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Waiting in line at my local office supply chain superstore, I hear Kurt Cobain's creaky voice from beyond the grave:
"Rape me. Rape me, my friend. Rape me ...."
Ah, the Nirvana classic, so timeless in its despair and desolation that it found its way into the Musak soundtrack of my purchase of file folders. And somehow I could chuckle at the irony of the lyrics superimposed across the incredible blandness of Office Depot, wondering how a song like this slipped into the censorship-happy mainstream of America.
Tim Edwards of PC Gamer claims
Spore's first penis creature.
And it made me that much more annoyed at EA and their double-talk about the freedom of user-created content -- as long as it is squeaky clean, safe and sanitized user-created content.
Yes, I'm talking about the great
Spore ban.
The whole story goes like this. EA releases the
Spore Creature Creator to build anticipation for the ultimate sandbox game's arrival this September. Fans flock to the software and pump out over a half-million unique critters in the first two days of its release. Demonstrating the staggering variety that life can take, some of these beasties looked like penises. Some actually had a penis. Some had really large penises. And a surprising number of creatures looked an awful lot like two Dr. Suess characters copulating. Cute, crass and kind of creepy. EA responded by banning accounts and culling the herd.
Way to go EA.
PC Gamer's Kristen Salvatore responds with the very naughty Boobalicious.
Did you forget what you had posted on the
Spore Web site:
"With Spore, anyone can be creative -- make whatever you can imagine with easy built-in Creator tools. Then create and guide your unique personal creature on an epic journey of discovery."
Yes, you can make whatever you like as long as that thing is a Tribble with fangs or an animal that looks like a chair. And if you actually make a creature with anything close to naughty bits, then your "epic journey of discovery" is a cease and desist letter from EA legal.
This is your standard
Spore creature. Cute, polite and don't ask how it makes babies.
I know, I know. EA is a mainstream brand and
Spore wants to be a mainstream success. These days, this means no sex.
I'm sure this is what my mom had in mind when, as a child, I was having a grand time making my two "Planet of the Apes" action figures kiss, and she shrieked and made me stop and promise never to do that again. Over the years, this ban really didn't do much to help me understand homosexuality and did leave me with an ongoing fascination with man-on-man monkey love.
As it turns out, you can't stop people from thinking about things like sex. All you can do is get them to pretend that they don't, which is more ironic than Grunge classics being played in the stapler aisle.
Since this is actually only one animal, this does give a new meaning to "go f*** yourself."
This bugs me all the more when it comes to
Spore. The whole point of
Spore is freedom. Making the HippoPenisMus might be juvenile, and maybe you can keep it safely away from EA's searching Sauron eye of censorship by choosing not to upload the beast to the global Sporeapedia. But what's the fun in that? How does that give you the sense of freedom and possibility that
Spore promises? By the time the game launches, there might be 50 million different alien races created by players to populate the
Spore galaxy -- and not a single one of them will have recognizable genitalia? Since when did the image of God manifest as Mr. Rogers at a Focus on the Family book burning rally?