Sims 2 "Worse than Hot Coffee for GTA"; Possible Ban?

Sims 2 "Worse than Hot Coffee for GTA"; Possible Ban?

(yes, its already happened in China). Anyways, the infamous lawyer Jack Thompson (at least infamous to us hardcore gamers), the guy who managed to tag San Andreas with an AO rating is trying to get TS2 banned, and, pardon mon francais, but hes pulling stuff out of his butt to get it banned. An article on Gamespot explains further.

Essentialy the fact that theres a cheat to show a smooth mannakin like body merits a ban. And yet he says that they're modeled with all the nudity, which is a lie, so he probably needs to get disbarred anywyas.

My opinion is that anyone who has the degree of intelligent to decide right and wrong (from my life experince gaming since I was 4, 13.) should play ANYTHING they want. I really blame bad parenting for those who are trying to kill gaming. I mean, the kids who imitate VGs and go crazy are the ones who were messed up anyways.

 

I've read about this sort of thing in recent days. It didn't interest me a great deal other than intellectually so I haven't stored away the memory of where or what game(s), exactly, were under attack. However I did think at the time that it was only a matter of time before such strange and peverted people turned their attention to TS2.

"Peverted"? You bet. I'd as soon take my chances in the rubble of the post-apocalypse with a few honest-to-goodness 'deviants' who knew how to do useful stuff (including the provision of nipples for female sims for those players that find the absence disturbing and offensive) than with the sewer-bound minds of a pseudo-moralistic hegemony whose only agendum is to make us all feel filthy simply for having normal human feelings, emotions and desires.

Yes I am a moderator but that won't stop me from having, nor expressing, my personal opinions. Wholesomeness begins with the whole. The moment we take away parts of the whole -- for whatever reason -- we are firstly challenging the correctness and purity of our own ( discrete and deeply personal) religious and/or moral beliefs and secondly we are debasing our own experience of life by seeking to deny others the right to learn the same way we ourselves did: by trial and error and by an innate curiosity that thirsts for discovery and for new knowledge.

OK Rant over. I am calm now. Thank you Random0 for setting me off on one.

 

The first thing I thought when I read this article was, "Oh, no, pedophiles can use pencils to draw naked pictures of children! Better outlaw those, too." Personally, it never occured to me that anyone would make their sim kids naked, and I wonder about someone who came up with that idea all on his own as Mr. Thompson apparantly did.

Mirelly makes an excellent point, too. There is nothing inherently wrong or evil about the naked human body, and teaching our children that there is does nothing but send them confusing messages and open the way for all sorts of issues in adulthood.

I really don't expect anything to come from this, though. The GTA hot coffee mod was put in the game by the manufacturer, whereas the only way to get true nudity in TS2 is through 3rd-party content, so there is really no way EA could be held responsible. That would be like my mother suing Paramount for that time she caught me sneaking into a rated-R movie at 14.

 

Actually, it has been held to be illegal in some cases to have painted or drawn pictures of fictional naked children. This has been upheld as child pornography in some courts. I speak as a long-time member of the National Coalition Against Censorship and Feminists for Free Expression, both worthy organizations. NCAC especially is an activist group and deserves your support.

Today's news is that the newest version of Grand Theft Auto has been denied a rating and must be pulled from mainstream stores. This is due to the secret, hacker-only sex content.

What blows my mind is that the violence on GTA isn't the problem, nor is the seemingly endless murder and torture of young women on primetime television cop shows. We can have a reasonable discussion about whether that's over the top. But it doesn't seem possible to have a reasonable discussion with many people about nipples.

 

Too flaming right, Jiko! If only all the prigs could wake up to the insanity of their rhetoric, which essentially boils down to this: the filth doesn't damage me but I want it banned because it will certainly damage (almost) everybody else. Oh my! If it wasn't so ******* (those are my asterisks) funny for its sheer bloodyminded arrogance we'd still have to laugh at it to stop ourselves weeping.

 

The irony of all this is that if video games cause people to do the things they see depicted, why is it that most people do not go about serially murdering random pedestrians, but *DO* go about having promiscuous sex with random people, something they did *NOT* see in a video game? Frankly, I don't really see such a thing in a video game as being a problem: If anything, anyone who plays these games is considerably less likely to get laid.

 

A paedophile will harm children without any 'encouragement' from sims 2. Believe me, there are more graphic images out there on the internet and in other places than there are on sims 2. Why does this attorney stop at sims 2 with his accusations? Why not go to Toys R us and remove all the real dolls etc? A paedophile could just as well go and buy a ken and Barbie and do things with those, or buy other branded dolls and act out things on those. It's the same thing.

Ugh, this attorney has no idea. Now i'm all for stopping paedophiles as i know directly what can happen (a distant relation of mine has been attacked as a child, and my brother was attacked aged 11), but believe me, a paedophile has all the ideas and plans in their mind already. I highly doubt that a paedophile will think, "oh i don't know what to do, let me go and buy sims 2 and try a few things". They will just do it regardless, because they are sick, disgusting, filthy people. They access porn through a wide range of means and i am quite sure that the last thing they will look towards is the sims 2.

I can understand the comment about san andreas, but come on, a paedophile already has plans/ideas about what they want to do. They don't need to buy a videogame to act it out.

I'm pretty stressed out now, painful thing to talk about, but whilst i am all for stopping paedophiles, i strongly believe that sims 2 is not a factor. if people believe it is, then why not stop the sale of dolls too.

 

Video games don't affect children. Take Pacman for example. You don't see everyone running around in darkened halls, chomping pills and listening to repetitive music.

 

Eh, I don't really buy into this nonsense at all. I mean, if people really did all run out and imitate video games, we'd have a lot more violence, and a lot less promiscuous sex with random people. As it stands, reality works the other way around, and they sure as hell didn't learn it from video games. I actually believe that simulated-sex in video games would reduce the amount of this going on for real. Why? Because people who play games for that are losers who are not going to get laid.

 

George Orwell's 1984 is a thought-provoking read ... Big Brother here we come.

 

OMG!!! What is wrong with me? I must be a horrible parent!! I am raising a future pediphile! Someone should take me out and beat me because I play with a anti-censor patch on my game, and I allow my teenaged 14 year old son to play it also!!! Bad mommy, bad!!!!

You know, we have so many real problems in this world. Why do a___holes like this have to go around making up trouble? I want to know where in the game does it allow someone, even with mods, to molest a child? Warn me so I don't upload it by accident.

I did accidently download one on TS1 that changed all females defult PJ's to black frilly things and fishnet stockings, including the little girls (shudder). I got rid of that quickly, let me tell you.

I wonder if that arrogant SOB ever sat down and actually played TS2?? Oh, no, he's too busy writing legal breifs and scheduling press conferences. He's running for something, rest assured!! He's a politician, something much more evil, IMHO than a Maxis Game Programer.

I told my son about it, and he said, "He sucks! Mom, someone needs to go break his neck!" (sigh) must be something he learned from playing too many video games.

But you know what? With him playing video games all the time, I know where he is, I know what he's doing, and I know he's not doing drugs or boosting cars or getting into fights or getting some little girl pregnant. I guess the "honorable" Mr. Thompson would rather him be out doing that.

 

I guess that Ken and Barbie must be outlawed as well. After all any resourceful child might well take a felt marker and add realistic detail ... that would be too awful to contemplate. The Mattel veeps should be incarcerated forthwith. I mean the doll isn't even clearly marked and sold as suitable for teenagers only.

But if you feel strongly about this issue (and if you are here reading this then you ought to ... you should be plaguing your congressman (http://www.house.gov/writerep/); starting up a campaign at your school and in your community.

The man, Thompson, is utter fool (at best) and a dangerous pervert at worst (IMO). His misguided and stupid campaigning threatens to destroy an industry's well-supported and mostly respected self-governance and all this not because of excessive violence which has any amount of evidential, albeit arguable, matter to condemn it but because of (cartoon) nudity. It is time to arrest this campaign before it becomes a serious bandwagon.

On the other hand all that will happen if the man does succeed will be the destruction of the ESRB's fragile legitimacy, followed by a wave of new businesses that will surely start up to fill the void left by Walmart and its ilk if video games come out of mainstream retailing.

For sure we will not see EA, id, Sierra and all the others disappear, cease trading, or surrender their freedom of operation. The US may be the world's largest market but it is not the world's only market. The rest of world might even benefit from this fiasco because games giants might just start aiming games at more international audience. It may be a pain to design for 30+ languages but the developed Eurasian block has half a billion well educated, liberal-minded consumers with plenty of disposable income.

Just my thoughts. (You asked for them, Josh )

 

Hahaha, that's utter nonsense. The internet is far more worse than any video game, Grand Theft Auto or TS2.

I've seen far worse things by the time I was 12 from the net (it was spam mail) than from The Sims even with the hack that takes away the blur.

Paedophila is certainly bad, but if a pervert really wanted to see naked children, he'd go find a real child, not gaze lustfully as computer generated child steps in and out of the bathtub/shower.

That lawmaker just loves the limelight and his accusations have no grounds logically.

 

Of course video games can affect behavior. So does church, reading books, having friends and being reared by parents. We learn by watching, imitating, doing, trying. Kids will try things. If they hear hate speech, they will use hate speech. And vice versa. It is up to parents to teach critical thinking, ethics, and responsibility.

The United States sensibility about this kind of thing is second only to that in the countries our government purports to dislike. The rest of the world - think Brazil, Iceland, New Zealand, Tobago, Japan, Switzerland, etc etc. - is far less afraid of real and imagined sexual content and much more relaxed about ordinary human behavior.

I used to laugh at this stuff more - before the Patriot Act. I once knew that no matter how much ranting and raving was done and how much fear this cohort showed about even the most benign of nudity (like breastfeeding) - I once knew that our culture was on a long trend toward social liberalization and equality and openness.

Now I find myself, at 48, a child of the 60s and 70s, watching the culture become rigid, reactionary, and full of hate and I SEE IT BEING PUT INTO LAW.

I do think it's not enough for us to complain to each other here and feel superior and right. We have to be active in response. WE HAVE TO WRITE LETTERS, MAKE PHONE CALLS, SEND FAXES. E-mail petitions are worthless to legislators. PICK UP YOUR TELEPHONE AND CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVE. Write a letter to the editor of your newspaper. TALK to your neighbors. MAKE NOISE.

 

Meh, I don't really buy it that video games are the issue here. Kids have been playing "soldier", "cowboys and indians", and other such violent entertainments since before games were invented. And despite all this "violence" in video games, most of society's violence is committed by people who can't afford computers or video games. What's that tell you?

I say it's that violent video games don't make you violent, it's that violent people play violent games.

 

I hear you Jiko and it bothers me too that our society is so fully controlled by reactionary fools (who just happen to be the same people who seemed to be as cool as "we" were way back when we had no responsibilities). Why is it the case that most teenagers grow into the same ignorant, bigotted old farts that their parents were? It is one thing to wish to be a better parent to one's own children but most young parents take that responsibility irresponsibly. They either seek to lock their children away from all possible harm or make no effort at all each as as bad as the other. Though it is possible to argue that the former is the more serious form of abuse; if only because it is systematic and governed only by glandular fears and intolerance. A total lack of parental care and responsibility might be forgiveable on the grounds that ignorance, poverty and lack of opportunity are more substantially the fault of the wider aspects of human society. Whereas trying to be better than your forebearers by taking their example and amplifying it is so mind-bogglingly faulty a philosophy as to beggar description ... let alone further explanation!

 

What I was saying there was toungue-in-cheek ... I was actually taking a dig at the rave scene.

Children and everyone else learn from the sum of their experiences. Some not as well as others, some better than others, and thats what makes us all unique. As a parent you need to make sure that they are not gratuitously exposed to blatant sex, violence and suchlike, but at the same time not overly protect them so they end up as a naive adult. I don't need no thought police.

Frankly the human imagination is a far more dangerous thing than a game or movie with some sex scenes and violence. People should have ratings! Actually, lets give everyone prozac, that way nobody will be violent.