What is the best thing about Conan? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of your lawyers.
Please note this isn’t a design decision or something we can reverse. It’s a legal (or as good as legal) requirement to sell the game in that particular territory.
With that said:
The US version is rated M for Mature by the ESRB. If you buy the US version, you will not see nipples.
The German version is rated 18+ by USK. The German version has full gore, but will not have decapitation, dismemberment, and over-the-top type fatalities.
The “elsewhere in Europe” version is rated 18+ by PEGI and is unchanged.
This is complicated. Thus, I will help you with a simple chart.
| Neo-Berlin and surrounding territories |
The Holy Christian States of America |
The Free European Socialist Paradise of Brussels |
| VIOLENCE NEIN! Sex is cool. |
SEX CAUSES COOTIES Blood is great, though |
We’re a bunch of degenerates. We can take anything. |
#1 by Lucas on February 5th, 2008
I love charts, we need more
#2 by sanyaweathers on February 5th, 2008
That’s not all that sex causes.
#3 by Paks on February 5th, 2008
Pics of nipples or it didn’t happen! Oh wait in the US it won’t happen!! What the hell? I can go to a theater and watch someone being torn limb from limb with guts and gore splattering the screen but I can’t see nipples in my MMO of choice?
#4 by DJ Larkin on February 5th, 2008
There’s got to be a country that doesn’t allow either. Your chart is severely lacking.
#5 by HitNRun on February 5th, 2008
What I don’t get is that it takes explicit sex to get an NC-17 rating in movies, but…nipples gets you an AO rating in videogames?
Not so much a commentary on American prudishness, this is a sad admission that parents in this country really have no idea what their kids are playing.
#6 by Scott Jennings on February 5th, 2008
Nope! Those are the options!
#7 by ajeba on February 5th, 2008
This is a design decision and a stupid one at that. Everyone knows some bored programmer is gonna create a Hot Coffee Conan mod that shows the nipples and then we’ll have Jack Thompson and his Super Friends over here again bitching and moaning. This has happened in WoW and everyone said big deal and moved on.
How the hell did Playboy the Mansion game or Leisure Suit Larry make it over the shelf and not this?! DUMB! DUMB! DUMB!
#8 by Athryn on February 5th, 2008
This might be the first MMO where a lot of Americans buy the Euro version as opposed to the other way around. I know I’d be tempted to.
#9 by Drey on February 5th, 2008
@Paks: Actually, you can see guts, gore AND nipples at the movies in the US.
@Ajeba: The ESRB rating for pixelated nipples would sink the game’s sales.
#10 by D-0ne on February 5th, 2008
BWAHAHAH!
No nipples?!?
Bwahaha!
#11 by Freakazoid on February 5th, 2008
This isn’t a suprise at all. Well, except for germany banning gore. That’s just odd.
#12 by William Purvis (Fear of BV) on February 5th, 2008
Screw it! I am moving to England!
#13 by Zubon on February 5th, 2008
When removing nipples, does the ESRB prefer tassles, tiny bikini tops, or just the normal huge breasts with no nipples on them?
Which version does Canada get?
#14 by Ico on February 5th, 2008
I’m really surprised they say the German version contains full gore … most often it’s one of the first “features” getting cut or replaced by other colors like yellow, green or black.
Some politicians call almost all games “killer games” (even without knowing what they’re really about – some guy messed World of Warcraft and Counterstrike to name an example) and would like to bring people to jail just for creating or owning(!) such games. “That 10 pixel guy is bleeding for 5 pixels! Bad influence to our youth!”
#15 by Wm.S. on February 5th, 2008
What’s the over/under on hot coffee?
#16 by Todd Ogrin on February 5th, 2008
“Which version does Canada get?”
Canada gets the Maple-leaf pasties version.
#17 by Soulflame on February 5th, 2008
I think Canada gets the Hello Kitty Island Adventure version.
#18 by TheeNickster on February 5th, 2008
Sooo…. what’s the housing market look like in Brussels?
#19 by Merkwurdigliebe on February 5th, 2008
I’d rather play a He-Man MMO. At least it wasn’t 100% swords and sorcery; it had spaceships.
#20 by Amp on February 5th, 2008
He-Man wasn’t very manly.
#21 by Igniferroque on February 5th, 2008
The post Scott linked got amended with another link: http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?t=55373
Appearently Eidos submitted a version with no “server-side censorship” – whatever that qualification means. They got a 17+ rating with the bewbs in. Yay, bewbies!
#22 by GreyPawn on February 5th, 2008
The discrepancy between what is okay to show in film/tv and what is okay to show in video games is precisely why the ESRB rating system so desperately needs an overhaul, preferably with greater granularity. If the rating system is used by market forces to completely eradicate entire subsections of rated product (what’s the last AO game you’ve heard of?), then the rating system has intrinsically failed. A society may as well go the Equilibrium route and rate everything EC 10 for “emotional content”.
#23 by SirBruce on February 6th, 2008
The real questions are:
1. If I buy the Euro version, can I play it on US servers and see everything? I assume it’s just client-side assets; the server isn’t checking to see what version I have and only sending the “nipples” flag if I’m in the right regio.
2. How long before there are third-party patches for each version to enable nipples and/or decapitation?
#24 by Jessica Mulligan on February 6th, 2008
This is the kind of thing that drives developers mad (those of us who weren’t already insane when we joined the parade). In Europe in general, sex is considered pretty much a non-issue, but violence is carefully monitored for the proper rating, which is just about the opposite of the US. But every country is slightly different, so lawyers get rich and producers take Valium trying to figure it out.
I remember watching the start of a French film on TV in Paris; the parental warning was that the film was appropriate for kids 12 and over. The opening scene? Two bare breasts with erect nipples, followed by steamy sex in progress. That would be enough to cause the fundies in the US to have apoplexy. Die Hard, however, had a rating something like “Not allowed for those not ready to expire from natural causes.” (OK, 17 years and over) Yet, Die Hard is probably considered tame by today’s US standards.
I wonder which version goes to China?
#25 by Viz on February 6th, 2008
I’m fairly certain pornography is illegal in China. Hong Kong’s most-adult stuff is … CAT3? I think it is? Which is basically porn where you can’t see anything. So I would imagine that China would get the violence-but-not-sex edition.
Americans are really in the middle ground on this issue.
#26 by adam on February 6th, 2008
“We’re a bunch of degenerates.
We can take anything.”
- I have a new SIG. Thanks!
#27 by Taoist Biker on February 6th, 2008
The USA chart is perfect. GTA? Oh yeah, kill all the random people you want, but the Hot Coffee mod is what’s unacceptable. *gasp* Think of the children!!
#28 by itsjustaphase on February 6th, 2008
Massively into your reading between the lines. I will never look at ratings the same way again. From now on the moral undertones of my society have been revealed!!
Love!
http://itsjustaphase.wordpress.com/
#29 by Kaalinn on February 8th, 2008
How exactly are they going to enforce people playing the German version anyway? It’s way hard to do in Europe. Of course they might go with German only servers instead of general european ones, but it’s still incredibly hard to stop people from buying any other version that’s distributed in another EU country, and playing on UK servers isn’t much of a problem at all since language aswell as time zone is pretty much a non-issue.
Also, doesn’t this limit them regarding Digital Distribution? I doubt a button saying “If you want to buy this game, click here. However if you’re American, please disregard that, and click over there instead.” would hinder anyone.
#30 by Viz on February 10th, 2008
Kaalinn, that’s actually kind of the point. The “American version” is more to meet some requirements set by people who will never actually play the game. If you then purchase the uncensored edition, it’s now on your head rather than the company’s, so they have a way out of dealing with the screaming ignoramuses.