Is it art, or just titillation?

The topic of romance in video games is getting discussed a bit more lately. The MTV Multiplayer blog has been particularly good at addressing it.

Here is a video that MTV Multiplayer posted that shows some guys from BioWare talking about the romantic element in Mass Effect. The gist is that they're going to keep putting romance in games because it's a realistic part of life, players love it, and it's part of what makes video games an emerging art form.

I'm right with these guys until one of them verges on condescending when he talks about "titillation" in other games. Come on, guy. It's all titillation, in those other games and in Mass Effect. That's why we love it. That doesn't make it wrong, so don't go taking airs.

Comedian Jeff Foxworthy's wry but honest observation about what men really want should bring you back to earth: "I'd like a beer and I'd like to see something naked."



To see Jeff zero in on the basic elements of good entertainment, you might want to fast-forward to about 1:20 into this video:

Severed heads, naked breasts and video games

The other day when I went into Wal-Mart, I came upon one of the cardboard movie kiosks in the front near the cash registers. There, at kids'-eye-level, was a DVD with a picture of a man's pale, decapitated head in a dish. Wal-Mart is selling "Saw IV."

Then I came across "Saw IV" again, this time in the Xbox Live marketplace. Not only could I download the movie to my Xbox, but I could buy a theme and gamer pictures featuring "Saw IV" to decorate my Xbox 360 dashboard.

Here is the Internet Move Database's rating description of "Saw IV": "Rated R for sequences of grisly bloody violence and torture throughout, and for language."

At Wal-Mart, the sky's the limit on bloody violence and torture. You can buy the Unrated Director's Cut of "Saw IV" from walmart.com right here. No doubt the Unrated Director's Cut has even more gruesome stuff in it than the R version.

Wal-Mart and Microsoft have no problem with us viewing scenes of torture, mutilation and victimization on our Xboxes. The kids can enjoy looking at severed heads right there in the aisle while mommy waits to check out. Wal-Mart puts the movies out there, and people buy them. Then when you get home, you can pop that R-rated or unrated movie into your Xbox 360 and watch it with the kids, if you choose.

Torture, smorture. A little torture and victimization never hurt anyone, apparently, or Wal-Mart and Microsoft would take a strong stand against it, just like the stand they take against nudity in video games. Both are quick to let us know that they'll protect us from the horrors of seeing a woman's bare breast in a game. THAT would be too awful for decent folks to put up with, gosh-darn it.

Adults-Only rated video games are "not available at Wal-Mart or Walmart.com," the retailer tells us on its web site, because "Titles in this category may include prolonged scenes of intense violence and/or graphic sexual content and nudity."

Equally pious and paternally protective is Microsoft. "Xbox Dad" on xbox.com says: "It is company policy that there are no AO games for Xbox or Xbox 360."


Anyone who's played a Mature-rated video game knows that violence means nothing when it comes to distinguishing an M from an AO in the ESRB ratings, regardless of what the ratings guide says. Our tolerance for grotesque violence is limitless, and there's money to be made from our appetite. No violent-but-profitable game will get the AO scarlet letters that would ban it from retail shelves.

The recently released trailer for Gears of War 2, which shows the hero eviscerating an enemy with a chain saw, shows how hard it is to discern any threshold between acceptable and unacceptable violence. Violence is inevitable in a story about war, and although I prefer not to see torture and victimization in something like "Saw IV," I can handle the combat scenes in Gears of War. I completed the campaign in the first Gears of War, and I'm looking forward to the sequel.

A video game can depict violence all day, but the alarms go off when flesh is bared. The "prolonged scenes of intense violence" that might give a video game an AO rating can't be the problem, or Wal-Mart and Microsoft wouldn't sell a film with such as "Saw IV," with its "grisly bloody violence and torture throughout," now would they? So the nudity is obviously the offensive part, in their eyes.

Gosh, and I had always thought of breasts as a happy, comforting sight. Severed heads, on the other hand, I find considerably more disturbing and apt to offend. But that just goes to show you how out of step I am with the wisdom of the corporate mainstream.

Witness the "hot coffee" sex scene controversy over Grand Theft Auto, and the tempest in a teapot over the sex scene in Mass Effect, which doesn't even reveal a breast. The people in those Mature-rated games were getting too affectionate! If they had been cutting each other's faces off like good, decent Americans instead of getting overly friendly, nobody would have said a word.

While glimpses of breasts are occasionally tolerated in a game such as God of War, a Mature-rated, PlayStation 2 adventure about Greek mythology that makes no effort to hide a little bit of nudity, game companies usually go to great lengths to keep us from seeing the deplorable sight of nakedness.

Bethesda was taken to task when some guy discovered that he could remove riduculous, anachronistic brassieres from medieval women with a simple mod in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Bethesda did cartwheels to disavow this glimpse of nudity in their Mature-rated fantasy game. Xbox 360 players were safe from the titty horror, though, because you can't mod the console version. And the "Nipplegate" controversy over the yet-to-be-released Age of Conan is still unfolding.

The corporate fathers are looking out for our best interests. Although we can glimpse breasts in a few bold Mature-rated video games, we aren't allowed to see any extended nakedness or sexuality. We can't handle it.

Only adults are allowed to buy Mature-rated or AO-rated video games, right? No kids allowed, just like with R-rated movies. So just think of the harm it might do to an adult who sees disgusting, extended nudity in a game -- something like "Dawn," an 1881 painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Talk about your "extended" nudity! This woman has been naked for about 120 years. I could stand there all day admiring this painting, which is my favorite work of art at the Birmingham Museum of Art. I guess I'm just sick.

And don't even think about seeing a naked bottom in a video game. Mass Effect showed a fleeting little side-butt glimpse of love-interest Liara's blue ass, but a straight-on blue moon? Never! You might tune in to network TV to see some cheeks, though. Remember Charlotte Ross' nude shower scene in "NYPD Blue"?

Or you could go to an art museum to see the likes of Aphrodite's gorgeous posterior, but the goddess of love's marble buns and Charlotte Ross' shapely bottom alike are off-limits in video games.

It's a good thing that I, a grown man in my 40s who enjoys video games, am not allowed to look at a breast or a butt in an AO-rated game on my Xbox. I can't be trusted to know what's good for me. Because if I could strip my avatar down to the skin in the equipping screen of an RPG like Oblivion or Mass Effect or Fable, I know I'd do it. (And then I'd put her armor back on because she wouldn't have enough hit points running around naked, but I'd check her out first, for sure.

... And, for the record, I'd NEVER want to see something in a game as indecent as a stark naked Celtic berserker woman who got magical armor protection from her woad blue body paint. That would be wrong. Besides, nobody's developing a game like that, anyway. ... Are they?)

Over on the DVD aisle, I can choose whether to see "Saw IV." I prefer not to because I dislike watching torture, but it's OK if somebody else wants to see it. It's a free country. I'd prefer to play a medieval fantasy or sci-fi video game that might let the characters get frisky between battles, but if I walk a few feet from the DVDs to the video game aisle, that option has been censored. I can't play a game like that even if I want to, not even if it's clearly not for kids, rated for adults and available only for adults to purchase.

They won't let me play a game like that, I suppose, because they're afraid I'll let my kid play it. But thanks to Wal-Mart and Microsoft, I don't have to decide whether it's appropriate to let my teenage son see a naked human body in a video game (unless it's dismembered). Sure, I have to exercise parental responsibility when I decide whether he can watch an R-rated or unrated movie like "Saw IV." Wal-Mart and Microsoft trust me with the movies. But heaven knows I'm completely incapable of good judgment when it comes to taking parental responsibility for what video games my son plays. Big brothers Wal-Mart and Microsoft make that decision for me. What a relief!


I wouldn't want my son seeing something indecent and upsetting such as a woman's naked breast for an extended amount of time, like, say, a nursing baby would see a breast. Who knows how it could warp his brain?

But, again thanks to the higher-ups at Wal-Mart and Microsoft, I know that an image of a severed head in a bowl will do my son no harm at all, unlike the disturbing sight of a medieval woman's naked bosom or an alien woman's bare behind.

I'm just glad they have their priorities straight.

New Mando Banjo logo

Here's a new logo for myself that I've been thinking about, and I might get a T-shirt made to wear to a sci-fi convention that's coming up. What do you think?

Gamers at their worst

Gamers on Xbox Live are both blessed and cursed by their anonymity. The same information buffers that protect people from stalkers, predators and loonies also cloak them in social camouflage that too many people use to conceal despicable behavior. People say hateful things on Xbox Live that they would never say to another person's face.

I'm sick of hearing people use the "N-word" on Xbox Live, and I'm sick of hearing adults curse at children. These appalling behaviors seem to be growing more and more common, and I'm bewildered as to why that is. Didn't their mothers raise them better than this?

Despite the way the N-word is tossed around by some black entertainers, it is nevertheless an utterly offensive word. I live in a city infamous for being the place where white terrorists -- men who used the N-word easily -- put a bomb in a church in 1963 and murdered four little girls. I grew up hearing old bigots use the word. If you said nothing, tacitly approving their language, they assumed you were a bigot just like them.

When I got old enough to know my own mind and my own conscience, I quit letting that word pass. I drew the line at letting people think I approved of bigotry. My black friends are deeply offended by the word, and it sickens me to think that if they went online to play a video game with me, my friends would hear children, college students and adults tossing the epithet around as if it were nothing and hitting my friends in the crossfire. This reveals gamers at their very worst, and it embarrasses me as someone who loves video games.

I have told people in Xbox Live game rooms that I object to that word. I have left lots of rooms after hearing it too many times. I have filed complaints for hate speech with Xbox Live after hearing particularly odious tirades, but only when I was sure who was speaking. Often it's difficult to tell, if you don't glance at the microphone indicator at just the right time.

Decent people do not use this word in casual conversation, so why do I hear it so much while playing Call of Duty 4? What is going on? I heard an American call a British youth the N-word yesterday. It was a small international incident that made me ashamed of my countryman. Racism is not patriotic, boys. Call of Duty 4 honors soldiers who fight to defend the rights of others, not to trample their rights.

Parents who let their children play Mature-rated games such as Call of Duty 4 need to be aware that even if they judge the game itself to be OK, the online chatter is what can be most offensive in video games.

The N-word is not benign. It is poisonous. The more you spread that poison around, the more lives it will taint.

I am also outraged by adults who curse at little kids. Just last Saturday afternoon, I heard a guy who sounded like he was perhaps in his twenties trash-talking a child just for being a child. "You (F)ing 8-year-olds," he grunted at them. It made me angry enough to rebuke him immediately. It was Saturday afternoon. That's when you'd expect kids to be playing. I called him a jerk and told him not to talk to kids that way. I hope his own dad would have done the same, if he'd heard him.

Would you talk to your own kid brother that way? To your nephew? Imagine a little boy's face if you said that to him.

I've done my share of cussing. Sometimes a cuss word is the only word that fits. I usually keep my microphone muted, but there are times when a rain of random grenades, for example, might goad me to blurt out a expletive online, despite my efforts at self-censorship. But there is a difference in an adult uttering a curse among other adults, and an adult cursing not only in the presence of a child, but at the child.

And using the N-word in front of children is the worst. If you've never read Martin Luther King's Letter from The Birmingham Jail, you should. In my formative years, it was a serious eye-opener for me. More than anything, it showed me how racist behavior such as the N-word hurts children. I read this passage about 30 years ago, and it has stuck in my mind ever since:

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. ... Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; ... when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.

Gamers have enough problems trying to get the mainstream off our backs, trying to convince people that we're not all slackers and that video games are an art form, and a mature medium of entertainment.

It's in our own best interest to do better than this. I've heard crass talk and vile, racist insults more than enough now on Xbox Live, and now I'm angry about it. I'm not against cussing. I'm against being mean to people, and especially being mean to children. It's a matter of common decency, and not making your mother ashamed.

I challenge everyone of like mind to take a stand. If you stay quiet, they assume you approve of what they're saying. And the poison spreads some more ...

Last banjo to Clarksville

My review of Rock Band was published in the newspaper last Sunday, and you can see it at Techcetera here.

My son, who's quite good at Rock Band and Guitar Hero, downloaded "Last Train to Clarksville" on Xbox Live over the weekend. Actually, I was the one who wanted to download it, because Fortiscule didn't even know who The Monkees were.

As a follow-up to my review, I want to note that although I'm not such a strong Rock Band guitar player, I do practice on my banjo quite a bit. Thus it came to pass that I was noodling around on my banjo while Fortiscule was playing Rock Band this weekend. He played "Last Train to Clarksville," and I started picking out an accompaniment on the banjo. I started noticing which notes on the banjo corresponded to the little colored notes he was playing in the game, and we got it going pretty well.

Fortiscule agreed that the banjo sounded good with the Monkees. Looks like I made a banjo believer out of him!

Prestige or practicality? Rank in COD4

I've reached the top rank in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which is 5-star general. To get any further rank I'd have to opt for "Prestige mode." That's where you reset your rank to zero, giving up all the weapons, accessories, perks and gun camo patterns you've unlocked.

I'm a role-playing gamer at heart, and one of my favorite things in RPGs is collecting weapons and armor and various treasure. That's why I like this collecting aspect of COD4. I like winning all the guns and stuff. The rank is almost incidental, a windfall for unlocking the guns. That's why I just don't see the point in me doing the Prestige mode.

That's not to say I don't understand Prestige mode. The fancy rank icon does suggest a certain amount of skill. My friend Fartknockker has "flipped" Prestige mode at least twice, and he's very skilled. But it took me forever to unlock all the stuff, and I still haven't unlocked the blue tiger and red tiger camo patterns for some of my favorite weapons.

Moreover, as one of my online friends pointed out during a match one night, "Sythbane is OLD, dude!" Indeed, I'm old enough to not be concerned with how much prestige I have in the eyes of a stranger. The guys I play regularly with know about how good I am relative to their skill level. For all the rest, I'd just as soon they don't know how good (or not good) I am. I don't feel the urge to impress anyone with the colorful prestige badge, although I salute my buddies who've earned it.

I'd be happier if "Prestige" mode consisted of more accessories and camo patterns for the weapons. I don't even like that red stripe pattern, but I want it because it's the highest one. That's prestige aplenty for me.

I got a little weary of COD4 the other night and popped in Rainbow Six: Vegas, which I haven't played in months. I'm afraid COD4 has ruined Vegas for me. I felt like my feet were bogged down in peanut butter, and everything was in one of those slow-motion nightmares. Vegas just moves too slowly. I hope Vegas 2 is speeded up, or it sure is going to be frustrating.

Gale Force Wins

Our friends HZG, HZG Extreme and ANT Pogo came over this afternoon for a tabletop game of the Star Wars Roleplaying Game, using Star Wars Miniatures. We've been playing this particular scenario for a pretty long time. It takes place shortly after Order 66, a few months into the Jedi Purge.

My character is an experimental clone trooper, an ARC Trooper who was given genes for Force abilities. He was being trained with Jedi, so he was in a dilemma when Order 66 came down: Should he side with his brother clones, or the Jedi with whom he trained? He opted for loyalty over betrayal and sided with the Jedi, after witnessing clones suddenly shooting Jedi in the back. He went rogue and joined a band of fugitive Jedi.

He grew his hair long to disguise his clone-trooper face and embraced his Mandalorian heritage as a bounty hunter. During a stop on Naboo, he picked up some mirrored fighter pilot goggles to further the disguise.

Here is Gale Owassa with his lightsaber and flame thrower gauntlet. I doodled this picture this afternoon on my character sheet while we were playing, and colorized it just now in Photoshop. I was playing using a miniature of Quinlan Voss for my character, and it gave me the idea.



Here's a picture of Fortiscule's character, Drace Ragbar, a Trandoshan pilot who carries a repeating blaster that looks like a SAW gun.

This game is a fun break from video games sometimes, and a lot easier on the eyes and nerves! However, it sure does whet our appetite for Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Let's hope that LucasArts allows for lots of customization of a Jedi character for online multiplayer. It sure would be cool to construct video game characters that resemble our tabletop characters!

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A duty to customize

Speaking of role playing games ...

I recently completed the campaign in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and this morning I ranked up to four-star general in the online multiplayer. The other day, I was looking at the COD4 site called Charlie Oscar Delta, and I saw an invitation to sound off to the developers what you thinking about the game, what it needs and so forth. I wrote a response that was about three paragraphs long, and when I tried to submit it the thing said it had to be no more than 500 characters.

Here are my suggestions for the game as I wrote them first and then didn't have room for, followed by the shortened version that I submitted to Infinity Ward. What do you guys think? What features would you like to see in the game?

Suggestions for COD4

COD4 is the best modern-setting shooter yet, but it needs more customizing options to make the player feel like an individual character inhabiting the game. COD4 stands to lose a lot of multiplayer participation to Rainbow Six Vegas 2 this year if multiplayer customization isn't improved. Here are my suggestions for free updates via Xbox Live:

• A. The ability to configure a persistent character's uniform in as many ways as can be, rather than linking the character skin to the weapon type. This feature should be more like Rainbow Six Vegas, except for making the uniforms more realistic than in R6V. Even being able to select from the existing character skins would be an improvement.




• B. The ability to affix multiple attachments to a weapon in multiplayer, once they are unlocked, such as a scope and silencer like you use in the campaign. A single attachment is an absurdly unrealistic limitation, considering the overall realism of the game. Perhaps an additional attachment could replace one of the perks.


• C. Team deathmatch and free-for-all modes that eliminate helicopters. Players able to call in helicopters are usually dominating already anyway, and helicopter kills allow them to build an insurmountable lead, often doubling the kill counts of most players in the game. This would level the playing field considerably.


• D. The ability to customize your character with a real-world unit patch (such as the Screaming Eagle patch of the 101st), or design your own embroidered unit patch, like you can design tattoos with the art system in Rock Band. Such colorful unit patches could be used to designate clans online, like the emblems can be used in Halo 3, instead of using tedious prefixes in parentheses. After all, real units have their own patches! Just make sure they have the embroidered texture to look real.


• E. COD4 needs a split-screen online co-op mode and split-screen multiplayer party mode, so my son and I could play together, like we can in Halo 3. Not having that option often means we turn off COD4 and play a different game, even when we both want to play COD4.

Shortened version that I submitted to Charlie Oscar Delta

• Add an ability to customize your uniform, rather than linking the skin to the weapon. Even selecting an existing skin would be better.


• Allow customizing with real-world unit patches such as the Screaming Eagle patch, or design a patch, like you can design tattoos with the art system in Rock Band. Patches could designate clans. Make sure they have the embroidered texture to look real.


• Multiple weapons attachments should be allowed once they are unlocked, such as a scope and silencer.

Be sure to tell them what you think, too! Go here to Charlie Oscar Delta to tell see the suggestions and offer your own. I think you have to be a "member," to leave a comment.