I have seen my share of video game boobs, uncovered, and they are polygonal.

The last time I witnessed bare female flesh in a video game was during Afro Samurai, a game that’s saturated with enough “not for kids” content that I chalked it up as par for the course and continued dismembering near-helpless foes. Don Reisinger, on the other hand, came across a pair in his playthrough of The Godfather II, and he’s pissed.

Am I pissed that he’s pissed? No, because his concern is valid: Shouldn’t this game be rated Adults Only? After all, AO games are described as “prolonged scenes of intense violence and/or graphic sexual content and nudity,” while the slightly more tolerable Mature games are marked by “intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language.” The addition of content descriptors on the back of the box, including one for nudity, did little to placate Reisinger.

So he took his questions to the ESRB. In short, they blew him off, something to the effect of “Get bent, our ratings are fine,” to paraphrase, of course. What Reisinger didn’t mention is the unspoken subtext: “We won’t rate anything short of Manhunt as Adults Only because console manufacturers won’t support it and retailers won’t sell it. Kind of like NC-17 films.” Why raise a stink over a pair of breasts, right?

I haven’t played Godfather II, so I don’t know if what Reisinger saw qualifies as prolonged nudity or the kind of brief encounter that would fly in a coarse R-rated flick. Trouble is, if the ESRB had a problem with the boobs, covering them up would be the only way out. Tone it down or the game dies.

Reisinger thinks the boobs didn’t belong in Godfather II to begin with, but that’s beside the point. The important thing is for naked humans to have a place in video games, safe from censorship. If it takes a notch up to Adults Only, so be it. Too bad the games industry won’t allow it.

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This isn’t usually the place for circulating news; it’s rather more of a freewheeling, bile-spitting type of joint. But word should be spread that Jack Thompson, the self-appointed crusader against violent video games (particularly when they’re marketed or sold to minors), was disbarred today by the Supreme Court of Florida.

I’m too tired to rehash or ruminate. GamePolitics has a digestible summary of the decision, plus the full text if you care to download it. Kotaku has a lengthy response from Thompson, who’s as clever a spin doctor as anyone and plans to go down swinging.

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First, a wag of the finger to Kotaku for forgetting their roots in a post on the upcoming Contra 4 for Nintendo DS. Any Contra nerd worth their salt would know that Mad Dog and Scorpion are not “new merc characters,” nor are they simply “names of really bad alcoholic beverages.” In fact, they are nicknames for the original game’s heroes, Bill and Lance, who are entirely seperate characters in the coming sequel. Shame on you Kotaku, for not drawing attention to this discrepancy. Also, I can’t post about Contra without mentioning that I have beaten both the NES and Arcade Contras with no extra lives code and no continues. I believe a w00t is in order.

This next bit is more pressing. I did not realize that Nintendo and Sony do not license games that have an Adults Only rating. I learned this when reading about the ESRB’s decision to rate Manhunt 2 AO.

I’m all for keeping games like Manhunt 2 out of the hands of minors, but that doesn’t mean those games shouldn’t be available at all. If it means putting games up on some high covered shelf out of kids’ eyesight or distributing online only, so be it — at least it’s in the publishers’ hands whether they want to clean up a game for a Mature rating. For all the arguments the games industry puts forth about the need to defend their creative expression, I’m shocked that it’s the game companies themselves doing the censoring.

Finally, I’ve hit a rut with GameFly — a sort of spin on the classic lament of people with day jobs who have too many games to play and not enough time. I’m maybe a third of the way through Super Paper Mario, and Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter 2 just arrived. In addition, there’s the two games I kept after renting them, Oblivion and Trauma Center. I want to play the games I’m renting so I can ship them back out and feel I’m getting my money’s worth, but the last thing I want is to make gaming a chore. I suppose I’ll go back to my old strategy of digging up classic games, finding interesting PC experiments and flicking at my rentals with an occasional prolonged console binge.

Perhaps I’ll start with a Contra speed run.

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Over at the Escapist Forums, some gamers reacted to news that Jack Thompson won’t appear at the upcoming Penny Arcade Expo. Apparently, talks were underway to have him debate with IGDA’s Jason Della Rocca or some other leading game industry figure, but Penny Arcade and Thompson couldn’t come to an agreement because PA wanted the event to be a surprise and Thompson wanted to publicize it.

That in itself bothers me; Penny Arcade had a chance to get Thompson and Della Rocca in the same room having an open debate, and somehow the ball was dropped. PA should have bent over backwards to make this debate happen. We are talking about the opportunity for an unprecedented live debate that could at best break new ground in the discussion of video game violence, and at worst be really interesting to watch or read about. In my mind, the only reasons this shouldn’t have happened are if either PA didn’t have the finances to schedule it (e.g. Thompson requests a large sum of money to appear) or if the terms or topics of the debate were somehow restricted by either party.

But what really ticks me off is the response from some posters on the forums. It doesn’t even occur to them that Thompson may be in the right here.

Sure, Thompson can be irrational sometimes, and maybe his request to publicize this event was a bit arbitrary, but PA’s argument that an advance announcement would overcrowd the room seems a bit thin. You’re telling me they can’t hire a few extra bouncers/ushers to prevent a possible fire hazard? Or worse yet, is PA implying that a room full of gamers who generally don’t like Thompson can’t behave themselves during a debate?

Instead of asking these questions, the posters attack Thompson without a flinch. One of these posters writes in PA’s defense that “having him simply appear on stage unexpectedly would likely have left everyone too stunned to resort to violence until after the debate was over.”

What?

So we’re saying that Thompson is right about gamers, that they’re such angry pack animals that the mere knowledge of his whereabouts will drive them to a violent rage. Maybe so, as another poster writes, “I’m going to be at PAX and I’d sure love the opportunity to punch this jerk in the face. I bet he realizes a lot of gamers feel that way and that’s why he won’t attend.”

No. To reiterate, Thompson is the one who is willing to make his presence known in advance, so you could have even planned your route of attack for punching Thompson in the face. And if you did, he’d love it. He’d take that precious little anecdote (and his black eye) to Fox News and CNN and every other major media outlet in the country and tell people about how violence-crazed gamers assaulted him during a peaceful debate.

Maybe I was wrong about Penny Arcade; maybe it’s the gamers who are dropping the ball on this one.

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…but this was worth linking.

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