While the conflation of violent content with sexual themes is a false equivalence, I feel it's mainly being reflexively pointed to due to the stated motivation behind Sony's... let's be neutral and say content edition policy. They say they are doing this to protect children, and yet they see no issue risking small or pre-adolescent children from seeing horrific images of violence, which can trigger night terrors that can take a lot of therapy to undue (I say this from personal experience.) However apparently Sony is willing to risk a child having nightmares for the artistic merit of the expression of violence on their platform. Furthermore if they are to cite the #metoo movement as a reason, they might want to scrub their games of depictions of violence against women, as that is a bigger issue in the real world than whether a few borderline sexual content games are "teaching" pedophilia. Considering that in Mortal Kombat, 11 one can vivisect a wide variety of female characters over and over, it seems that Sony is fine with violence against women. And yes I know the context of the violence against women in Mortal Kombat is that they are all on a mystical island with a fight tournament going on, but the violence is happening regardless of context, and it seems little hollow to use such implausible contexts to support of depictions of violence against women while denying equally implausible contexts for suggestive/sexual content.
Speaking of implausible contexts...
Rich Irwin, Ohio
I can remember when the dirtiest thing on gaming consoles was "Leisure Suit Larry." The problem in keeping sexual content out of the kids' hands is it can't be done. Any kid determined to get that kind of software will find a way. Sony's efforts in this area are welcome, but it is going to take a combined effort by Sony and the parents to reduce demand. One solution: Have the boys play a game where it's the guy who's the lust object and see how they like being portrayed that way.
If I'm not mistaken, is this not the plot behind the Gal Gun series? Is this not the basis of several harem anime? Isn't Tenchi Muyo sort of like this, and more recently that Yuuna series? Are there not several dating sims, sexual or otherwise, where an unwilling or hesitant male character is being pursued by several female characters is the entire basis of the plot, up to and including women in positions of power or authority entering into romantic relationships with underage or borderline underage male characters? I feel this desire has been met, but not it a way that might satisfy the conveyance of sexual objectification of small children that this person desires.
Ultimately, The issue I have with Sony's heavy handed approach is not knowing how capricious they are going to be with it. It's obvious that bigger publishers won't be subject to the same guidelines if their profile is big enough, and more recently Red Dead Redemption II allowed player characters to hogtie women, and especially sex workers, and drag them off into the woods (for the purpose of teaching various rope escape techniques, I'm sure). Yet I feel Rockstar and 2K won't have to be subject to the same policies as smaller developers, even smaller publishers. If these are major content guidelines being laid down, it's important that every publisher be subject to them, and I would applaud Sony if they stood up to the bigger ones, if they are in fact doing this out of a need to protect children.
