A Fear of Sex.

Oh. My. Goodness. This letter to Sen. Hillary Clinton by "Everything Bad is Good for You" author Steven Johnson is simply amazing (thanks Kotaku). It basically says everything gamers have been claiming about video games in a very simple and eloquent way. I completely agree, and I think this is the exact argument we should be making as gamers against anti-game legislation.

The only problem I see is that the feeding frenzy on games has temporarily departed violence and now entered sex. Sex is bad. Sex is evil. We were iffy on the killing hookers and glorified gang violence. But sex in games? Ho-buddy. That leads to unwed pregnancy and social diseases!

Seriously, though, I believe that our battle as gamers has become a bit more difficult since 'Hot Coffee' (the new "wardrobe malfunction"! Huzzah for lame buzz words!). While it's relatively easy to disprove claims about video game violence with statistics, common sense, and some historical studies, sex is a different manner. Much more than violence, sex in American culture is taboo. It transcends stats and figures and goes into a very deep-rooted collected unconscious that promiscuity and its portrayal are bad. Why do sexually-inclined women have to die in horror films? Because they need to be punished.

Even consensual sex is viewed as somewhat scary and should be kept behind-closed-doors.

Furthermore, in American society � and I'm paraphrasing a cultural critic whose name I'm sorry I've forgotten � we view the entrance into puberty as a sad loss of innocence rather than an entry into maturity. Therefore we have this terrorized fear fed to us that children knowing about sex would ruin their existences and shoot them into a world of suffering. So the mere thought that a newly-pubescent child can cause (and therefore understand) two people having sex comes off as very icky and somewhat scary to many people.

So. How do we defend against a national fear of a boogey-man that can't exactly be defined in numbers and charts?

Comments

[Phil]

Well, people tend to fear what they don't understand. You know, the unfamiliar. So my theory is that most of the anxiety about these issues comes from people who aren't getting enough sex. If we all get out there and do what we can to give them the f*cking that they need and, frankly, deserve, maybe they'll lighten up. My own tactic -- and this is just a personal prefernce -- will be to start by teasing them a little. Once I get a smile I'll see where it can go from there.

[Phil]

Well, people tend to fear what they don't understand. You know, the unfamiliar. So my theory is that most of the anxiety about these issues comes from people who aren't getting enough sex. If we all get out there and do what we can to give them the f*cking that they need and, frankly, deserve, maybe they'll lighten up. My own tactic -- and this is just a personal prefernce -- will be to start by teasing them a little. Once I get a smile I'll see where it can go from there.

[Malkyne]

I've thrice now written an insanely long essay in response to this, and I don't think this is the right forum for it. It's rather a shame. It was some nice prose, if I do say so, myself.

I'll be honest with you: We can't beat this. It's going to take a force much bigger than the game industry to change things. All we can do is ask not to be held to a double-standard. We should be treated no more restrictively than movies, and we should not stand for anything else.

Unfortunately, the movies have it bad, too. You can show a woman being shot, but god forbid she's enjoying herself. The MPAA finds carpet rather unpalatable, as it were:

http://www.deep-focus.com/flicker/cooler.html

[Zild]

I have to disagree. I think that this kind of letter (which strikes me as being more for the gamers than for Senator Clinton) is too biased and, dare I say it, humourous to be of use in this 'battle'.

It is a shame that the world's media tends only to pick up the more volatile arguments. Why can we not have the matter discussed by people who are willing to listen to the opinions of others, and to give an entirely balanced account, rather than just the points that work to their benefit.

I've also seen many an example where stats are used to justify attitudes completely wrongly, and I fear this may be one such case.

Personally, I have to agree with some of what Bowler was saying in a recent post: Why is consensual sex (even when it is very much unrevealing) such a bad thing, whilst the simulation of crimes such as rape and murder are deemed entirely appropriate?

I also find it annoying that just because sex is apparently deemed such a vile act by 'Americans' (I wish not to tar you all with the same brush - it seems that, once again, democracy has allowed the minority to impose their views on everybody else), it becomes the case that many games have to exclude it internationally, due to the importance of the US market. I fear the whole 'Hot Coffee' issue is going to make it so much harder for distibutors to allow such content in some countries but not in others.

I do also wonder why Ms Clinton believes it to be her place to crusade against this 'filth'. Her husband seemed to have been corrupted without any help at all from computer games!

[Foopy]

I agree with Zild's point about Johnson's letter being a little weak and one-sided. Near the end of his letter, he ends up violating the basic "correlation does not imply causation" rule everyone learns at some point through high school: just because kids are less violent today and not committing carjackings doesn't mean that videogames are what's making everything better.

As for the sex thing, my general impression is that it's not so much whether the sex is consensual or not--the whole "consensual" argument is just a way to turn sex into an argument about violence. I think it's more about the context that sex is presented in. Most conservative Americans tend to view sex as a sacred act; placing it in the context of a game where you try to provide maximum pleasure by jiggling your joystick reduces it to an activity that is simply amusing and devoid of meaning. I'm not saying that the solution is censorship, but I can understand why some people might not like what's going on in Hot Coffee, regardless of how much skin is involved.

[Mike]

I disagree, Foopy. The consensual sex argument is key. The reason is this: consensual sex is legal. As long as both parties willingly consent, it doesn't matter if it's for pleasure or for reproduction or because God told them to do it. What matters is that both parties are adults and willing participants. It is a legal act. And the fact that some people think that having sex for pleasure is icky doesn't stop the fact that it's completely, 100% legal.

As a society, we're more comfortable with seeing acts of violence than acts of sex in media. To quote Bruce Campbell, "You can cut off a breast in a movie, but you can't kiss it." To us, shooting someone is far more palatable than fucking someone, which is just plain odd.

My point is that, if in GTA, it was rape, I'd probably be more willing to condemn the hack. However, since the woman invites CJ into her home and she willingly participates in the act, I think the legality of the situation overrides any religious taboos.

[Foopy]

I'm not very familiar with the situation of CJ in Hot Coffee, so I can't comment on it specifically; what I'm arguing about has more to do with the concept of "casual sex" or "liberated sex" that is depicted in the media today. It might not be exactly what some opponents of sex in video games are against, but it is how I personally relate to their arguments. Skin, legality, or religious taboos have little to do with it.

Suppose, for instance, that a movie had a scene where a 12 year old kid woke up and his parents told him that they didn't love him anymore. This isn't graphically violent, sexual, illegal, and it doesn't use strong language, but depending on the way it's presented, it could be considered "mature content" not suitable for children, because it is a theme that could affect a child's view of the world in harmful ways. Todd Solondz's film Welcome to the Dollhouse, for instance, features an unattractive teenager being screwed over and rejected by everyone around her--friends, family, classmates, everyone. The film is Rated R for language, but even if every cuss word were beeped over, I hardly doubt this film would still be suitable for children.

Depending on the way sex is presented, it can have the same kind of psychological impact. For one thing, it involves incredibly complex emotions that children have absolutely no way to relate to; and just because the sex is consensual doesn't mean that two people aren't hurting each other. For instance, what if they're doing it because they're depressed and bored and are looking for some fleeting sense of excitement, which just ends up making them feel more lonely? What if one of them is just doing it so they can brag about it to their friends? What if they really care deeply about each other, and what if they don't? How is a child supposed to differentiate between these motivations, or even understand what they mean, or whether they're good or bad? This is part of what makes such actions far more subtle than simple violence; when someone physically harms another, only an idiot would think it wasn't wrong, but when it comes to certain actions that aren't explicitly graphic and don't use strong language, it's hard to figure out how they can affect younger audiences who may not have the maturity to understand the issues presented to them.

[Zild]

Which brings us again to what some people seem to consider the largest problem for the industry: people outside of it, especially people old enough to have any real power over the situation, tend to think of games as being for children. This is just plain wrong, these days.

What is the average age of a gamer in the US these days? Mid-twenties? I believe this is also generally the case around the world.

Unlike the music and (in some cases) movie industry, games aren't aimed specifically at children these days. For a start, the prices hardly seem suitable! GTA:SA had a rating that (as far as I understand the system) prevents people under the age of 17 even buying it. And I am certain that I have never said during development 'Let's not do this, kids mights not understand' or 'This can't go in, it's too mature for children'.

I think we need to start making the busy-body senators understand that games are not just for kids anymore. And it would be nice to see the same kind of restrictions used throughout the different forms of media.

And as a developer, I wish that the rules could be a little more consistent from country to country!

[Foopy]

As far as I understand the situation, an ESRB rating is only available so that the buyer can make informed purchase decisions. The ESRB website, as far as I know, never mentions that the sale of the game should actually be restricted in any way. It seems to be operating under the assumption that it is always parents who buy games for their children.

Also, like the MPAA's "R" rating, the ESRB's "M" rating does not imply that the work must be watched/played by someone 17 or older. It's very subtle wording: the "M" rating claims that "Titles rated M (Mature) have content that may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older" (emphasis mine). In other words, the ESRB leaves it up to the parent to decide whether the game is actually appropriate for their child. The idea, for instance, that Terminator 2 was only viewed by people 17 and older is ludicrous, and the same goes for Resident Evil. These are both titles that a lot of parents would understandably think it okay for their children to experience.

It's a subtle distinction, but like the MPAA's "NC-17" rating, the ESRB's "AO" rating makes a much more definitive judgement call about the title's content: "Titles rated AO (Adults Only) have content that should only be played by persons 18 years and older" (emphasis mine). Here the ESRB is saying "parents, you would be completely insane to let your kids play this game."

So, "M" doesn't necessarily mean the game should only be played by persons age 17+, but "AO" does mean the game should only be played by persons age 18+. (I'm also contradicting part of what I said in a comment on a previous post.) The year difference is insignificant, and I wish the ESRB could somehow make the real distinction as explicit as the MPAA does, but game stores don't have control over who ends up playing their games, whereas movie theaters do have complete control over who watches their films.

In any case, given this distinction, I think that if we really didn't want children to play Grand Theft Auto, we should have given it an AO rating from the very beginning. The same goes for a lot of other games.

[outsider]

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[outsider]

tworzenie stron tworzenie stron ; ogoszenia nieruchomoci ogoszenia nieruchomoci ; reklama w internecie reklama w internecie ; sm ; ma ; mpa ; apteki warszawa apteki warszawa ; jiddu krishnamurti jiddu krishnamurti ; stomatologia warszawa stomatolog warszawa ; opony opony ; mieszkania warszawa mieszkania warszawa ; jk ; freud

[Allan]

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