Let’s talk about maturity
I hate the term “Mature Content”. It implies a level of emotional sophistication, which may be true but most often “Mature Content” is usually applied to games that are anything but mature. Let’s face it, gratuituous tits and ass is something aimed at adolescent males who still have not quite figured out women. Sadly, I think every man has a teenage boy inside him until the day he dies. We grow up, we get careers, we have families, and yet we still want that inner child to come out and play. We love our locker room banter even though it’s no longer politically correct. Everyone knows that it goes on, but not in polite company.
Humans just don’t seem to care for nuance. I hear a lot of talk about shades of grey but everyone wants black or white. One extreme or the other. This is no different in our approach to sex. Sex is such a complex issue and yet in America we always take it to the extreme. Some groups want to ban any public discussion of sex or the slightest display of sexuality while some products can seem to sell themselves without shoving sex in our face. On one hand we have the image of the strong independent career woman and on the other we have advertisements that tell us bikini models will hang out with us if we drink the right kind of beer.
Games lack nuance as well, but I can forgive them to an extent since storytelling in videogames is still evolving. Technology advances continue to give storytellers new ways to involve the player, which means we continue to see new ways in which to involve players. Of course, when a game basically panders to the lowest common denominator we label it with “Mature” even if that game is something like Playboy: The Mansion or Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball. I guess it’s fine to warn that a game shouldn’t be played by children even if you can’t really wear your adult hat when playing a game. There is a certain irony in making a game that would appeal most to a 15 year old but have a rating that suggests they shouldn’t play it.
That’s not even the real issue though. What happens when a game does try to explore adult themes in a meaningful way? Why do we get so unnerved that someone may approach these themes in a negative way? Fable gave us the possibilities of marriage, divorce, and bi-sexual relationships. There was even a brothel in the Lost Chapters version. We also saw up close and personal the childhood tragedies of the protagonist rather than the usual abstract background story of flashbacks. If someone abuses their spouse in a game will it mean they will do it in real life or do they just have a sick sense of humor? I don’t much see the point of films like Saw or Hostel but that doesn’t mean there is necessarily something wrong with someone who does. I suppose someone could be a little too into them, but there are always signs that a person is unbalanced and their taste in movies or actions in a videogame alone is usually not enough.
Games are an interactive experience and I think developer intentions count for something. If developers give us an option to see a female character in a thong when it serves no purpose in the story then I think it says a lot about their intentions. If developers give us the choice between nurturing a relationship or descending into abuse, then I would wonder what their intentions are. In Fable, a happy spouse will reward the player with trinkets and the occassional useful item. Positive reinforcement for positive behavior. Scenarios like that are enough for me to give developers the benefit of the doubt.
Sadly, I don’t think we’ll ever see a “Sophmoric depiction of sexual themes” warning on ESRB ratings anytime soon. We want games to grow up but we don’t always give them enough credit for handling sexual themes and content in a mature manner. Instead we lump true mature content into the same category as adolescent fantasy. Sure, it’s a “Mature” rating either way, but at least acknowledge the difference between games that are truly exploring mature themes versus those that see their core demographic as man-children who dress up as comic book characters on days other than Halloween.
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July 24th, 2008 at 8:54 am
“Sadly, I don’t think we’ll ever see a “Sophmoric depiction of sexual themes” warning on ESRB ratings anytime soon.”
More’s the pity.
July 24th, 2008 at 9:07 am
The problem with video games is that they are essentially fantasy fulfillment on a grand scale. Sexuality aside, most people play because they want to be the gun-toting hero mowing down rows of nazis, the football star or the starship pilot.
I’ll grant the themes are predictable at times and there are plenty of games that appeal to more basic interests like Mario, but lets face it, Guitar Hero is probably one of the biggest fantasy trips of all. Lets face it, nobody wants to be a “rock star” because they dream of just making music. Rock stars get money, admiration and women screaming at the base of the stage.
Sexuality is probably one of the worst subjects humans have been intentionally equipped to handle so we tend to lump anything risque as “mature”. We view sex from the perspective of what effect they have on small children and work our way backwards from there. Thus everything errs on the side of caution. It certainly doesn’t take an adult to process a joke about the male anatomy or boobies but it is part of this “just in case” approach. We are terrible at increasing the grade of cultural experience as age increases because we are afraid they won’t be able to handle it.
It’s rather silly to view adult themes from the perspective of how children process them coupled with a societal obsession to delay adult behavior in teens. I don’t think we are brave enough (or socially mature enough if you like) to differentiate between “mature” and basic sexual desire anymore. We use love to paint in broad strokes because it makes us feel secure about a subject we don’t want to handle with actual maturity.
Sadly I think we tend to shame “immature” sexual behavior far too readily. I hate to be blunt but all this maturity and trappings we learn in life are designed to control and understand this fundametal drive. Again, we are viewing the desire for sex backwards as adults, looking back on our past as opposed to sexually drive people that learned how to contain themselves in culture. I think game developers are often seen as shut-ins and nerd (they are) but there is a keen awareness that sexy girls in a fantasy environment appeals to a part of male nature that we spend a great deal of time controlling in the real world. They aren’t just selling sex, they are selling a release, much like God of War sells fantasies of violence and revenge.
Does anyone remember the Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball commercial? A German ad firm was paid millions to engineer an erection joke…millions.
I think given there are big names and starched shirts driving these development firms then the status quo is going to remain. Our cultural inability to deal with sexuality will continue to give them all the room they need to profit from a culture that for all it’s advancements, fails to fully confront the truth of very thing that keeps it in existance. I’m all for taking a more logical look at ratings and expectations, but I don’t think that will happen until we come to terms with how society views sex, I don’t see that changing. Movies and television has been around forever by cultural standards and we are still slow to figure out ratings that work for them.