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Comment by mrcharles | Hacker News Reader

This kind of argument is exactly the kind which leads to the problems. First, you assume that AO means sex. Second, you assume that if it's AO, it can't be subjectively of high quality.

The easiest way to shoot down your arguments is to google lists of movies rated NC-17, which is the rating which disallows anyone under 18 from watching a movie, and which is the functional equivalent of ESRB's AO.

Among that list you will see movies like Requiem for a Dream, and documentaries like This Film is Not Yet Rated, which is actually very relevant to this whole discussion. (The film actually chose to be unrated, as being rated would have earned the documentary NC-17).

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Censorship does happen. Stanley Kubrick's last film, Eyes Wide Shut, was censored to avoid an NC-17 rating. You're correct NC-17 movies do get made, but how often can you go to your local cinema and see an NC-17 movie?

Only in the US release -- extra bodies were added in to the orgy scene to hide certain things.

I saw it when it came out in the uncensored version and, frankly, the less said about the whole movie the better. Stanley Kubrick made some of the greatest films of all time... and then he made Eyes Wide Shut as an old man because it gave him an excuse to look at boobs for six months.

True it was in the US release. I guess I assumed that since we're talking about censoring nudity we were talking primarily about the US market.

This is getting off topic, but I don't think it was a bad movie, although certainly not his best. Despite the nudity, the film is strangely un-erotic. I think you are unfair about Kubrick's motives in making the movie. I also think there's much that can be said about the movie, For example: http://www.collativelearning.com/EYES%20WIDE%20SHUT%20analys...

Edited: Terrible grammar.

I've seen a lot of NC-17 equivalent movies here in Canada, in theatres, but that's likely because our ratings system is significantly more permissive than the MPAA's. It does involve going to smaller theatres a lot of the time, but that doesn't bother me at all.

But the cinema argument is also a bit of a red herring -- your DVD player doesn't refuse to play a DVD of an NC-17 film. Movies have two (or three, if you count TV) vectors for delivery, games do not (in that making different platform versions is often the equivalent to making different movies).

I agree it is a red herring in general. That's why I asked when do you see NC-17 movies in a cinema (in the US).

Hey, I'm not assuming that brilliant and artistically valid video games with adult content can't exist. I'm just cynically pointing out that they're incredibly unlikely to actually get made.

Movies are a very different sort of art form, with a very different sort of maturity level. Also, I think it's easier to have explicit (or weird) sex in a movie without it becoming pornography [ * ] than it is in a video game since in a video game you are the protagonist. A Clockwork Orange is (I assume) rated NC-17 due largely to its rather nasty rape scene... try imagining a video game version of that and you can see we've crossed the line from Serious Art to Fucked Up Shit.

Anyway, anyone who wants to develop an effectively NC-17 rated game is welcome to write one for the PC (or Mac, or Linux!) where there are no gatekeepers to stop you. I have difficulty imagining what a non-sucky one would look like, but maybe I just have a limited imagination.

[ * ] Oh, and if people want to make games which are just pornography I don't have a problem with that... except that I suspect they'll wind up as bad video games and bad pornography.

Well the irony of developing an NC-17 game for PC would be that the kind of budget you'd need to make a truly quality AO game would likely outstrip the amount PC games make. So trying to do an AO game on PC would really just result in a bad game that would further your own arguments.

It's a pretty nasty catch 22, really.

Didn't you say upthread that the most lucrative market for games is 13 year olds? How much money do you think there is in AO games, anyways? (Serious question).

Well, the average age of gamers is over 30 at this point in time. I'm 31, and a game developer, but honestly, I'm finding games less and less satisfying as they continue to cater to the teenage boy in me, who is less and less as each year passes. This year I have played almost nothing, to be honest.

I suspect there would be a large market for some truly mature games (and now I'm not talking about AO so much as games that have mature content, not tits and blood), but it's hard to say for certain because the big companies have decided that all the money is in the 13-16 year old range, and that's where games stay firmly entrenched.

It's true that there's a lot of money there, but I think a lot of it is simply that that is where all the games are being directed. It's a feedback loop, where more money is put in to 13-16, and so more money is made there.

Once developers start leaving childish stories and content behind, and moving on to meaningful and emotional content, or more serious and complex content, we should see a shift towards selling significantly more at higher age brackets.

I was personally disappointed in Heavy Rain because it was the potential for a mature game sullied by horrible controls and interface. Had they simply stuck to more traditional control schemes I have no doubt that the game would have done much better. Of course, that wouldn't have made the writing any better, but at least it would have been a step in that direction.

Honestly, I'm looking forward to indie game development becoming more and more prevalent, where developers not beholden to marketing can influence bigger development by branching out and exploring new territory.

I guess maybe it's not the specific answer you were hoping for, and somewhat meandering, but I do believe it's simply a case of money-in-money-out. If people looked for it, it would be there.

Interesting response.

Also: doesn't Blizzard make metric crap-tons of money on PC games? Isn't that a pretty powerful counterargument to "AO games can't make money on the PC"?

No, because Blizzard is now making online-only games which are A) immune (or at least resistant) to piracy, B) are built with an art style that is compatible with low-end PCs, but not so much with the realism which would even remotely trigger an AO rating, as the issues become stronger the closer you get to photo-realism.

One could argue Valve as well, with respect to PC games, but they have their own reasons for being successful, which involves building and supporting a game with multiple releases and constant attention which is atypical of the industry.

Yes, it's possible to make money on PC, in the same way it's possible to make money with an iPhone game or a search portal. That doesn't mean that doing so is even remotely viable for the fast majority of people who would wish to do so.

I'd be interested to know what you envisage this hypothetical high-budget non-crap AO-rated console game as actually being like. Because my main problem with this discussion is that I can't imagine a video game that incorporates explicit sex without it being... well, just a particularly embarrassing form of porn.

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