Ubisoft censors nude statues in Assassin's Creed: Origins' Discovery Tour mode
- Thread starter Plumpbiscuit
- Start date
Having played the thing, I mostly find it funny. All the nude statues I've come across just have seashells on them. It's like some prude vandal decided that enough is enough, trained in parkour and made it their life goal to put seashells on all of the boobs and dongs across the land.
If Ubisoft couldn't make it optional because of ratings or some such, and even though it is blatantly dumb and inaccurate to where it's arguably not necessary to explain, they probably should've explained in-game why there's seashells everywhere. It is kind of difficult to not notice. It's just this weird thing that's left unaddressed. In the meantime I'll treat my idea of the prude vandal as canon.
If Ubisoft couldn't make it optional because of ratings or some such, and even though it is blatantly dumb and inaccurate to where it's arguably not necessary to explain, they probably should've explained in-game why there's seashells everywhere. It is kind of difficult to not notice. It's just this weird thing that's left unaddressed. In the meantime I'll treat my idea of the prude vandal as canon.
Yeah. If they actually had to censor it due to the ratings board in a certain overly prude country, they should've made it more apparent that it is censorship. For example, by using ugly black bars or a pixelated post-processing filter to hide it rather than trying to make it fit nicely into the game world. Censorship should not be made to be pleasant, comfortable or inconspicuous for the audience. It's an ugly thing that messes with the intended message or vision and it should be perceived as ugly, incongruent, intrusive... it should be noticeable and it should be immediately recognisable as censorship.
How exactly does that justify censorship in something intended for educational purposes?
Well, I was asking these posters in response to a previous post.
I would also love to hear the nonsensical justification from the rating boards.
Sure.
Considering that E rating isn't exclusive to young child audiences, but also teenagers and young adults. I just don't see how censoring of this nature helps to educate children about aspects of history?
Especially when the nudity of the statues isn't pornographic, but an element of the art from that period. Which is inherently part of that history.
You have to ask the ratings board. Because I'm not the one demanding for the statues to be covered. My point was that the game and the discovery tour have different ratings since you seemed to miss that.
Actually, I already acknowledged that distinction from the previous post.
As you said this is a question best aimed at rating boards and Ubisoft, and I agree with that. I was simply engaging in the ongoing discussion within the thread.
By making it more easily accessible to them versus something with a non-general audiences rating. You're misconstruing the argument if you're under the impression that an actual connection between it's inherent educational value and the rating is trying to be established here.
Sure but you wanted me specifically to answer so I did. When I firstly noted to your violence argument that the discovery tour doesn't have that either, it could have seemed that I tried to justify the coverings. Not my intention, just that the tour and the game are different products with different content and intentions and bringing it up isn't relevant to how Discovery Tour is handled. Like to me toning down the violence and having no combat at all in Discovery Tour seems absolutely reasonable, but covering art is very unreasonable.
Edit: Well actually to be fair, I think the main game has some art depicting cunnilingus. I think I saw someone post that here. I guess that could be considered as pornographic art, so not having that visible wouldn't make me roll my eyes quite that hard. But simple nudity in non-sexual context is entirely different thing like with these statues.
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Why wouldn't schools be able to use it? Should history books and art books be removed from schools or censored, since they technically have the same function as this? Or maybe health classes not be taught because they tend to also include nudity? It really depends on the context, doesn't it?
Also, in the same world where games are given T ratings when they have stylized forms of violence. It's pretty unreasonable to attribute an M rating to content hardly justifying it.
Censoring something meant to be educational simply to make it more accessible doesn't exactly make for an ideal learning tool within the subject of cultural and ancient history. Not the best precedent to set, if you ask me.
The game being M for having nudity is a complete other topic. Ubisoft just did what they had to do to get the T rated. Schools can't show M games just like schools can't show rated R movies. Hell up until high school we needed a permission slip to watch a PG13 movie in class. You can't expect schools to seriously be fine with their students playing a rated M game in class?
Then blame past precedents. If you can reconcile the idea that Ubisoft authored and released the same content in an uncensored form elsewhere, I'm not sure how absolutely zero indictment is going towards the pressures that be that led them to make the change in the first place. An "ideal learning tool" isn't one that's completely unusable either, especially for what makes up such a minority of content and that's alternatively expressed in other forms, still uncensored, within the same package.
Well, it certainly depends at which grade level, much like any curriculum. It's not the schools I take issue with, my beef is with the decision made by entities within this industry.
My expectations for schools is to teach people (in this case, youth) factual information when it comes to history without resorting to censoring images of historical cultures that aren't sexual or pornographic. Doing so would defeat the purpose of helping people understand why certain things are within proper context.
Also in my early teens, I've watched several PG-13 films and documentaries in certain classes, my teachers at the time did so with the intention of educating us. My school libraries had certain art history books that contained nudity because there is nudity in certain art.
Thats America for you.. lol. We watched Schindlers List in school.
Why wouldnt they be able to show an r rated movie if the educational purpose is there?
I also kept a presentation about Reservoir Dogs when I was in junior high (Finnish equilevant). I was allowed to show a clip too, my teacher trashed the movie for it's violence though. Not sure if she had seen the full movie or based her criticism just on the clip, can't remember what scene I showed.
Content rated T here with nudity - https://www.esrb.org/ratings/search.aspx?content=Nudity&javaScript=0&platforms=&rating=
Not sure why some of you are hardline stating it would be rated M with a statue being nude (not even a depiction of an actual person).
Not sure why some of you are hardline stating it would be rated M with a statue being nude (not even a depiction of an actual person).
4 pages on that, every single title only seems to have "partial nudity"
Point still stands if the ESRB want to rate a statue as M, only suitable for 17+, that is pretty sad.
Sure, just pointing out that from all pages I've seen so far, partial nudity is the only thing acceptable as nudity goes in T rated titles.
As an example, look at what the "partial nudity" means for DMC HD Collection "One creature is depicted topless with hair barely covering her breasts; background posters also depict topless women with pasties covering their breasts"
Demon Gaze, rated T. Usual Japanese content filled with sexualization.
Then other posters are suggesting a non-sexualized statue would warrant an M rating? :/
How about we rate content for adults if it is properly graphic or heavily sexualized? Not if it's educational and depicting real-world art.
Yes, it is.
Statue like David without any sexual implication should be E.
I agree that doesn't make any sense and shouldn't be that way, but it is how the ratings system seem to work, sadly. I can't find any instance of straight up nudity(not partial) on the site's database so far.
You're probably right, but the system is a mess if this is how it is.
Pretty much.
Yeah, I have to agree. Very possible that the fault doesn't lie with Ubisoft but rather with the rating boards (it's unclear as of now, I think), but it's silly no matter what.
It's just a guess, but maybe it's censored so the Discovery Tour mode can be used as a teaching tool at schools for small children.
That's what the school was like. A lot of schools need permission slips for PG-13 movies as parents will want to know what their children are doing in class. A lot of parents will not allow their kid to use this teaching tool if they get a note saying the school wants them to play an M rated game in class. They will be much more okay with it being T.
Dot act like having some seashells are completely misinterpreting the whole experience. The facts and architecture that are true to history far outweighs the small censorships. No kid is going to be negatively affected by not seeing the actual statues in the game. You guys really love to make a non-issue some big thing.
I think even the giving of the "Nudity"/"Partial Nudity" tag is based on the context and is not given that easily/automatically.
Castlevania Aria of Sorrow/Dawn of Sorrow have nipple-less pixellated nudity on some backgrounds and some enemies but are rated Teen and do not even get a "partial nudity" label, because in the context of the game it's not really prominent.
http://www.esrb.org/ratings/Synopsis.aspx?Certificate=8064&Title=Castlevania+Aria+of+Sorrow
http://www.esrb.org/ratings/Synopsis.aspx?Certificate=20181&Title=Castlevania:+Dawn+of+Sorrow+
I guess it's similar for the nudity in the "background" for the Discovery Tour, which doesn't trigger a Nudity/Partial Nudity warning for the ESRB.
(At least not on the label shown on Steam. I still can't find the game on ESRB's site!)
All female enemies sprites of AoE, 5 types of which could count as "partial nudity"
Enemy sprites of DoS that could count as "partial nudity":
Enemy sprites of DoS that could count as "partial nudity":
I also think some of the 285 Teen rated games with "Partial Nudity" actually has "Nudity-that's-not-very-visible-so-we-labelled-it-partial".
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I don't think it's fair to put all the blame on the rating board and dismiss the whole discussion.
Ubisoft themselves came and said that it was to take in account the sensibilities of people across the world and the classroom setting.
https://kotaku.com/assassin-s-creed-origins-tour-mode-censors-naked-stat-1823206999
So it makes sense that they would go beyond what would be asked to them by rating boards to be more inclusive.
Even if there was static nudity with statues, it would probably not be able to bump the ratings one level higher.
The Discovery Tour mode has a Pegi 12 rating, which allows nudity. http://www.pegi.info/en/index/id/33/
The level above that is Pegi 16, which covers explicit realistic sexual activity. That's clearly overkill.
The Discovery mode has a ESBR Teen rating. I cannot find the rating on the site, but it probably doesn't have a "nudity" tag right now, despite nudity being present in the background for some images.
The level above that is Mature 17+, which is clearly overkill for that particular game. Rating boards do take in account context when taking their decisions.
So if the main statues would become unsensored, there's still room to add a "Nudity" tag, even though it would be a hard sell because such a label can scare parents. But that's clearly not the fault of the rating board.
Polygon comments that only one game has a "Nudity" tag on while being rated Teen on the ESRB, but 285 games rated Teen and a "Partial Nudity" tag.
https://www.polygon.com/windows/201...s-creed-origins-discovery-tour-statues-nudity
I think the rarity is due to the fact that games don't usually feature nudity in educational or artistic context in a way that merits a label anyway.
It's often tucked away in the background, which as we can see right now, doesn't require a Nudity label. Lack of precedent does not mean that it cannot exist.
However, it's very unlikely to change based on the current state of things. People calling out censorship, art defiguration or spreading of dangerous moral puritanism are not many enough to be heard.
It's a matter of principle, so I will have to disagree with you.
It's a matter of schools not allowing it so the argument doesn't matter. I think schools should be fine with the nudity but that isn't the case. It doesn't matter what we think. It's how the superintendent of a school district feels.
Sorry, I don't agree with that. The argument most certainly matters. As people have children and family, or possibly even teach children themselves, I imagine it would be relevant to them. I would also imagine they don't all hold the same view or opinions on the matter.
There are definitely schools that would allow this version of the tour mode in classrooms with respect to the curriculum and grade level, as that's already the case with books or films that are already in schools. It's not unanimous across the board.
To me, it's more reasonable to let school boards or faculty decide for themselves whether or not to include it their classrooms, as opposed to censoring outright.
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That's a blind appeal to authority. Teachers and educators of children may well have a different view than this and they'd be right to raise that view into the debate. You don't make progress if you just say "Who's at the top of the totem pole? Well, only their view counts".
My sophomore year of high school my marching band show was about a man who rapes a young girl. My band director wanted to perform the show at halftime. The principal was okay with it. When the superintendent heard about it he shut the idea down despite the director and principal being okay with it. Would not be surprised if the same thing happened with the nudity in this game.
Little Timmy isn't going to fall into a life of depravity and sin from seeing a statues' dick or tits.
We're talking about non-sexualized art, so I'm not sure how relevant bringing a show about a man who rapes a young girl is. The whole point of this debate here is to try and show how not every form of nudity = sexualization and it's not helpful for the world for people to view it as so.
The point was that a superintendent has the power to shut it down if he/she wants to as I was replying to your blind appeal to authority.
My blind appeal to authority remark is in the context of this topic, not an end all and be all statement. There probably will be times I agree whoever is the head has to step in, but this isn't one of those times. Anyone in such a position censoring art or acting like it's sexualization deserves criticism.