Games News

Easily bullied game makers EA have pandered to the easily offended and  will censor some of Bulletstorm's sexual innuendoes.

Skill titles will be renamed in a patch to be issued next week.

EA's Steve Wordsmith, issued the following statement:

After getting countless complaints about the sexual nature in Bulletstorm, we finally had to do something about it. I personally had no idea how dirty people's minds really were. It's quite sad to see your work get changed like this, but after all the negative attention about this game, EA pretty much forced us to make the words more kid friendly. I'm baffled. I spent some quality time coming up with words that fit the action on screen. How can people associate words like topless, rear entry, or gag reflex as something dirty? These words have very clear intent on the happenings on the screen.

Topless for example, happens when you successfully cut an enemy in half. What else was I supposed to put there that would be precise to the player? If you look at the bottom half of the dead enemy, you can clearly see he's missing his top half, ergo the term topless. Rear entry is talking about shooting a guy in the back. The terminology seemed to be basic knowledge to me. People have both a front side, and a back side, which can also be called the rear.

The one that annoys me the most is gag reflex. You must have a really sick mind to think gag reflex is sexual. Ever take a bite of food to big and start choking? Ever throw up before? You can thank your gag reflex for that. Honestly, to even think that any of these things have a sexual nature, you got to have a really dirty mind to begin with. Sadly it looks like people who won't even play this game have the dirtiest minds, and EA has forced us to change the names into something more kid friendly.

Changes include: Topless which will be changed to Pull Yourself Together , Gag Reflex will become Choke on That! and Double Penetration will be turned into Two Guns, One Dead Body .

The console game Mortal Kombat has been banned in Australia.

The censors said that the game was 'Refused Classification'.

Warner Brothers said:

The highly anticipated video game Mortal Kombat, published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment (WBIE) in Australia, has been refused classification by the Australian Classification Board and will not release in Australia. We are extremely disappointed that Mortal Kombat , one of the world's oldest and most successful video games franchises, will not be available to mature Australian gamers. WBIE would not market mature content where it is not appropriate for the audience. We understand that not all content is for every audience, but there is an audience for mature gaming content and it would make more sense to have the R18+ classification in Australia. As a member of the iGEA, WBIE is reviewing all options available at this time.

Ron Curry, CEO of the Interactive Games & Entertainment Association had this to say:

The granting of another RC to a video game clearly designed and targeted at ADULTS again highlights the shortcomings of the current classification scheme. In particular, the absence of an adult classification.

And indeed the BBFC, with a complete range of age classifications avaialbale, passed the game 18 uncut with the comment: Contains strong bloody violence.

Update: Decapitations, dismemberment and spraying blood

27th February 2011. From skynews.com.au

Australia's Government censorship board said that the game contains excessive levels of violence, and is unsuitable for a minor to see or play, specifically citing more than 60 death scenes, with graphic images of decapitations, dismemberment and spraying blood .

Despite the exaggerated conceptual nature of the fatalities and their context within a fighting game set in a fantasy realm, impact is heightened by the use of graphics which are realistically rendered and very detailed.

The video game, Call of Juarez: The Cartel , is set to release this summer. Unlike the previous releases in the series, The Cartel is set in the present day and focuses on a bloody road trip from Los Angeles to Juarez, Mexico. But apart from this, little information has yet been released about the game

The modern-day setting combined with the title has rubbed law enforcement officials in south Texas up the wrong way. Gang and drug cartel-related violence is very real to towns in southern Texas bordering Mexico.

Brownsville Police Chief Carlos Garcia says that any game involving organized crime sets a bad example:

Unfortunately there are companies that are looking to capitalize on the violent situation in Mexico which has had a very negative impact on the country, said Garcia. There have been spillover cases in certain areas of our country with cases of kidnappings and murders. This is a serious topic and this is just another violent video game.

It doesn't matter if it deals with the cartel in Juarez, the Gulf Cartel or the Sinaloa Cartel. It is simply not something that is appropriate for our youth, Garcia added. This leaves lasting images and ideas in teenagers who get caught up in the game and may try to make it a reality and live the violent lifestyle they see in these games.

While Cameron County Sheriff Omar Lucio admitted that he was not familiar with the game, he says that he agrees with Garcia that any type of media that glamorizes the criminal lifestyle should be discouraged.

The title itself leads one to believe that the game deals with narcotic trafficking organizations. Games like these create a false idea in the minds of teenagers who are still developing and may grow up and want to imitate these characters. Sadly enough these kind of games are protected by freedom of speech, but the violence that comes from cartels is not a game and it affects us all.

Update: Chihuahua lawmakers recommend Call of Juarez: The Cartel

21st February 2011. Based on article from globalvoicesonline.org

The video game Call of Juarez: The Cartel by game developer Ubisoft has drawn criticism from Mexican and US officials even before anything substantive is known about the game beyond the promotional statement:

You'll embark on a bloody road trip from Los Angeles to Juarez, Mexico immersing yourself in a gritty plot with interesting characters and a wide variety of game play options. Take justice into your own hands in this modern Western shooter.

Mexican blogger Ismael Flores explains that legislators in the state of Chihuahua,where Ciudad Jua'rez is located, have now called on the Secretariat of Governance and the Secretariat of Economy to prohibit the sale of the video game in Mexico.

It remains to be seen whether Mexico's federal government will act upon the request. But of course if they do they will have to answer why they are not spending their time concentrating on banning the real violence in Jua'rez.

Fox News seem well impressed with the latest video game and have written a glowing piece of hype:

Parents had better beware: There's a Bulletstorm on the horizon.

In the new video game Bulletstorm due February 22, players are rewarded for shooting enemies in the private parts (such as the buttocks). There's an excess of profanity, of course, including frequent use of F-words. And Bulletstorm is particularly gruesome, with body parts that explode all over the screen.

But that's not the worst part.

The in-game awards system, called Skill Shots, ties the ugly, graphic violence into explicit sex acts: topless means cutting a player in half, while a gang bang means killing multiple enemies.

And with kids as young as 9 playing such games, the experts FoxNews.com spoke with were nearly universally worried that video game violence may be reaching a fever pitch.

If a younger kid experiences Bulletstorm's explicit language and violence, the damage could be significant, Dr. Jerry Weichman, a clinical psychologist at the Hoag Neurosciences Institute in Southern California, told FoxNews.com.

Violent video games like Bulletstorm have the potential to send the message that violence and insults with sexual innuendos are the way to handle disputes and problems, Weichman said.

Carol Lieberman, a psychologist and book author, told FoxNews.com that sexual situations and acts in video games -- highlighted so well in Bulletstorm -- have led to real-world sexual violence: The increase in rapes can be attributed in large part to the playing out of [sexual] scenes in video games, she said.

The game was rated M (mature 17+) by the ESRB, the US game ratings organisation.

In the UK. the BBFC rated the game 18 uncut with the comment: Contains frequent strong bloody violence and strong language

Offsite: Caught with her hand in the porky pie jar

12th February 2011.

Somehow gamers don't seem to putting up with the same bullshit that anti-porn and anti prostitution campaigners get away with. Games aren't quite so immediately morally reprehensible, and so lies are allowed to be challenged by media editors and the likes.

So when Carol Lieberman made the above claims about games being connected to real-world sexual violence on Fox News, writers were up for the challenge. After all there is very little sexual content in Popular gaming to base such conclusions on.

See article from wired.com :

Pundits and legislators have been attacking the gaming industry for decades now, pinning the blame for tragic events like the shootings at Columbine and Virginia Tech on violent videogames. This week, self-described media psychiatrist Carole Lieberman took that war of words one step further, claiming explicit games trigger rapes.

Despite the seriousness of Lieberman's allegations, when Wired.com asked her multiple times to clarify her comments, she failed to cite a single study, statistic or piece of evidence that proved her point.

Perhaps it's because such studies simply don't exist.

...Read the full article

Offsite: Nutter sound bites fail to make any impact on the games industry

17th February 2011. See  article from  guardian.co.uk

Later Carole Lieberman sent out a mass email to journalists providing links to her sources on violence, rape and video games, it turned out to be a selection of eight studies, none of which tied sexual content in games with real-life sexual violence. John Walker at PC gaming site Rock, Paper, Shotgun carried out a painstaking analysis of the studies and his article is worth reading, if only for the fact that it highlights just how inconclusive the links are between simulated and real-life violence.

...

And to most of us, it should be obvious by now, that such isolated attacks are not worth worrying about. Video games are part of the mainstream, they have powerful advocates, they make billions of dollars -- there is no threat. EA barely bothered to muster an official response; the developers themselves tweeted about it quickly and dismissively. There is serious work to be done on the psychology of interactive entertainment, but it won't be carried out by Fox or Lieberman.

In this country, Labour MP Keith Vaz who has made regular confused attacks on violent games, has allegedly found his point of view increasingly isolated within parliament. Last month, culture minister Ed Vaizey told Gamesindustry.biz:

I'm constantly teasing Keith and I think he is aware of the sea-change in videogames and that, particularly with the new generation coming into parliament, there are now many more MPs who grew up with games as a normal part of their life.

...Read the full article

Offsite: Amazonbombed

21st February 2011. See  article from  foxnews.com

After psychiatrist Carole Lieberman told FoxNews.com of a connection between violent games and rape, the site Destructoid ran the headline, Games cause rape psychologist's book gets raped. The article described how Lieberman was Amazonbombed -- meaning gamers posted dozens of scathing and profane reviews of her books to the online retail site. (See example at US Amazon )

One commenter, timetheterrible, at Destructoid wrote:

Since this woman's outright untruths will never be recognized or discussed on a platform as large as Fox News, people vent their frustration at the situation by publicly questioning her credibility.

...Read the full article

According to researchers at Ryerson University (Toronto, Canada), violent video games do not desensitize players to violent imagery. The study was lead by Holly Bowen and co-authored by psychology professor Julia Spaniol.

Researchers examined the impact of chronic exposure to violent video games on emotional memory and responses to negative stimuli.

Emotional long-term memory helps us avoid negative situations, Bowen said. This has significant implications for public health. For example, if you remember the negative experience of being involved in a bar fight, you will avoid future situations that may lead to an altercation.

Participants were shown 150 images representing three different stimuli: negative, positive and neutral scenes. One hour later, the students viewed those same images again (along with a new set of 150 distractor images) in random order. As each image was displayed, participants had to respond whether or not they had seen it before. Finally, at the end of the experiment, the students completed a self-assessment test regarding their state of emotional arousal.

The researchers believed going into the study that game players would prove to be less sensitive to the negative images and therefore show reduced memory for these materials. The results showed no difference in the memory of video game players and non-players. Exposure to video games were not associated with differences in self-reported arousal to emotional stimuli.

The findings indicate that long-term emotional memory is not affected by chronic exposure violent video games, said Bowen. Researchers caution that further study is needed to see if these results apply to all age groups and not just young adults.

The nutter hyped Bulletstorm has been given a USK 18+ rating by the German Entertainment Software Rating Board.

Even with an 18+ rating, the game had to be significantly cut by removing ragdoll physics effects, blood, blood splatter, and dismemberment.

The game was rated M (mature 17+) by the ESRB, the US game ratings organisation.

In the UK. the BBFC rated the game 18 uncut with the comment: Contains frequent strong bloody violence and strong language

The BBFC rating for another up n coming video game has generated the usual interest in internet chat.

Sega's No More Heroes: Heroes Paradise has been passed 18 uncut with the BBFC comment: Contains strong bloody violence and strong language

The BBFC also notes that game contains 60:00s of video (cut scenes).

The BBFC rating for another up n coming video game has generated the usual interest in internet chat.

Sega's Yakuza 4 has been passed 18 uncut with the BBFC comment: Contains strong bloody violence and strong language

The BBFC also notes that game contains 384:00s of video (cut scenes).

Indecision over whether games featuring video content still need a BBFC certificate has temporarily derailed the implementation of PEGI ratings.

The handover from the BBFC to the VSC will not now occur until September at the very earliest.

A new government proposal states that interactive entertainment which features linear content (such as trailers) would require a BBFC rating. That means a game that features a video in it will need to have both a PEGI and BBFC label on the box.

UKIE representing UK games producers condemned the proposal, saying in a statement:

Any dual labelling is contrary to the principles that were established in having PEGI introduced into the Digital Economy Act and if this proposal were implemented we believe it would only cause unnecessary and potentially harmful consumer confusion.

Taking a lead from a packaging policy that they introduced for the Wii last year, Nintendo will be packaging their mature 3DS titles in black cases.

Any game which achieves the Japanese equivalent of a BBFC 15 or a PEGI 16+ (CERO C) or higher will be packaged in a black box instead of Nintendo's usual white packaging.

The German release of Dead Space 2 has been delayed until February. The delay was caused by censorship issues as the game had to be cut to keep the German authorities happy.

The friendly fire option has been  removed from the multiplayer portion of the game.

Apparently, the German government was uneasy with a player killing their own teammates.

Thankfully the single player portion of the title will remain unaltered.

Producers Electronic Arts said in a translated press release that the game will be released on 03:02:11 for PS3 and Xbox 360 only. The Wii release still seems mired in censorship difficulties and will not get released at this time.

The BBFC rating for the up n coming video game has generated a lot of interest in internet chat.

The BBFC passed the game 15 uncut with the comment: Contains strong violence and language.

It seems that most commentators were expecting an 18 rating. Eg pre-orders on Amazon had assumed an 18 certificate.

The BBFC rating for the up n coming PS3 game has generated a lot of interest in internet chat.

The BBFC passed the game 18 uncut with the comment: Contains strong bloody violence and strong language

Perhaps a few clues about the high level interest in the game may be found in promotional materials promising a brutal combat system"

Key Game Features:

• Epic single player campaign with a gripping storyline and intense action
• Battle your way through huge, diverse environments from alien jungles to harsh arctic vistas shown in incredible graphic detail
• Face off against new, relentless Helghast enemies armed with more powerful weapons and abilities
• Full 3D compatibility takes immersion to new heights, delivering a "boots-on-the-ground" experience like no other
• Award-winning multiplayer mode returns, with added game modes, new vehicle gameplay, brutal close combat system, more powerful weapons, and a more accessible experience
• New brutal melee system lets you get "up close and personal" with Helghast enemies for even more intense combat
• Increased vehicle gameplay, including aerial combat action with ISA Intruders and jet packs

Keith Vaz surprised a few parliamentarians when he turned up an event in support of gaming.

Parliament Games Day was organised by pressure group Gamers' Voice to bring together politicians and the industry to promote the cultural and economic strengths of British software.

Vaz told Eurogamer: I've never been against games. I've been against violent games that are able to fall into the hands of young people who are perhaps not able to understand the implications of what they're doing.

I don't oppose games, he inisted. I just think it's very important that people respect and acknowledge the age limits. And the campaign has always been about ensuring there is proper labelling so that people know exactly what kind of games they should have.

Asked if he was happy with the new games classification system – still waiting to be passed into law – Vaz said he felt it was moving in the right direction . When we started this campaign the age limit was the size of half a, I think, a 5p coin, which was very small, he explained. Obviously we want to see what PEGI does, but the more that they can draw to the attention of young people the need to respect the age limit better – and if you're over 18 you can do what you want. No-one wants to stop you playing your games.