Eidos Says Games Viewed As ‘One Step Up From Porn’
Video games have become incredibly popular. Almost everyone’s playing them, from nuns to grandmothers to frat boys to doctors. Most video game companies are steaming ahead with their profits in the face of a global economic recession. Some games have broached questions of ethics, morals and political ideology but they’re often still looked down on.
Eidos’ creative director Ian Livingstone has charged the UK government with a need to put more support behind the gaming industry: “We’re still seen as the red-headed stepchild of the creative industries, one notch up from pornography in the eyes of most of the establishment,” he said to the Guardian.
While I will agree that the level of support needs to be raised, it’d certainly help to legitimize the industry if gratuitous sexual content is cut out. I understand a gritty, crime based title like GTA wants to have prostitutes in it for realism, but does everything else need to have a busty female heroine in skimpy clothes? Eidos has made a killing off Tomb Raider in part due to its protagonist, the unlikely gymnast and action hero Lara Croft, well known for pulling off complex aerial acrobatics despite a rather abundant bosom. They might get more respect if she was a female figure that could be taken more seriously.