The Gamer’s Quagmire: 21st Edition
- Jamison DeLorenzo

Just in case there was any confusion about whether GTA had lasting impacts on the video game world Elder Scrolls IV now carries the ESRB Mature rating. Why? The two cited reasons for change in every place I can find are some detailed blood and a third party mod that can change the game to make female characters be topless. Does this sound familiar? It should.

Remember all the slippery slope nonsense? It applies here. I should write a third-party mod to minesweeper that depicts nudity every time you expose a bomb. If cleverly disguised as a Windows Hotfix then wouldn’t that be something? Of course if I were to change the minesweeper game to show nudity I would probably be sued by Microsoft. In this case the person changing the game isn’t at fault- it’s the publisher. A game’s rating should never have to reflect what it can be changed into. It’s way beyond idiotic and asinine to think otherwise. I’m not kidding. The Jerky Boys’ sue everybody joke is starting to be more than just funny now.

If you do not recall the Hot Coffee mod let me get you up to speed on the fundamentals. Someone modified source code to make the game do something different on the PC than what the publisher released. This grew into Rockstar/Take Two becoming evil. This case with Oblivion is quite worse because now someone used an application to unpack all of the game’s texture maps, modified the pack, re-packaged the texture maps, and uploaded the content to the web as a nude pack. Clearly Bethesda is doing something evil by allowing its customers to do this.

Clearly.

Putting this burden on the video game world is like throwing an artist in jail for someone painting phallic symbols on his painting. Imagine Michelangelo being attacked because his statue portrayed… wait, that already happened- in the 16th century. It does make you wonder about our censorship- everyone is trying to make an issue out of this but somehow games like Blood Rayne and Lord of War remain under the public’s radar. Slaughter and dismember people all you want (along with showing arterial spray) but whatever you do please don’t show someone’s nipple!

Okay, let’s try a better analogy than last time. Imagine Picasso being sued because someone altered Guernica to include a nipple. That should sound vehemently idiotic- and so should the attack against Bethesda. A third-party altered work and now you’re blaming the artist. Does anybody care to explain this to me? Don’t all video games now have to carry the Mature rating by extension? Any game can be altered to have nudity in it. ANY GAME. It therefore stands to reason that Spongebob Squarepants games could be altered in hilarious ways and then your kids’ favorite cartoon character would be the star of a Mature video game.

I’ve played through parts of Oblivion and there are spots that are relatively disturbing. I say relatively because while I’m not bothered by items such as a rending room it’s easy to see how a teenager could become a little flustered by such material. Of course we are talking about this in places of the game that are designed to reflect Hell (or some similar concept). The game designers are not being subtle in these areas and the ESRB obviously saw this when they splashed the Teen rating on this game. They cited, among other things, animated violence as well as blood & gore. Maybe, just maybe, this game should have had a Mature rating to begin with.

But it didn’t.

The problem is that the only acknowledged experts who can make claims about how games should be rated with any weight already work at the ESRB. People can complain all they want about how games are rated. Rest assured Hillary Clinton won’t be among them this time because, well, this isn’t exactly making headlines (the importance of that jab may become apparent in 2007-2008). The fact is people can lobby and complain about certain items all they want, but the ESRB is the only entity that has any expertise in rating video games. If rating video games was so similar to rating TV shows or movies then we wouldn’t have separate entities doing so.

Now Hillary may not be raising her voice on the censorship bandwagon this time but the gaming community’s favorite lawyer is. This shouldn’t surprise anyone, and because I want to limit as much credence to Jack Thompson as possible I’ll keep this blurb on him to a bare minimum. Anybody who thinks that this so-called incident is in any way worse than the one with GTA is almost completely ignorant about gaming. This is not an exaggeration. I won’t fault anybody for not understanding how the patch process works, but people who think that companies should be sued for the illegal acts of the customers need to be taught a lesson.

Can you imagine the RIAA suing its own labels for people distributing digital music? I didn’t think so.

After perusing several game retailer’s sites the ratings change has definitely taken place for how the game is listed. Of course if you were to walk into a store it is completely conceivable that some boxes may have the Teen label on them. At the very least this could happen in the used games bin. As the old saying goes- never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups. It’s even fitting that an image of Lemmings just popped into my head. Is there any way to turn some of these rating change yuppies into those exploding Lemmings and take out a whole bunch of them?

Why does this rating change bother me so much? There are multiple reasons, the forefront of which is that this is another thinly-veiled assault on the video game industry. I don’t even care where it’s coming from at this point. We are inching towards the point where any threatened or supposed change to a game forces gaming companies to re-issue games with a different rating. What, Wal-Mart needs more control over what’s stocked on shelves? No other art form or product is subject to these shenanigans. With everything that can be read into a passage or plot item from a book or movie why aren’t those ratings more restrictive?

Of course the answer there is that one change is imaginative and not tangible. There should not be any legislation on thinking (and not just because of anything Orwell said), so there is a legitimate excuse there too. Fine, so a third-party can change a game and actually display something that was not intended by the game developers. In a sense isn’t that imaginative also? Don’t immediately dismiss this. If you are for this change from Teen to Mature for Oblivion then what you are saying is that you’re telling the ESRB to figure out all possible changes to a game that could be done and base a game’s rating on that.

Take this a step further. The ratings on the box for the game are for, well, the game that’s inside the box. There is no rating attached to the software that’s not distributed by the same source. The point is to rate the game as it is inside the box. Imagine any game that contains a development kit that allows you to create your own missions, scenarios, stages, or whatever else. In a game like Civilization IV where you can create your own units with their own images and put them into a custom scenario there is nothing to stop someone from creating a low-budget rated X scenario that’s then distributed over the Internet to anyone who wants it. Does this mean that Civilization IV is to be rated Mature also? What about a game such as Neverwinter Nights where you can make up entire campaigns? With minimal effort anyone can whip together a Leisure Suit Larry campaign complete with sound effects.

When I told you over a year ago that these lawsuits against GTA were idiotic it wasn’t just because of what was happening to GTA. There’s now precedent for whining and moaning getting people to change how games are rated. What makes it worse is that there are people in the industry that somehow are feeling guilt over the Hot Coffee scandal (and that enigmatic sense of guilt is a whole other story) so they’ll let the rating change go through to avoid bad press. This is sickening at best. Okay, this ratings change doesn’t affect me at all but Oblivion is one of those games that allows players to use their imagination, be creative, and develop skills that aren’t just for their avatar. Preventing anyone under 17 from playing this game brings us one step closer to having kids grow up without any exposure to violence and explicit material on any level as well as limiting access to their own imagination and creativity. Let them use their imagination. I’m begging you. It’s for their own good.

Won’t somone think of the children?!

Want to think about something else disturbing? Try this- there are no signs of anyone stepping forth on behalf of the gaming community and putting a stop to it. The overwhelming urge in America to file complaints and lawsuits against anyone is purely a mitigating factor. Lawyers are nothing more than facilitators here. Strictly staying inside the realm of video games forcing a ratings change on a game because of what it might contain later is absurd and unconstitutional. It’s one step away from locking people in jail for what they might do. Let kids play graphic video games. Let them watch violent movies. Let them watch MTV and other cleavage-packed stations. Let them read explicit and violent books. Lord knows that if you talk to them about what they’re experiencing you’ll find out that they probably can deal with it a lot better than you can.

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