Censorship is a funny old thing, especially when it comes to video games. Despite some opposition, it's often perfectly OK for games to depict all manner of blood and guts, but—as Rockstar found out in the infamous Hot Coffee incident—throw something sexual into the mix and the world is up in arms. There are plenty of poor examples of sexual content in games of course, particularly when it comes to the treatment of women, but as a medium video games are oddly prude when compared to their more artistically developed cousins like film and television.
Streaming service Twitch.tv, home of video game streamers the world over, has recently come under fire for banning the quirky Rinse & Repeat, a shower simulation game about various aspects of gay culture that contains its fair share of sexual content. In the game, players take on the role of a man showering with an aviator shade-wearing gay sex icon, and, well, washing him. You can only wash said sex icon at different times of the week, which the developer says is intended to demonstrate the joys of "delayed gratification." It's also worth pointing out that while nude, the characters in the game have their penises pixelated out.
Twitch's own rules on nudity state: "Nudity can't be a core focus or feature of the game in question and modded nudity is disallowed in its entirety. Occurrences in game are okay, so long as you do not make them a primary focus of your stream and only spend as much time as needed in the area to progress the game's story." Those rules stand in stark contrast to YouTube's and Vimeo's, both of which allow depictions of nudity and sexuality for artistic reasons, amongst others, provided they aren't "gratuitously graphic."
Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments
No comments:
Post a Comment