Just when we thought
Gamers For Gaming didn't have enough to do, we hear word of yet more inanity regarding the censorship of videogames. According to the guys at
Gaming Today, they've recently had to remove two trailers for
Dark Sector because, many months after their official releases, the ESRB has suddenly decided it didn't like the "excessive or offensive content" found within.
At the request of the developers, Gaming Today has pulled the trailers, but is understandably confused as to why the ESRB has put the squeeze on this great looking game. As far as I'm aware, this is the first time a trailer has essentially been censored from the Internet in such a strange fashion, at least this long after they were cleared for release. The two trailers have been out since December 2006 and March 2007! Talk about an epic backpeddle and possible indication that something very screwed up is happening.
Hey, do you remember what we've been saying about slippery slopes? It's time to grab something to hold onto, folks, because it's sliding time. You can be sure that we here at Destructoid, like with the censorship trendsetter Manhunt 2, will keep our teeth sunk into this story and any stories regarding further censorship and outright hysteria over games. Right now I worry my fears are coming true that a disappointing new precedent may have been set.
[Thanks Burling, you 'da' man]
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So, I can find hardcore horse pornography, and that's okay.
I can see videos of a cruel, evil dictator being hung to death, and that's okay too.
But a video of a VIDEO GAME, is too much for me to handle?
This is ridiculous, and I for one am not for it.
Told ya it was about more than Manhunt.
Precedent Evil, guys. Precedent Evil.
Well this news doesn't fill me with much confidence.
Am i the only one who is confused by Jack Thompson not making any appearences recently?
All this BBFC and ESRB stuff would have had him jumping for joy on all the news channels i'd have thought.
dear god no
i dont like where this is going at all...
I really had no idea the ESRB had the power to ask for a game trailer to be removed from the internet. The internet is full of pr0n with farm animals, pictures of actual bodies being dismembered, and blogs devoted to Paris Hilton. And yet, a TRAILER to a video game is a problem for the ESRB. Isn't the point of trailers to video games to be over the top in order to help with the sales of the game? The trailers they asked Gaming Today to take off weren't even that bad.
This nonsense with the ESRB has to stop and people just need to lock their children away from the internet until their 18 if this and any other group out there has a problem with what's on it.
I think Jack Thompson sold his soul, and assimilate the whole ESRB. Resistance is futile..
"So, I can find hardcore horse pornography, and that's okay."
Somebody digg this, quick! Tazar loves hardcore horse porn!
(buried as old news)
This really pisses me off. If you are reading this and thinking, "big deal, who cares about some stupid trailers" then you aren't seeing the big picture. This unnecessary censorship has to stop... now.
For the record, I can verify that Tazar loves horse porn.
@Tazar, please quit clogging up my gmail with horse porn!!
Okay, yeah, that's frivolous banning. How is that any worse than, say, Mortal Kombat?
Censoring, I mean. Not banning. At least, hopefully not.
F1tches: Well, we kept saying last time that this issue wasn't just Manhunt 2. These trailers indicate that the slippery slope has just been made slicker. Personally, I thank the ESRB for proving GFG correct and continuing to keep the themes of censorship nice and warm while we work diligently backstage on the next phase of our plans. Dance puppets.
As somebody who pays his bills by cutting video game trailers, I've got to say this scares the bejeezus out of me. Jim, remember when I said I'd have to wait and see about the Manhunt 2 disasterbacle?
My wait is over, apparently. THAT was quick...
Welcome to the team, Reg. :)
I've never lived a censored life. When I was 5 my parents let me watch Commando, Revenge of the Nerds and all that ridiculous crap. I turned out pretty awesome, so what the hell?! I cannot condone censorship of any kind and this is just stepping over the line of stupid
@D
My family never censored me, or told me that I couldn't see this or that.
I'm a model citizen, I work hard, pay bills and taxes. Hell I've never even had a speeding ticket in my life before. I and only I should be able to decide what is right for me.
ESRB asked the devs and the devs asked the sites that host the vids. It wasn't mandatory
BlueWolf: Read what they said carefully. They worded it like a request, but the message was simple - the trailer is not to be made available for download.
I can understand wanting to keep "offensive" material away from kids, but keeping it away from adults is a complete violation of the first amendment (at least in the US). I'll bet that argument would hold up in court, too.
'Hold on to your hats gamers, we are on our little sled staring down the 'safe gaming' hill, someone is pouring water onto the snow, the ESRB fuckers are about to give us a nice shove and nothing but fluffy bunnies and kittens awaits us at the bottom.'
This is just the beginning. Wait till they decide that Counter-Strike is not too violent, but offensive to those nationalities with the reputation for harboring terrorists! First step: violence censorship Second Step: Political Censorship. I'm curious what authority the ESRB has to tell a gaming site to pull a trailer. They're a bunch of fucking game raters, not the surpeme gaming gurus. It's like telling a movie studio two months after their trailer was released to pull it off the airwaves and movie reels.
What blows me away about this is that they've done it to an OLD trailer. One that they've known about for months. I suppose it could just be a coincidence that it happened now, but right after the Manhunt situation? (I'm fucking sick of typing the word "manhunt.") Are they just scared, or are they just seizing the opportunity to clamp down on content? I wish I knew their motivations, minus all the PR bullshit.
@Wolf
Your saying that the devs found this trailer to be offensive 6 months -1 year after making it???
This is just a thought but perhaps the ESRB has begun to step up its involvement in gaming so that the Government won't have to.
As soon as the ESRB is found to be incompetent you can bet that some politicians/lobby groups will make a push for a tax-funded, government board to regulate our hobby.
I'm not saying I agree with what's going on with Manhunt 2 and now with game trailers, because I don't.
In fact, I'm very opposed to the idea.
But at the same time, it's not that hard to picture the even MORE evil alternative.
Down with ESRB! WHo's with me??
So, does anybody have the old trailers? Time for a good ol' fashion Diggfest!
no the devs want to make the esrb happy as they want a m rating or lower so making the esrb happy was the reason why they sent emails in. As a site owner you got the email from the devs asking to take it down. Some will and some wont I was just pointing out that it wasn't mandatory but Jim points out in the email it seem like the sites didn't have a choice but within the next 4 hours I expect people to upload the video to sites like youtube and others to fight the powers that be.
wheres the gaming industries larry flint? or better yet, lets get larry flint on board. sometimes it takes a man with a lot of money and a gold wheelchair to convince the idiots that be that censorship is the opposite of what this country was founded on.
getting rediculous.... but if they want to keep this bullshit up time to be fair and give AO ratings to Gears of War, RE4 and many more games....... then we will maybe get some game lawyers that can do something about the retardedness.... cause apparently take two lawyers can't handle it
Someone should digg this, and the youtube video of the trailer as well. I don't need the ESRB telling me what I can and can't watch - or even suggesting what I should and shouldn't watch.
Basically, it seems to be going down like this - The ESRB can't *make* websites take it down, but they've already managed to censor the internet through Gaming Today who respected the pressured wishes of the devs. The devs are clearly being leaned on and most likely don't want their game threatened so are gonna have to comply. That's my take on the matter.
And I don't like it one fucking bit.
Nor do I. I expect some heat to come bioshocks way soon as int he game you can kill children from a story I found recently.
Damn, this is starting to get very very very f'ed up.
Thomas Paine wouldn't have stood for this bullshit. Nor Ben Franklin.
What we need to do is form an Illumnati/Masonry secret society bent on destroying all censorship of video games.
You know Mark Rein from Epic?
Secret Brotherhood member.
Will Wright?
Same.
David Jaffe?
Yup.
You were right Jim, it's about more than Manhunt and it's happening faster then we thought. So, when do we get our decoder rings?
invisible universe: Check the Gamers for Gaming link. It's no secret, but we have our society.
Wolf: I've been worried about Bioshock for a while. I will be crushed, seriously crushed, if a game as complex and dark and deep as Bioshock appears to be gets banned. It will set back the evolution of gaming as a storytelling medium back at LEAST five years.
Lets not even bring up postal3 for the pc and xbox360...
i didnt know that esrb even rated or restricted game trailers :S
I'm just confused on why they decided to pull them now. I can't find a reason to pull trailers on a game this far before the release of the game (Q1 2008) or for that matter at all. Nothing in either of those trailers stood out for being excessively gore from what I can remember. This whole thing seems to be quite a mystery!!
Jim, thanks for the mention. We (Gaming Today) received the request from the devs, as you mentioned, and at their request, we pulled the trailers.
The thing that concerns me about the situation is the slippery slope that you mention. I've always thought that the idea of trailers was to give a good idea of the game content, and given that the ESRB may or may not have rated Dark Sector already (most sites are still listing it as RP), I'm curious as to what their take on the game as a whole is.
If they've rated the game already , and it's not AO, what's the issue with the trailers? Are they more graphic than the game? Or is it just a case of stimulus = response in the wake of the Manhunt 2 craziness?
Ah, I missed the days when cencorship was almost a waste of time, music was more appreciated, and kids got whipped when they did wrong and nobody cried abuse.
Nowdays we got people sueing over anything under the sun, kids feeling (and almost knowing) they got more power than parents, and things on the internet (what many say is our last "freedom of speech") being banned by something not even remotely as bad as a majority of things on there.
When you really look at the past compared to now, at least with the simple thing as music, games, and movies, it's amazing how much some simple things have changed... for the worse. Now we get trailers banned from EVERYBODY, including adults... sad... really sad.
And what happened to the whole "enter your birthdate" to view a trailer? Is that little (annoying) process obsolete now so we just remove content on a whim?
RonW: Thank YOU for taking the time to comment here. Listen, we're working on something to try and fight back against the slippery slope, could you email me at jim@destructoid.com so I can have a word with you about what we're up to? I feel you and us are on the right wavelength here.
Am I missing something cause there some videos that I would call a teaser!
http://www.gamevideos.com/video/channel/Trailers
This is something you pull from a site.
I found nothing offensive or excessive in that trailer. In fact the game looks pretty sweet. It's basically GOW without guns, which itself is RE4 without zombies. Actually now that I think about it, this game's gonna suck.
This is crazy, censorship on the internet? Not only is it unheard of, but its also pretty much goes against everything that the internet stands for. I'm confident that there is no way for this to be enforced long term, and that this is just the ESRB using there newly realized power (A power that Manhunt 2 just happened to make them aware of) and that tactics will change to combat them directly.
I think a bigger problem is the fact that in overstepping there bounds they are in turn bringing themselves into a direct collision course with the entire community, but they are more like a canoe vs. an aircraft carrier. When the eventual conflict comes and they are abolished or completely de-ligitimized, we loose a good check against the people that complain about gaming corrupting the youth.
I'm more than a little pissed at Rockstar on top of all this. It looks like Manhunt 2 is going to be another shallow game that is violent for the sake of being violent (Like the first). And its entire press campaign is based around creating insane amounts of negative press. They seem to have done a great job, at the expense of the entire industry. Its almost like Rockstar picked a fight with a cop over something that was so ridiculous that even the people that backed them couldn't agree with what they did.
Its as if they gave the Jack Thompsons of the world the reason they needed
The ESRB historically has a pretty lax set of restrictions for game trailers. When I'm cutting a trailer, I always have to ensure that the ESRB rating and content descriptor are clearly visible for at least four seconds, and if the trailer contains any content that could be considered "mature" (blood, violence, drinking, language, nudity, etc.), it has to be placed behind an age gate. I've had trailers sent back for recutting if the age gate wasn't an option and I had to remove a few frames of blood here and there, but to get banned entirely? I'd have to Tyler Durden the whole damn thing.
seriously , if they fux with Bioshock , i'll be terribly saddened
The ESA doesn't have anything to do with the ESRB, correct? As far as management or anything like that, I mean.
......THIS was censored? God fucking dammit, this is shifting from slippery slope to freefall a lot faster than I thought it would. Nut gud. Nut gud.
I'm pretty sure they put the trailer back up cause this is the one from March 01, 2007. I could be mistaken but I don't think so. It's the one with all the finishing move and people getting torn apart lol.
http://www.gamevideos.com/video/id/9703
Crap, forget that last post it's on gamevideos not gaming today my bad.
A freaking trailer?
I don't particularly care of this game itself, but if it turns out to get a 15 by the BBFC (and that's probably not likely after seeing the Manhunt 2 debacle) then obviously something fishy is going on.
Also, I didn't think the ESRB are even capable of censoring TRAILERS from the INTERNET, considering that ESRB's ratings only affect America.
If FingerTehHand's point is true, which it sounds true to me, then I wonder what the hell's going on exactly?
We are slowing losing our amendments. Freedom of speech is gone.
Gamers are physco killers now? When did this happen? What's next? They should try to ban oil or money thats what people are killing other people over anyway, it's not because of a game nobody has ever played(manhunt 2). It's definitely not because of trailers for a game. Why not ban the trailers for Hostel 2? Or those commercials for Charm School on Vh1? Atleast I have a choice as to whether or not I watch a trailer for a game.
Perhaps it was when the main character "de-jawed" that creature, or when he decapitated another guy close-up (personally my favorite parts) - whatever the cause for this, it is insane. This game is no worse than RE4 (actually, it looks like a pretty blatant ripoff of RE4, but that's not the issue here).
This has to be stopped. Now.
I do worry for BioShock. It's got the M rating now, but look at the long list of things it got an M for. If a trailer can be taken down months after release, what's to stop the all-powerful ESRB from changing a rating? Still have over a month before release...
wow, this is getting scarier by the day. pretty soon the rating system will collapse, and we will only have E rated games.
and i don't mean all games, kiddy or adult will be g rated.
i'm saying barbie and harvest moon are going to be all we've got.
Rated E for Boring
(it doesn't gotta make sense)
See, this type of thing has to be an all or nothing. Everytime they take one thing down, 10 other things, worse things, come in it's place or are mentioned. Why not take out the whole mortal kombat franchise... or god of war... hell, take mario bros. so none of our kids will drown themselves going down pipes and toilets!!!!
Uhg... just thinking about it hurts my head. Who the hell do they think they are...?
btw How do you join Gamers for gaming?
Christiangamer: Stay tuned to Destructoid.
Right now though? Be a gamer and give a damn about the respect our favourite industry deserves.
We'll have more GFG info for you guys soon!
So long as they keep their hands off PC gaming we'll have an island to go to. This censorship is just a good way to piss people off enough to fuck with you back. This is just the chain of the geriatric bureaucracy twisting their connections until it reaches a place like the ESRB where there is some power available to get that section of the media to act the way they want it to act. If people would learn to sit down and well...fucking learn about what they're angry about, we might not have as many problems with what happens in our society. This stuff isn't harming anyone but the paranoid, over-protective, ignorant, hypocritical, and arrogant mothers (at least they are the ones I argue this point with the most. there are other groups just as bad). These are the people who will just hop on their soapbox and have a good ol' time telling everyone how THEIR opinion is the only one worth living for...damn I hate living