EA Defends The Sims' T Rating (July 22, 2005)

[Howard Day]

And speaking from the experience of a game artist - lots and lots of assets get left in there. It's called asset dependancy. You never know when some random art file might be needed. rather than deleting it, and risking a serious game bug, you leave it in there. It's a very common practice - especially when you're getting down to the wire and have just had a feature/level/minigame cut from the final product.

 

[Ptarmigan]

And speaking from the experience of a game artist - lots and lots of assets get left in there. It's called asset dependancy. You never know when some random art file might be needed. rather than deleting it, and risking a serious game bug, you leave it in there. It's a very common practice - especially when you're getting down to the wire and have just had a feature/level/minigame cut from the final product.

Many games I have seen have models and graphics not used.

 

[Howard Day]

yup - there's several examples in the WC universe, even. Unfortunately, none of them involve nudity/sex.

 

[Ptarmigan]

yup - there's several examples in the WC universe, even. Unfortunately, none of them involve nudity/sex.

I remember in WC3, there was a Kilrathi starbase you never saw in the game, but is mentioned in the Victory Streak manuals and I think you see it in some cutscenes.

 

[Howard Day]

Indeed - and the Black lance carrier in WC4 is another example.

 

[Death]

yup - there's several examples in the WC universe, even. Unfortunately, none of them involve nudity/sex.

Well, they almost had it in the game that actually showed, with that pixelicious triple-bra setup the priestess in SM1 wore during the Sivar ceremony on Firekka...

(Not to mention the drawing of the nude kat chick in the WCP intro.)

 

[cff]

yup - there's several examples in the WC universe, even. Unfortunately, none of them involve nudity/sex.

Privateer 2?

 

[ChrisReid]

Wow, they were making the sequel to the game that was cited by almost every anti-game organisation out there, with gameplay clips being shown in almost every TV program about game violence... and there was no reasonable expectation of this?

Yeah. It seems you don't understand the rating system at the heart of this, the content of the games in question and the surrounding issues. The game was out for nine months before this stuff erupted. Games with far worse content get by just fine with the M rating. AO is a virtually nonexistent rating. So yes, there is absolutely no reasonable expectation of this. There's no debate. That's just how it is.

And yes, there are plenty of other games with far more explicit scenes out there. But none of those games are the sequel to GTA3, so none of them count. Anti-gaming activists aren't known for their knowledge of games - remember how back during the Columbine thing, they were still making a big deal about Doom, even though compared to the average 1999 FPS game, Doom's pixellated imagery was so tame you could hardly take it seriously?

You've ignored my points and gone off on a tangent here. I've explained the ridiculous nature of this AO rating in step by step detail. You're replying to that with irrelevant anecdotes here and it doesn't change anything.

They knew about GTA3, so they were bound to make a big deal about San Andreas, and there is no way this could possibly have been a surprise to Rockstar.

It doesn't sound like you even read my posts above. "They" making "a big deal" about San Andreas isn't really accurate nor relevant. It's a game about murdering police and assaulting prostitutes. An incredibly tame tiny inaccessible part, revealed almost a year after the game was released, was somehow twisted around and used to get the game a virtually nonexistent rating. That's what we're talking about, and anyone who doesn't find that surprising is crazy or just doesn't understand what we're talking about.

 

[Delance]

A Wing Commander game (Priv2), unlike those games, had naked woman. And no one gave it a lot of free publicity. What a bommer, eh.

 

[Quarto]

You've ignored my points and gone off on a tangent here. I've explained the ridiculous nature of this AO rating in step by step detail. You're replying to that with irrelevant anecdotes here and it doesn't change anything.

No, I haven't gone off on a tangent here - you have, about two posts ago . As I've already said (how many times must I say this?), it's not about sense. It's not about the ratings system being consistent. As you yourself have said, the AO rating is political - San Andreas got it not because it was ultraviolent and such, but rather because it got itself into a pseudo-scandal about a hidden sex mini-game, which had the potential to seriously hurt the games industry unless the ESRB would bow and upgrade the rating to AO.

That's what we're talking about, and anyone who doesn't find that surprising is crazy or just doesn't understand what we're talking about.

But that's my point exactly - anyone who does find it surprising is crazy. They (the anti-games activists) couldn't make any noise about this game right off the bat, because it was no more extreme than the previous games in the series. But once an excuse ("they're hiding stuff in the game to corrupt your teenage kids!!!") appeared, the effect was inevitable - the anti-games activists who had to watch this particular game closely immediately started making noise, and the ESRB had to revise the rating, because the ESRB is an industry organisation that ultimately is there to serve the industry, and they sure as hell ain't gonna say "well, gee, we're not going to upgrade it to AO, because there's a dozen other games out there that include sex nudity and violence, and we'd have to upgrade their ratings too." They had to do it to fob off the activists. And this all was easily predictable to anyone who's paid any attention to how the anti-gaming movement and the media in general have reacted to various computer games over the past ten years.



And that's all I've been trying to say - not that this stuff was left in the game through malicious intent, but simply that it was an incredibly stupid thing to do. And, while indeed it is impossible to prove, I find it very hard to believe that this was unintentional stupidity - it just seems ludicrous that someone might be so naive that they would decide to disable this content in the game and then not give a second thought to the idea that the disabled will be found immediately after the release. Far more likely to me, it seems, is that the decision that was made was to cut the content out of the game completely - and someone stupidly decided to go against that decision.

 

[Death]

Ironically, the very thing that the ESRB was created to avoid, governmental regulation of the game industry, looks like it might be coming anyway, thanks to their caving to a one-trick pony who'd be unknown except for his crusade.

FTC to investigate Take Two over "Hot Coffee" mod.

 

[Howard Day]

I was making mention of the fact that none of the hidden "remnant" Art/materials in WC games was sexually explicit. Not that any such content has never existed in WC games. We all know it has. But to the best of my knowledge, there was never a mod that allowed access to a minigame where you can bump uglies with Angel for a better ship assignment.
Which is a good thing, I think.

And every other WC game had the line "Wing Commander" in the title save one. Privateer 2. You don't think that means something?

 

[Bandit LOAF]

And every other WC game had the line "Wing Commander" in the title save one. Privateer 2. You don't think that means something?

First of all, that just isn't true. Electronic Arts considered 'Privateer' and 'Wing Commander' to be different marks -- but this policy started in 1994, not 1996. The original Privateer's addon, Righteous Fire, also lacked the 'Wing Commander' logo.

If you remember Origin's ugly flash website, they divided their franchises into 'Ultima', 'Wing Commander', 'Privateer' and 'Other'. Additionally, none of the myriad attempts at developing a Privateer 2, Privateer 3 or Privateer Online had the 'Wing Commander' in the name either.

 

[Howard Day]

RF was an add-on ( we knew they meant WC Priv, right? ) - and that's not strictly true, LOAF.
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/w...er-righteous-fire/cover-art/gameCoverId,3170/
That's the version I bought. I do know that there's a version that doesn't sport the Wing Commander title on the front.
And how could they consider the original Privateer to be a different mark when it says very clearly that it's a Wing Commander Game? By that logic they would consider Armada and Acadamy to be different brands.
It does seem like an effort to distance the Privateer follow-ups from the original, but a half-hearted one at that. It clearly takes place in the same universe - no question whatsoever about that. (Just read the back of the box)

I'm sure you agree with me that the links between the Privateer 2 and Wing Comander universe are tenuous at best. I honestly don't recall anything inherent in the game itself besides that talon model. And that smacked of a tongue-in-cheek easter egg. Please remind me if there's anything else. (besides that after-thought of a reference on a web-based help forum)

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Aww, come on, the archives are full of Privateer 2 arguments, we don't really need one here. I made a nice long post about the development history in the regular CZ yesterday or so, actually. There's a bunch of minor connections, including the Talon, a newscaster referencing the Kilrathi at the end of an FMV sequence and talk about the Confederation in the 'universe database'. While I agree that Privateer 2 is very different, I can't really see anything other than a conscious effort to include the game in the rest of the continuity behind these kinds of references.


The problem with Privateer 2 is that it has very poorly polished mechanics, not that it isn't "part of the Wing Commander universe". It's the same darn game concept created by the same man... if they'd cleaned up the gameplay issues (jumping, faction balancing, having a system that actually punishes/rewards you for buying and selling things, etc.) it'd be a genuine classic today instead of something weird we talk about sometimes.


The idea that Privateer would be a separate mark came *after* the original game (whose development cycle began before Origin was part of Electronic Arts) was released, but before the addon/sequels. Privateer was originally envisioned as a one-shot spinoff, like Academy or Armada -- had Armada or Academy wound up with sequels they may also have lost their 'Wing Commander'.

I'm curious about your RF box, though -- I've never seen it before (well, I've seen the artwork before, it's the Privateer box with 'righteous fire' written on it). Is it some odd disk format or a non-US release? Does it have an EA number under the barcode?

 

[Howard Day]

To be honest, LOAF - I'm not sure where that box is right now. I do remember what it was... I believe it was a CD version that had the original Privateer/RF/speechpak all on one CD. I purchased it on E-Bay around...oh, man - I don't know. It's gotta be at least 2 years ago. I'll root around and see if I can find it. I don't recall seeing "EA" anywhere on it - but then I wan't looking.

As for the whole P2 argument - I guess it just boils down to the fact that it didn't put you anywhere near/around/in the WC universe that we'd all become familiar with - so I have an extremely hard time justifying it as a WC game. Maybe it's that WC games were....good.

Anyhow - Mature content in games is great... Games are not for kids, silly rabbit.

I think we (the industry) should move to a completely digital form of content delivery (for those without broadband - physical copies would be availabe to be mailed) - one that is mostly unregulated. Some would see this as moving toward having ultra-violent video games and the like, all being freely accessable to children.

To that I say: You gotta have a credit card to buy things online. Therefore, it's a much more secure way of delivering things to the intended audience. Little Billy isn't going to get his hands on this stuff without his parent's knowledge. And if he does manage to buy it using his parent's card without their knowledge? Not our problem. The parents farked that one up. We've already done as much as we could. you got a problem with it? Discipline your child, and let little Billy know that that BS will not be tolerated. It all comes back to parental responsability, folks. You own that house - you determine what takes place. If you don't, then something needs to change there.

 

[TurboTim07]

well... most of the time the same could be said about just buying games the regular way. most places will ID you if you try to buy an M rated game (i know that EB Games and Gamestop will. they do here anyway. Circuit City and Walmart sometimes do too. usually they do a good job of asking for an ID) so then just a lil kid can't get the game unless 1. the parents buy it. or they get an older friend to buy it. so you usually can't get an M rated game unless you had an ID to prove you were old enough. i say usually because i wasn't ID'd for when i bought Halo 2 even though i was old enough but Halo's content isn't as bad as GTA which they did ID me for.

 

[Death]

Even having broadband, I'd be less inclined to get a game if it's only downloadable online. Not only because quite a few games nowadays span multiple CDs, but because sometimes the best thing about buying a game is the physical documentation.

I mean, how nifty was it to pick up that WC1 box and find those nead blueprints in it, with an in-character magazine used to get the player started? Or the calendar that came with Kilrathi Saga, the maps that came with P2D and WCP, and other Cool Stuff™ that made WC game boxes worth buying instead of getting a warezed copy?

(Granted, most games nowadays don't have that kind of thing even for physical boxes, but that's a rant for another day, and even further off-topic for this thread than the above. )

 

[ChrisReid]

No, I haven't gone off on a tangent here - you have, about two posts ago . As I've already said (how many times must I say this?), it's not about sense. It's not about the ratings system being consistent. As you yourself have said, the AO rating is political - San Andreas got it not because it was ultraviolent and such, but rather because it got itself into a pseudo-scandal about a hidden sex mini-game, which had the potential to seriously hurt the games industry unless the ESRB would bow and upgrade the rating to AO.

How many times must you say that? The above is exactly what I said earlier.

But that's my point exactly - anyone who does find it surprising is crazy. They (the anti-games activists) couldn't make any noise about this game right off the bat, because it was no more extreme than the previous games in the series. But once an excuse ("they're hiding stuff in the game to corrupt your teenage kids!!!") appeared, the effect was inevitable - the anti-games activists who had to watch this particular game closely immediately started making noise, and the ESRB had to revise the rating, because the ESRB is an industry organisation that ultimately is there to serve the industry, and they sure as hell ain't gonna say "well, gee, we're not going to upgrade it to AO, because there's a dozen other games out there that include sex nudity and violence, and we'd have to upgrade their ratings too." They had to do it to fob off the activists. And this all was easily predictable to anyone who's paid any attention to how the anti-gaming movement and the media in general have reacted to various computer games over the past ten years.

No, it's not. Not at all. It's been my profession to follow that movement and explain it to the public since 2000. "Well, gee, we're not going to upgrade it to AO, because there's a dozen other games out there that include sex nudity and violence, and we'd have to upgrade their ratings too," is exactly what any reasonable person would have predicted they would say. I've explained in detail why several times already.

And that's all I've been trying to say - not that this stuff was left in the game through malicious intent, but simply that it was an incredibly stupid thing to do. And, while indeed it is impossible to prove, I find it very hard to believe that this was unintentional stupidity - it just seems ludicrous that someone might be so naive that they would decide to disable this content in the game and then not give a second thought to the idea that the disabled will be found immediately after the release. Far more likely to me, it seems, is that the decision that was made was to cut the content out of the game completely - and someone stupidly decided to go against that decision.

I've already addressed every one of these points. This is getting stupid, so it's over.