8:30 am
If Nick and Geoff (and the rest of the Internet) are to be believed then Mass Effect 2 is one of the best gaming experiences of all time. We will have our official review up soon but I think it’s safe to say that the game is going to score very well indeed.
However one slightly depraved Internet individual has picked up that there is a distinct lack of side boob in ME2 compared to that scene in the original.
Stanley Woo has quickly hit back at the subtle claims of bowing to the man, and he is being pretty forceful about it. According to Stanley
“It’s kinda funny that this topic keeps coming up over and over again. People who claim to be old enough and mature enough to handle sex and nudity in a game seem to believe that any lack of sex and nudity in the game is a sign of self-censorship. They generally don’t believe that a game can be called "mature" without explicit sex and/or nudity.
Let me tell you, folks, that as a developer full of mature individuals, we are also free to not have explicit sex and/or nudity in our games, no matter what you, Fox News, the government, or Bunky the Wonder Clown has to say about it. We have never considered it a "problem," it is simply a choice we have made and we have every right to make that choice.”
Ouch… someone doesn’t like criticism much, but to be honest I do understand where the guy is coming from. The Internet masses cannot all be appeased and there is always a vocal minority that cause a huge stir over nothing.
Just to ensure no one missed his point Stanley posted again a little later,
“You (random forum poster) are absolutely correct. It is not our job to parent the child or determine what content is acceptable or unacceptable for our players. But on the other hand, it is not your job to dictate what content we include or don’t include in our games. Game development is not a collaborative effort between developers and gamers; it is a dictatorship, where we alone determine what content goes into our game. You the player make the choice whether that content is acceptable to you (and/or your family) or not.”
I predict he is going to get burned for this one though, with the world currently still securely wedged into the social media phenomenon the mass market doesn’t like being dictated to.
Though I still personally feel he is right, democracies are perfect (as can be) for running countries but when you get down to companies I do believe a dictatorship is the only viable solution. BioWare obviously works amazingly well internally as a company and I don’t suspect some random negativity about side boob is going to dramatically alter the way they create games moving forward.
