you'd also have to include:
> Contains Aliens. Do not buy this game if the concept of extra-terrestrial sapient life conflicts with your religious beliefs.
> Contains women not covering their face. Do not buy this game if unaccompanied and uncovered women offend you.
> Contains the destruction of a historical site. Do not buy this game if poor archeological practices offend you.
You could go on forever.