Last week, I wrote about The Godfather II game, which features topless women. I argued that the nudity was unnecessary and gratuitous.
After reading through the story, some readers debated whether in-game nudity objectifies women. Both sides make a compelling argument.
One reader, "CrimsonCantab", said "female nudity...is unneeded and degrading to women. Pornography is shown to have many negative side effects, like reduced fidelity in marriage. There's already too much of it on the Internet, and I find it harder and harder to be a gamer when games are headed in the same direction."
"Renegade Knight," on the other hand, wrote that "the problem isn't the nudity so much as the reaction to it. Clearly, it's a problem for some people."
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M or AO? You decide.
EA sent me a copy of The Godfather II for the PlayStation 3 last week. A Godfather trilogy fan, I was excited to see how the game would turn out.
After escaping from Cuba, I was ordained the Corleone family's New York boss and set out to take over some turf. The first place I was told to capture was a bordello. I had to make it clear to the owner, through violence, that I was now in-charge. After a short drive, I walked through the "front" business and proceeded into the brothel. I was greeted by a woman offering me sexual favors. But there was something special about this prostitute. Unlike the dozens I'd seen in the Grand Theft Auto series, this one was topless.
It wasn't the first time a woman has been shown nude or partially nude in a video game. Nudity in gaming dates back all the way to the Atari 2600 when Mystique, a "Swedish Erotica" video game developer, started making adult titles for the console.
Since then, nudity of some kind (breasts, buttocks, or full frontal), has remained an infrequent occurrence in the industry. The vast majority of games containing nudity have been released on the PC, but some titles have found their way to consoles (here's a full list).
So, The Godfather II isn't unique. But nudity played an important role in this game. In fact, it was its only memorable feature.
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The British secretary of state for culture, media, and sports, Andy Burnham, told The Daily Telegraph recently that he thinks "cinema-style ratings" should be placed on all Web sites to grade them based on their content and decency.
According to Burnham, the Web is "a dangerous place" and we need to do a better job of ensuring children don't make their way to the wrong sites. He believes that by using the ratings system already imposed on films, it could do the world a great deal of good.
He's kidding, right? How can anyone expect a "cinema-style" ratings system to work in an environment where individuality and "user-owned" content are coveted above all else? Oh, and what about the whole enforcement of such an idea? Should we hire pimple-faced teenagers to check IDs before your 13-year-old decides to surf to HowardStern.com like they do at movie theaters?
The idea that anyone would want to place ratings on Web sites strikes me as, well, one of the dumbest Ideas I've heard in a long time. It's not that I'm against keeping kids away from questionable content. I simply don't know how a ratings system could do any good.
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