CENSORSHIP IN VIDEO GAMES

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So, I've been thinking lately, how do people feel about censorship in Video Games? I know this can be a bit of a contentious topic, so let's keep it light if possible, but I'm curious as to what the community thinks.

My perspective is that first of all, there are three common types of censorship: gore, nudity, and coarse language. In the western world especially, nudity has been essentially outright censored except for in adult games, as it tends to be used strictly to represent sexual content, regardless of the context.

Coarse language has some censorship, but not as much in games rated M or higher. Even still, games that do use coarse language typically don't overload the player with it, and it gets sprinkled in here and there. Assassin's Creed does this quite a bit. It's used for emphasis and character depth, but it's not used every second sentence. Granted, although I've never played it, I'm sure games like GTA are far more liberal with swearing. However, in games that are intended to be more kid-friendly, such as FF7 (original not remake), the words are censored entirely. Barrett is known for having a foul mouth, but the actual words on screen are replaced with symbols.

Blood and gore, however, has a bit of a different usage. Most games won't shy away from it, but there are many games that have accessibility options that allow you to disable gore. And that's actually sort of the point of this topic, honestly.

Although appealing to a wide audience is great, if your game is intended for a specific audience should it be moderately censored to consider audiences outside of its target? Should games have more accessibility options to enable player-chosen censorship on more than just blood and gore, such as course language and nudity? And how much profanity is considered to be too much?

As I said, I know this can be a contentious topic, but I'm not trying to create a cesspool of negativity. I just want to see what everyone else's objective views are, without resorting to arguing one point over another.
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
If I want to be perfectly honest, if I see a profanity filter as a game setting option, I set that to "off". Though, I've only bothered to play one GTA game ever (Vice City, I think it was?), so perhaps I'm more in tune to what kinds of games would be too overboard for me. Though, I'm not sure if I can really quantify how much my personal level of "overboard" is in this regard.

I could probably say the same about blood censorship, but, the last time I ever saw a setting for blood was maybe an early Mortal Kombat game? Or maybe I'm just remembering the button-press "ABACABB" having something to do with it. Gore, well, I can manage something like Dead Speace for maybe an hour or two before needing to take a break? I dunno. It's been a while. I guess it's a thing I personally stay away from nowadays, but might have had a stronger stomach for it when I was younger.

*Edit: I think calunio's Beautiful Escape - Dungeoneer approximates a lot of what the site is willing to host in regards to this topic in general? I've never personally played it to know for sure what it contains, and I... kinda don't want to. Which might speak to my sensitivities on these issues, right there.

It's a bit weird to start this off the word "censorship" since it implies a governing body or outside party limiting the sales of games if there aren't changes to appease a rating. Most games usually do whatever they can to get under the AO rating so there's not really censorship so much as developers choosing on their own accord to go after a criteria set by the ratings board. You could argue that shift in culture due to censorship in the past is preemptive censorship I guess? I just haven't heard a "censorship" story since like maybe 2008. With maybe a banned in Australia story occasionally in the last few years? Which is blatant textbook censorship. Regardless of the semantics I think that's different from like, intentionally bleeping words out because you want to keep it a little PG. It just feels like a creative choice with the audience in consideration.

On Steam right now you don't even need to apply for the ESRB, I mean you can. Even if you apply for the ESRB (Which i had to for the Wii U years ago) I remember they just had us rate it ourselves, probably because we didn't plan on being store shelves or some such reason. Regardless, Steam is just chockfull of weird hentai hitler porn whatever games with little moderation as long as it doesn't feature real life porn, but that's rare in the first place anyway. There was the game Hatred which did get taken down for depicting public shootings where the protagonist literally has little motive for why he's killing the populace. But even that game was reinstated because Gabe himself couldn't find a good reason to delist it. I could swear that was probably in aftermath of the Sandy Hook stuff but my timeline might be a little jumbled.

At least in the newsphere and general culture censorship just feels non-existent to me at this point and feels left behind in like the Jack Thompson era. The game itself needs to break actual laws to violate anything at this rate. But idk I guess I don't spend half of my movie thoughts on whether or not a certain movie deserved a PG rating or whatever so perhaps I'm just ignorant. I'm also not too interested in debating the definition of censorship, but just my take or leave it uh... take.
author=Strak
Although appealing to a wide audience is great, if your game is intended for a specific audience should it be moderately censored to consider audiences outside of its target? Should games have more accessibility options to enable player-chosen censorship on more than just blood and gore, such as course language and nudity? And how much profanity is considered to be too much?

Accessibility options might sound like a good idea on paper (and sometimes they work fine) but my problem is that there are double standards with what content is deemed socially acceptable, and oftentimes rules are very inconsistently applied to begin with.


Even if you're not interested in Adult Content, I'd still recommend this channel. Annie is an intelligent person who makes a lot of interesting observations, and I think she's absolutely right when she says that Steam doesn't really have a set of guidelines for what is and what isn't acceptable, and may be disproportionately targeting games with a focus on LGBT content and games with a focus on female sexuality.

This is a little off-topic since the thread is specifically about video games, but I'd recommend reading 6 Bizarre Realities of How Movies Get Their Rating from Cracked.com.

The tl;dr is that this is by no means a problem endemic to Steam and has been a problem in American culture for decades.

Because even if there's no sex or swearing in a gay film, it still means a nigh-automatic R rating. And what little sex that does lube up and slip by is always from the straight-male perspective. The MPAA will cut just about any female sexuality beyond "get topless and dance around for the menfolk" out of a film. Name a recent movie with sex in it and, 99 times out of 100, the act is filmed with a clear male perspective. When films do try to get scenes from the female perspective, such as the recent Charlie Countryman, that's the first scene the MPAA will say has to go to avoid a higher rating.
Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
Accessibility settings are not censorship, and I feel like complaining about accessibility settings is like complaining about difficulty selection. The options are there for those that want/need them, and their inclusion doesn't detract from anyone else's experience. "How much is too much" is a question individual players have to ask themselves, and the settings let each person draw their own line. If only people outside the "target audience" use accessibility settings, then maybe the target audience isn't as narrow as players like to think?

I feel like "censorship" could only reasonably apply to settings that are beyond the player's control, like localization changes or games being outright banned from sale in certain countries. The party members in Bravely Default, for example, will always be 18 in the western release and 15-16 in the Japanese release, and there is no "age toggle" setting that would be natural in that game.

If a setting is in the game, then it's a choice made by the developers that it is okay to experience the game with that setting enabled. Whether they "should" exist is something developers must decide for themselves because each game is different, but the decision to include them should not be viewed as censorship or even self-censorship.
One one hand I think that self-censorship in the form of "do we really need all this gore in this game" and removing it to appease a broader audience is alright. On the other hand I also think it is a bit annoying to have to "compromise" one's vision by removing that stuff.

And perhaps even compromise a vision even more by adding options in the settings to remove some of the things. Like... Did it really have to be there at all if it is so easily removable?

I guess what I'm really thinking is that it's terrible to have to make the... censorable stuff so easily removable that it can be taken out by flipping a switch. There was never any reason to include that stuff in that case.

There should be more games where this is just an integral part and have the proper rating and warnings instead.

I'm just not a fan of being able to set gore to "minimum" or "maximum" because that makes the gore completely useless (I remember for Warhammer Total War there was some Gore DLC, which I thought was the stupidest thing) Or the same for nudity, if a game will not be impacted by removing the nudity, maybe the nudity wasn't necessary. Instead there should be more games where removing the nudity would in fact impact the experience.
Really appreciating all the different perspectives here. I apologize if the title for this topic was a bit misleading, I suppose "censorship" implies a forced etiquette as opposed to something that the developer chooses, or gives players the choice over. I just couldn't think of a better word. Filter, maybe?

Anyway, I guess there's a couple different ways of looking at this. On the one hand, if the game comes with content warnings, and players still choose to play the game, it should be expected that they'll encounter sensitive content. Adding filters isn't likely to draw in a different audience if the gameplay is essentially the same regardless of the filter. If a character is saying the F word, it's not about whether it's fully spelled out or replaced with asterisks. The player knows what is being said. No amount of filters will change that. Maybe it's a bit different for visual filters surrounding violence and nudity, but truthfully I was wanting to look more at coarse language more than anything else. Although I think it's an interesting subject to look at on the whole.
Red_Nova
Sir Redd of Novus: He who made Prayer of the Faithless that one time, and that was pretty dang rad! :D
9192
There is an artistic merit to replacing swear words with symbols: comedic relief. To me, at least, it's funnier to hear words bleeped out or censored than the actual words because it implies that the character is so foul mouthed or raunchy that even the game itself has to step in and apologize for all the swearing.

Just, uh, don't have someone swearing every other word in the first place in you're trying to be taken seriously. Otherwise, your heavy scene will suddenly have a Red Foreman in it:



Or, if you don't have a filter, you'll have Death:



I don't think a filter option for players is going to fix either of these scenes in a "seriously" project.
Frogge
I wanna marry ALL the boys!! And Donna is a meanc
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author=Red_Nova
There is an artistic merit to replacing swear words with symbols: comedic relief.

The new Puss in Boots is absolutely the funniest example of this by a long shot, probably because of how much it caught me off-guard

Censorship also includes these types: politic (inclusion of politicians or events), discrimination (race, religion, socioeconomic class,...), propaganda, drugs, alcohol, ...

The developers of commercial games will always apply some self-censorship to ensure commercial success.


author=Red_Nova
There is an artistic merit to replacing swear words with symbols: comedic relief. To me, at least, it's funnier to hear words bleeped out or censored than the actual words because it implies that the character is so foul mouthed or raunchy that even the game itself has to step in and apologize for all the swearing.

I had to censor my game to be able to share it here, and I'm happy I did. I wanted the only differences to be cosmetic, so I learned to write with double entendres. This added a bit of humor to the dark fantasy and made both versions more enjoyable to play.
There was a neat article on Polygon related this about content warnings. https://www.polygon.com/23622467/content-warnings-dead-space-chicory-ikenfell

One of the examples they use is this year's remake for Deadspace; but it was really interesting to read about. Because about 10 years ago, when advertising DeadSpace 2, EA's ad campaign back in the late 2000s was all about trying to earn an M-rated rating from test audiences who found the content offensive?

But when it came to creating the remake. This time, it was all about towing the line so that they could create a game that was accessible to people who still wanted to play the game, but don't necessarily want to be exposed to sensitive content? I dunno, it was really neat:

These warnings, much like the ones in Dead Space, do not interrupt gameplay or censor any game material on their own. A small text box appears beneath the gameplay that simply explains that the next scene might be triggering, and gives a preview of its content — for example, “Content warning: mention (but no depiction) of blood.”

“Parents were using it to determine scenes they could share with their kids,” says Blackhart. “Other people were using them to open up about the content with viewers on Twitch, or starting conversations. It happened so fast, and so naturally — it was beautiful.”

See, and that's actually one of the biggest reasons why I'm seriously considering adding a player controlled content filter. Streams. Not that I think this game is going to be seen by millions of people or anything, but you never know. If someone decides to stream my game and they don't give content warnings for the kind of game that their VIEWERS will be watching, it might be worthwhile to actually allow streamers to control that content. Especially with things like YouTube and how they handle monetization of videos based on content. Granted it's entirely up to the streamer to decide whether or not a game is something they should publicize on their channel, but I would hate for someone to neglect to stream a game just because it contains profanity that could potentially be filtered if given the option.
Backwards_Cowboy
owned a Vita and WiiU. I know failure
1737
I like when developers add a censorship toggle to allow players to adjust certain things, like the amount of gore when killing an enemy. Sometimes the filters are enough to make an M-rated (or whatever your regional equivalent is) "safe" enough for a teenager to play. Call of Duty, for example, practically reverts to being a T-rated series like it started out as once you remove the blood, gore, and the more intense profanity.

Some games like Cyberpunk 2077 have bizarre censorship that makes no sense to me. In the character creation and inventory screens, there is full-frontal nudity. You can even customize your pubes and certain aspects of your genitalia. In game, if you look down, suddenly you're wearing purple shorts. It makes no sense to me as the full nudity is already in the game; it's not like this was done in a way like Paradox did with Crusader Kings III for the console versions where they removed ALL nudity to make it easier to release in all regions and reduce the game to a T rating. Initially some people thought it was a bug put CDPR confirmed on their website in response to support posts that this was intended.

Then you have Nintendo where they have been flip-flopping on censorship for decades. Some games get censorship only in certain regions, others are censored worldwide. The global censorship seems to apply more for remakes and remasters, while the West gets regionally censored versions of new games.
author=Red_Nova
There is an artistic merit to replacing swear words with symbols: comedic relief. To me, at least, it's funnier to hear words bleeped out or censored than the actual words because it implies that the character is so foul mouthed or raunchy that even the game itself has to step in and apologize for all the swearing.

Yeah. I fairly recently found out (by recently I mean in the last ten years) that South Park uncensor their episodes on some platforms and I've occasionally stumbled upon it uncensored and the fact is that it's just not as funny when it isn't bleeped.

But I do still think that "toggles" make it worse. In the same way that a free 2 play game with a cosmetics only season pass make the game worse. It is not in a tangible "this is literally worse" way. But it is in the way that the game is designed around facilitating and enabling the thing.

As I said, if you can cut out content and it doesn't affect the game, then did that content need to be in there in the first place? And if you can add content and it doesn't affect the game, does it need to be added at all?
I think it's similar with removing/adding coarse language or gore. The game is designed around one thing being around and if you design it around both things being around it will inevitably lead to a worse game. Not in a measurable way, but in that "feel" way. One way of playing will be inferior. (Like how South Park is worse without the bleeping)
Another tangentially related article:

Game developers are creating new options for people with phobias
In the last month, 3 major video games have offered phobia settings that let players with severe fears alter content so they can play.
Once rare, this is now a trend. I spoke to developers from Xbox, PlayStation and EA about why and how they did this

Why it matters: It’s an expansion of an industrywide push to make games more accessible, offering the audience options that wouldn’t be as feasible in other forms of entertainment.

Developers behind these modes consider them a necessary matter of accessibility, no different from letting players who are colorblind select an option to change how colors appear in the game.

What they’re saying: “We realized that our game features spiders very prominently, and they're very large,” Brian MacIntosh, a programmer at Obsidian, tells Axios. “That could definitely be an issue for some people, so it seemed like something we had to do something about.”

What’s next: With each new phobia mode introduced into a game, more are likely to follow, according to Respawn technical designer Michel Wong, who worked on Jedi: Survivor’s arachnophobia mode.

Among other things, Michel says, they serve as proof, for peers and for their bosses, “to sort of make the case for why it's important and how it would work.”


Honestly, I am surprised games have reached a point where, features like these are actually being talked about and are accessible now. Really cool stuff here, as long as they can afford to do this. It's going to be interesting to see what this looks like in the next 30 years.
That is an interesting article, for sure, although there seems to be a bit of a fine line there. Not that I'm trying to downplay certain people's phobias or anything like that, but I think there's a critical difference between providing a player controlled filter for a phobia vs something like colorblindness. One is a learned reaction to sensitive content, another is a biological condition that impairs the ability of someone to play the game fairly. Now, I guess you could argue that providing a filter for a phobia really isn't any different than providing a filter for profanity in that sense, but it does seem like accessibility can be taken out of context, and it's easy to make the assumption that "arachnophobia and colorblindness are equal in importance if both require accessibility features," which is certainly not a statement I would agree with, but can be taken in that context. I dunno, maybe I'm wrong about that, but it's a tricky subject.

Granted, with how realistic games are becoming, giant spiders are probably far more detailed and lifelike than they were early 2000's, and with the emergence of VR gaming, maybe it actually is important. Who's to say.

EDIT: I will say, however, that this did spark an idea that I had with my own game that just makes good sense that I didn't think of before. A colorblind mode option. It took about an hour of coding, but works pretty damn well, and is actually pretty useful considering that enemy weaknesses are denoted by the color of their health bar (now by the shape of the cursor when targeting them in this mode) and item rarities are denoted by text color (now with a character next to the item name in this mode). For a game that heavily relies on color for pretty important game mechanics, I think the hour of coding was well spent to make it more accessible, so thank you for calling attention to that and giving me the idea.
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