What you are saying here is that Nudity is one of the major factors behind An advlt Rating. Well, I feel It's less of a case of we can't do this and more of a what CAN we do thing.

Allow me to explain. Too many advlt features in a game will end up giving it an advlt rating. SInce violence, alcahol, and bad images, three (of many) main things that make the Elder Scrolls games what they are, need to stay in, something's gotta slide to keep it in and a M rating. That thing is nudity.

I don't really care either way - nudity or not. But when there is, what really gets to me is censored nudity. briasts without nipbles? That's frigging disgusting. Like a head without eyes. A freakshow. For the same reason I can't stand watching american shows and their word censoring. Comedy central i.e., who's many jokes are based on cursing, or a style of the performer. It's like listening to a priest where all the religion is taken out. No, I'm not religious

If the americans can't handle it - fine, they can do whatever they want. But don't sell the shows pre-censored to countries who can actually handle such "strong" language. And yes, it annoys me more than you can imagine. Every time I hear a "beep" I feel a heart attack coming and the boycott hat comes on. Thank you Lord for internet and illegal "uncensored downloads" of the same shows - the only choice they leave us with. Yeah I tossed the telly years ago.

As for rating, I don't personally care other than it must not look like a Disney production. Violence where it fits. Strong language where it fits. Nudity where it fits. sixy where it fits. But nothing overdone or something that feels forced for the sake of having it.

Teen/Mature seems kinda okay to me. But I'll never get the Mature/advlt thing with its only one year difference.

1st: I will never understand the deal with the USA about nudity in movies. It's fine to see Rambo kill hundreds of people in a 1h30m timespan (15+ rating) but if it is Sharon Stone crossing her legs showing her pubic hair then it's a hideous thing for a underage boy/girl to see. (which I saw when I was 12 and haven't any trauma in my mind about it).

2nd: The whole MPAA rating (which I know, differs from the gaming rating, but probably follows the same rules) system is completely broken and its similarities with a Gestapo or any other government censorship 's goals of control over what the masses watch and listen.

Since when a movie or a game get's a AO rating, it just happens to have most of its market closed, since most movie theaters or general stores won't sell these. It really isn't about "protecting your child about explicit content".

You can see good documentary about the rating system by the mpaa in http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0493459/.

TL;DR: Nudity in a video game only reduces profit, so in the end it's never viable. Unless the design goal is nudity, which is not the case of Skyrim or any other TES game.

The same way movies can. I mean, lots of action movies have no shortage of blood and gore and cursing, yet there stories are in no way more sophisticated than a saturday morning cartoon, there's just more people dying.



And yet the M rated games featuring nudity of played usually have those other things too, and in fact are often stronger in those things than past Elder Scrolls games had.

The way I see it, it looks to me st this point that the problem with nudity in games is not increasing the rating, but the potential fuss the media might make about it. I mean, just look at the scandal with Mass Effect on Fox News a while back, and while I haven't seen the offending scene first hand myself, my understanding is that it's actually pretty tame. And I'm more inclined to trust people who have actually played the game on this than the media that makes a game set in an extensive science-fiction universe involving many themes which have nothing to do with six out to be interactive pormography. I wouldn't be surprised if Bethesda wants to avoid that, though.



I have to agree on that. Showing characters nvde but not actually showing anything just makes them look unnatural, and it gets worse as the visual realism of the game increases, in a game with characters that look like the ones we've seen in Skyrim, it's going to look very, very strange if we see them naked but don't actually see any of THOSE parts. Better to just keep characters clothed from the start even when it would make more sense for them to be nvde.

I don't find nudity necessary to enjoy a game, and if I had to choose between more gore and more nudity in Skyrim, I'd probably choose gore. That would have a more measurable impact on game-play, in my opinion . . . The entire thing doesn't seem worth the ratings risk. I like TES enough to want Bethesda to stay in business. Whether or not the ratings are right to judge a game on nudity is irrelevant; it's a factor that Bethesda has to deal with either way. :shrug:

Now, I'll probably end up downloading a body mod at some point, and that body mod will probably be a nvde one. Will I be running about pantsless for the view? No, not even if I play a male character. I don't really care about nudity. I'll go on to say that most people over the age of 20 won't either, unless they're religious or deprived.

I WILL vote for classier underpants. The diapers looked silly.

I completely agree with the OP. But, Skyrim will most likely not have nudity in the vanilla version.

Problem:
And as previous people have pointed out, this is because of politics, outdated religious/cultural beliefs, and the hesitance of the next generation.

Solution:
Next generation? Look at the poll. More than half of the voters are agreeing with the OP, yet where are their comments and support? That's the problem. So until the older generations pass away, along with their paradigms, and the new generation steps forward with a more evolved/developed and modern opinion/belief, we are stuck in limbo. It will take time. In order to create change, we have to be positive, friendly, and have patience. And in order for people to understand us, we need to listen and understand them first. :icecream:

Extras:
However, there is also an extra element to this problem. It is a continuing thread throughout American "Culture."

Colonel Tannanbaum said the following from a thread a few days ago: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1172540-daggerfall-had-nudity/page__view__findpost__p__17299551

Nudity, six and homosixuality are from the devil. Decapitating people is an innocent past-time. :S

Basically this, reasonable people are probably the rarest thing on earth these days, anyone with a lick of common sense would understand that nudity in itself is not harmfull in any way. It's funny how people say children shouldn't see briasts, but it's okay for babies to briastfeed, makes perfect sense...

I would like to see it done tastefully myself to make the world feel more real, but it's not going to happen. Basically, any person who supports or enforces censorship does not have my repsect, I'll leave it at that without saying how I really feel about that kind of thing, it's pretty much guaranteed to get me a warning and I don't feel like writing out an angry rant about why I hate these people.

I don't want nudity, because it adds nothing to the game experience for me, unlike violence

And of course violence is more inappropriate than nudity, it's even more inappropriate than hardcoe porm.

Stupid Victorian era morals. It's really idiotic because by making something hidden, mysterious and out of sight, you create a sense of voyiurism. In other words by covering it up, you've made it a big deal and now people will get a thrill out of seeing in this case, a nipble. :facepalm:

I see where you are coming from, and the funny part is that despite your hatred of censorship and those who support it, you end up having to censor yourself by omission.

Personally i don't care if they have nudity, seeing as i consider it more appropriate to put armour on characters, rather then having them prancing around naked.
(even give mages robes, i love a good cliché!)

Love your reasoning

Yup and i stroll along to the local arena, slaughter the other combatants and pick up some weird guy who follows me around. Then i walk off to some nearby cave (It's Scotland we have plenty of moutains full of caves ya know?) and tell aforesaid crazy fan-boy to wait there and then never return for a whole year only to find him still there. I also slip into neighbours houses and nick small items and walk outside the door to find a policeman already waiting for me, pay hm a fine and shoot an arrow in his head as he walks away. My real life really is a lot like my video game life........ We haven't even touched the whole prince of madness bit yet either! tehehe...

I'm not bothered one way or the other whether nudity is in or not to be honest, it's the dumb excuses people use to explain why it shouldn't be there that bothers me.

Yeah, I'd like to see some proper nudity when you take people's clothes off. It would be funny the first few times, but I think people would then get used to it - sort of like when you have six education and are giggling at every other word in the first lesson, but then just get on with it in the subsequent ones.

As long as it's not the usual nudity video games seem to be doing recently ("LOOK, MALES, THIS SCANTILY CLAD LADY HAS A nipble EXPOSED! BOOBS! BUY THE GAME! BOOBS!"). That sort of thing seems to satisfy the promise of nudity by having a softcoe touch. I'm not saying I want hardcoe scenes in (although I'm also not not saying that...) but what about us ladies? Seeing bare-chested men, for us, isn't the same as plonking some pert briasts in there.

I am not sure if you realise this but including nudity does not automatically mean an advlts only rating. There have been plenty of games with nudity which do not have the AO rating.

I don't feel it's necessary to enjoy a game either, really. I fully expect to enjoy Skyrim with or without nudity. I just think that, if games can show violence, drugs, and swearing, they should be allowed to show nudity too. Of course some people don't want to see nudity, and that's perfectly fine with me, whatever they're reasons, they don't have to play games with nudity in them. It is my belief that people should have the freedom to put what they want in games, movies, books, or anything else, so long as they don't violate any laws in the proccess, people also deserve the right to enjoy, or not enjoy, the products of such creative freedom as they wish, I fully support and respect the rights of anyone who objects to nudity in games to avoid games that contain it like they were radioactive, so long as they are willing to return the favor by respecting my rights to play what I want to play, and the rights of creators to create what they want to create. The issue here has absolutely nothing to do with standards or beliefs of any form, the problem is when people feel the need to force others to live by their own standards.

For this same reason, I also support content ratings, because how are people supposed to know what kind of content they can expect from the game if you don't give them some sort of indication as to what content it contains? It's just important to ensure that ratings don't become a tool for censorship, rather, they should provide guidelines as to what kind of content a game has. Indeed, I think abolishing game ratings would serve to make the problem worse, because as it stands, no one who does any actual research on the matter can accuse the gaming industry of not having anything to indicate if a game is safe for children or not. We can debate whether the standards by which games are rated are sound all we want, and debate whether the ratings should be enforced more all we want (Personally, I think it's reasonable if minors are required to prove they have their parents consent before buying M rated games, and if they do haveb their parents consent, there should be nothing wrong with them playing them. Because deciding what to expose children to, and when, is a job for parents, not for the government.) but regardless, we know it's there. However, if we take away those ratings, we give the people complaining about violent video games corrupting our youth more ground, because then there's nothing keeping said games out of the hands of children. Right now, we can counter their arguments by pointing out that parents shouldn't be buying M rated games for their children if they don't want them seeing that kind of content, without ratings, we can no longer use that argument, and they can rightly accuse game stores of selling games including graphic violence to children, because there would be no standard by which to determine what games should be sold to children and which ones should not, thus, either no games would be sold to children at all, or all games would have to be sold to them, whether they are suited for children or not.

But I think it's best we leave that discussion at that, before it gets a little too close to subjects we're not allowed to discuss here, we do still have forum rules to follow, after all.



That's been mentioned in this thread already, and some examples of said games have been presented.

It'll be (edit: probably) rated mature, so there shouldn't be any issue with nudity (though there is).

If you've seen any U.S. television, you might have noticed that often the genitals of infants are blurred, while some educational programs will not blur the genitals of grown men and women from other cultures. So...as long as nudity isn't sixual in nature (briast exams/cultural anthropology), it's okay. So... why are infants sometimes blurred? Whatever. My point is America is weird with what they censor. I would hope that most people could get off to briast exams or national geographic before a poopy baby.

Nudity, as others have said, is just an extra touch for immersion. Not needed, like other details (as said, running water, swaying trees), but appreciated. Nudity isn't automatically sixual, remember. It's just fact/nature.

:facepalm:
I don't think that the point here is if you have a woman in real life or not.

Anyway.
If The Simpsons had full nudity in their movie, then I think that it's OK for TES to have it.

Joke aside, I really don't see the problem with nudity in a game full of gore.
six and nudity is something natural and good while killing other people for fun, well, isn't (or at least it shouldn't be).
The point is, I don't have anything against full and proper nudity as long as it's done with taste.

In my opinion, the rating systems are elitist and they do not reflect real life opinions, accurately. And the bad thing is that they don't even TRY to do it, they have their personal taste and they are in control, so they impose their conservative tastes onto the audience. This isn't a conspiracy, it's a provable fact of life (because of the laws they follow, some of which shouldn't have even existed to begin with).

I mean, who in their right mind thinks that arms, legs and heads flying all over the place with intestines, blood and gore spewing out is LESS grotesque that seeing a female nipble or groin? I'm not gonna make this debate religious, but I think I should be allowed to say that religion plays a part without needing to discuss the particulars of that statement.

But hey, that's how the rating systems work nowadays (as with many other elitist things imposed on society by a select few "managers"), and the worst thing about it is that nobody speaks out in protest. People just accept it without a question, asking "how high?" whenever the elite tells them to jump. Similar to sheep and lemmings, really.

Nice to see this forum speak out, maybe Bethesda's able to take the hint. Nudity isn't all that - we're in 2011, after all. We're not in the 60s or 70s anymore. Been there, done that. Time to move on and worry about actual problems in this world.

Besides, weren't Adam and Eve banished from the Garden of Eden for covering up their genitals and starting to nag about nudity?

I'm with the OP. I wanna buy a copy of his book and follow his crusade to modernize the world.

Tell that to all the people who overreacted to Janet Jackson's chest at the Super Bowl.

Or the "fully interactive six simulator!" silliness over Mass Effect 1.

Or.... well, lots and lots of examples.


Yes, we have a messed up culture where splattering huge amounts of gore all over the screen is okay, but "OMG! nipble!" is the end of the world as we know it.

But that's not confined to video games (it's prevalent throughout US culture), and just saying "Well, this is silly because of " isn't really going to do much to change it.


Even ignoring that the average age of "game" players keeps rising (and is above the teens) and that these games are rated "M" (17+, same as R-rated movies), you'll never convince the hordes of oblivious parents and "moral guardians" who say What Do You Mean, It's Not For Kids?


---------

Besides, weren't Adam and Eve banished from the Garden of Eden for covering up their genitals and starting to nag about nudity?

Nah, it was for Breaking Daddy's Rules? ("Don't touch the apple.").

The covering-up was just a sign of the fact that they had touched the apple (i.e, learned that, as every Moral Person knows, Naked = Bad).

As much as I may agree with your reasoning, I do believe the answer is quite clear. As someone else has probably said (I only skimmed through the thread, after all), Bethesda is a business and their main concern isn't to be as openly accepting to all aspects of culture and realism; their main concern is how much of a profit they can make. Do I have a problem with this? Not at all! I love when businesses make money because then they can make more nice things for me to buy and keep the economy going. However, do I wish societal norms were a little more lax and the sight of a briast didn't cause quite the giggle fest among teenagers and the absolute horror from prudish advlts? Of course I do.

Thus, I suppose we can only prod our government to be more accepting of nudity as a fact of life and work on ending censorship as a whole. I do believe we are slowly heading down that road as it seems like more and more is allowed on television every day. I am all for it.



You mean TES nudity DOESN'T prepare you for the real thing???? What ever shall I do!? :shocking:

Its not the government, its Walmart (no one believes this) but they will not sell an AO rated title, and if they don't sell it ~it generally tanks. There is also a potential for backlash that would affect the bottom line (both for the developer/publisher, and any retailer.)
Monster trucks, wrestling, and horror films are accepted, burlesque is not (in general ~and depends highly on locality). There are cities in the US where the stores cover up the front of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmopolitan_%28magazine%29.

ESRB is not the government. They exist to remove the need (excuse) for the government to step in and regulate titles in the US.

Because we all know they'd do it worse.

("The honorable Republican Senator from Georgia would like to introduce the Save Mankind from Unlawful Trash Act - SMUT - banning all video games that are T rated and higher.")

I have doubts, I would like my american friends enlighten me:

In europe we have a rating system (PEGI) based in age (3,7,12,16,18).

#1: What are the MAJOR differences between M rating and A rating?
#2: What is the age at which a person ceases to be considered "Mature" and becomes "advlt" in USA?
#3: If we have canibalism and the possibility to kill kids in Skyrim, the game will have A rating?

And a question to my friends in Europe:

#4: I rebember that TES IV: Oblivion in USA obtained M rating, and in Europe obtained PEGI 16. But i see that Skyrim trailer is now PEGI 18, but only "M" in USA. What is the reason for this apparent mismatch?

Thanks.

Personally, I'm confused as to why female nudity is considered so much worse than male nudity.
Anyone who bought the DLC for GTA4 was treated to a full frontal dong in the middle of a cutscene, and hardly anyone complained.