While we've got Larry on the brain, it's an opportune time to talk about what's been coined "the chilling effect"-- that's to say, the idea that media backlash and rigid oversight results in proactive self-censorship of game creators, who fear fines, prosecution and summarily being "Hot Coffee'd"-- even in the absence of de facto legal censorship (see Wired's Chris Kohler's take on it here).Vivendi released a new Larry collection in October 2006-- with some omissions, most notably the entire 7th game, which was culled from the compilation apparently over one five-second easter egg that could've been easily removed. As Kohler notes, this title was sold in Wal-Mart a decade ago-- making it hard to ignore that the chilling effect is not only "alive and well," but steadily encroaching on our medium as time passes.
What I'd like to know is-- who buys a Leisure Suit Larry game without at least some idea of what they're getting? Is there anyone who'd buy a game called "Passionate Patti in the Land of the Pulsating Pectorals", or "Shape Up or Slip Out!" and anticipate "tasteful" sexual content-- or, more absurdly, no sexual content at all? Especially in this context, where what's being released is essentially a compilation intended for fans of the series-- in other words, people who've played most, if not all, of these games before?
Only two situations could cause problems for Vivendi-- one, somebody makes a blind purchase. They see a cartoon box and grab it without examining it even briefly. Two, somebody buys a game for their own use, leave it where their kid can find it, and it falls into the wrong little hands. Either way the issue is not that the content is obscene, but that the consumer is ignorant. Largely, though, an LSL collection will be marketed towards, and bought by, previous consumers of the brand, or by general retro gaming fans who've heard about it. Either way, pre-emptive censorship on Vivendi's part smacks of a paranoia dangerous to free speech.
I played a lot of games in my early teens that contained content that would have earned it a "M" rating. There was no ESRB system in those days-- only quite distinct warnings all over the packaging and enclosed literature that the game wasn't appropriate for children (and as such, by logical inference, may offend adults). That was the era of the (god-awful) live action adventure game, which means I saw a couple live-action sex scenes. I remember being positively stricken by the disordered sexual psychology featured prominently in Phantasmagoria 2-- still, nobody stopped me from playing it. I was not, however, allowed to play an overtly sexual title like Voyeur; Phantasmagoria 2 was primarily a horror game, albeit one with adult elements.
The hindsight of youth might be coloring my opinion, but Phantasmagoria 2 is up there as one of my scariest experiences in any media, period. I lost weeks of sleep, but all in all, I loved it. My parents gave a lot of credit to my sensibility, in hindsight-- my father, in particular, was quite tech-savvy and often wrote about games himself, so isn't that they just had no idea what I was being exposed to. It's that they knew I could handle it, figured I might benefit more from doing my own exploration than I would from being artificially sheltered.
The reason the ESRB was conceived was to allow adults to avoid giving inappropriate content to their kids-- and to judge, as responsible adults, for themselves what kind of content they felt was appropriate for their own consumption. It's time for some consumer responsibility, and the realization that one attends a movie, reads a book, or plays a video game at his own risk. The consumer is responsible for evaluating whether media is congruent to their value system-- and in the case that they misjudge, they can simply shut the book, leave the theater, turn off the game.
I say it all the time-- I'm not a parent, nor do I have imminent plans to become one. But if I had a twelve-year-old, I'd let him or her play GTA. Because a game doesn't instruct children in values or appropriate behavior-- I'm the one who's responsible for that. If my child has an inappropriate relationship with gaming, then maybe my child has larger, unmet emotional needs.
What strikes me now is that not only would I, in the current age, be legally barred from purchasing a game like Phantasmagoria 2, but more likely than not, such a game would have a snowflake's chance in Hell of ever making it past the conceptual stage. It'd never even come to be. That sucks.
--Though, I guess it's not such a bad thing if we never see any more of those creepy live action games, with the terrible acting and jerky animation.
