I applaud this post.

To be fair many famous pieces of Da Vinci’s work are defaced in it. It’s not like they stayed true to the rest and then just whipped out the wang at the last minute.

You two get to create games with challenging concepts and weird and wonderful design decisions, and Ubisoft Montreal get to create a game with a budget that caters to 2mil plus sales, but minus genitals and forced democratic creative direction. Something about having a cake and eating it too.

By the way, I asked about more interviews from the site, but more importantly, will either of you be doing any post-mortems?

Thanks,

Kyle

My question is to the meaning of the “18plus” label. If “18plus” is not mature enough to see a penis drawn by the world’s most well known artist, what is? Do we need a new label?

We will most probably make an extremely expansive post-mortem of The Path. But we’re not ready to start on that just yet.

To be fair, there is an Adult only rating that means 18+.
Mature only requires 17+.

http://img.engadget.com/common/images/5719485415193684.JPG?0.6481665814041725

amen to that

Well, that’s ridiculous. If it was presented erotically, I’d understand, but it’s just anatomy!

What’s that game the makers of Pathologic are working on? The Void or sumthin? There are female breasts in the previews, some in a very erotic context…

Am I missing some sort of cultural barrier here?

personally i think they should have taken their ‘artistic license’ and added a mech attachment there, like they did for the arm ;)

Maybe that the missing penis is kind of a puzzle to solve :-). I don’t know but it’s ridiculous. Is it even legal or moral to alter an master piece of art in favour of creating a game? I’m against it.

Perhaps it’s a clue to the narrative of the game.

X wakes up to find that after a lifetime of having a penis, he no longer does. X pursues the cocknappers in a frenzy of rage and ends up as an assassin. Armed with a weapon that is in no way phallic X finally regains his prize and lives happily ever after.

Hats off to Ubisoft.

What do you expect from a pig but a grunt?

“Answer after the cut” sounds wondrously ambiguous in context. Michaёl, you are back in “industry defamation” mode! Glad to see it!

The game has a site with some hidden images. One of them is the picture with the penis. Gamesradar has an article mentioning it:

http://www.gamesradar.com/f/secrets-of-the-assassins-creed-2-teaser-trailer-revealed/a-20090407103047781052

[...] Michaël Samyn ze studia Tale of Tales zauważył na swoim blogu ciekawą rzecz. Choć może lepiej pasowałoby słowo: kuriozalną. Otóż niedawno [...]

Alright, calm down. The game is 18+. The ADVERTISEMENT needs to be totally family friendly. Game developers have gotten sued before because they released a game, and then a person altered the game in a mod to include nudity. Mass Effect showed a bare ass once in 40+ hours, and got accused of being an orgy simulator. That’s about as crazy as suing a paper company because someone used the paper to write a ransom note. Game developers have to deal with some serious stupidity. Can you really blame them for not showing a Penis in the ad? Blame the culture, not the designers, there just doing what they have to do.

Culture comes from everywhere! If we give in to this kind of hypocritical bigottery, there’s no end to it. Especially considering that using this kind of imagery did not used to be a problem. We’re going backwards in time. If we don’t watch out, we will start burning books again and chopping heads off of statues in churches.

We have to resist this! As artists, as creative people, it is our duty to educate, not to give in to some reactionary tendencies in the audience.

I say hypocritical because of this. Even Google’s “Strict SafeSearch” setting does not remove Da Vinci’s penis. So everyone everywhere has already seen this image! Ubisoft’s move implies more conservatism than is necessary. And each such exaggerated step takes us back further than we need to go.

Let’s be proud of being human! Do we really need to teach ourselves all over again that there is no shame in the naked body??

Certainly its bad. At this level, there is no reason to cover up the nudity. But don’t blame Ubisoft on this. The culture is overly conservative, and has lost its priorities. Ubisoft has just adapted to the cultural necessity. Is it reasonable to assume that a large company like Ubisoft would be willing to take on a full frontal assault from angry right-wing groups legal actions and boycotts, and crazies like Jack Thomson, and put the distribution of there beloved game at risk so the games advertisement can make an artistic point? From pictures, it looks like the game itself will be uncensored. Don’t blame the developers.

I do blame Ubisoft. Who else will change this reactionary tide but forward looking people? If we just give in to the biggots, things will only get worse. It is exactly companies like Ubisoft who can and should resist.

And if they’re shy, then they just should not use that image at all. How about that? There’s plenty of games that advertise themselves without penises and without drawings of Da Vinci. There’s no reason why Ubisoft cannot do the same.

By the way, for some people (probably more than we are willing to imagine within the industry) the very fact that Ubisoft is using artwork by Da Vinci to promote a videogame is insulting. If they are willing to take that risk, they might as well take the other.

Hi Michael. I made a post about this on Neoseeker’s sister site here:

http://gamegrep.com/news/19701-asassins_creed_ii_teaser_site_censors_classic_nude_art_rated_18/

So now there’s a giant picture of a penis on our front page. :)

Send me an e-mail when you’re up for that post-mortem look at The Path!

Haha. They just relesed a new teaser video today. With a brief flash of the Vitruvian Man at the end. But his penis has not grown back. :(

http://www.gamesradar.com/f/secrets-of-the-assassins-creed-2-teaser-trailer-revealed/a-20090407103047781052

in here if you pay attention to ubi’s v-man it has also assasination glove on his left hand…. also it’s announced that we (the character know Da Vinci).. So it may be over a censor, may be it is a thing about what we change in game…

By the way before i read the article i thought there’s something strange about v-man.. that’s it they even castrated the v-man..

[...] dal blog dei Tale of Tales (quelli di The Path e The Graveyard, per intenderci) una notizia di poco conto ma indicativa di un [...]

This made me laugh: “Answer after the cut.”