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Pushing the Medium Forward

Has any medium's idea of what is acceptable for display moved as quickly as that of video games? Just two years ago, Mass Effect was universally hated (by people who had never played it) for including a "sex scene" which was actually just mild nudity. Now, Bioware's latest titles include the same level of mostly clothed "sex scenes," with virtually no public outrcry, despite these titles' huge mainstream attention. And despite not coming anywhere close to actually portraying sex, they're probably closer than the Hot Coffee mini-game was so long ago. Jack Thompson has disappeared, games are getting reviewed in the New York Times every week, and their perception as a children's medium is dying.

Video games can now have nudity and yet still be sold in Wal-Marts. That's a huge and recent development. Grand Theft Auto IV's DLC expansion The Lost and Damned was a strategically important place to get this done, and I think developer Rockstar North knew that. The Lost and Damned included a cutscene with a visible digital penis (belonging to a congressman), making it the first mainstream North American release to include male nudity. First of all, the game would not be released in stores to begin with, because it was download-only. The only people who could stop it from being sold were inside Microsoft. Second, as merely an expansion, the mainstream media attention wouldn't be overwhelming, so you get less people talking about a scene that they've never actually seen, which is important. Third, the DLC would eventually be sold in a disc format, after the attention had died away. Now we have stores selling a video game with frontal male nudity without controversy. It has now set precedent for all game releases in the future, and the medium has moved forward in the public consciousness.

Heavy Rain is now widely known as a game that's meant to move the medium forward, in many more ways than simply nudity. But, the fact that their nude scene is interactive makes an important distinction in the ongoing argument. One of the major reasons people will argue that video games should not have nudity while movies can is that video games are interactive. Nude scenes in games past have almost all been simple, non-interactive cutscenes, but in Heavy Rain, you can be seen as controlling the scene. The game hasn't yet been released, so I haven't played it, but it will be interesting to see exactly how it's handled. Regardless, the scene just isn't attracting the Fox News-class outrage we've seen in years past.

Maybe certain Japanese games like Rapelay put things in perspective.