Sometimes its nice to look at other sides of the Industry, Gamesindustry.biz gives some exciting interviews that are about the buisnes in general and not just the games.

Julian Eggebrecht held an intresting keynote at GCDC in leipzig about how the rating system is very wrong. It' s a fairly long read.

Factor 5 president Julian Eggebrecht has said that games' inability to include sexual content, satirical jokes and fantasy violence without degrees of censure are symptoms of a wider problem with ratings - and said that he didn' t feel the US Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) took the medium seriously as an artform.

" I would be happy if in games we could talk about homosexuality, but we' re not even at the point where we can admit that humans have heterosexual relationships, and that is a real problem - and it tends to show that games are not being seen, even by our own ratings boards, as an artform," he told attendees at the Games Convention Developer' s Conference in Germany.

Eggebrecht devoted much of his keynote address on the first morning of GCDC to attacking the US Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) over ratings problems encountered developing PS3 title Lair, and drew attention to various examples.

One of these was a satirical video of a real-life coffee maker hidden behind a cheat code in Lair - a reference to the presence of unfinished sexual content in the original release of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. " Everyone thought it was hilarious...but we couldn' t call the cheat ' Hot Coffee' , because that would imply we were mocking the authorities investigating Hot Coffee."

" If you cannot have satire about these things, that is approaching the realm of McCarthyism," he said.

In a speech that regularly drew comparisons between the use of violence and sex in film and videogames, Eggebrecht called on his fellow developers to include more sexual content in games. " I want to see a game with real sexual content in a store here in Germany - I don' t think it will happen unless we really recognise games as an artform," he told the audience. He pointed to Stanley Kubrick film Eyes Wide Shut, which " discusses relationship issues that you have in a marriage" . " You don' t have that in games - it is time to wake up and make it happen."

It was during this phase of his speech that Eggebrecht referred to Hot Coffee, defending embattled publisher Rockstar. " How a game can be drawn off the shelves based on a cheat in which you can barely see something that might be interpreted as a sexual act - as an Easter Egg no less - is absolutely beyond me, when at the same time movies have been pushing the envelope for a long time," he said.

Eggebrecht also called on the ESRB to introduce a new American rating between the Teen and Mature badges, arguing that neither was suitable for games like Lair whose innate appeal is to teenage gamers, but whose content is fantasy violence that can be viewed from custom angles - something of a sticking point for censors.

Factor 5 had been forced to excise various elements of Lair' s violence because, while publisher Sony sought a Teen rating, the ESRB repeatedly objected to spurts of blood and organic aircraft being blown into visible " chunks" , forcing the developer into a time consuming and " hugely problematic" cycle of submissions, Eggebrecht said.

" On the one hand they objected to this, but they let us through with a Teen even though you can use fire - you can set up to five, six thousand people on fire. They burn, they run around and they scream, but of course that wasn' t a problem [due to the absence of blood]."

He called the submissions process " a charade," saying: " It' s a flat out bizarre system...It makes it even harder for games than movies because we don' t have the intermediate ratings." Although there were obvious parallels between the way game content could be tweaked to fit ratings guidelines, and the way that film directors were able to remove frames or frame violence artistically so that disgusting or shocking acts were alluded to rather than literally seen, the gap between Teen and Mature ratings and the ESRB' s awkwardness were a source of agitation, he explained.

" They don' t really tell you what they will object to - they just say ' well, follow the standards that have been set before' , which is a problem if you want to push the envelope," he added.

Despite this, Eggebrecht encouraged his fellow developers to continue pushing against the boundaries of what was acceptable in order to establish games as an artform. He concluded: " I hope that we actually can prove that this is an artform. Show me something that proves on all levels that games are indeed an artform - push the violence, but also push the sex, and push it in an artistic way where it' s not really gratuitous, but where it gets my thinking brain going."

I think its worrying that the story telling in games is more restricted than in TV, its barely allowed to show people kissing in games.

The Hot coffee scandal sums it up neatly. I think developers should try to push the envelope a little, but its pretty hard when the Console makers can prohibit the release of games rated AO.

No one should be allowed that kind of scensorship, not even private companies. As long as games rated AO cant be released, games will always in some way be seen as an infirior medium compared to books and movies.

And as it is, consumers cant even vote with their money, since all options are the same!

I think the system just about works in the UK, we have 18 certificate games for those with adult content, I personally haven' t got any problems with sexual content in adult games if it is within context of a plot. The ratings board here gets adult games and rates them appropriately (99% of the time), its just the system is abused by shops selling to those underage. That is why the tabloid-fuelled public just doesn' t understand adult aimed titles, they still perceive gaming as a kids pastime rather than in the same category as films.

Germany has real problems with games violence, and it takes a brave person to try and push the boundaries there.

The US rating system does appear a bit messed up, the hot coffee incident being the main example, a game was ok for a mature audience with depictions of murder, theft, arson, prostitution, but a cartoonish depiction of sex between consenting adults is a no-no. Bu then America seems to have a bit of hard-on for sex in general, is this the influence of the christian fundamentalists?

Ratings Systems are fucked up in general. Over here in Germany it' s the worst thing possibly because, instead of sticking with the rest of Europe and accepting the PEGI system, they are sticking to some weird abomination of their own called USK which, as the name already implies, has to do a LOT with sucking. Games that ANYWHERE else on the planet would easily get an 18+ rating need to be heavily censored over here, so that they don' t get banned from public display. And heck, USKs fugly sister BPJM, who has got to do nothing with ratings, but is simply there to ban games, can even totally forbid games. That' s going to happen with Dead Rising soon.

And to add insult to injury we got our own pack of hillbilly politicians who believe video games are the evil of the world and whenever children go wrong they tend to blame either drugs or video games because parents make no mistakes. My ass. Some of those politicians plan to totally ban distribution of any game that' s too violent in their opinion (In fact, the masterminds behind this evil plot are the CDU, which is our countrys leading party). They even want to criminalize the development of such games. Crytek already announced that they are willing to move to another country if CDU has their way.

So seriously, no matter how bad your rating system is - ours is worse. I wish they would just once stick to the european way instead of implementing their own nazi censorship system.