More Oblivion Re-Rating Fallout 279
The ESRB has a retort to the criticism leveled against it after rating Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Mature. The move has required Bethesda Softworks to pull all of the current stock of the game to relabel. From the GameDailyBiz article: "When we brought the topless female images to Bethesda Softworks' attention, they confirmed that the art file existed in a fully rendered form in the code on the game disc. The ESRB's investigation found that the mod allowed users to change the filename for the female character mesh in order to access the art file that was created by Bethesda. While true that a modification was required to access this file, the changes we implemented last year - expanding our disclosure rules to include locked-out content - were made to prevent these kinds of situations" Via Cathode Tan, who has his own commentary, an opinion piece by John Romero has yet another view of the complicated situation.
movies v. videogames (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:movies v. videogames (Score:5, Insightful)
Pointing to that as an example of ill intent by Bethseda is just flat-out irresponsible by those who are arguably supposed to be industry insiders.
Decent underwear (Score:2)
You can take a basic character model and layer different layers of clothing on top
Then why not put a sports bra or something on the basic character model?
Re:Decent underwear (Score:2)
Re:Decent underwear (Score:3, Insightful)
My god, its 2006, why is nudity even an issue in media?
Re:Decent underwear (Score:2, Informative)
Jaysyn
Re:Decent underwear (Score:2)
The first rule of MMORPG is to conserve processing power. That means the code that gets used most often (combat and player body) needs to be as clean as possible.
Re:Decent underwear (Score:2)
Re:Decent underwear (Score:2)
No it isn't. You make the base texture with a painted on "bra" rather than nipples. It isn't an extra layer. This is exactly how the normal "naked" textures in WoW work - the nude textures were user creations for that game as well.
Re:Decent underwear (Score:3, Insightful)
Still, that wouldn't have prevented this. As mentioned many other times already, the mod involves pasting a barechested male texture over the female body size. I'm sure the same thing could be done with any of the Resident Evil or Dynasty Warrior titles. Are they all to be relabelled "mature" now?
Re:Decent underwear (Score:2)
Or how about The Sims?
You can remove blurring effect and then all characters are nekkid.
Re:Decent underwear (Score:4, Informative)
Trust me, there is nothing male about textures\characters\imperial\female\upperbodyfema
There is a third-party program called tes4bsa. Its whole job is to unpack the game's art and sound files from the proprietary archive format they are in. That's all it does, it makes no changes to any of the content at all. It is an essential tool for making your own unique copies of objects for a mod you want to do, as you have to be able to browse to the nif file when making a new object. With Morrowind they gave you all the art files unpacked on the second CD. So this tes4bsa merely enables the tradtional means of modding this game, so that it is available again as we modders were used to with MW.
1. Download tes4bsa, and put it in the Data folder.
2. Run it to unpack the textures archive.
3. Navigate to Data\meshes\characters\_male (yes, it doesn't sound like there's females in here, but there are, don't ask me why)
4. Delete femaleupperbody.nif and rename femaleupperbodynude.nif to drop the word nude.
5. Play the game, find a dead woman (or, um, stalk and kill one) and loot her clothes. See?
Note that no textures were modified, or superimposed on anything, or even touched. No hacking out of mesh coordinates to remove the perma-bra that the default female characters actually use in-game. Just unpack the art files, delete one file and rename another. This content is not the result of any user input whatsoever.
I wonder if there is a connection: Just as many of us don't RTFA, we also seem to have a propensity for not TTFE (trying the fabulous experiment) before talking about it like we know what's happening. This is not a flame on anyone, just an observation.
Re:Decent underwear (Score:3, Informative)
That is in fact what they did: femaleupperbody.nif is the end product of femaleupperbodynude.nif with a bra mesh permanently welded onto it, with the appropriate texture for the bra mapped to that area. Problem is they forgot to turf the nude one, which was no longer needed when the game was ready to ship. The nude one is not used when they have clothes overtop, as one might think that was why it was there, because of problems with the
Re:Decent underwear (Score:2)
Re:Why isn't Windows rated M? (Score:2)
Re:GET IT STRAIGHT (Score:2, Informative)
No, it is not in the game.
It is on the game disk, but it is not in the game.
There is no way to see it in the game without modifying the game. Therefore, it is NOT IN THE GAME.
When will people learn to think.
By your logic, every bar in the country should be treated as a strip club, because those waitresses are naked. Um, like under their clothes. But they have naked skin and they're in the bar, and they might take those clothes off, se
Re: (Score:2)
Re:movies v. videogames (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not the same organization, not controlled by the same people, not rating the same media, nothin'. They don't necessarily have the same leadership or employees.
To consumers, I'm sure, media is media is media, and consistent standards and enforcement should be obvious. But consistent standards and enforcement is not required and in the minds of some might be anti-competetive.
You expect consistency where there is no reason (other than in your expectations) for there to be any. The only place to enforce that "media-is-media" ratings consistency is government, and that's the LAST thing any sane consumer or producer wants.
Re:movies v. videogames (Score:2)
No, but you'd think that since video game ratings came later they would have based them somewhat off of the other ratings systems that existed at the time, namely the movie ratings system.
Re:movies v. videogames (Score:2)
Video Games are still in the same area as comic books (Clearly aimed at kids, even if they have an adult market), so they had to be rated more strictly. (Because even though the average age for gamers is somewhere in the low 20s, games are for kids. Period.)
Re:movies v. videogames (Score:2)
Breasts must be kept secret! (Score:5, Insightful)
Face it, any kid with access to the Internet will find a way to view naked women, if he/she so desires. Kids are smart. They have friends with printers. The secret is out, women and girls have different parts than boys do.
If you want to make sure your kids grow up to be well-adjusted, talk to them and explain things. Make sure they have plenty of parental attention and affection. Tell them they can always come to you and talk about things. Don't let kids learn all about sex from their peers.
Oh, and teach them that there are more important matters for people to worry about than whether or not electronic models have breasts.
Re:Breasts must be kept secret! (Score:3, Interesting)
Here in Europe ( France, Belgium at least ) you have tits in almost *every* commercial on TV and at whatever time of the day.
Tits sell Orange Juice,
Tits sell shampoo and soap
Tits sell cars, milk, washing powder, food,
I also wonder why a game becomes M-rated because you *can* see some breast *if* you *patch* the game (and even then, nothing is done to erotise the situation, if you walk naked, nobody even look at y
Not that kind of boob tube (Score:2)
Re:movies v. videogames (Score:2)
Re:movies v. videogames (Score:2)
I think the nude texture is just an excuse for the ESRB realizing their mistake in the face of complaints and adjusting the rating to be more accurate. Of course, the real question is how it got a T in the first place... did anyon
Re:movies v. videogames (Score:2)
Re:movies v. videogames (Score:2)
Cruel! (Score:5, Funny)
Zonk, expect rabid RPG fans after you for raising their hopes, albeit by accident!
Re:Cruel! (Score:3, Insightful)
Fine by me. Bethesda is one of the few companies I'd trust to understand that "Mature" is not a synonym for soft-core pornography.
Unbelievable! (Score:3, Funny)
Changing the rating (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Changing the rating (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Changing the rating (Score:3, Informative)
Sex content => sex crimes against women
Violent content => violent crime
Which is worse in this country? According to the stats, sex crimes are far more common than violent crimes (assuming you don't give the violent crime category credit for the violence typically involved in sex crimes).
Re:Changing the rating (Score:2)
Here are the ideas you have to accept as fact for this to make sense.
Re:Changing the rating (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Changing the rating (Score:2)
I don't understand the flack over this. The game isn't banned it's rating was just changed. Those ratings are voluntary and are not enforced by law.
It isn't even like alcohol and cigarettes. A store can choose to sell pretty much any game to anyone. No will get fined or go to jail for it.
It's not like they are banning it.
Unlike here http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/347/eu.shtml [stopthedrugwar.org] or here h [go.com]
Re:Changing the rating (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously it depends on the context, but on the whole, you can stir up some trouble by mixing women (clothed or not) and violence.
Take a game, replace all the killable Monsters/Nazis/bad guys with women and watch the fury boil over.
Re:Changing the rating (Score:2)
Of course if their butt or a nipple were showing, then it'd be mass outrage from the very vocal minorty who always complain about this stuff.
Locked out content? (Score:2, Interesting)
However, if the nude female images were present and simply "locked out" by Bethesda then we have pretty much the same story as the Hot Coffee incident. IMO the ESRB exists solely to enable parents to feel more confident about buying games for their children, and the id
Re:Locked out content? (Score:2)
You don't get through the 'lockout' by entering a code, you get 'through' it by downloading a mod from the internet for that exact purpose. And that mod could of just as easily include new meshes/textures of nude body parts as 'unlock' the texture in oblivion (the texture is used for layering so that the armor will actually
Re:Locked out content? (Score:2)
Re:Locked out content? (Score:2)
In the case of Oblivion, the details aren't known yet, but it's possible that this is just a male skill mapped onto a female body, in which case the "topl
Re:Locked out content? (Score:2)
Apparantly this is just the skin/mesh from the male model used on the female model.
Re:Locked out content? (Score:2)
Back in the day there was a game for Genesis (I forget the name) that had a code that let you see brief nudity. It was by Naughty Dog, and if you held down certain buttons as the Genesis was turned on, the Naughty Dog logo would be replaced by a picture of a topless woman. Pixelated cartoon boobs at their finest. That si
Re:Locked out content? (Score:2)
Re:Locked out content? (Score:2)
Re:Locked out content? (Score:2)
The ESRB also rated Super Metroid as E. Is this E either: http://www.metroid-eu.com/supermetroid_endings/sam usfront1.gif [metroid-eu.com] ?
If you want to say "oh, but those are only on for a few seconds", I say so what? You can see them over and over if you want. Sure, they aren't M rated by any stretch of the imagination, but they're ok anyone 6 or older? If they were looking through the lens of today, I'
Re:Locked out content? (Score:2)
Re:Dude. (Score:2)
Re:Dude. (Score:2)
Re:Dude. (Score:2)
I am the cutest invincible shoe rider ever! Mario! Mario! He's in the ULTRA green SHOOEEE!
Complicated Situation? (Score:4, Insightful)
Far more offensive than pixellated boobies. Hell, the kids are likely on the internet in the first place to find out about the hack. If kids aren't already corrupted by all of the boobies [and worse!] on the internet, some scantly clad model isn't going to harm them.
Does anyone know the background? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Does anyone know the background? (Score:3, Insightful)
The bigger issue at play here is why is everybody such a fucking prude. Its womans breasts, for crying out loud, what a freaking repressed society. Games should be rated for violence, and graphic sex, but boobies that
Re:Does anyone know the background? (Score:2)
Re:Does anyone know the background? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Does anyone know the background? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Does anyone know the background? (Score:2)
(I think it's silly to slap an M rating on something for breasts - but I also think that in
Re:Does anyone know the background? (Score:2)
Re:Does anyone know the background? (Score:2)
Re:Does anyone know the background? (Score:2)
This will change things... (Score:2, Insightful)
This is getting crazy (Score:4, Insightful)
While not necessarily right (and maybe not on point), it is absurd to think that the difference between 'T' and 'M' is going to make a difference in who buys these games. Now, the kids (I actually do not know any kids who play ES IV) just have to get their parents, who have shown total disregard for what their children are doing (see complaints about movie, television and game ratings...and the recent "myspace scare"), will blatantly ignore the ratings and purchase it anyway.
I would love to see some game makers stop using the ESRB all-together. Like the MPAA movie rating system, it is completely voluntary and even if a few places won't carry an un-rated game, I am sure plenty of legitimate video game retailers will be more then glad to sell such a game. Unfortunately, this probably will not happen because I would imagine that some of the larger retailers would be the ones refusing.
Re:This is getting crazy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is getting crazy (Score:2)
Re:This is getting crazy (Score:2)
Bad idea. We have the ESRB to stave off the government from creating their own regulatory body.
Game should be rated M anyway -- it's got a lot of gore in it.
Can anybody corroborate this rumored explanation? (Score:2)
Any truth to this? If so, it pretty much confirms the idiocy of the ESRB with regard to this whole situation.
Re:Can anybody corroborate this rumored explanatio (Score:2)
On top of that, it's also a model with this texture attached to it, though this does also claim it's male, erroneously. 'meshes\characters\_male\femaleupperbody.nif'.
This was not done by accident, and is not a hack to apply a male texture to a female body.
I beli
Re:Can anybody corroborate this rumored explanatio (Score:2)
I agree with someone further up who said that it really doesn't matter if this mesh was in the game originially or not. If you have to download a mod that extracts files from the locked-out portion of the game and renames them to put them i
Romero (of all people) misses the point entirely. (Score:2)
Change the old slogan to "John Romero is going to... bitch." He really seems to have missed the entire point of the issue, seeming to place blame on modders in general. Rather surprising, considering where he might be had "Doom" not been moddable and therefore immortal.
Re:Romero (of all people) misses the point entirel (Score:2, Insightful)
I figured another slashdotter would comment on that part of Romero's post.
Modders are not screwing the industry; if anything is in this case, (and I really think the whole thing is being blown out of proportion) it's the fact that a depiction of female anatomy which the majority of users will never see is enough to warrant a change in rating. It. Is. A. Nipple. Jesus.
Neither are modders under any obligation to "help the industry". Game studios may well release data in the hope that mods will help their
Re:Romero (of all people) misses the point entirel (Score:2)
That is not how game designers will respond, anyhow. It makes their development much harder for no real payba
I can see it now.... (Score:2, Funny)
OT Dr Seuss (Score:2)
So... (Score:3, Funny)
ESRB are morons.
The question everyone is asking is... (Score:3, Funny)
Oh no (Score:3, Funny)
Oh no. The end of our civilization is near.
And it won't be because of topless toons in some video game.
Teen: Let's Beat it To Death While We're At It (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Play Oblivion for 1 hour, you'll find zombies with their guts hanging out. The player is rewarded for bashing them MANY MANY times as they spray blood all over the walls. I don't see how Bethesda could have "hid" this from the ratings board - it shows up within minutes of play.
2) Talk to the various characters in the first town in the game, and you'll find out there's a "secret" guild that will let you in if you MURDER someone. In fact, you are very often rewarded for criminal activity in Oblivion. Going to jail is REQUIRED to complete at least one of the quests in the game (probably more, I don't know).
3) A nipple shows up in a downloadable mod, and OMG! change the rating to "Mature".
This isn't about Oblivion being rated "M", it's about the reason provided for the change. "More gore than initially disclosed" is ridiculous, because the game is chock full of gore and it's central to the gameplay itself. When the ESRB initially reviewed the game, did they even play it? My take is that Oblivion probably should've been rated "M" from the start. The game contains mature subject matter and it was no secret, plain and simple.
Are American Teens exposed to graphic violence through other means? Yes, certainly.
Are young children? I am reading the classic book, Farmer Boy, of the famed Little House on the Prarie series to my Kindergartner. In this book, the "older boys" in the school house gain reputation for "thrashing" teachers into submission with their fists. The replacement teacher is heralded for subdueing his attackers with a whip.
Does that make it a "good thing"(TM)? Nope. (see also: "Shikata ga nai")
Can a Teen process violence in entertainment and separate such depictions from the morality requisite to be a good citizen? Yes. "Mortal Combat" was a popular morality target in my teenage years, yet I never attempted a "Finishing Move" on any of my schoolmates, and I've grown up to be a good citizen by most accounts.
Can responsible, involved parents allow their brood to slash video game foes for fun? Yes. I enjoy such entertainment, and I'm sure my young'uns will too. Human beings are violent (see also: "history of civilization"). It'll be my decision to make concerning their maturity approaching such subject matter.
If my teen sees a booby, will all my hard parenting work unravel? God, I hope not. That would surely mean I'd done a terrible job educating my own on the birds and the bees. Believe it or not, I'd rather my kids look at boobies than bash skulls. Interest in sex is not unnatural (see also: "World Population").
ESRB claims the change is due to a lack of disclosure. Under normal circumstances, that would be an acceptable reason in my mind. However, the gratuitous and obvious violence in Oblivion calls into question the criteria by which the game was rated IN THE FIRST PLACE. The ESRB lacks credibility, and this debacle won't help that issue, that is certain.
Re:Teen: Let's Beat it To Death While We're At It (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Teen: Let's Beat it To Death While We're At It (Score:3, Interesting)
It would be interesting to see the actual submission footage. It seems pretty clear that Bethesda wants to stay out of the fray on this political issue, so I doubt they'd leak it, but it would shed light on all of this for sure.
The resource problem is an interesting one. I'd wager that if they enlisted "general public reviewers" to preview the games prior to release they'd get an army of volunteers who'd do it just to get early copies of games. I realize software is generally not ready
Astounding (Score:4, Funny)
Congratulations. Short of airdropping copies of the game over each major american city, there is no other possible action that would ensure people previously fence-sitting on the original version of the game will go through considerable effort to obtain a "real" copy.
HYPOCRACY (Score:5, Insightful)
Seeing a pair of tits seems a bit trivial, yes?
To the hypocrites at the ESRB who seem to think violence is fine and nudity is a crime... rethink your policies, and rethink your hidden agendas. Nudity is not sex, which could be misconstrued as a mature theme. Every female on the planet has a vagina and breasts. Every male has a penis. These are anatomical features. Science. Fact. They are not the subversive agendas being pushed by conservatives to have us back in the social dark ages.
I am a player of Oblivion and I don't think for a second that any of the fantasy provided by this game is not enough for a 13 year old to grasp. By rating it mature, we're taking a modification to a game and making a big mountain out of a mole hill.
Let's boil this down, folks. I'd be much more worried about my 12 year old kid murding all the townfolk, supporting the daedric lords, playing out their virtual life as a vampric character. Not that there is anything wrong with the fantasy of any of those, but I'd want to make sure they understood the difference.
What needs to happen (Score:2, Interesting)
Statements of this sort already exist in a small sentence on most online games, where they'll state "Online Gameplay Experience May Be Different" or something (I don't recall the exact wording.) But the point is that ESRB would be much more effective with something like this.
I don't think developer
The ESRB made a mistake in the first place. (Score:2, Insightful)
As a parent this is the kind of game that I would want to know my teen was playing. I probably would not mind them playing it, but I would want to talk to them abo
mmmm Children. (Score:3, Funny)
"Children, we are not doing this 'to' you, we are doing it 'for' you."
I need the US Gov't to raise my kids! (Score:5, Insightful)
That is exactly what I need for my kids, the US Gov't writing some helpful laws to this end. Perhaps they could help by also removing those extremely violent newscasts on the cable and network news outlets. The newspapers too. They are FILLED with reports of violence and war that are to the detriment of my children. Can you believe the SCHOOL in my hometown also teaches children about sometimes very gruesome and unsettling violence in history class, and I need laws to stop this from harming them. I can't do it all!
A good law to draft would be to transport all of my children to some sort of government educational facility, where they can learn to serve their country by putting down the violent people of the world through judicious use of lethal force. In this Utopian society, there would be no sex, because it is "dirty" and "very bad", and the law would provide men in jack boots to catch the teens "in the backseat trying to pick her locks", and they could "send them back to mother in a cardboard box".
I need help with the music out there these days too. Everyone knows the only good use for so-called "Heavy Metal" music is in psychological warfare.
As for games, we need wholesome, morality-based games. America's Army could teach my kids about responsible engagement, for instance. In that game, everyone plays as Americans! They only shoot "terrorist-looking" people, the way it should be.
And offensive movies should be re-cut. Take the terrific job done on "Brazil" (the love endures all ending). That movie was a real downer before some fine studio exec had it corrected.
Why is nudity considered mature? (Score:3, Insightful)
-matthew
Re:Why is nudity considered mature? (Score:3, Insightful)
Even ignorning that, the question still stands, what are we protecting children from? What is it about nudity that might harm a child psychologically?
What is even more stupid is how we differential between bare skin and clothing when the clothing is skin tight. Few people have any problem with bathing suits, right? You take you kid to teh
Disconnection (Score:2)
That is to say, the ESRB has been consistent about judging the content within the game itself, not the content added by modders. This is consistent with the stance taken on Grand Theft Auto. The issue at present is should conte
Re:Disconnection (Score:2)
Consistently stupid. If it requires a modification to the game files, and is not accessible via gameplay, the experience is not part of the game as delivered. If you let your children play games on computers where they have access to change the installed files, well, you open it up to both rearranging existing content to change, substantially, the experience and to third-party
Going to happen more in the future (Score:3, Informative)
It's only a matter of time before most 3D models use the same technique, because the technology is there and it does make things look better. So what's a developer to do? The nude character mesh has to be stored somewhere in order to get the clothing overlaid onto it.
If it were up to me, I'd slap little pasties on the female nipples reading "THANX ESRB". Heck, put 'em on the male nipples too, just to be Fair'n'Balanced.
The real solution is for America to get over itself. A teenager will see more pokey nipples in the clothing stores flanking Gameslop in the mall, and with a lot less effort, than in half a dozen videogames. (When the heck did mannequins all get pokey nipples, by the way? I stopped going to malls for the last few years of my first marriage, and when I started up again a couple of years ago, all the female mannequins had been molded in very cold rooms, if you know what I mean...)
Exactly what is this file? (Score:2)
Re:Exactly what is this file? (Score:2, Insightful)
There's the shipped male-torso-with-nipple that is used on female bodies but covered with a bra. All that's needed to use this one is replace the bra texture with nothing; so, it's in the game, but it's not actually meant for female bodies (it's got everything in the wrong places).
Then, other modders have reskinned the female torso to make "proper" breasts. This requires installing a mod to override the textures.
Re:Exactly what is this file? (Score:2)
Giants: Citizen Kabuto (Score:2)
Personally, (Score:3, Funny)
I need horrific violence _and_ exposed nipples to really jerk off properly.
Help me?
The Real Reason (Score:2)
Besides with all the corpses and stuff that goes *splat* when you kill it, it'd probably give kids under 10 nightmares to play it anyway. So really the ESRB is not only completely
Re:I'm curious why World of Warcraft isn't R... (Score:2)