Has the industry reached a point where Mature video games have become much more accepted by the general public? Since the Sexbox incident on Fox a couple of years ago we have seen games like GTA: Episodes from Liberty City, Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age: Origins and Heavy Rain released with no large public outcry from major media or government officials. We are talking about games that have mild to strong sexual content or have some form of male female nudity. Each of these games have had either a previous game in the series or at least had the developer face public/media or legal issues in the past. GTA suffered the Hot Coffee legal battle. Developer Bioware suffered Fox news Sexbox issue for the first Mass Effect. Heavy Rain's developer had to make cuts of nudity to it's previous game (Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenhiet) before it could see a North American release (with a rating below AO). Jump forward two years and we've had full frontal male nudity in GTA: Lost & Damned, multiple sexual partners in both Gay Tony & Mass Effect/Dragon Age as well as female nudity in Heavy Rain and no major news organization has made a public stink about it and no government official has asked for hearings.
Even violence in video games seems to have become less of a factor to the public. The "No Russian" scene from Modern Warfare 2 only seemed to get a mild amount of attention from the media and then nothing. Are we at a point where we don't have to fear the government coming in and taking away are mature video games or having the ESRB force cuts of content for fear they will be told they are not doing their job correctly and the government should step in to protect us?
Video games are slowly moving out of a conservative interpretation (might be the wrong thing to say) and defying the reactions of taboos; although it doesn't mean that developers should 100% un-restrain themselves and put naked cartoon pussy everywhere. Despite some situations the ESRB is doing a fine job and having a federal system is considered a nightmare for most of us.
Yes, I'd agree that there has been less open controversy, but I don't think thats due to people being more accepting of games, just that they still look down on them in general and have bigger things to complain about.
@Meteora: I think there have been a couple that have passed away since "sexbox", not sure of the ones who may have been hired. I wonder if younger newscasters would be enough to prevent negative news stories on video games or if it would have to be the older more senior higher ups at the news stations that would have to go too?
There is probably some truth in this or the public just isn't as easily brought to media induced frenzy by the sexual content in the games. A couple of years have passed since Mass Effect was going to corrupt the youth of America and warp their fragile little minds. But, the 24-hour news cycle demands that the next controversy bring bigger ratings, be more sensationalistic, and full of warnings that the following video contains graphic images; please let's think about the children! So, following those expectations, the mass media couldn't really attack more recent displays of virtual adult interaction since they were no worse than what had been shown before. To incite a new hysteria, they needed "fresh" meat and they found it in a four-year old PC game not for sale outside of its native region. After fanning the flames of hysteria over Rapelay, anything that appeared in Dragon Age or God of War III is tame by comparison. What's going to be the next great Satan? Who knows, maybe lolicon games (again not legally available) or furries (akin to zoology) or something we just haven't seen yet. Just who is this "Cooking Momma" and how does she "make it better"?
Hopefully what we are experiencing right now is a "changing point" in the history of video games. With more and more "non-gaming individuals" playing games thanks to the Wii, DS and soon to be Sony Move and Microsoft Natal, the gaming industry itself may have finally gotten beyond the major hurdles of growing up and become more of a respected industry like movies and music?
Someone always has to take the first bullet. After that it's old news. How many times can you report a "Hot Coffee" incident and expect people to care? Hell, it took Rapeplay to get the media buzzing recently. Top that!
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