3411 réponses à ce sujet

[N7M]

 

I have seen countless forum threads where gamers have asked if X game has an option to turn off explicit content, and the answer is almost always the same: no such option exists. The replies on these threads then usually go on to mock the gamer in question, attempting to emasculate the player (regardless of whether they are male or female), telling them they need to “grow a pair” etc. I don’t see any need for this kind of mentality in the gaming world. Bioware games champion the fact that different kinds of people, leaders, and problem-solvers all have a place, e.g. you can be a renegade, you can be a paragon, etc. I don’t think Bioware needs to limit its fan base to those who enjoy explicit content. My reasons for wanting to limit my own exposure to explicit content are personal. Strangers don’t have to understand my reasons for them to be valid.

 

 

This type of bullying behavior and tactics do little to favor those that use them or help their position in the debate. It's best to ignore them. It's unfortunate that moderation to curtail such behavior on these forums isn't as strong as it could be. On a thread like this where sensitivity to language is one of the issues discussed there could be voices willing to support this feature that won't speak up due to being turned off by immature behavior of a few. 

Fortunately, these posters are in the minority. Perhaps, with a time out, self imposed or otherwise, they will take the opportunity to consider their words and responses and afterwards help promote an environment that is safe for all sensibilities to respond maturely.

 

In spite of this, it's good to see that support for your idea is growing.

[Farangbaa]

This type of bullying behavior and tactics do little to favor those that use them or help their position in the debate. It's best to ignore them. It's unfortunate that moderation to curtail such behavior on these forums isn't as strong as it could be. On a thread like this where sensitivity to language is one of the issues discussed there could be voices willing to support this feature that won't speak up due to being turned off by immature behavior of a few. 
Fortunately, these posters are in the minority. Perhaps, with a time out, self imposed or otherwise, they will take the opportunity to consider their words and responses and afterwards help promote an environment that is safe for all sensibilities to respond maturely.
 
In spite of this, it's good to see that support for your idea is growing.

Ok just a simple question then.

Is nudity worse than killing?

[FKA_Servo]

In spite of this, it's good to see that support for your idea is growing.

 

Well...

 

I buy the notion that there might be more posts in favor of it. I'm skeptical that there are actually more posters.

 

I still imagine anyone actually polled outside of the BSN would be either indifferent (which I suppose works in their favor) or opposed.

[DaemionMoadrin]

In spite of this, it's good to see that support for your idea is growing.

 

Yep, counting you there are already three people in favour. That calls for a celebration!

[Elhanan]

A friendly member of the community sent me this helpful article on the topic, which some here might find of interest:

http://kotaku.com/58...f-mature-gaming

[dfjdejulio]

No, that the feature is logistically unfeasible is unequivocally true given the resource requirements and the market.

 

I'm sorry, did a BioWare representative come in here and actually make an official statement to that effect?

 

If so, I missed it, sorry!  (If not, you're full of bantha droppings, and are just trying to win your argument by sounding authoritative.)

[Il Divo]

Well...

 

I buy the notion that there might be more posts in favor of it. I'm skeptical that there are actually more posters.

 

I still imagine anyone actually polled outside of the BSN would be either indifferent (which I suppose works in their favor) or opposed.

 

See, I think the opposite on that front. I would say indifferent works against implementation of the toggle, from a business perspective.

[Farangbaa]

A friendly member of the community sent me this helpful article on the topic, which some here might find of interest:

http://kotaku.com/58...f-mature-gaming

It's a mix of things that draws Tristan to these games that he knows I don't let him play. I suspect the fact that I've told him he can't play them tops the list, followed by the fact that they deal with topics considered taboo for most children.

In games like Gears of War, players can turn on filters that remove the mature language found in the game's dialog and the blood and gore that fills the game. You're still shooting the game's monstrous Locust and Lambent. But the sprays of blood and the ability to literally blast an enemy into bloody chunks of meat is removed.

This world is full of dellusional people thinking that removing the blood from the kill actually makes the kill right, apparantly.

What an obscene, perverse thought.

Seriously, how does removing the gore make the killing right for your child to see? What are you teaching him or her here?

If you kill someone, don't make a mess?

[Il Divo]

I'm sorry, did a BioWare representative come in here and actually make an official statement to that effect?

 

If so, I missed it, sorry!  (If not, you're full of bantha droppings, and are just trying to win your argument by sounding authoritative.)

 

I wouldn't say an official representative, but we did have a developer, Bryan Johnson, make a statement to that effect. Not the same thing by any stretch, but his personal experience is probably more applicable than any of ours on that front.
 

[BioWareMod01]

Hello everyone. Please keep it civil and on topic. Thank you.

[N7M]

Even ignoring the active vs passive medium debate, honestly I'd be more concerned with my kid dealing with death in a story than I would be with him hearing an F-bomb, which is bound to happen sooner or later.

 

But in Star Wars' case, it also doesn't deal with Alderaan's destruction to any satisfying extent. It's a quick "Oh hey, billions of people just died"..... and now back to the story. Mass Effect is designed for the player to deal with consequences of choosing to exterminate an entire group of people, amongst other issues. That goes far beyond the scope of what any toggle could ever achieve. Again, we're operating from a premise of genocidal robots here.  

 

Stories exploring how people deal with death and the threat of death have been in children's storybooks for a very long time.  Death is a part of the cycle of life and unavoidable.  Swearing is a choice.

 

The ethical conundrums in Mass Effect as a storytelling device allow the player the opportunity to explore the outcomes of one's character choices in the narrative. This is a powerful and sophisticated form of narrative design that doesn't require explicit content to be successful in communicating the effect of choice involving profound dilemmas nor does it preclude it. In relation to young minds 10+ of average education, the choices presented in Mass Effect aren't all that outside their ability to appreciate to some degree, in my experience. Yet, with guidance, it's possible these choices and outcome in Mass Effect could be appreciated more thoroughly.

[KaiserShep]

This world is full of dellusional people thinking that removing the blood from the kill actually makes the kill right, apparantly.

What an obscene, perverse thought.

Seriously, how does removing the gore make the killing right for your child to see? What are you teaching him or her here?

If you kill someone, don't make a mess?

 

That's why you always wear protection, son.

 

[Chealec]

A friendly member of the community sent me this helpful article on the topic, which some here might find of interest:

http://kotaku.com/58...f-mature-gaming

 
Just to quote the article you're linking to:
 

Giving players the ability to experience the game the way they want to isn't quite as simple as bleeping out a few words. Because the filters can be turned on or off, the process is more complex.

"For every line that has a word that we want to filter out, we'll have two lines loaded in memory - one mature and the other filtered," Fergusson said. "So when the game is preparing to play a line of dialogue, it checks the language filter flag, and if it's set to 'on,' then it will play the filtered line with the radio static. If it's set to 'off,' then it will play the original mature line. Inside each line is the appropriate subtitle so that onscreen text matches what's being said as well."

... which is pretty much what everyone of a programming bent has said all along; it ain't that simple.

Epic actually made the engine that GoW runs on so they have the ability to do whatever they like with it - they wrote it. BioWare used the Unreal engine for the previous Mass Effect games - that engine developed by Epic, under license, so I guess, in theory the filters may have been possible... a shed tonne of manual work, but not impossible; impractical, unprofitable maybe ... but not technically impossible.

With the Frostbite engine though, I've no idea.

[dfjdejulio]

I wouldn't say an official representative, but we did have a developer, Bryan Johnson, make a statement to that effect. Not the same thing by any stretch, but his personal experience is probably more applicable than any of ours on that front.

 

See now, that's a much more reasonable stance than "this is obvious and if you disagree you're an idiot".

 

At this point they clearly know some folks want the feature and some of them are at least starting to think over the cost/benefit tradeoffs.  I'd say the OP's mission has been accomplished and ... not sure why anyone should keep talking now.  Guess I'm out!  Ta ta!

[Elhanan]

Just to quote the article you're linking to: 

... which is pretty much what everyone of a programming bent has said all along; it ain't that simple.

And yet, it was used and modified to make the entire game more immersive. Context is helpful.

[FKA_Servo]

 
Just to quote the article you're linking to:
 

... which is pretty much what everyone of a programming bent has said all along; it ain't that simple.

 

I totally forgot that GoW3 did this (probably because I enthusiastically refrained from utilizing it). It's worth noting that this is a story with one path through it - no branching dialogue or variation, identical every single time. So these complications would only be about a million times more complex in that regard when applied to a Bioware game.

[Elhanan]

I totally forgot that GoW3 did this (probably because I enthusiastically refrained from utilizing it). It's worth noting that this is a story with one path through it - no branching dialogue or variation, identical every single time. So these complications would only be about a million times more complicated in that regard when applied to a Bioware game.

More complicated for DA than the Shepard/ FemShep ME series. What I found intriguing is that the feature was desirable enough to not only include, but to modify for the enjoyment of another wider market.

[Farangbaa]

I seriously don't understand how anyone can advocate a filter to make killing appropriate for your kid to watch.

[Il Divo]

Stories exploring how people deal with death and the threat of death have been in children's storybooks for a very long time.  Death is a part of the cycle of life and unavoidable.  Swearing is a choice.

 

The ethical conundrums in Mass Effect as a storytelling device allow the player the opportunity to explore the outcomes of one's character choices in the narrative. This is a powerful and sophisticated form of narrative design that doesn't require explicit content to be successful in communicating the effect of choice involving profound dilemmas nor does it preclude it. In relation to young minds 10+ of average education, the choices presented in Mass Effect aren't all that outside their ability to appreciate to some degree, in my experience. Yet, with guidance, it's possible these choices and outcome in Mass Effect could be appreciated more thoroughly.

 

Any choice that involves a player actively committing cold-blooded murder and/or genocide should not escape an M rating. That goes far beyond the idea of "the cycle of life". You said swearing is a choice. But what should we call murder and genocide? Those are all choices (and messed up ones, at that).

 

This is why I love the KotOR 2 example: you have a story which allows your protagonist to manipulate a tortured young woman into falling in love with him. Then you have the ability to persuade her to sacrifice herself to kill her former master, responsible for committing genocide against her people, at which point you can rub it in her face that you were simply using her, as she dies.

 

The problem with the solution is: this becomes costly. How does Bioware get around explicit content? Let's use Mass Effect 3 as an example. Using toggles, redesign ME3 to retain all its narrative elements and be suitable for a 10 year old. How do you deal with Thane's death? The Quarian-Geth conflict? Tali's suicide? Shooting Mordin? Cut-scenes are regarded as among the most expensive resource hogs in gaming. Unless the solution is "fade to black" in every scenario, with current resources, it's not possible to appeal to all those markets.
 

[FKA_Servo]

More complicated for DA than the Shepard/ FemShep ME series. What I found intriguing is that the feature was desirable enough to not only include, but to modify for the enjoyment of another wider market.

 

I maintain that I still don't know how wide the adult market is, in this case. If we're talking kids - I still wouldn't let my ten year old play a bowdlerized Gears of War, honestly.

 

I also can't think of another example of this. They didn't do it in either of the previous games, as far as I know.

[KaiserShep]

I seriously don't understand how anyone can advocate a filter to make killing appropriate for your kid to watch.

 

Rod Flanders: Daddy, what's that coming out of kitty's ears?

 

Ned Flanders: Why that's….raspberry jam!

[Battlebloodmage]

I seriously don't understand how anyone can advocate a filter to make killing appropriate for your kid to watch.

To be fair, you kill people all the time as Sora in an E rated game. It's not just Disney's death where the villain fall off the cliff either, Ursula was stabbed through her stomach. I guess you can kill people as long as you don't make it messy. 

 

Kids have bigger balls than most adults if you see the kind of games they play. You should know this if you play M rated online games or see youtube videos. A lot of them are very young kids. I would say that a lot of the people who request for no mature contents are not kids but adults. It's for their own sake. To think that it has anything to do with kids instead of themselves is laughable. 

[Elhanan]

I maintain that I still don't know how wide the adult market is, in this case. If we're talking kids - I still wouldn't let my ten year old play a bowdlerized Gears of War, honestly.
 
I also can't think of another example of this. They didn't do it in either of the previous games, as far as I know.

As I do not play most titles that are Action based, and do not have Pause features, GoW is not in my game library, nor a title that I have researched. But I did note that such features were mentioned as early as 2006, and the article was written in 2011. This is a feature that was made viable for this title, and seemingly has been around in use for nearly a decade.

[Fandango]

But I did note that such features were mentioned as early as 2006, and the article was written in 2011. This is a feature that was made viable for this title, and seemingly has been around in use for nearly a decade.

And I'm sure we could all mention dozens of commercially and critically successful M rated games that were not sanitised for the benefit of children. Now what?

[Farangbaa]

And I'm sure we could all mention dozens of commercially and critically successful M rated games that were not sanitised for the benefit of children. Now what?

They will all leave a horribly bloody mess when killing people.

Awful.