That’s bad. That’s very bad. They cannot have a “Teen” rated game with hidden adult content. As you said: that’s EXACTLY what the ESRB ruled after the GTA fiasco. If someone has an inside contact with this company, they need to be informed NOW before shit hits the fan hard.
EDIT
To explain it in a very simplistic manner: though the ESRB has as a panel that plays submitted games to check the content, they do not have a team of crackers or hackers to look in the program files. Nor do they have the time. The ESRB works on an honor system thingie. The game producer tells the ESRB what’s the most controversial material in the game (violence, sex, religious mockery, etc), where it is in the game, and then the ESRB takes a look at that part to make their judgement on a rating. Sometimes it’s pretty obvious (a game called Kill Everyone Violently probably should start out as MA), but other times it’s not so simple. If you withhold or hide stuff and don’t tell the ESRB, it’s a very huge breech of that trust. Easter Eggs or Dummy Data of prohibited material that exceeds the rating the ESRB gives, is not allowed.
The full CGs aren’t present but the thumbnails are (using the same censorship the Japanese use). Some are still questionable though due to the small size of the thumbnails.
The character dolls/sprites/whatever you call them however…
Hopefully JAST doesn’t mind one sample image (just let me know if you want me to edit it out admins): http://i44.tinypic.com/30k6ihz.png
As barbie-like as the characters look (facial expressions are a layer on top of the face), the breasts are enough to start problems.
Wow, no chance in hell I’m going to buy this. Like it’s been said, if you want to release all ages games, license games that are all ages in the first place. I’m not interested in a games with bits and pieces cut away from it that were never meant to be removed.
This made me angry back then (with GTA Hot Coffee) and it makes me angry now remembering it, because it’s entirely the wrong direction for the ESRB to take.
If someone modifies a game and after the modification it breaches the rating given, why does it matter if that modification added content to the game that wasn’t there before or merely unlocked content that was hidden? Technical people and non-technical people alike have difficulty understanding this decision.
Nonetheless this is what the ESRB decided; there is precedent and Moenovel had better scrub that stuff before releasing the game (probably doesn’t matter if the preview copy sent to the ESRB still contains the content since they won’t find it)
It’s an integrity factor. In addition, the ESRB rating predominantly matters to people with conservative sensitivity or children. When the ESRB rates a game with something, the buyer trusts that the game does not contain anything “worst” than what the warning indicates. That includes stuff that’s hidden or very hard to access. The ESRB rating does not really care about mods to a game.
The “Hot Coffee Mod” did not add the crude sex mini-game to GTA. The crude sex mini-game was ALREADY there. What the mod did was let it be played. Rockstar Games violated ESRB’s trust by having dummy data that would have given the game an AO rating if the ESRB panel was shown it. The ESRB doesn’t care about how accessible questionable material is in a game… only if it’s in the game or not. To quote EA, “it was in the game.”
Speaking of EA… let’s take the SIMS for a counter example. There is no rape command in the game. People have made a Rape Mod. The ESRB is not going to force SIMS with a MA or AO rating, even though the Rape Mod uses the core game code to make it possible, because there is absolutely no rape command or animated scene of rape in the SIMS. Both the Hot Coffee Mod and Rape Mod require forced user intervention to have, but the difference is that EA did not program rape into the SIMS. Rockstar Games did program the sex into GTA.
Now that isn’t to say the ESRB won’t give Kono Oosora a “Teen” rating with the dummy content in the data files. The SIMS has sex in it… and there’s even “Barbie doll nudity” if you use a mod to remove the mosaic filter. That game has a Teen rating. However the ESRB [u]KNEW[/u] about the sex and what the SIMS would look like without the mosaic filter when rating it (the whole Barbie doll thing was done because having too much detail would have instantly made the game MA).
Does the ESRB know there’s dummy content with crude nudity in it? That’s the matter at hand. I have a strong feeling they do not, and if that’s the case, they will not be happy. Nor will the game industry at large. The ESRB has been accused of being Nazi from time to time about how they rate a given game, but they are fairly lenient compared to the MPA’s way of doing things. No one wants to do it that way in the game industry. If too many games slip through the ESRB with questionable content and get too much negative media attention, they will certainly become more draconian. It would also increase the costs of registering (and time for approval) with the ESRB since they’d have to hire programmers to pick apart games to see if the creator’s are being totally honest and upfront with everything. An all around pain in the ass for everyone involved.
Lastly, if you’re going for an ESRB rating, it means you want to sell your product in a place like Walmart or Gamestop (they won’t sell games without an ESRB rating - and never AO stuff). They will not want to caught up in negative publicity if game “lied” about it’s hidden content. Worst case scenario: it would make it harder for b-games find mainstream acceptance, since we know Fox News would LOVE to air this “controversy” if given a chance for ratings. And the negative aftermath would give Japanese b-game creators yet another reason to hate the Western market.
It still defies logic. Nobody ever alleged that the sex minigame exposed by ‘Hot Coffee’ was actually ever available in the game. You needed to modify the game to do it. The fact that the amount of modification necessary to expose the minigame amounted to the editing of 1 bit is honestly totally irrelevant. It’s not accessible, so it’s not in the game. Even if it was coded into the game
This would be totally different if you could enter in a cheat code or something to enable it; if this was the case, I’d say the ESRB decision was justified- but it’s not. The game needs to be modified and whether the code for it was present in the game or not is irrelevant, both logically and practically.
Logically irrelevant: because dummied out or unreachable code is not part of the program. The only way a series of perfectly neutral bits become a sex minigame is through interpretation in a context and this context is never provided unless you modify the program, at which point all bets are off because you can modify the program to do anything. Even if you could access the game through normal gameplay by triggering some overflow to write over the variable in question it’s still irrelevant - there’s a neat Pokemon video on youtube where someone did exactly that, using bugs in the game to overwrite data to expose a piece of dummied out code (a memory editor) and using that to create an image and play a song. Just because you can use that to draw porn doesn’t mean Pokemon has porn in it.
Practically irrelevant, because when you’re running something to modify a game and after it’s done the game contains a sex minigame, how does it practically matter if the minigame was contained in dummied-out code in the first place? You still have to run the modification and a modification could do anything to the game. You could perhaps argue that including the minigame in dummied-out form made it slightly more likely that a sex minigame mod was going to be made for GTA:SA within the first X months, but I don’t think this is relevant.
Dummied-out code is not ‘hidden content’, it’s not snuck in there to get porn past the censors and into the hands of kiddies. It’s dummied out, for all intents and purposes not part of the game at all. A movie wouldn’t receive a higher rating because someone included a porno on parts of the physical film that don’t get projected, or in macroblocks in the digital video file that are never displayed.
In the land of logic there is zero difference between including a dummied-out sex minigame in the shipped product and not including it. In both cases, playing the game as shipped will never reveal the minigame and a modification would be required to make it appear in the game. Clearly the modification would take considerably more effort to make in the latter case, but it could still be done and the experience would still be the same for the end-user. Clearly the ESRB has made a decision on this. They made the wrong one and if retailers / parents / congresscritters agree with the decision they are also wrong.
Here’s something that does interest me, though: we’ve already established that if you release a game and someone makes a mod that adds porn to it and releases that mod on the internet, you’re fine, you didn’t lie to the ESRB, that content was never part of your game in the first place and you’re powerless to stop it anyway.
Would it still be okay for the original game developer to release a patch on their official website that makes the same modification? I don’t know if the ESRB requires that all official patches, DLC etc. either maintain the same level of content or obtain a new rating from the ESRB just for that patch/DLC - I’ve never heard anything like this.
What if you distribute the patch-that-turns-this-game-into-a-porno as an update patch, but one that gets automatically (or pseudo-automatically) applied? For example, you made the game check a website on starting out to see if there’s a patch available and you automatically (and silently) download and apply the patch. You didn’t deceive the ESRB because the shipped product contains nothing that you didn’t disclaim, but you silently added this after release in a way that virtually ensures nearly everyone will get it. Obviously nobody would ever do this, but still, food for thought.
I do respect what the ESRB does and I have no desire for a game to have sex if the player isn’t expecting it to, but nobody was protected by changing GTA:SA’s rating due to the presence of code that, if modified, could include something subversive in the gameplay experience.
The ESRB solely exists, because there’s a large number of conservative minded parents and politicians, who wanted regulation of the video game industry for the growing proliferation of sex and violence. It’s entirely optional, and as per the Supreme Court, cannot be enforced by law. It is nothing more than a “seal of approval” for letting games be sold in family retailers. People expect that a game claiming to not contain adult material, does not in fact contain adult material. That is what an ESRB rating without the adult content warning means. It is irrelevant if the material is hidden or not. Again: it’s purely an integrity factor.
There is unauthorized adult content in GTA. Is it easy to get to? No. Can you get to it by playing the game normally? No. Is it in the programming? Yes. Can someone get to it? Yes. Could an underage child gain access to it with the right tools? Yes. Can an underage child get those tools online without too much hassle? Yes. Is it stupid? Fuck yes. But at the end of the day, when all is said and done, there is adult content in GTA.
The ESRB isn’t the problem. The situation is so unique, it only happened once. Why is the material even in the game? Why is the mini-game (as far as GTA mini-games are concerned) so thorough? Rockstar KNEW such a mini-game would be an issue, but they put it in there anyways. They planned and programmed it. The whole mini-game was intentional. If they didn’t want it to be found, they could have taken it out or gutted out enough of the code to make it not work. However it works perfectly, exactly as designed, when someone goes looking for it in the right place. I’d be more critical of the ESRB if this was a God honest mistake on the part of Rockstar, but this does not look like a God honest mistake. The reaction was not what Rockstar expected: the conservative community exploded and went apeshit crazy. I’m sure they thought because the game was already Mature rated, and a game of high violence content, everyone would just laugh it off. That did not happen… so we got the shit storm of GTA and revised ESRB guidelines. Because no one expected anyone to knowing do something that fundamentally stupid… but Rockstar had to go and do it.
And again, it’s not like the ESRB is Nazi about ratings. Duke Nukem Forever has childish [b]sex scenes[/b] in it. Game is only M rated: even with all the laundry list of offensive stuff it has. Had Rockstar let ESRB know about Hot Coffee, maybe it would have still gotten an M rating. We don’t know… because Rockstar knowingly withheld that info. For the ESRB, the issue is that ESRB was not informed – not that a game rated M could have sex in it. Because if the ESRB doesn’t know about it, then they can’t tell the ultra conservatives with a dumb warning box less than ONE INCH in size, and that’s the whole reason why the ESRB exists. For that false security blanket.
Which brings us full circle with Kono Oosora having hidden adult content. It can be hidden, but the ESRB has to know about, so then can make their truthful rating.
The ESRB does not require DLC to be seen by them, because it’s not on the game they inspected.
From the ESRB:Downloadable content (DLC) that will be appended to a previously-rated product need only be submitted to ESRB for rating if its content exceeds that which is in the existing “core” product. Otherwise, the rating assigned to the core product is applicable to the DLC as well. Where, however, DLC content exceeds the rating assigned to the core product, it must be submitted to ESRB and a different rating may be assigned to the DLC.
This is gray area no one has violated yet. All DLC released by commercial games so far, do not exceed the rating to the core game given by the ESRB. According to the agreement, there is no reason or penalty for making “adult” DLC for a Teen rated game. You just can’t call the DLC “Teen” rated. However I doubt anyone wants to touch that with a 100 foot pole… because it would no doubt get a reaction from conservatives.
You can make an adult and non-adult version of the same game. ESRB doesn’t care.
If you make a T rated game, it cannot have ANYTHING in that product, that violates the T rating. That includes unused, hidden, or dummy data. Now if you make a patch that makes the T rated game into an AO rated game (and it’s the patch that contains the adult content being added; it’s not hidden in the core game), then the ESRB drops it into the DLC ruling. The patch would be AO rated but the original game itself would still be T rated. No commercial company, to my knowledge, has done this after getting an ESRB rating… I’m sure it would get a lot of negative attention, if the conservative media got wind of it. However no rules by the ESRB would have been broken.
However this enters new territory. If a commercial entity is turning a non-porn game into a porn game with an official patch, I’d be more worried about federal and state laws about pornography distribution (especially age checking who is getting the download), than the ESRB. You kinda have to also look at it from the eyes of an ultra conservative parent, with minimal or zero exposure to the Internet. If they buy a game that’s only rated E – they expect everything about that game to be rated E. Again, that’s what the ESRB exists for – their “sleep better at night” factor. Something like this might intrude on that perception of safety, and then get a negative reaction. Since the ESRB exists for such an audience, it could cause a change in policy. Right now, an ESRB rating does not factor DLC or an MMO’s online experience (because what people do or say in an MMO can sometimes be worst than the “core” content the programmers made) – but if an incident big enough happened, that could change.
No one wants a draconian ESRB, and the ESRB doesn’t want to be draconian. Common sense, and not trying to find loopholes in the ESRB rules, has thus far prevailed in keeping the status quo. But again, since the ESRB exists for ultra concerned gamers (or their parents), it is that population the ESRB listens to when complains or issues arise.
That and facedesk where my reactions. Jeez, if teens and above are so immature that they can’t seem to handle lip on lip kissing, I wonder what they will be doing to the twincest route…
So, how long does it usually take for a game/VN page to get listed on the ESRB and PEGI website? Because it was rated Teen and 12+, but I can’t find their page on those sites.
Depends on how many games are in the que and how long it takes for the test players in the panel to feel satisfied they’ve “experienced” enough of the game (they don’t have to necessarily complete or master the game… just confident of understanding it’s mechanics and overall theme). There’s also a question and answer part of the process. If the publisher doesn’t like the rating, they have a chance to modify the game and resubmit for another review… making it take that much longer of course.
The ESRB posts the results two to four weeks after the publisher accepts the ESRB’s rating. To be honest, most game companies submit their titles MONTHS before release day (or even public announcement). It’s just safer that way, in case of rating rejection or a panel that really wants to take it’s time. The ESRB or PEGI don’t want to be accused of making a mistake, because they were rushed.
The Teen and 12+ means that’s what Moe Novel wants… so if the ESRB or PEGI don’t give 'em that, I’m sure they’d modify the offending content (i.e. censorship some more) and resubmit.
Since the thread on Mangagamer has been nuked out of existence, might as well update everyone on our current knowledge of MoeNovel and its debut title.
MoeNovel is the newest localization company to enter the market. The company appears to have connections to Active Gaming Media and Will, Pulltop’s parent company.
VNTLS MoeNovel news summary: http://vntls.org/news/
MoeNovel’s debut title will be “If My Heart Had Wings” or KonoSora (http://vndb.org/v9093), one of Pulltop’s most successful story-driven titles, and is slated for release at the end of June 2013. The original title was winner of 3rd place in the 2012 Bishoujo Game Awards, and ranked 4th place for Scenario. News that the English release will be all-ages (no such version exists in Japanese) has attracted criticism.
Summarizing currently known information from the closed VNDB discussion of this title (http://vndb.org/t4066):
Content rating: The game has received a rating of T from the ESRB and 12 from PEGI.
Demo and translation quality: MoeNovel has released a demo. The translation is questionable and probably performed by a non-native English speaker: it appears to be accurate, mostly grammatically correct, yet very awkward. MoeNovel claims the script is still undergoing editing, and the final product should be more polished than the demo.
Overall content edits: The game’s art will have to be heavily edited. The original game had 17 H-scenes and 5 heroines (2 of which are twins). Shini’s count of the game’s CG are as follows (note that these counts include variations of the same base CG):
Non-H: 463 (includes swimsuits, wet t-shirt with bra showing through, scene where it looks like a girl has nopan)
Ero: 646 (includes CGs that are part of H scenes and bath scenes with visible nipples)
SD: 110 (chibi characters)
Known alterations outside of H-scenes: Kissing CG will be altered to hide facial contact / sexual suggestiveness. Heroines will be covered by towels in the bath scenes.
Availability: The game will be available for sale from Play-Asia, Mangagamer, and J-List. An unconfirmed leak from Play-Asia suggests a Steam release may be possible.
Promotion: The game has received coverage from several anime and gaming blogs including Siliconera, Anime News Network and Japanator. MoeNovel will be utilizing social media to promote the game, including Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
Oh, it has nothing to do with hating anything. I happen to agree they’ve ruined their product, but it’s easy to do that without hating it. That’s a bit harsh.
I expect that there’s a reason Pulltop released Princess Waltz, years ago, in English - and nothing since. (Other than this soon-to-be-DOA release, I mean.) If they wanted to work with Jast again, they’d’ve inked some sort of deal by now. (It’s pretty clear they’re interested in English releases, after all, considering all the work it must have taken to, ah, ‘alter’ the game like that.) I wouldn’t be surprised if they never want to work with Jast again.
As for why they would try this? And then ignore everyone saying it’s a terrible idea? It smacks of desperation. They are making a bold ploy to try to get a lot of sales. Rather than picking something more modest, they went directly for one of their best titles. This avoids one common pitfall (releasing a crappy test project, then overgeneralizing when said crappy game bombs) but puts them at way too much risk of - well - doing exactly what they’re doing now. Compromising too far, abandoning their original audience, and not winning over the mainstream audience they were never going to get anyway.
But ultimately they’re doing this because they want the game to be successful. They want to try to move a lot of units, and they think (probably correctly) that continuing to sell to the eroge market will yield only small gains over time, and won’t hit whatever target number they’re aiming for. They’ve made a decision to ignore the naysayers and take the long shot. They’re not doing this because they hate their products and their customers, but because they see it as a better option than walking away.
Sometimes it works. If, once upon a time, Atlus USA hadn’t hacked “Persona: Revelations” to pieces (modifying the sprites, dubbing and translating it dreadfully, having to dummy out half the game), the RPG market would be very different. They wouldn’t have been able to barely eke out a living in the PS1 era, Disgaea likely never sees release outside of Japan. The ‘wacky JRPG market’ basically wouldn’t exist today.
But where Atlus USA eventually succeeded, Pulltop is probably going to fail.
