Aug 20
Games Are Not Art
Gen Con stuff soon, I promise. Just wanted to take a quick moment to post about how happy I was to read about Julian Eggebrecht’s comments out of Leipzig.
Factor 5 president Julian Eggebrecht has said that games’ inability to include sexual content, satirical jokes and fantasy violence without degrees of censure are symptoms of a wider problem with ratings - and said that he didn’t feel the US Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) took the medium seriously as an artform.
“I would be happy if in games we could talk about homosexuality, but we’re not even at the point where we can admit that humans have heterosexual relationships, and that is a real problem - and it tends to show that games are not being seen, even by our own ratings boards, as an artform,” he told attendees at the Games Convention Developer’s Conference in Germany.
Just three weeks ago I wrote almost the exact same thing for my bi-weekly Escapist editorial, and it’s totally kickass to see someone with industry credibility putting their name on the line in a public forum like this. Can’t wait to see the ESRB’s response.
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I’m fairly certain art existed before sexual content was more common, so I’m not sure what he’s actually trying to say here. (And why weren’t games “artier” bfore the ESRB’s existence?)
Games have thus far been unable to do anything with violence except make it cooler and more graphic, so what exactly would it do for human sexuality?
Should games feel free to go down that path? Absolutely. And no one—including the ESRB—is stopping anyone from doing it. The ESRB won’t tell EA not to spend $20 million on a sex game. And while I’m not aware of any game with homosexuality as a theme, I’m going to guess that it has nothing to do with the ESRB or fear of censure and everything to do with feeling it was a unmarketable.
The blame is being cast on ESRB, but it’s really the marketplace that can’t absorb it. These games exist, they’re just not sold through mass retailers, which means they don’t get the volume, and therefore not the revenue, and therefore not the budget to develop in the first place.
Tha parallels to almost all media-based entertainment are strong. Music, Movies and TV “suffer” the same “problem”, in quotes because those are opinions.
But at the same time, this is the reason there are indie-level anything.
There’s a market for this stuff. It’s just not the mass one. That is a sociological thing, not something ESRB caused.
I had just come across and posted the same article myself at DR.
What makes this an issue is developers aren’t being given the same rights as artists to express themselves as any other media in existance and are effectively censored by the ESRB when it rates their games.
Even at minor allusion to sexality, or anything that the ESRB doesn’t agree with brings down the threat of a mature or adult rating which is a deathnell for trying to get on a major retailers shelf like Walmart.
I highly recommend you read the article again to see how ridiculous it really is and how it affects you as a gamer.
“Who is rating the games?
Basically, your average Joe. Almost anyone can rate for the ESRB, whether they’ve ever played a computer game in their life, or not.
To obtain eligibility to rate a game under the ESRB label, an individual must undergo extensive training, involving a wide variety of entertainment software, before becoming certified. Supposedly, upon passing this game-experience training, the individual is deemed fit to judge what is acceptable and unacceptable for the designated age groups in America; with this ability, they are queued with 100 other raters.
From this pool of raters, three are randomly chosen to judge each game. ”Raters include retired school principals, parents, professionals, and other individuals from all walks of life.” This is a group of non-gamers. Outsiders, some might say. Despite this, they are respected by various government and educational groups, and, because of this, are given virtually free reign to decide what games thousands of people should or should not play.”
http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=ESRB
This isn’t an issue for non-mainstream games, its an issue for ALL games that can’t even get the most basic expression of humor or sexuality in them without the ESRB giving a rating that keeps it out of the marketplace for consumers to decide.
“What makes this an issue is developers aren’t being given the same rights as artists to express themselves as any other media in existance and are effectively censored by the ESRB when it rates their games.”
Nothing is stopping any artists from expressing themselves, but they are faced with certain limitations imposed on them for being commercial artists. If you remove commerce, artists can be completely free to do whatever they want.
But it’s ridiculous to think that it’s limited to games. Have you ever heard of the MPAA? Ever heard of “clean” versions of music CDs? Are you familiar with the brouhaha over the release of American Psycho at bookstores?
The MPAA keeps Hollywood from marketing and producing sexual material for teenagers, for example. It mandates that R-rated movies can’t be advertised during shows with large teen audiences, or at certain hours. The ESRB mimics the MPAA in almost every way.
And movie studios and directors are constantly battling the MPAA, and bitching about them, and in the end… it’s generally just about people complaining that they don’t get to show as much blood and boobs as they’d like to show. And honestly, if that’s what defines “art” now, we’re fucked.
“Even at minor allusion to sexality, or anything that the ESRB doesn’t agree with brings down the threat of a mature or adult rating which is a deathnell for trying to get on a major retailers shelf like Walmart.”
It’s a myth that Wal-Mart doesn’t carry M-rated games. You can buy Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas there today. And Bioshock. And you will be able to buy Halo 3. What you can’t buy is an AO game, should one be produced. But you also can’t buy XXX movies at Wal-Mart, though they may have some “unrated” ones, or even an NC-17 one.
“This is a group of non-gamers. Outsiders, some might say. Despite this, they are respected by various government and educational groups, and, because of this, are given virtually free reign to decide what games thousands of people should or should not play.â€
This is really silly. Why would gamers be trusted to rate games? They aren’t exactly un-biased here either. Ratings are mostly for non-gamers anyway.
Yes, this righteous outrage does strike me as rather silly. Games are art the same way that television programs and movies are art. I.e. they are commercial art. Thus, they must conform to the standards of the buying public if they want to sell. If your definition of art requires “edginess” and “shocking the mainstream public,” then you’ll have to make your game freely available, because it sure as heck isn’t going to sell enough copies to warrant being put on store shelves in the first place.
Ratings are important. Have some kids and you’ll understand that. It’s unfortunate that they’re used as a crutch for poor parenting in many cases, but even if that were not the case, we still need them. There’s just no way for me to play through every game my little guy will eventually want to get. I want to make an informed judgement on what sort of content my child is exposed to.
Is the ratings system perfect? Of course not. But it’s necessary.
The issue with not being able to address homosexuality in a game is a problem with society, not with the ESRB.
[...] December 17, 2007 Kids With Guns (Virtual Ones) Posted by aortiz under Headline News, Oddly Interesting, Reviews and Previews | Tags: , blogs, Columbine, controversy, ESRB, Grand Theft Auto, GTA, hacking, Holocaust, Manhunt 2, PSP, ratings, Reviews and Previews, SCMRPG!, shootings, Super Columbine Massacre RPG!, Tom Brokaw, violence, Virginia Tech | Hearing this is rather disheartening as a supporter of T-, M- and AO-rated games being equally promoted and acknowledged in the industry as E-rated titles are. I really like M-titles. I do. I want there to be more of them. In the same way there’s like five bajillion R and PG-13 movies out there, there needs to be more M- and T-rated games. They’re what truly define the issues our cultures have to deal with today–the ugly things, the things people try to ignore. Racism, discrimination, violence, rape, political instability, historical precedents, human error, human flaws, conflicted sexuality and more. I love talking about human problems because they’re so many and they have so many sides to them. And the less you have to worry about reaching people’s standards, the less you have to worry about interfering with the art process. And I illustrate: Games Aren’t Art and its followup blog. [...]