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Porn and Nintendo...that just doesn't make sense...
Two thousand and six began with a bang, at least within some households. On New Year’s Day the smart sex blog Fleshbot <www.fleshbot.com> found an interesting trend: significant pornography websites started posting the label “Wii Friendly” on their homepages. Around Christmas Nintendo gave Wii owners a free, beta version of Opera. It took the pornographic industry approximately one week to get hip to the game, sort to speak. The homemade Wii label basically says the website will look good within the system’s limited display. With the Wii’s vibrating pieces and mass market penetration, it’s probable that the adult industry had been planning this for months. Someone at Kyoto HQ must have thought about this possibility. (If not, my resume is available at the website listed below.)
Any technologist worth his, her or its salt knows pornography pushes the envelope: the adult industry aggressively pushed motion pictures, the VCR and even the DVD player into our hands. Porn’s link to technology seems more pervasive because we have more technology around. Never before has digital flesh been so accessible.
The biggest change is that users are more in control. For instance, YouTube, formerly an anything-goes video website, allowed users to mark certain vids as inappropriate for young or sensitive audiences. People interested in watching the marked video had to become a YouTube member, a process that required giving your age. However, the company staff is now more actively removing videos themselves. Excited voyeurs outweigh concerned citizens, at least to the point where the company can depend on the audience to determine what is proper and what is not. This isn’t a new lesson. Back in the early ‘80s, arcade game producers discovered a way to put a cheap camera – what we would now call a stillshot webcam – on to coin-op machines. Get the high score in Joust, take a quick digital pic and have your face displayed next to your ranking, designers thought. Within a week the testing location brought back pictures of pale asses, shriveled scrotums and other things that wouldn’t tempt (most) people to put in a quarter. Male teenagers are perhaps the least self-censoring group on the planet, but the rest of us aren’t so great, either.
The whole Wii Friendly situation gives Nintendo a problem and an opportunity. The problem comes from Nintendo’s own historically conservative leanings. Hoping to appeal to parents burnt out by the Atari and its mediocre, overpriced products, Nintendo made efforts early on to associate with toy manufacturers rather than other computer and video game companies. (The company even partnered with Teddy Ruxpin’s World of Wonder at one point.) It made wholesome Mario, from the classic Donkey Kong, its official mascot and pushed cartoon-like, plush adventures. It gladly became the Disney of video gaming. Unfortunately, gaming and gamers grew up. Mortal Kombat was perhaps the first sign of adulthood, and Nintendo reacted by giving gamers green blood in its otherwise solid Super Nintendo conversion. (The fact that it, as well as Sega, was being investigated by a congressional violence committee made the decision much easier.)
Nintendo’s squemishness gave Sony its own lane: the PlayStation became the first video game system aimed towards adults. In truth, Sony knew better because it got burnt earlier in its history. Back in the ‘70s, the gigantic electronics company launched BetaMax, a better quality VCR tape than the JVC/Panasonic-supported VHS. And while the VHS companies had an anything goes approach towards content, Sony made it abundantly clear that every legal BetaMax tape would go through an evaluation process. Serving as its own virtual ratings board, the company allowed no hardcore porn and, presumably, no “gratuitous” violence. The rest is history, with BetaMax being the butt of more failure jokes than pre-CSI David Caruso. Sony had the marketing muscle, the name brand and even the quality, but what it didn’t have was the support of the then million-dollar porn industry. Some experts have claimed watching explicit content in one’s home was the main reason for getting a VCR in the first place. The broader implication here is that people don’t like being told what to do. The average household might not want to watch Saddam Hussein’s hanging or play a JFK murder simulation, but it will likely be up in arms if told something can’t be done on the $1400 machine sitting in the den. It’s the illusion of freedom, and not the act of it, that is more important.
As of early January Nintendo has said nothing about the Wii Quality symbol, preventing sites like Mighty Big Juggs from getting the press it likely seeks, which may, in the end, be best for all of us. Furthermore, what we have now is a beta test version of Opera. (Indeed, users including myself found some weird quirks, like scrambled screens and system freezes.) The final version of Wii Opera is slated for sometime this spring. It will run for around $10. Until then, Nintendo has to pick between two obvious routes. Conservatively, it can censor the hell out of the browser, limiting it to major sites, using ubiquitous, albeit unreliable software like NetNanny to monitor traffic or even employing a password lock to prevent child use.
Alternatively, Nintendo can embrace its now grown-up players and keep the browser as open as its PC counterparts. As of this writing, the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 browsers are unrestricted. Keeping Opera open will show potential users that Nintendo trusts its audience. The Electronic Software Association says the average gamer is now 31 years old. We don’t like getting our hands tied so much.
In the end, the laissez-faire route might draw criticisms, but for Nintendo it would blow over quickly. Anyway, Wii porn is like cell phone porn: the idea is appealing, but who wants to watch on an awkward, washed-out apparatus when the PC is in the next room?
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Damon Brown writes about technology, sex and music, and is author of the Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Satellite Radio and the best-selling Pocket Idiot’s Guide to the iPod. Read his blog at www.damonbrown.net.
