Could you please specify more clearly what "these games" are? I'm not asking this because I'm nitpicking or trying to be confrontational. I'm asking because I'm still not completely happy with the responses to my point.
My point being that M-rated games are allowed by default, and AO-rated games are banned by default, even though the actual distinction between the two is extremely fuzzy.
Heck, even the ESRB themselves sometimes can't decide on whether a game should be M or AO. As pointed out earlier, Fahrenheit got slapped an AO rating in the US, only to years later being "demoted" to an M rating, with no changes to the game content.
There are M-rated games out there where you can go to a strip bar and get a lap dance. I'm assuming that would not be accepted here.
The most reasonable argument given so far is that publishing AO-rated material would cause the site to be de-listed from some search engines. But this has little to do with the site being "child-friendly" (because, as said, many M-rated games are anything but.)
I'm not sure how much of that fear is justified. For example, speedrun.com's Manhunt 2 page lists multiple speedruns of the PC version of the game with direct video links. As far as I know this has not caused any major problems for them.
To elaborate on me being able to give some examples of TAS worthy games, lets start by looking at the kinds of porn games that exist.
Normal games with one or two porn scenes.
Glorified image galleries, usually with trivia question blocking progress.
Visual novels with pornographic scenes.
Platforming games with pornography as a threat, ie, get hit and the enemy rapes you until you break free.
RPGs with various porn scenes and mechanics.
One can judge these classes of games from a variety of perspectives. But here I choose to focus on the suitability of them for TASing.
Normal suitability, depends on the game, but usually suited
Speedy cancellation, trivia games are generally not TAS material
Visual novels are generally not speedrunable.
We have a long history of TASing platforming games. This is the most suitable category.
RPGs are tricky to deal with. We do have some TASes of RPGs, but this class of games is not the normal kind of RPGs. No, these are generally sandbox types of games where the game design is about unlocking more pornographic content than progressing through a story or having a series of interesting battles.
As such, only some of these games are suitable. But I note, we do miss out on some really good TAS material if we exclude them all.
To me, the current policy of TASVideos regarding adult content, was always wrong for a number of reasons.
1. Only using one specific rating system (ESRB) is arbitrary.
2. The rating system of the ESRB is wrong. It follows that weird, American idea that nudity and sex are the worst things imaginable, followed by swear words, while violence is irrelevant.
What should be done instead:
1. The use of ESRB ratings as a guideline is obviously due to Google using them. But why should we even care about Google? It's not like this site is here to make money, it's a niche community for nerds.
2. Games should be judged case-by-case. If something is deemed inappropriate for younger audiences, a login should be required to view it.
3. When judging content, this should be the guideline, from most to least important: Extreme violence/hardcore porn -> Nudity / strong violence. The only type of content that should be considered completely unacceptable should be anything that promotes things like racism or fascism.
You know what's the best thing about this system? Your average hentai flashgame would still be filtered out, simply because of the existing rule that a TAS must have meaningful gameplay. But at the same time, a good game that happens to have some nudity, could still be published without having to carefully avoid specific content.
It's not like this is ever going to happen, since people with my beliefs never get to be in positions to decide such things. My opinion is quite simple, though: Nudity never hurt anybody, only hardcore porn should be restricted, but not necessarily more than extreme violence.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Joined: 8/14/2009
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Location: The Netherlands
It is less arbitrary than using multiple systems, and having to pick and choose what counts if they differ.
Using one system which is the de facto standard of the majority of the American video game industry, for an American-hosted video game site, is not arbitrary at all.
Whether or not the ESRB's rating system is 'wrong' is a subjective opinion, not fact, so I can't hold a lot of value to this statement.
Also, the reasoning is factually wrong - ESRB does rate games AO for violence reasons, and in fact has been controversial quite a few times for doing so. Thrill Kill, Manhunt 2, and Hatred are all rated AO solely for violence and have caused a bit of controversy as a result.
Nobody has mentioned Google in this context so far in this topic, but either way it is far from the only reason. Nach already mentioned Symantec, Microsoft, safety-concerned ISPs, and such. Google hits may be a similar factor but it's not as major as some of these other ones.
The site is not here to make money, but we do have goals to not get our site blocked from view for potential users (due to one of aforementioned) or have it otherwise hidden from a potential audience.
As mentioned before in the topic, putting requirements or checks on viewers before they can watch a movie that they're not even sure they'll like to watch will mostly just annoy people, while not really solving anything.
Why would we refuse to use the most relevant rating system for this, just to end up making up our own rating system?
That's a really arbitrary solution and just creates more work. It would also be a massive mess of subjectiveness and controversy, when inevitably there would be a disagreement between what the site thinks is acceptable and what certain users will think is acceptable.
If you think the ESRB bans all games that have any form of nudity (and exclusively that), you may want to read up on the ESRB. Several links have been posted in this topic so far (including in the actual rule itself) - I recommend you give them a read.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
How do you know there's not any problems? Has anyone even checked the various content filters to see if they're blocked?
My day job involves supplying various services to educators who sometimes deal with various content filtering. I often hear from them details you would never guess unless you regularly used filtering of this sort yourself. Banning of complete domains over an offending image or video displayed somewhere on the site is unfortunately not an uncommon experience.
Even if a site isn't currently blocked, it just takes one parent to complain to their safe ISP or filter software, supplying a justification, and the company in question will take down an entire site just to be safe.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Fair enough, ISPs blocking a site is much more of a problem than Google giving a site unfavorable search results. It really sucks how certain questionable morals can have such a huge impact.
As for the ESRB, there might be justified AO ratings like Hatred, but then there's just as many ridiculous ones like the original version of GTA: SA.
But admittedly, all rating systems have problems. There's the example of the German USK and the European PEGI that judge games differently, which has lead to things like a handheld game that is rated 18+ by one and 0 by the other. Generally, it seems that each rating system can make the weirdest decisions.
But this is a gaming community, not a bunch of moral guardians that never play games themselves, so we can judge content much better. We've had so many debates over the content of TASes, so why not here? Sure, it would produce intense flame wars, but that's how the internet works.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
What game are you TASing that can't get published under the current content guidelines?
If you're not personally affected by the content guidelines, why is this such an issue for you? As has been stated before, this is an American-hosted site, so we follow American-based conventions (since we fall subject to American-based laws, and there's very little that can be done about that)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4090
Location: The Netherlands
andypanther wrote:
As for the ESRB, there might be justified AO ratings like Hatred, but then there's just as many ridiculous ones like the original version of GTA: SA.
I'll grant it that the SA rating was blown out of proportion (keeping in mind it was entirely due to the existence of Hot Coffee, disregarding its lack of accessibility). There's a good argument to be made that the controversy overshadowed reason in its judgment, so I'll give you this one. I also already explained earlier in this topic how a run of original SA can still be published here, knowing exactly what content falls under AO and what doesn't.
There are, currently, 29 AO-rated games. How many others do you consider 'ridiculous' and do you disagree with? And how many of those do you think should be publishable on this site, not counting the games that also have M-rated versions available?
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
There are, currently, 29 AO-rated games. How many others do you consider 'ridiculous' and do you disagree with? And how many of those do you think should be publishable on this site, not counting the games that also have M-rated versions available?
I don't know most of the games on this list, which isn't surprising given their obscurity. Besides Hatred, I also agree with the including of Manhunt 2 and maybe Thrill Kill (I didn't know about this one until now). Everything else is about sexual content (which one odd exception of gambling), about which I still hold my opinion that it's not as problematic as the extreme violence of the three games previously mentioned.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Fair enough, ISPs blocking a site is much more of a problem than Google giving a site unfavorable search results. It really sucks how certain questionable morals can have such a huge impact.
I have to wonder on what basis would an ISP block tasvideos.org. It's not a video streaming site. All the videos are on YouTube and other independent streaming sites, not on tasvideos.org. If an ISP were to block tasvideos.org for having "inappropriate" content, they would have to block the entirety of YouTube because that's where said content is. Are ISPs really blocking sites that link to YouTube, but not blocking YouTube itself? I have really hard time believing this.
On what other basis would an ISP block tasvideos.org? Simply mentioning and talking about AO games is not a criterion. If it were, those ISPs would have to block Wikipedia, and all video game review sites (which often even contain self-hosted screenshots, etc.)
Unless someone can accurately explain how exactly this goes, I think it's just baseless fear-mongering. If you have an ethical problem with AO games, then say so; don't just use "we may be blocked by ISPs" as an excuse, unless you have actual verifiable evidence that's so, and can explain why it would happen.
Andypanther is asking us to disregard the official ratings system's arbitrary judgements and instead implement his own arbitrary judgements. Hmm...
I'm no fan of censorship, but I do understand the argument that Nach and the like are making that hosting such content might jeopardise the site at the hands of internet guardians. But if someone really wanted to shut us down they could do so anyway on copyright grounds - even if we aren't breaking any rules that doesn't seem to stop people.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Warp wrote:
I have to wonder on what basis would an ISP block tasvideos.org. It's not a video streaming site. All the videos are on YouTube and other independent streaming sites, not on tasvideos.org.
Whose actually hosting material is often not relevant, it's where the material appears. Some sites are file dumps where you cannot access anything unless you know the URL to it, while other sites actually make that data available in an organized manner. Those making it accessible will often be blocked.
Warp wrote:
If an ISP were to block tasvideos.org for having "inappropriate" content, they would have to block the entirety of YouTube because that's where said content is. Are ISPs really blocking sites that link to YouTube, but not blocking YouTube itself? I have really hard time believing this.
YouTube is being blocked all over the place. Some content filtering tools will allow YouTube though if loaded by flash, just not by the browser proper. This means those embedding YouTube may playback but pages from YT itself cannot be accessed.
Warp wrote:
On what other basis would an ISP block tasvideos.org? Simply mentioning and talking about AO games is not a criterion. If it were, those ISPs would have to block Wikipedia, and all video game review sites (which often even contain self-hosted screenshots, etc.)
Some block Wikipedia too.
Warp wrote:
Unless someone can accurately explain how exactly this goes, I think it's just baseless fear-mongering. If you have an ethical problem with AO games, then say so; don't just use "we may be blocked by ISPs" as an excuse, unless you have actual verifiable evidence that's so, and can explain why it would happen.
Each content filter is different so as a collective, it's difficult to guarantee how this will go. The various content filters themselves are also sometimes arbitrary and based on heuristics and complaints from their customers. I'm not sure what kind of evidence you want as to what practices are. You want links to content filtering pages? You want to see a filter that blocked Wikipedia?
Some will block entire sites that distribute community-based content, and for those, there's no hope for us anyway, we're surely blocked. However, those that are more reasonable with humans reviewing things will review a site to find out what its community rules are. If they see our rules forbid adult content, and a cursory glance show we enforce those rules, we will not be blocked. Heuristic based real-time scanning is more problematic, and even a discussion like this may cause issues, but will often place such blocks solely on our forum, not the main site as the forum is blocked from robots, and thus will not load for them nor their users.
Our published videos are those easy to find for humans that review our sites, and are where our focus of course needs to be. Of secondary importance is those found in submissions or user pages, as while less organized and hard to find, automatic scanners will come across them.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
If you want to test some existing content filtering yourself, here's some free options:
*Symantec DNS
*K9 content filter
Here's some pages where some popular filters describe their practices:
*The JNet ISP
*Convenant Eyes content filter
*Net Nanny content filter
This list is by no means exhaustive nor anywhere near close to it.
Edit:
On a side note, we appear to get a higher "safety rating" (whatever that means) than WP and YT.
TASVideosWPYTimgur
Edit 2:
And here's Speedrun site mentioned above which has low confidence in child safety, in addition to an overall lower rating than us.
Speedrun
Those looking to whitelist based on say a WOT score of child safety >90% and confidence >65%, it's easy to see how we score well compared to other community sites. We certainly do not want to change that.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
My day job involves supplying various services to educators who sometimes deal with various content filtering. I often hear from them details you would never guess unless you regularly used filtering of this sort yourself. Banning of complete domains over an offending image or video displayed somewhere on the site is unfortunately not an uncommon experience.
Even if a site isn't currently blocked, it just takes one parent to complain to their safe ISP or filter software, supplying a justification, and the company in question will take down an entire site just to be safe.
Anybody that would hear stories about people trying to block access to content on the Internet on a regular basis would definitively be concerned about their website suffering from the same fate. I'm wondering if your day job isn't biasing your point of view though, just like I am biased for not witnessing these ecosystems from my home.
For instance, you're talking about selling to educators, but TASVideos doesn't really offer much educational content in the first place. Should we really care about schools trying to block non-educational websites in the first place? I believe that's not something that we should care about at the site administration level.
Also, you pointed out that speedrun.com has a worse rating on WOT than TASVideos. While this is true, it's still very high, and if you look more closely, WOT gives its own rating confidence at 1/5 for child safety in this case. It probably doesn't have enough data to give it a proper rating. Just for fun, I put in a bunch of niche IT-related websites in, and they all have similar ratings to it. so it seems that speedrun.com is in the normal here.
If we take that away, what we're left with is either ignoring these filtering services and risk having more people potentially not being able to access TASVideos from one of their Internet access points, or block some TASes based on adult games to be shared to anyone regardless of quality, entertainment or Vault value. Neither case is good in my opinion, but at least in the former case there's always the possible workaround for users of accessing a non-filtered access point. The latter case requires TAS creators to host their movies on a separate website altogether, splitting the community in the process, which I believe is worse overall.
On a final note, I agree with Warp's previous comment. There's really no point in trying to bypass filters strict enough to block websites full of useful content to everyone like YouTube and Wikipedia.
What about the European rating systems? There are games like GoldenEye, despite that game having a Teen rating in the US, it was rated 18 in Germany. What about Australia, with its R18 rating recently instated, which include games like Mortal Kombat X.
Games that are "Adult" in general are usually banned and/or rejected in most countries. Russia's highest rating is 21, which is the legal drinking age in the majority of countries.
And also, censorship. AO games are only on PC, For Manhunt 2, it would have to be toned down for consoles.
And don't get me started with the porno games, especially the notable Atari ones, and the Panesian ones on NES/Famicom.
Games that are "Adult" in general are usually banned and/or rejected in most countries. Russia's highest rating is 21, which is the legal drinking age in the majority of countries.
Off topic: The legal drinking age in most countries is actually 18 years, when looking at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_drinking_age
Back to topic: Yeah, the site shouldn't be so US-focused and only use the ESRB system, but what can we do? I still think that just using common sense instead of rating systems made by non-gamers would be a better choice.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
If it was a matter of common sense, then almost everyone would have shared the same opinion so far, and it's definitively not the case.
Besides, having potential flame wars on this matter for each individual submission really doesn't sound like a good idea to me. On this regard, the current rules allows this potential problem to occur for games not rated by the ESRB, and I believe it will become a big issue for DOS games if nothing is done in the near future.
I don't believe in any kind of censorship. I believe strongly in free knowledge and free use.
I know many will disagree with me, but that's just my opinion.
As such, if I had it my way, the site would allow pornographic/violent submissions for the Vault or something, with some sort of disclaimer so that people know that they're about to see a TAS of a graphic game, both in the video and the publication text. But no one will listen to just me, and really it looks like I'm the only one who wants this.
I don't think of games as any more than programs. Sure, they can have offensive or politically incorrect things on them, but in the end they're just programs, that can be exploited just like any other programs, and that's what TASing is for.
I will always be against censorship, but when it comes to games with sexual content (and I mean more explicit than some nudity), it's hard to even find a game that has non-trivial gameplay. In a perfect world without censorship, your generic hentai dating sim would simply get rejected for being a bad game choice.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
I think that sometimes it wouldn't even be a question of whether the game shows more or less explicit sexual content, but whether the speedrun shows that part of the game.
For example, in most GTA games you can go to a strip bar and get a lap dance. However, AFAIK in none of the games is this part of the mandatory storyline; it's completely optional. A speedrun would naturally not show this.
Thus would GTA games be acceptable for publication, as long as the speedrun skips any of those more explicit parts?
Moreover, if getting a lap dance were part of some kind of category (eg. some kind of 100% completion), would it be rejected?
I think that sometimes it wouldn't even be a question of whether the game shows more or less explicit sexual content, but whether the speedrun shows that part of the game.
For example, in most GTA games you can go to a strip bar and get a lap dance. However, AFAIK in none of the games is this part of the mandatory storyline; it's completely optional. A speedrun would naturally not show this.
Thus would GTA games be acceptable for publication, as long as the speedrun skips any of those more explicit parts?
Moreover, if getting a lap dance were part of some kind of category (eg. some kind of 100% completion), would it be rejected?
A lot of mainstream games have such parts, sometimes they are even mandatory. Not even sites like Twitch have a problem with those, what they don't want are ganes that are only about sex.
If TASVideos would not allow things like the sex minigames in the God of War games to be part of a TAS, they would be more strict than the prude US-based video and streaming platforms.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Even in examples where the game is almost entirely sexual, I still think the game should be allowed (with a disclaimer; I think it's important to notify people of nudity or sexually explicit content before watching which they may be turned off by if they found out without knowing).
I'll give you an extremely absurd, off-the-wall, and disturbing example:
Let's just say there's a game that's a platformer (yes, where you run around, jump around, and actually do stuff), where the synopsis is entirely pornographic (and absurd); a man is running around naked, shooting out ejaculation at enemies to defeat them, and having sexual intercourse with the final bosses. (That is disturbing, I know, but it's just an example, and I don't know how in hell that game would ever get officially licensed by Nintendo etc., but IN THE CASE that it did...)
Well, so regardless of the fact that the hypothetical game is literally all about sex, someone here finds a glitch that you can use in a lot of the levels (for instance, a through wall glitch) that saves major amounts of time in gameplay.
This TAS should be accepted in my opinion. Regardless of the fact that a naked guy is running around having sex with things, the game's logic does not actually represent that (game IMAGES and AUDIO can represent human symbolism of any kind in any game, not the programming and logic of the game). The developers could have, for instance, replaced the nude man in my hypothetical game example with just a block running across the screen, and jumping around on the platforms, shooting smaller blocks at enemies, and just hitting boss battles which are larger blocks, and staying there for a while, and it would be the same logistically. Obviously, the reception of the game by humans would be different because the images represent different ideas, but it would essentially be the same otherwise. I remember a video I watched a long time ago while YouTube surfing of a texture in SM64 where Mario was intended to appear to be running around naked, but that didn't change the actual gameplay at all, for example. (not that such a texture could be used on a TASVideos TAS lol, since any external textures usually aren't allowed, but I'm just saying)
I don't really care about the images in a game as much as I care about the way they move and how they interact with each other, which is what the game REALLY is. If the movement is shocking or entertaining in the perspective of the movements done rather than of the sexual, etc. symbolism, then it should stay no matter what ideas it represents symbolically. Sure, there are a lot of really immoral aspects within some games, such as theft (GTA), murder (most FPS games), rape (Custard's Revenge), and torture (probably others), not that I'm advocating for any of these things to be done in reality because I'm certainly not, but in the games, no matter how offensive they are or how immoral it would be to actually do the things they represent are, there is no actual value in those ideas in the logic of the game, which is what TASing's focus is supposed to be.
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4090
Location: The Netherlands
Warp wrote:
I think that sometimes it wouldn't even be a question of whether the game shows more or less explicit sexual content, but whether the speedrun shows that part of the game.
For example, in most GTA games you can go to a strip bar and get a lap dance. However, AFAIK in none of the games is this part of the mandatory storyline; it's completely optional. A speedrun would naturally not show this.
Thus would GTA games be acceptable for publication, as long as the speedrun skips any of those more explicit parts?
Moreover, if getting a lap dance were part of some kind of category (eg. some kind of 100% completion), would it be rejected?
andypanther wrote:
A lot of mainstream games have such parts, sometimes they are even mandatory. Not even sites like Twitch have a problem with those, what they don't want are ganes that are only about sex.
If TASVideos would not allow things like the sex minigames in the God of War games to be part of a TAS, they would be more strict than the prude US-based video and streaming platforms.
Is the rule (written in the first post, and which spawned this topic to begin with) seriously this unclear, or do you just not read it?
All GTA games, including the ones with strip teases, are rated less than AO, so none of them are banned from TASVideos. (The only exception being Hot Coffee, but that's Hot Coffee - we already went over this in this topic. Only Hot Coffee counts as AO content, the rest of San Andreas doesn't)
No God of War game is rated AO, so none of them are banned from TASVideos. This exact question was already asked and answered at the start of the first page of this topic.
Ready Steady Yeti wrote:
the game's logic does not actually represent that (game IMAGES and AUDIO can represent human symbolism of any kind in any game, not the programming and logic of the game) <snip a lot of stuff>
Imagery, audio etc. are pretty inseparably a part of a game, and one can't simply disregard it when looking at a game. Sure, it's strictly speaking not relevant for the process of TASing, but it is still relevant for the final TAS output, which is a playthrough of a game.
Also, disclaimers are an annoyance for both encoders and viewers, on top of being entirely useless. They are not going to make any half-persistent moral guardian suddenly give a free pass for adult content.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.