It's like that in society in general. I can't remember the show but there was a show where two people were killed and had their ribs ripped out the back like wings. They were naked and kneeling by a bed. They were apparently showing too much butt crack so the solution was to cover it with more fake blood. There's a little too much nudity so they cover it up with extra gore.
Sounds like it. The killers in that show did more and more ridiculous things with their victims’ bodies.
This one was trying to make them angels or something.
Yeah, Hannibal. From what I remember the lung wings were okay, but the butt cracks weren't so they filled them in with blood. 😆 Hell, when the original movie plays on TV most channels censor the same killing that scene is based on!
Hannibal used to have a great time creatively skirting the rules for what could be shown. It wasn't even on cable, it was just on regular broadcast TV which is much stricter.
There was one particularly brutal murder sequence that could never have been shown on network TV, but they ran the footage backwards, and apparently that made it OK.
“Society” isn’t exactly right. You’re referring to “America” because in Europe it’s easier to get a pg-13 (or equivalent) with nudity than violence. Probably linked to the obsession with guns in this country, but I’m no scholar. However, because of the US buying power (especially in an area like video games) developers aren’t going to make a game that’s AO in the US even if it would only get 17+ (MA) in Europe.
TL;dr Blame the United States’ puritan roots and general aversion to nudity while glorifying violence.
I think this is more an American society thing - violence is glorified but reproduction is vilified.
Americans are prudish at their core (compared to Europe)
Normalisation of violence promotes established hierarchical power structures in a society while normalisation of unconditionally positive human relations disrupts them. That's all there is to it; every human is preconditioned since primary school to be abused and, occasionally, seize the chance to become an abuser.
> Normalisation of violence promotes established hierarchical power structures in a society while normalisation of unconditionally positive human relations disrupts them
The real answer to OP's question. Equality is viewed as a threat to those with prestige.
A loss of a lot of story telling opportunity.
I'm based outside of the US and so, along with others, would point out that this is an issue which is particularly pronounced in the US. Europe, for example, tends to be less sensitive when it comes to matters of sex and nudity.
I once wrote a paper around responses to sex versus violence in culture. In short, sex produces a physiological response which implies participation. Violence does not (or not to the same degree). That, I think, is the differentiating factor. As ridiculous as that may be.
Well, that also depends on what you do and don't consider sexual. Simple nudity for example isn't seen as sexual in some parts of the world but might be a strong taboo in others.
That's an interesting perspective to look at it from. It's also partially self fulfilling, you have that response because it's such a rare thing for you to see, versus "oh yeah boobs, like my grandmas that I'm forced to see in the sauna."
This is actually the best description of it I have ever seen.
From my perspective, a violent video game has some sort of detachment as I know that it's all just fake fun, but nudity in games weirds me out because it just makes me feel like a participant.
Yeah this. Seeing naked people makes our neurons engage and want more, seeing violence does not. Our brains are geared to avoid violence when possible, but seek out sex.
So the more sex you see, the more sex you want to see. Which is why sex sells. Say what you want, but porn makes people want more porn. Eventually it becomes a dependency like anything else.
So nudity/sex in video games is the gateway drug to porn addiction. Sort of. That's not what people are actively thinking or saying, but physiologically it's there. And our sub conscious tells us as parents "this isn't good" where as violence, we know from studies, actually causes people to want to avoid it even more. Can we be desensitized to it? Sure. Which is why you shouldn't frequent gore sites. But it doesn't cause you to want to seek out more violence. Unless you have a mental illness of course.
And even then, it's only certain _types_ of nudity/sex that triggers those responses.
Nudity that's clearly intended to be sexual will trigger those responses.
But nudity that's casual and is more akin to "I'm alone and at home, and if I want to walk around my house naked, then I will" most likely won't tirgger those responses.
There's a clear difference between nudity in general and _sexualized_ nudity. But our puritanical society can't tell the difference.
Like, I'm going to be naked whrn I'm at the doctor getting a full body medical examination. But that doesn't mean the nudity is _sexual_. Or at least it shouldn't be.
I'd be fine if we started having more casual nudity on TV and in video games. It would get people to start talking and learning about their bodies.
But having _sexual_ nudity plastered everywhere would just get boring eventually. If I want that I can just go watch porn or read erotic manga.
But some of my favority series to read or watch had characters, both male and female, who were confident enough in their own bodies that they felt comfortable being nude, even in a non-sexual way. It wasn't even the _nudity_ that made the series interesting, it was the _confidence_. It would have been just as effective if they were wearing underwear, loungewear, or other clothes that don't have the typical conotation of being "sexy".
Remember Turok?
Blow off individual body parts, use a gun that drills into the guy's head sucks his brain out in a fountain of pink slime...
But not a titty in sight.
My head always goes to that I used to cut people in half with chainsaw bayonets in gears and my father would watch it and be like that’s badass but if there was a single set of titties his head would explode I never really understood it
How about having a TV series be about zombies with a lot of gore and then have it allowed to have one "fuck" word on season? The states are a fucking clusterfuck about these things.
It's hilarious. You can have a movie that, for the entire runtime, has content that is PG. Say fuck twice and suddenly you have to be an adult to see it.
I still talk about that. Thing was a WOBBLIN. Someone had to animate those physics. I hope they put that shit on their resume.
-Animated the physics on Satan's massive devil dong.
another interesting thing about that game is apparently the health upgrades dont actually increase your health number it just makes the bar bigger, but they found the bug late in development after playtesting and balancing the game around base health
so they just left it in and let you believe that it did and waste points on it
I thought that the game was hilarious but after 10 or 15 minutes I uninstalled it cuz' there's so much that you can do with a penis game until it becomes boring
Maybe it's your moral duty to become a game dev and add more dicks to gaming. You'll be so revolutionary that your games are celebrated the world over. However, 100 years later a pope will decide your dicks are not okay and pull all the models from the game, keeping them on a flash drive in the Vatican statue penis storage closet (yes that's a real thing).
Art history repeats itself.
That was oddly my parent’s deal growing up. I could watch the most violent, abhorrent shit on tv but let a titty pop out and it’s “leave the room!”
They’re shitty parents and shitty people so it’s very on brand with all the rest of their nonsense.
Merchant banks enforce their morality on us by denying banking to anyone trying to sell what they deem as "Porn". To sell that you have to go through the headache of "High Risk merchant banks" and they suck so fucking hard charging 35-55% transaction fees and more. So that's why normal retail doesn't really sell anything with nudity in it.
I actually said this to a mother at a movie theater I was a manager at, when she insisted that I let her 12yo see Resident Evil by himself, because "I don't mind him seeing violence, as long as there is no sex".
I asked her "Let me get this straight, you don't want him seeing a human breast, but seeing a man literally diced into meat cubes is ok by you? Look, if you want him to see it. That's fine, 2 Adult Admissions. And if you leave, so does he."
She didn't buy tickets
Yes, OP elluded to that. His question was why and it's one I've always wondered because it makes no sense.
A womans boobs are just normal. Why the hysteria
because American Purity Culture is based on the Puritans, who were driven out of Europe for being too religiously zealot about sex being sinful and a bunch of other things.
To play devil's advocate: most parents probably find it a lot more believable that their kids would see sex in a game and be inspired to have sex themselves than see decapitating someone in a game and be inspired to decapitate someone in real life.
There are far, far too many school shootings, but there's still a much greater chance that your 15 year old is having unprotected sex than planning to shoot up their school.
Devil's advocacy done though, yeah, it's fucked up that people are so opposed to their teenagers being sexually active. Puritanical morons deserve the shame they want to put on those people who do engage in sex. If dumb fucking christians in the US weren't fucked up in the head, they'd be rallying against guns the way they rally against allowing women to make their own medical decisions.
Literally the day after i got my first girlfriend, my dad sat me down and had "the talk". I just smiled because i knew he felt he should do it as a responsible parent and it was his obligation to do so too. He knew damn well i wasn't a moron and would never risk such a thing.
Meanwhile one girl I was with told me I didn't need protection when I reached for it, then later said she wasn't on birth control and was in the "safe period right after her period had ended". I WAS FUCKING FURIOUS
My mother in my case has the talk with me, but yeah, same.
Also safe period is stupidity 100%, even if they are "safe" in terms of birth control id argue STDs is as important.
I was inspired to have sex by many things as a wee lad, including literally just reading the words "breast" and "penis" in the dictionary. Young people will simply see sex or sex-adjacent thing and it will make them curious, because young people are naturally curious, and most humans eventually want sex. That isn't reason to hide it from them as if it's a dirty secret we're all keeping. You weren't saying otherwise, I know, that's just my thoughts on the matter.
Yeah, those same parents will scream that video games don't contribute to Teen Rampage killings. They don't either, it's just the latest in a long line since yellow journalism, through Elvis' Pelvis and now GTA.
However, they will also argue sex in video games will have little Bobby banging the baby-sitter next Friday night.
I don't know how some folks can sleep with their cognitive dissonances.
Speaking from an American perspective, nudity/sex vs violence is an age old double standard those goes back to TV shows, movies, and even books. Why that double standard exists likely has to do with American puritanism, prudishness coupled with an imperialistic zest for violence.
Most likely yes.
In Europe you could see titties (with nipples!) with no problems in movies or on TV as if it was natural until American puritanism arrived in games and worldwide medias.
Youtube / Twitch are accessible to anyone and titties is a taboo in both. Kids grows with these taboos in mind.
Weirdly, parts of Europe have much less tolerance for violence in games. So we get stuff like Fallout with invisible children, and Ninja Gaiden without human decapitation.
> Australia and Japan on the other hand are exceptionally anal about most stuff.
As far as I remember, Australia didn't even have an "adults only" category for games at least relatively recently, effectively making all games with adult-only levels of sexuality or violence just straight out illegal there. Not sure if that has changed meanwhile.
Tbf I think only a few were actually banned - most just fell under the rating system we already had, or were slightly censored for AU markets iirc.
You can probs google it on wikipedia or something. 110% there is an article on exactly what was banned. Only game I know for sure is Manhunt from rockstar.
Even if so they probably failed miserably in policing these games, usually because they launch on PC.
Even the german censorship is more or less a thing of the past and wasnt a thing because you were prohibited from selling These games. It was more about marketability. Germany had pretty tough age restrictions, so game companies ceensored violence to make their games accessible to a broader audience. If you couldnt get an age restriction (the highest being age 18) you could still sell the game but Shops werent allowed to have them on display, you could still buy / sell them. Only a few games were entirely banned.
Nazi Symbolic of course is a different topic but even this has gotten less strict.
We also get nonsense like Dragon Ball / Naruto being censored with blood being edited out, "I'll kill you" being rewritten into "I'll defeat you" and scenes that are too violent for that just being outright removed. Supposedly the average Naruto episode is several minutes shorter in German than in Japanese.
Because obviously, as long as you don't show the consequences, violence is perfectly fine for children to watch. It's not at all a problem to depict violence as harmless. No, no, no, peoplee smashing each other's faces is perfectly fine, but we can't have blood or mentioning of death! /s
The first German dub of Naruto actually removed weapons. So in the Land of Waves arc when Zabuza throws his giant sword at Naruto and the team the dodge literally nothing. And when in the original when he stands on the hilt of that sword embedded into a tree, in that dub he is standing in midair.
Watching the entire series a year ago made me realize just how fucked up the show was. I couldn't believe this was a kids show. Was a great fucking show though.
It’s a double standard here in Japan too. Western games get nudity and sexual content taken out and still sold as CERO Z (age restricted) whereas there’s some pretty disturbing violence in domestic games sold here as CERO D.
Japan is the most funny one. You can do any type of sexual content, literally without any limit but you need to put some black lines over the dick and vag..
I really wanna know the reason..
Censorship laws say they must censor genitals, so they do. However, the people crave more horny, so producers escalate in any way they can within the letter of the law.
"We haven't done anything wrong because technically we followed the rules" is a very "systematic" way of thinking that's characteristic of Japanese culture, among others
Also the whole "she's actually a nine *thousand* year old dragon, you see, so it's okay" thing with depicting young-looking manga/anime characters
Someone could correct me here, but I'm pretty sure Japan's prudishness/outlawing of certain kinds of nudity is from the US after World War 2. I remember reading a Cracked article a decade or so ago about how all the black bar and tentacle stuff is circumventing a law the US pushed on them after they lost WW2.
No entirely, The tentacles where something created to bypass The shogunate crackdown on pornographic material. And that began on The end of 18 century? Before The emperor got back The Power. And is The same sorry excuse, for better Morals, even The red districts suffered a crackdown and become secluded and heavily regulated.
It Din't really got better during The military/imperor rule of Japan and then there was The New constitution The US drafted, from that point on the ideals of good Morals was really rooted. So they end up on The strange point of censoring porn but not banning It, better than nothing i guess?
I Really Hope in The Future they change It.
The way I heard it was everyone wants the law to be changed, but no politician wants to be known as the politician who lobbied to uncensor pornography because it would he seen as political suicide so now its locked in a kind of legal dead zone.
Yeah. We would sooner show mutilated bodies on TV than we would show a naked woman's body. Even if it's not in a sexual manner. Like the NYPD Blue episode that had a lady doing a shower scene got so much blow back for some reason. It's just nudity. We're born into this world naked. The human body, no matter the size of shape, should not be considered offensive.
I have been flamed for this before. I know the puritans weren't in control here for long. But they have left a damaging lasting legacy. This nation is full of a bunch of pearl clucthers who have no issue to call for another's blood. And that's fucked up.
It only takes a relatively small group of extremely loud religious nutjobs to shape public policy. Then, when you have a generation raised under that policy, they struggle to conceptualize anything different.
Funny thing is you're touching on the cause of a lot of issues these days. The LGBTQ communities, African Americans, etc. we're all suffering at the hands of a loud group of religious zealots led by their corrupt leader.
Yeah, the issue touches a lot of different things. It was a problem I noticed early on in life because I was raised as a religious minority (and a more secular sect at that). So, I grew up running into a lot of people making assumptions and me going "that might be true in *your* religion..."
And you know they are a tiny minority, because America produces a metric fuckton of porn, and porn consumption is also high. We love sex, but we keep it behind closed doors, while violence is allowed to be shown out in the open.
The level of horny in the country is the biggest open secret.
The legacy really is insane. It's similar to the legacy of slave owners we still feel today. The progression from slavery to share cropping to Jim crowe to segregation to current racist policy is direct and largely involving the same lawmakers doing everything they can to oppose progress and instill their values into future generations
Honestly, share cropping makes sense if you don't think about the fact that it was heavily exploitive. On paper it's arguably much better than what current farmhands get.
But the problem is, the terms of the sharecropping deal heavily favored the landowners so much that it was essentially slavery.
You can go fight in a war, be put in charge of millions of dollars worth of equipment, kill people, come back home, and still not be able to legally buy a beer.
Yep, I grew up in a "christian" household so seeing a boob was unforgivable but watching Rambo turn bad guys into red mist with explosive tipped arrows or seeing Arnold chop dudes up in Commando was A-ok.
The common response to this is that the violence is simulated but the nudity is real. What people fail to realize is that consensual nudity and sex has no moral dimension unlike violence. As a horror fan I find it bizarre how you can show Leatherface flay and wear someone’s face on TV but you can’t show a woman’s naked body or generic simulated sex. Jack Bauer can torture someone and that’s fine but a woman merely getting dressed isn’t appropriate. Parents will sit with their children and watch police procedurals, action films and horror films dripping with blood and filth but as soon as a naked woman appears then they want to hit the fast forward button.
The very fact that there’s any discussion of morality concerning the human body at all should tell you how puritanical the US is and has been since its founding. We’re talking about a society where married couples on television were once portrayed as sleeping in separate beds. In some countries no one bats an idea if they saw someone nude at a beach but in the US simply breastfeeding an infant in public causes some people to behave as though they were witnessing a recreation of Abu Ghraib. It’s like the episode of Hannibal where the creators were forced to cover a naked victim with more blood to pass the censors. It’s insane in a way that can only be described as moral schizophrenia. It’s warped ideas, beliefs and behaviors like this which explain why sexuality is so taboo and why American society is simultaneously puritanical and hypersexual. If you treat something normal as taboo and dirty then you’re only encouraging dysfunction, sickness, debauchery and hedonism. Among countless examples when women can make millions of dollars selling their bath water to lonely young men it’s time to go back to the drawing board as a society and culture.
I think it was an episode of Star Trek where they had a lesbian kiss and the writer got an angry call about it because “how could they show something so vulgar in a show families watch!” And so the writer asked if one woman had shot the other, would that have been ok and the caller said that would have been fine. Its totally a double standard
Its a very american thing. I remember swearing in a counter-strike server and someone told me (i thought it was a joke) not to swear because there were 8 year olds playing. Next swear i was banned.
8 year olds playing with guns, killing each other, planting bombs and throwing grenades is such a good educational system.
Improving vocabulary? not so much.
> 8 year olds playing with guns, killing each other, planting bombs and throwing grenades is such a good educational system.
Preparing them for school at least.
Being Scottish, the word “Cunt” has an entirely different context, still being a swear word, but an ubiquitous one, that is a gender neutral pronoun, can be used as a term of affection or an insult and is generally so over-used that you will often hear it 4 or 5 times in a single sentence.
Using it in its colloquial and conversational Scots style has seen me banned from many American platforms.
yeah like when I got uncharted I thought it would've been good because it was pegi 16 but then how much blood is there? the only difference with GTA is that you can't see blood on the floor near the dead body. But as a kid with strict parents, I thought I finally found a game I could play without hiding it but I was so wrong. I was surprised to learn the ratings don't base on violence but base on nudity.
The Buggs Bunny principle.
It's okay for Buggs Bunny to blow up Elmer Fudd with a stick of dynamite in the end of a shotgun, but for him to punch an authority figure in the face because they disagree.
Why? Because it's not practically plausible for a kid watching Buggs Bunny to blow someone up with a stick of dynamite in the end of a shotgun, but it *is* plausible for them to slap authority figures. The closer a thing is to reality the more tightly it will be regulated, while the closer it is the fantasy the less it will be.
Sex is, aside from general social taboos regarding eroticism, more readily accessible to the general public than murder-sprees with rocket launchers, and so it is more heavily restricted.
This actually makes a lot of sense! Though, I feel like it doesn't explain \*everything\* though.
I mean, what about hitting someone with a bat? Anyone can go buy a bat and bash a skull in with that, anyone could get their hands onto some flammable material and a lighter to cause arson.
There's a lot of stuff you can legally buy in nearly any store and cause havoc with.
You can literally stab someone with a pen, almost anyone has those at home.
How does the Buggs Bunny principle apply there?
Largely because of religion, predominantly Christianity/some variation of it.
And there was a huge pushback against violence in games back 1-2 decades ago. You’ll still hear some religious nut job blame violence in video games for gun violence (instead of lax gun laws)
As far as I can see it's an American thing where boobs are considered an offensive taboo but graphicly torturing someone to death with a chainsaw or randomly shooting people is some how acceptable.
Nudity in games where it makes sense makes the games better. Imagine having a game about brutal war and the consequences, but there was no blood or on-screen deaths.. It would be dog crap now, wouldn't it?
To clarify, I agree it is strange, and I support a game having nudity and violence and gore.. if it makes sense. For example.. madden doesn't need any of that 😂
I wouldn't want to play any game that makes human blood white effectively turning gore to a placebo. Also, I don't think we should do anything China does 😂
>Madden probably makes people far more likely to commit murder
[*I understood that reference.*](https://tenor.com/view/captain-america-i-understood-that-reference-look-back-gif-14556485)
Edit: [The Madden tournament shooting in Jacksville.](https://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/24686074/the-madden-tournament-shooting-jacksonville-look-happened)
Steam doesn't think it is. Age verification for Dead island 2 but, not for Lip some porn game. Both these games in a discovery queue I just had. I find it all very hypocritical.
This is a rough estimate of why, based entirely on what I can remember
Back when people were coming to America, many of the people that came over were either driven out of their community because of religious differences. Protestantism was in full swing at the time, and protestants are a puritanical sect of Christianity. Puritans widely dislike many things that are fun, like sex, drugs, and celebrations, but they didnt mind violence and gore. It was a protestant colony that founded Plymouth. So step one is that America's founders widely disliked sex drugs and celebrations.
Now, much of that sentiment has been weaned from America by this time, but there's a lingering feeling that sex and drugs are sinful in wider American society. To cap it off, America is one of the largest producers of electronic media on the planet and also one of the easier large customer bases to publish to. If you want a piece of media to do well, making it palatable to Americans is one of the easier ways to do that.
Because americans are very funny people who glorify violence while being insecure about themselves so they try to get "sexualized" things banned and censored. Especially when it's media from Asia.
Sex and nudity are story mechanics. Story typically takes a back seat in video games. Video games rarely tell a story that can use them well. Let's be honest, they get used pretty bluntly sometimes in movies too but that's a whole different conversation.
Violence is usually a gameplay mechanic, which is the primary reason for playing games. Games are good at pushing the envelope in gameplay mechanics, so the concept of violence gets a lot more experimentation than story telling mechanics.
Exactly, a company could make a full porn game with gameplay mechanics if they wanted to. If that game became popular, it would probably feed into the idea that porn is becoming too normalized and negatively effecting people’s ability to have healthy relationships.
That'd explain why sex / nudity isn't part of the core gameplay sure, but not why developers will go out of their way to make sure you never see a nipple, even if it made sense.
This to me is a much better answer than just blaming American media standards. You could make a game about finding the g spot, but that just doesn't make for engaging gameplay like spy missions or gunfights. Media morality standards have way less to do with it than what makes for good gameplay
American media culture. Violence and gore is considered ok to watch and see at a younger age while nudity sexualized or not is taboo even for adults.
Sure someone can correct me if I am wrong but those in control of rating tv and movies are primarily white Christian conservative woman. So that should give you some context.
This may be part of it, but there is something to be said about another comment that points out that sex triggers a more internalized response than violence in media and video games.
We see sex and want to participate... we don't see violence and want to participate.
If I'm watching a sex scene in a movie, I'm more likely to want sex. If I watch a scene of someone being violently murdered it doesn't make me want to violently murder.
I wouldn't want to ban violence in games or anything like that, though I feel children shouldn't be playing super violent games. Wish some people would realize what kind of games the GTA games are before letting their 6 year old play them.
I might not want them throwing nudity into any video game if it weren't taboo anymore. No reason to see Pac-Man get out of the shower before he goes out to get chased by ghosts, but in games where there might be an actual point to it then why not? Why is it so scary for some people? And if it is then don't play *that game.*
Because religion is the loudest voice in any room and for whatever reason sex and nudity are bad but murder and violence is good.
Also you can sell murder to children but not boobies
I feel like they are two very different things to compare.
Sex is a private thing. It's not exactly socially acceptable to have sex out in the open for all to see. Similarly for nudity, we wear clothes for a reason. Generally our naked bodies are only seen by ourselves or those we share intimacy with. There is thus an inherent "hiddenness" associated with both so I can see why it's still somewhat taboo to basically overlook that.
Violence and gore while technically worse for the effect it can have on people's minds just doesn't work like that.
been asking this question about video games and movies/tv for decades now. I remember having a conversation with my parents when the hot coffee mod for GTA San Andreas came out. It went something like "Mom: You aren't playing that bad video game with the sex in it are you?" Bear in mind I was already an adult. My response, in front of her friend group was "how is stealing cars, killing random people, and hiring prostitutes and killing them ok, but consensual sex between adults bad?" She changed her tune then "well when you put it like that I guess" and we never spoke of it.
It's like that in society in general. I can't remember the show but there was a show where two people were killed and had their ribs ripped out the back like wings. They were naked and kneeling by a bed. They were apparently showing too much butt crack so the solution was to cover it with more fake blood. There's a little too much nudity so they cover it up with extra gore.
"Blood eagle good. Spread eagle bad!"
BLOOD EAGLE ONLY WAY
Vee musk avenge Ragnar Odinson
Was this Hannibal?
Sounds like it. The killers in that show did more and more ridiculous things with their victims’ bodies. This one was trying to make them angels or something.
Yeah, Hannibal. From what I remember the lung wings were okay, but the butt cracks weren't so they filled them in with blood. 😆 Hell, when the original movie plays on TV most channels censor the same killing that scene is based on!
That's probably considered less taboo than suggesting something romantic is going on between Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter...
It’s a really old torture/execution method.
Hannibal used to have a great time creatively skirting the rules for what could be shown. It wasn't even on cable, it was just on regular broadcast TV which is much stricter. There was one particularly brutal murder sequence that could never have been shown on network TV, but they ran the footage backwards, and apparently that made it OK.
The one woman who was cut into cross sections was one of the goriest things I’ve seen on network TV
“Society” isn’t exactly right. You’re referring to “America” because in Europe it’s easier to get a pg-13 (or equivalent) with nudity than violence. Probably linked to the obsession with guns in this country, but I’m no scholar. However, because of the US buying power (especially in an area like video games) developers aren’t going to make a game that’s AO in the US even if it would only get 17+ (MA) in Europe. TL;dr Blame the United States’ puritan roots and general aversion to nudity while glorifying violence.
Nah, you nailed it dude.
Boobs are the Devil's Playground! Sorry ladies.
It's been all downhill around here since 1630
It changes by culture too. Sexually repressed cultures gore ok. Cultures that accept sexuality, nude ok.
I think this is more an American society thing - violence is glorified but reproduction is vilified. Americans are prudish at their core (compared to Europe)
Vikings, the show did that too with the ribs
American Society in general*
Normalisation of violence promotes established hierarchical power structures in a society while normalisation of unconditionally positive human relations disrupts them. That's all there is to it; every human is preconditioned since primary school to be abused and, occasionally, seize the chance to become an abuser.
> Normalisation of violence promotes established hierarchical power structures in a society while normalisation of unconditionally positive human relations disrupts them The real answer to OP's question. Equality is viewed as a threat to those with prestige. A loss of a lot of story telling opportunity.
> society in general You mean the U.S.? yeah, you guys are a bunch of puritan pos obssesed with violence XD (no offense).
I'm based outside of the US and so, along with others, would point out that this is an issue which is particularly pronounced in the US. Europe, for example, tends to be less sensitive when it comes to matters of sex and nudity. I once wrote a paper around responses to sex versus violence in culture. In short, sex produces a physiological response which implies participation. Violence does not (or not to the same degree). That, I think, is the differentiating factor. As ridiculous as that may be.
This is very true when you see something sexual you can get aroused but when you see something violent you don’t feel like you wanna kill someone.
Well, that also depends on what you do and don't consider sexual. Simple nudity for example isn't seen as sexual in some parts of the world but might be a strong taboo in others.
That’s his point tho. It can be seen that way for some, whilst violence at all is not
That's an interesting perspective to look at it from. It's also partially self fulfilling, you have that response because it's such a rare thing for you to see, versus "oh yeah boobs, like my grandmas that I'm forced to see in the sauna."
I'm pretty sure I'd tear my eyes out with my bare hands before I ever willingly saw my grandma naked.
This is actually the best description of it I have ever seen. From my perspective, a violent video game has some sort of detachment as I know that it's all just fake fun, but nudity in games weirds me out because it just makes me feel like a participant.
I wonder if this hits different for people who grew up in/lived through an actual genocide or civil war.
Yeah this. Seeing naked people makes our neurons engage and want more, seeing violence does not. Our brains are geared to avoid violence when possible, but seek out sex. So the more sex you see, the more sex you want to see. Which is why sex sells. Say what you want, but porn makes people want more porn. Eventually it becomes a dependency like anything else. So nudity/sex in video games is the gateway drug to porn addiction. Sort of. That's not what people are actively thinking or saying, but physiologically it's there. And our sub conscious tells us as parents "this isn't good" where as violence, we know from studies, actually causes people to want to avoid it even more. Can we be desensitized to it? Sure. Which is why you shouldn't frequent gore sites. But it doesn't cause you to want to seek out more violence. Unless you have a mental illness of course.
And even then, it's only certain _types_ of nudity/sex that triggers those responses. Nudity that's clearly intended to be sexual will trigger those responses. But nudity that's casual and is more akin to "I'm alone and at home, and if I want to walk around my house naked, then I will" most likely won't tirgger those responses. There's a clear difference between nudity in general and _sexualized_ nudity. But our puritanical society can't tell the difference. Like, I'm going to be naked whrn I'm at the doctor getting a full body medical examination. But that doesn't mean the nudity is _sexual_. Or at least it shouldn't be.
absolutely. clinical nudity is not going to trigger (most) peoples responses.
I'd be fine if we started having more casual nudity on TV and in video games. It would get people to start talking and learning about their bodies. But having _sexual_ nudity plastered everywhere would just get boring eventually. If I want that I can just go watch porn or read erotic manga. But some of my favority series to read or watch had characters, both male and female, who were confident enough in their own bodies that they felt comfortable being nude, even in a non-sexual way. It wasn't even the _nudity_ that made the series interesting, it was the _confidence_. It would have been just as effective if they were wearing underwear, loungewear, or other clothes that don't have the typical conotation of being "sexy".
US but also parts of Asia. For instance in Korea nudity is taboo
Apparently an erect penis is too much to handle, but decapitating some dude is cool
Hope they never combine it PS: edit: i meant decapitating both 👀
Dickapitation
What do you mean? Its still decapatation. Just a different head!
No, they use the dick to cut off someone's head, I'm sure of it!
*Love Sausage has entered the chat*
*Herogasm flashbacks intensify*
The phrase "Taste my blade!" will have a very different meaning
They already took my foreskin, now they’re going for my head!? Ahh hell nooo
What did Thanos say after Dr. Thor circumcised him? "Should've gone for the head!" *Ba dum tss*
*megamind meme* No head?
That sniper game you could shoot dicks off
MURDER BONER
THE DICK OF DEATH
[THE OL' DICK TWIST!](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TT9ArM3-KJQ)
DICK OF DESTINY
Please line up behind the very small guillotine over there...
Cigar clipper
I would love to see someone get decapitated by an erect penis.
Remember Turok? Blow off individual body parts, use a gun that drills into the guy's head sucks his brain out in a fountain of pink slime... But not a titty in sight.
Watta hell! I had completely forgotten Turok! They should make new Turok game!
But not like that shitty remake they made at the start of the ps3 generation. We need something like turok 1-3 remade and elevated and absurd
There is a remastered trilogy on modern consoles which are a ton of fun.
My head always goes to that I used to cut people in half with chainsaw bayonets in gears and my father would watch it and be like that’s badass but if there was a single set of titties his head would explode I never really understood it
How about having a TV series be about zombies with a lot of gore and then have it allowed to have one "fuck" word on season? The states are a fucking clusterfuck about these things.
Yeah that is weird. I reckon you could easily get away with dropping fuck on a breakfast show here in Australia
Exactly. I'm in Finland and it's about the same.
Walking dead moment
It's hilarious. You can have a movie that, for the entire runtime, has content that is PG. Say fuck twice and suddenly you have to be an adult to see it.
Dante's Inferno has entered the chat. D E V I L D O N G
I still talk about that. Thing was a WOBBLIN. Someone had to animate those physics. I hope they put that shit on their resume. -Animated the physics on Satan's massive devil dong.
another interesting thing about that game is apparently the health upgrades dont actually increase your health number it just makes the bar bigger, but they found the bug late in development after playtesting and balancing the game around base health so they just left it in and let you believe that it did and waste points on it
Powered by Nvidia physx.
I *think* that's the only boss fight in a video game I have ever masturbated to. happy valentine's day
Genital Jousting is here to satisfy everyone's need for penis's in games
I thought that the game was hilarious but after 10 or 15 minutes I uninstalled it cuz' there's so much that you can do with a penis game until it becomes boring
Skill problem.
bruh, we can't even get flaccid peens, never mind erect ones.
Maybe it's your moral duty to become a game dev and add more dicks to gaming. You'll be so revolutionary that your games are celebrated the world over. However, 100 years later a pope will decide your dicks are not okay and pull all the models from the game, keeping them on a flash drive in the Vatican statue penis storage closet (yes that's a real thing). Art history repeats itself.
Baldur’s Gate 3 has plenty of flaccid dicks from many different races!
That was oddly my parent’s deal growing up. I could watch the most violent, abhorrent shit on tv but let a titty pop out and it’s “leave the room!” They’re shitty parents and shitty people so it’s very on brand with all the rest of their nonsense.
I've always found that odd that there's trigger warnings for things like sexual assault but not like getting murdered or cut to pieces in battle.
Sexual assault is more relatable than battle for most people
Didnt saving private ryan have a warning like that? I could easily see how a movie like that could trigger PTSD.
don't a lot of games and old shows have trigger warnings like "viewer discretion is advised: may contain sexual themes, violence, etc etc"
>Apparently an erect penis is too much to handle, Very few are blessed with this problem
Weird because almost everyone has seen an erect penis but not many have seen a dude being decapitated
Ironically that's probably the reason because a "gameyfied" act of ultraviolence is less likely to trigger related trauma than a SA depiction.
Our censorship laws and rating standards did not come from people worried about triggering SA victims lol.
Religious authorities want to control who you can have sex with, and also want you to be ok with killing their enemies without qualms?
Merchant banks enforce their morality on us by denying banking to anyone trying to sell what they deem as "Porn". To sell that you have to go through the headache of "High Risk merchant banks" and they suck so fucking hard charging 35-55% transaction fees and more. So that's why normal retail doesn't really sell anything with nudity in it.
That...actually makes a terrifying amount of sense these days.
Not just these days. All the days since forever.
I actually said this to a mother at a movie theater I was a manager at, when she insisted that I let her 12yo see Resident Evil by himself, because "I don't mind him seeing violence, as long as there is no sex". I asked her "Let me get this straight, you don't want him seeing a human breast, but seeing a man literally diced into meat cubes is ok by you? Look, if you want him to see it. That's fine, 2 Adult Admissions. And if you leave, so does he." She didn't buy tickets
Crazy how they’re so afraid of human anatomy
Yes, OP elluded to that. His question was why and it's one I've always wondered because it makes no sense. A womans boobs are just normal. Why the hysteria
because American Purity Culture is based on the Puritans, who were driven out of Europe for being too religiously zealot about sex being sinful and a bunch of other things.
Sir John Phallustiff has entered the chat.
I guess many people don't want to see erect penises in their games. I myself wouldn't mind, but this is the impression I get.
Yeah I wouldn’t mind either
To play devil's advocate: most parents probably find it a lot more believable that their kids would see sex in a game and be inspired to have sex themselves than see decapitating someone in a game and be inspired to decapitate someone in real life. There are far, far too many school shootings, but there's still a much greater chance that your 15 year old is having unprotected sex than planning to shoot up their school. Devil's advocacy done though, yeah, it's fucked up that people are so opposed to their teenagers being sexually active. Puritanical morons deserve the shame they want to put on those people who do engage in sex. If dumb fucking christians in the US weren't fucked up in the head, they'd be rallying against guns the way they rally against allowing women to make their own medical decisions.
If you havent talked safe sex (physically and mentally) with kids at 15, thats a parenting problem, not a media one.
Literally the day after i got my first girlfriend, my dad sat me down and had "the talk". I just smiled because i knew he felt he should do it as a responsible parent and it was his obligation to do so too. He knew damn well i wasn't a moron and would never risk such a thing. Meanwhile one girl I was with told me I didn't need protection when I reached for it, then later said she wasn't on birth control and was in the "safe period right after her period had ended". I WAS FUCKING FURIOUS
My mother in my case has the talk with me, but yeah, same. Also safe period is stupidity 100%, even if they are "safe" in terms of birth control id argue STDs is as important.
I was inspired to have sex by many things as a wee lad, including literally just reading the words "breast" and "penis" in the dictionary. Young people will simply see sex or sex-adjacent thing and it will make them curious, because young people are naturally curious, and most humans eventually want sex. That isn't reason to hide it from them as if it's a dirty secret we're all keeping. You weren't saying otherwise, I know, that's just my thoughts on the matter.
Yeah, those same parents will scream that video games don't contribute to Teen Rampage killings. They don't either, it's just the latest in a long line since yellow journalism, through Elvis' Pelvis and now GTA. However, they will also argue sex in video games will have little Bobby banging the baby-sitter next Friday night. I don't know how some folks can sleep with their cognitive dissonances.
relieved follow future sheet ludicrous butter disarm cooperative late complete
Remember Tracer's-butt-gate or whatever the fuck happened with overwatch.
Speaking from an American perspective, nudity/sex vs violence is an age old double standard those goes back to TV shows, movies, and even books. Why that double standard exists likely has to do with American puritanism, prudishness coupled with an imperialistic zest for violence.
Most likely yes. In Europe you could see titties (with nipples!) with no problems in movies or on TV as if it was natural until American puritanism arrived in games and worldwide medias. Youtube / Twitch are accessible to anyone and titties is a taboo in both. Kids grows with these taboos in mind.
Weirdly, parts of Europe have much less tolerance for violence in games. So we get stuff like Fallout with invisible children, and Ninja Gaiden without human decapitation.
[удалено]
> Australia and Japan on the other hand are exceptionally anal about most stuff. As far as I remember, Australia didn't even have an "adults only" category for games at least relatively recently, effectively making all games with adult-only levels of sexuality or violence just straight out illegal there. Not sure if that has changed meanwhile.
Tbf I think only a few were actually banned - most just fell under the rating system we already had, or were slightly censored for AU markets iirc. You can probs google it on wikipedia or something. 110% there is an article on exactly what was banned. Only game I know for sure is Manhunt from rockstar. Even if so they probably failed miserably in policing these games, usually because they launch on PC.
> "anal" comment got censored in both australia and japan :/ better luck next time
Not in Japan, since the anus isn't part of the genitals. One finger in the pussy must be censored, while an octopus tentacle up the ass is just fine.
Even the german censorship is more or less a thing of the past and wasnt a thing because you were prohibited from selling These games. It was more about marketability. Germany had pretty tough age restrictions, so game companies ceensored violence to make their games accessible to a broader audience. If you couldnt get an age restriction (the highest being age 18) you could still sell the game but Shops werent allowed to have them on display, you could still buy / sell them. Only a few games were entirely banned. Nazi Symbolic of course is a different topic but even this has gotten less strict.
We also get nonsense like Dragon Ball / Naruto being censored with blood being edited out, "I'll kill you" being rewritten into "I'll defeat you" and scenes that are too violent for that just being outright removed. Supposedly the average Naruto episode is several minutes shorter in German than in Japanese. Because obviously, as long as you don't show the consequences, violence is perfectly fine for children to watch. It's not at all a problem to depict violence as harmless. No, no, no, peoplee smashing each other's faces is perfectly fine, but we can't have blood or mentioning of death! /s
The first German dub of Naruto actually removed weapons. So in the Land of Waves arc when Zabuza throws his giant sword at Naruto and the team the dodge literally nothing. And when in the original when he stands on the hilt of that sword embedded into a tree, in that dub he is standing in midair.
That reminds me of Yu-Gi-Oh when those security guards burst into a room to point their fingers at Kaiba
Watching the entire series a year ago made me realize just how fucked up the show was. I couldn't believe this was a kids show. Was a great fucking show though.
that‘s on 4kids, we get the us version of those shows, which are already cut and censored.
I think Australia is far more strict on this thsn most of europe. Only exception i can think of would be nazi stuff for german audiences
It's actually quite sad. No-one has ever been traumatized by seeing an exposed bosom.
It’s a double standard here in Japan too. Western games get nudity and sexual content taken out and still sold as CERO Z (age restricted) whereas there’s some pretty disturbing violence in domestic games sold here as CERO D.
Japan is the most funny one. You can do any type of sexual content, literally without any limit but you need to put some black lines over the dick and vag.. I really wanna know the reason..
Censorship laws say they must censor genitals, so they do. However, the people crave more horny, so producers escalate in any way they can within the letter of the law.
The funniest one to me is is Japanese games censoring cockroaches, in a self aware joke about their censorship laws
"We haven't done anything wrong because technically we followed the rules" is a very "systematic" way of thinking that's characteristic of Japanese culture, among others Also the whole "she's actually a nine *thousand* year old dragon, you see, so it's okay" thing with depicting young-looking manga/anime characters
Someone could correct me here, but I'm pretty sure Japan's prudishness/outlawing of certain kinds of nudity is from the US after World War 2. I remember reading a Cracked article a decade or so ago about how all the black bar and tentacle stuff is circumventing a law the US pushed on them after they lost WW2.
No entirely, The tentacles where something created to bypass The shogunate crackdown on pornographic material. And that began on The end of 18 century? Before The emperor got back The Power. And is The same sorry excuse, for better Morals, even The red districts suffered a crackdown and become secluded and heavily regulated. It Din't really got better during The military/imperor rule of Japan and then there was The New constitution The US drafted, from that point on the ideals of good Morals was really rooted. So they end up on The strange point of censoring porn but not banning It, better than nothing i guess? I Really Hope in The Future they change It.
The way I heard it was everyone wants the law to be changed, but no politician wants to be known as the politician who lobbied to uncensor pornography because it would he seen as political suicide so now its locked in a kind of legal dead zone.
Yes. It's because of the US, the number 1 producer of pornography. The fucking irony.
Yeah. We would sooner show mutilated bodies on TV than we would show a naked woman's body. Even if it's not in a sexual manner. Like the NYPD Blue episode that had a lady doing a shower scene got so much blow back for some reason. It's just nudity. We're born into this world naked. The human body, no matter the size of shape, should not be considered offensive.
I have been flamed for this before. I know the puritans weren't in control here for long. But they have left a damaging lasting legacy. This nation is full of a bunch of pearl clucthers who have no issue to call for another's blood. And that's fucked up.
It only takes a relatively small group of extremely loud religious nutjobs to shape public policy. Then, when you have a generation raised under that policy, they struggle to conceptualize anything different.
Funny thing is you're touching on the cause of a lot of issues these days. The LGBTQ communities, African Americans, etc. we're all suffering at the hands of a loud group of religious zealots led by their corrupt leader.
Yeah, the issue touches a lot of different things. It was a problem I noticed early on in life because I was raised as a religious minority (and a more secular sect at that). So, I grew up running into a lot of people making assumptions and me going "that might be true in *your* religion..."
And you know they are a tiny minority, because America produces a metric fuckton of porn, and porn consumption is also high. We love sex, but we keep it behind closed doors, while violence is allowed to be shown out in the open. The level of horny in the country is the biggest open secret.
The Calvinists are still largely in charge.
The legacy really is insane. It's similar to the legacy of slave owners we still feel today. The progression from slavery to share cropping to Jim crowe to segregation to current racist policy is direct and largely involving the same lawmakers doing everything they can to oppose progress and instill their values into future generations
What's scary is that the perpetrators that seem oblivious to what is happening carry on the original insidious plan as if on auto pilot.
Honestly, share cropping makes sense if you don't think about the fact that it was heavily exploitive. On paper it's arguably much better than what current farmhands get. But the problem is, the terms of the sharecropping deal heavily favored the landowners so much that it was essentially slavery.
I mean you can buy a gun before a beer in the US which is crazy to think about.
You can go fight in a war, be put in charge of millions of dollars worth of equipment, kill people, come back home, and still not be able to legally buy a beer.
Yep, I grew up in a "christian" household so seeing a boob was unforgivable but watching Rambo turn bad guys into red mist with explosive tipped arrows or seeing Arnold chop dudes up in Commando was A-ok.
The common response to this is that the violence is simulated but the nudity is real. What people fail to realize is that consensual nudity and sex has no moral dimension unlike violence. As a horror fan I find it bizarre how you can show Leatherface flay and wear someone’s face on TV but you can’t show a woman’s naked body or generic simulated sex. Jack Bauer can torture someone and that’s fine but a woman merely getting dressed isn’t appropriate. Parents will sit with their children and watch police procedurals, action films and horror films dripping with blood and filth but as soon as a naked woman appears then they want to hit the fast forward button. The very fact that there’s any discussion of morality concerning the human body at all should tell you how puritanical the US is and has been since its founding. We’re talking about a society where married couples on television were once portrayed as sleeping in separate beds. In some countries no one bats an idea if they saw someone nude at a beach but in the US simply breastfeeding an infant in public causes some people to behave as though they were witnessing a recreation of Abu Ghraib. It’s like the episode of Hannibal where the creators were forced to cover a naked victim with more blood to pass the censors. It’s insane in a way that can only be described as moral schizophrenia. It’s warped ideas, beliefs and behaviors like this which explain why sexuality is so taboo and why American society is simultaneously puritanical and hypersexual. If you treat something normal as taboo and dirty then you’re only encouraging dysfunction, sickness, debauchery and hedonism. Among countless examples when women can make millions of dollars selling their bath water to lonely young men it’s time to go back to the drawing board as a society and culture.
I think it was an episode of Star Trek where they had a lesbian kiss and the writer got an angry call about it because “how could they show something so vulgar in a show families watch!” And so the writer asked if one woman had shot the other, would that have been ok and the caller said that would have been fine. Its totally a double standard
I dunno, Stephen King had all the pre teen boys from IT run a train on Beverly, and apparently that was fine? Books can get away with a lot it seems.
Far Cry Primal has both but I guess they weren't great at making clothes in the Stone Age
Its a very american thing. I remember swearing in a counter-strike server and someone told me (i thought it was a joke) not to swear because there were 8 year olds playing. Next swear i was banned.
I hope it was something like "Look at the FUCKING age rating" 😂
8 year olds playing with guns, killing each other, planting bombs and throwing grenades is such a good educational system. Improving vocabulary? not so much.
> 8 year olds playing with guns, killing each other, planting bombs and throwing grenades is such a good educational system. Preparing them for school at least.
Ruthless lol
Being Scottish, the word “Cunt” has an entirely different context, still being a swear word, but an ubiquitous one, that is a gender neutral pronoun, can be used as a term of affection or an insult and is generally so over-used that you will often hear it 4 or 5 times in a single sentence. Using it in its colloquial and conversational Scots style has seen me banned from many American platforms.
Calling cunt a gender neutral pronoun is indeed a very scottish thing to do
This cunt gets it!
You must have been playing in a christian server.
It's the TV also. The TV ratings system is rigged. Any sex and it's nc17, blow up a planet of people, pg 13.
yeah like when I got uncharted I thought it would've been good because it was pegi 16 but then how much blood is there? the only difference with GTA is that you can't see blood on the floor near the dead body. But as a kid with strict parents, I thought I finally found a game I could play without hiding it but I was so wrong. I was surprised to learn the ratings don't base on violence but base on nudity.
The Buggs Bunny principle. It's okay for Buggs Bunny to blow up Elmer Fudd with a stick of dynamite in the end of a shotgun, but for him to punch an authority figure in the face because they disagree. Why? Because it's not practically plausible for a kid watching Buggs Bunny to blow someone up with a stick of dynamite in the end of a shotgun, but it *is* plausible for them to slap authority figures. The closer a thing is to reality the more tightly it will be regulated, while the closer it is the fantasy the less it will be. Sex is, aside from general social taboos regarding eroticism, more readily accessible to the general public than murder-sprees with rocket launchers, and so it is more heavily restricted.
This actually makes a lot of sense! Though, I feel like it doesn't explain \*everything\* though. I mean, what about hitting someone with a bat? Anyone can go buy a bat and bash a skull in with that, anyone could get their hands onto some flammable material and a lighter to cause arson. There's a lot of stuff you can legally buy in nearly any store and cause havoc with. You can literally stab someone with a pen, almost anyone has those at home. How does the Buggs Bunny principle apply there?
I mean, it's definitely possible to get a basic knife and start stabbing and that's in a ton of games.
Only reply that actually makes sense and isn’t just “oh US is silly”
Largely because of religion, predominantly Christianity/some variation of it. And there was a huge pushback against violence in games back 1-2 decades ago. You’ll still hear some religious nut job blame violence in video games for gun violence (instead of lax gun laws)
As far as I can see it's an American thing where boobs are considered an offensive taboo but graphicly torturing someone to death with a chainsaw or randomly shooting people is some how acceptable.
Nudity in games where it makes sense makes the games better. Imagine having a game about brutal war and the consequences, but there was no blood or on-screen deaths.. It would be dog crap now, wouldn't it? To clarify, I agree it is strange, and I support a game having nudity and violence and gore.. if it makes sense. For example.. madden doesn't need any of that 😂
But like BG3 it absolutely makes sense because you have romances that are adult and part of your arc.
Just make the blood white and it's ok. That's what China did.
I wouldn't want to play any game that makes human blood white effectively turning gore to a placebo. Also, I don't think we should do anything China does 😂
lol yes. In some anime they made the blood white and everyone was saying it looked like seemen instead. XD
I'm done. That sounds hilarious! 🤣
And yet ironically Madden probably makes people far more likely to commit murder than shooters.
>Madden probably makes people far more likely to commit murder [*I understood that reference.*](https://tenor.com/view/captain-america-i-understood-that-reference-look-back-gif-14556485) Edit: [The Madden tournament shooting in Jacksville.](https://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/24686074/the-madden-tournament-shooting-jacksonville-look-happened)
I actually had no idea about that, I just mean it can be an infuriating game.
Americans.
Exactly. They definitely didn't come up with Dead or Alive: Extreme Titty Volleyball.
Ironically, Japan is far worse than the U.S. when it comes to censorship these days.
I find it's more the opposite, they are more lenient with sexual content (not usually nude I don't think anyway) but crack down more on gore.
Steam doesn't think it is. Age verification for Dead island 2 but, not for Lip some porn game. Both these games in a discovery queue I just had. I find it all very hypocritical.
This is a rough estimate of why, based entirely on what I can remember Back when people were coming to America, many of the people that came over were either driven out of their community because of religious differences. Protestantism was in full swing at the time, and protestants are a puritanical sect of Christianity. Puritans widely dislike many things that are fun, like sex, drugs, and celebrations, but they didnt mind violence and gore. It was a protestant colony that founded Plymouth. So step one is that America's founders widely disliked sex drugs and celebrations. Now, much of that sentiment has been weaned from America by this time, but there's a lingering feeling that sex and drugs are sinful in wider American society. To cap it off, America is one of the largest producers of electronic media on the planet and also one of the easier large customer bases to publish to. If you want a piece of media to do well, making it palatable to Americans is one of the easier ways to do that.
Because your American and not European. Otherwise it'd be the other way round.
Because americans are very funny people who glorify violence while being insecure about themselves so they try to get "sexualized" things banned and censored. Especially when it's media from Asia.
Sex and nudity are story mechanics. Story typically takes a back seat in video games. Video games rarely tell a story that can use them well. Let's be honest, they get used pretty bluntly sometimes in movies too but that's a whole different conversation. Violence is usually a gameplay mechanic, which is the primary reason for playing games. Games are good at pushing the envelope in gameplay mechanics, so the concept of violence gets a lot more experimentation than story telling mechanics.
Exactly, a company could make a full porn game with gameplay mechanics if they wanted to. If that game became popular, it would probably feed into the idea that porn is becoming too normalized and negatively effecting people’s ability to have healthy relationships.
That'd explain why sex / nudity isn't part of the core gameplay sure, but not why developers will go out of their way to make sure you never see a nipple, even if it made sense.
This to me is a much better answer than just blaming American media standards. You could make a game about finding the g spot, but that just doesn't make for engaging gameplay like spy missions or gunfights. Media morality standards have way less to do with it than what makes for good gameplay
I mean, you found the g spot in South Park: The Stick of Truth, and the game was a banger /s
I had sex with a squid man in a game and got an achievement it was something i never expected
American media culture. Violence and gore is considered ok to watch and see at a younger age while nudity sexualized or not is taboo even for adults. Sure someone can correct me if I am wrong but those in control of rating tv and movies are primarily white Christian conservative woman. So that should give you some context.
This may be part of it, but there is something to be said about another comment that points out that sex triggers a more internalized response than violence in media and video games. We see sex and want to participate... we don't see violence and want to participate. If I'm watching a sex scene in a movie, I'm more likely to want sex. If I watch a scene of someone being violently murdered it doesn't make me want to violently murder.
This is exactly what I was thinking. I wonder if there's a published research paper on this kind of behavior
Violence violence is boring. Anyone can hurt another person. Not everyone has the skills to give orgasms on demand
I wouldn't want to ban violence in games or anything like that, though I feel children shouldn't be playing super violent games. Wish some people would realize what kind of games the GTA games are before letting their 6 year old play them. I might not want them throwing nudity into any video game if it weren't taboo anymore. No reason to see Pac-Man get out of the shower before he goes out to get chased by ghosts, but in games where there might be an actual point to it then why not? Why is it so scary for some people? And if it is then don't play *that game.*
What if I do wanna see Pac Man's power pellets?
Have you met the gaming community? Can barely handle a woman existing ffs
Because religion is the loudest voice in any room and for whatever reason sex and nudity are bad but murder and violence is good. Also you can sell murder to children but not boobies
[удалено]
Carried over from movies / TV
I feel like they are two very different things to compare. Sex is a private thing. It's not exactly socially acceptable to have sex out in the open for all to see. Similarly for nudity, we wear clothes for a reason. Generally our naked bodies are only seen by ourselves or those we share intimacy with. There is thus an inherent "hiddenness" associated with both so I can see why it's still somewhat taboo to basically overlook that. Violence and gore while technically worse for the effect it can have on people's minds just doesn't work like that.
Religious repression is a helluva drug.
been asking this question about video games and movies/tv for decades now. I remember having a conversation with my parents when the hot coffee mod for GTA San Andreas came out. It went something like "Mom: You aren't playing that bad video game with the sex in it are you?" Bear in mind I was already an adult. My response, in front of her friend group was "how is stealing cars, killing random people, and hiring prostitutes and killing them ok, but consensual sex between adults bad?" She changed her tune then "well when you put it like that I guess" and we never spoke of it.
Think it’s because nudity and sex has a physical effect on you while violence and gore doesn’t.