I said this before, but I think if Valve has any problem, it’s the same one that the rest of the videogame industry has: it’s not used to experiencing games that deal with sexuality - certainly not ones from a queer woman’s perspective - and just doesn’t know how to respond. Not that dicks jokes aren’t hilarious - they definitely are! - but it’s clearly a bad sign if that’s the only way you can relate to sexuality, so I’m glad they’ve proven that to not be the case. That said, I do think it’s a problem if you’re only able to acknowledge sexuality if it’s a) as a joke, and b) only from a male perspective. Making the distinction between actual erotic work and uncensored dick jokes is obviously an important one, but at the same time, I think the fact that there’s room for both does help fight back against the prudish fear of sexuality that we have. Do you think Valve has a bigger problem with erotica than it does with nudity/sex? Is that a larger problem beyond Valve? CL: First off, I’m pretty happy that there’s room for Genital Jousting on Steam too. The main difference between the two is seemingly that Ladykiller is meant to be erotic and Genital Jousting is just uncensored. PA: A big push for Ladykiller came after (the goofy penis game) Genital Jousting appeared on Steam. In general, a lot of things in the videogame industry are a lot more adhoc than you’d think, and the biggest problem can often be just getting a person’s attention. I want to emphasize that this is a pretty common problem for indies dealing with larger companies, it can often be difficult to get their attention as a small developer. Did a real-person ever tell you no earlier in the process? Or was it just a silent cold shoulder? Christine Love: Yeah, the only problem I had was just getting through to a real human - I tried earlier and didn’t get a response. We did a short Q&A about the move to Steam with Christine Love after the announcement: Post Arcade: You’ve said that Valve never asked for you to censor anything after a real flesh and blood human actually took up your case. Regardless, one of Toronto’s best written and unique game experiences is now available to a lot more people. It is possible, of course, that Valve could simply make this one exception and keep blocking the games it was blocking before. Other major digital storefronts such as the PlayStation Store and the Xbox marketplace have strict policies in place to block pornographic and other sexual content. Valve, unlike many major platform holders, is a privately held company so they have the ability to remain opaque on the process and if Steam will now be overrun with, as O’Neill puts it, “less thoughtful pornography.” “I wasn’t willing to censor it, since sex is so important to the game, but also they never asked,” Love said on Twitter. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |