Come Out Swingin' for Mature Content

by G. Carr 

And so, the debate continues in the matter of mature content in video games. And by gosh, I say let it. The Japanese need a good laugh; they look so serious all the time, don't they?

I thought I saw some questionable points in the recent batch of anti-mature content editorials, most notably in those by Roehl Sybing and Jeff Adashek, and I thought I might question them.

Sybing begins by asserting that there are "alarmingly few games left that can appeal to all audiences without having suggestive content in them." Pardon my cynical tone, but I doubt whether this individual has looked closely at any video game shelf in any store, anywhere. Just off the top of my head: Gex, Gex 3d, Klonoa, pandemonium, Tomba, Jersey Devil (not Satanic), just about any shooter, speed racer, Blasto, rayman...and these are only for Playstation. And if I were to continue with this list, I guarantee you'd have a collection that would keep any child-- and most adults-- busy until they went blind or bankrupt. No, Namco revivals are not the only games children can play. This brings me to my next point.

Any company makes money by appealing to a certain market. Game developers make money by designing games while thinking of who will be playing them. They know that there are millions of people who will think that Resident Evil is an awesome play-- but they also know that there is a market for good, more old fashioned style games, and they design accordingly. This is why there is such a list as the one above. They make several different kinds of games, with varying degrees of violence, difficulty, and cartoonie-ness, and they make money doing it. I personally enjoy resident evil and nightmare creatures very much, but I also played a demo of Tomba, one of the most flamboyantly cartoony games in history, and am eagerly awaiting its release, because i think it could be one of the best platformers of all time. Games like Tomba show clearly that the market for "cleaner" games is far from dead. Roehl makes the point that people don't need to stop playing games like Tomb Raider and Parasite Eve, but he had said earlier that "we have a responsibility to young audiences and successive generations (in video game time, of course) to demand content that can be viewed by all." Do I need to point out the contradiction? How do we demand cleaner content by buying its opposite? And besides, as I ranted about above, there is already an abundant supply of content that can be viewed by all.

The point that irked me the most was when Roehl said that we cannot "let video game companies happily corrupt children and then blame it on the parents." I must say, when I read this, I nearly wet my pants. Companies happily corrupting children? Where did this come from? This is not the Hitler Youth, people, it's an Entertainment Industry. And in the case of video games, when a parent has to actively bring the medium into the proximity of the child, well then your darn right I'm going to blame the parents if the child becomes corrupt. Later, Sybing says that the game industry is placing this burden on the parents. Friends, what we are talking about is not a burden created by the evil gaming industry, it is the very definition of the inherent responsibilities of a parent! You are in control of your impressionable lump of clay-- that burden was placed on you when you had your child, not when Night Trap hit the shelves.

But enough about that. On to Religion.

Mr. Adashek begins by stating that fiction is pure escapism, or a commentary on life. I agree, in the sense that fictional worlds are meant to either provide separation and elevation from our own reality, or perform some criticism on it from a far off reality. But then, he says that it is "intended to be persuasive." Again, with the pants. I believe that pamphlets distributed in public places for free by members of some religions stating that if you don't convert you will go to hell are meant to be persuasive. I do not believe that novels, or indeed, video games, are meant to be so. If people on the street handed me a copy of FFT and said, "pay attention kid, your immortal soul is at stake, stay away from Jesus," I would likely have been much more pissed about the content of that game's plot. I don't know the reason for the writer's attitude towards Catholicism. But, as Adashek said, fiction can be a commentary on life: Maybe Johnny developer thought that Jesus was evil, and that's his opinion. Fortunately, his cohorts down the hall thought that awesome strategy role playing was virtuous, and programmed accordingly. In Mr. Adashek's example of Melanie Rawn's novel, the same applies. Maybe she agrees / disagrees with abortion, and thought she would express it in her novel. But maybe, just maybe, her message was more along the lines of "look at how horrible closed-minded jerks can be."

Adashek later describes that FFT is offensive because it sets up a Jesus figure and shifts it into a greed and murder promoting demon. Let me propose this: When the Jesus figure becomes a demon, it is no longer catholicism! If you worship a corrupt demon, then, and only then, is this your religion being portrayed in the game. Sure, it draws parallels with catholicism, but (even thought that historical structure seems to form a convenient template with which to make up a fictional religion) the parallels come to an end.

Adashek makes an interesting point which I think makes a good conclusion. He cites developers' tendency to consider the American audience juvenille. Well, they're absolutely right! Look at the fuss we're making over mature content in video games, for God's sake! Remember folks, in Japan, respectable businessmen read porno comics on the crowded public subways, and nobody thinks the lesser of them. Issues like this probably don't last five minutes over there. That's why, if they see the debate raging on overseas, they are probably rolling on the floor with laughter.