Mature teaser: no penis

penisless_davinci

What’s wrong with this picture?

Answer after the cut.

This is what’s wrong:

assassins18plus

This is a frame from an advertising campaign for the new Assassin’s Creed game by Ubisoft, a game I’m personally looking forward to a lot because I really like the first one. But what’s wrong with the people who made this campaign?

So this is the state of maturity in the games industry? You insist on rating even your “viral” advertising 18+ (the highest age rating that I know of) and then you still feel the need to deface a classic work of art to make sure that your “mature” audience is not confronted with seeing a penis? I’m shocked!

Here’s the missing piece:

davinci_penis

It’s beautiful!
Thank you.

22 thoughts on “Mature teaser: no penis”

  2. 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

  3. 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.

  6. 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?

  7. personally i think they should have taken their ‘artistic license’ and added a mech attachment there, like they did for the arm šŸ˜‰

  8. 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.

  9. 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.

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

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  14. 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.

  15. 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??

  16. 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.

  17. 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.

  20. 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..

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