One of the main goals for this project is to teach about Māori culture, history, and mythology in a transparent way. I've always thought that if games harnassed their teaching potential for real-world subject, it could be powerful. On the other hand, I don't care for "educational" games, because they tend to just dress up quizzes with pretty pictures. I want to present things much like any game would present its setting and backstory. Maybe afterward people could say, "oh wait, this is a real thing? Cool!"
I watched in amazement as my kids failed to remember facts about European history from school, but could rattle off the stats of any given pokemon, and knew all the hundreds of cards in their MTG deck.
The issue with harnessing the power of games to convey information is that anything that you include must be accurate, or it'll imply the wrong information. Think of it like my game is the last in a long and venerable line of games, and I have to stick to canon or risk pissing off the super geeks. Except for instead of geeks, it's real people with real ancestors.
While I agree with you, allowances have to be made for the cultural mores in which your project is distributed. Nudity in public is taboo in this country, even when it's presented within the context of a culture in which it isn't.
I think you would be just fine with stating that while nudity was the norm at that time, you're clothing her (and others such as kids) to make the project palatable for the public in this country at this time.
Former Microsoft XNA and Xbox MVP | Check out my blog for random ramblings on game development
What would really be fun? Go the full on nudity route for everyone, and render little black-bars over selective bits when they are in clear view. Just to sort of point out the silliness of it.
Quote:Original post by Pete Michaud ...and knew all the hundreds of cards in their MTG deck.
Your MTG decks had hundreds of cards in them? One of the primary rules of the game was to put a lower limit on the number of cards in your deck (40 by the book, 60 in tournaments back when I played), as smaller decks performed more reliably due to the max-4-of-each-card rule.
One thing that I think you need to keep in mind is that sexuality and nudity are not the same thing. What you are describing is nudity, but it is not sexual. Likewise, you can have highly sexualized situations without any nudity at all.
The problem with innocent nudity such as what you are describing is that people in general have a lot of difficulty controlling animal responses to nudity regardless of whether it is sexualized or not. Guys especially are pretty strongly wired to react to seeing the female body. It's like being hit with a sledgehammer, you feel it whether you want to or not. This is what would get you in trouble and what would earn an instant M rating. I don't think that in an educational context many people would object at all if you simply blurred out her torso, similar to what you would see on TV, because at that point the involuntary "whoa, boobs!" response is probably diminished to the point that it's not a big deal anymore. You may need a bit more if it's more entertainment than edutainment, however, like a grass skirt or something like that.
I think that if you are trying to show a realistic portrayal of this culture and how people live, move, and exist in it, it is actually likely in your advantage to do something like a blur when rendering your character. While people in Māori culture may be accustomed enough to seeing members of the opposite sex more or less naked in non-sexual situations, people in the modern western world are not (compare to America in the 1800s, where glimpsing a girl's ankle was quite the racy and arousing event, but today's girls wear shorts all the time and most people think nothing of it). I think this may actually makes showing full nudity *less* realistic in the context of your audience, as they will be experiencing sensations and reading things into the presentation of your nude heroine that a Māori probably would not! Your noble intentions to accurately portray this girl as she should be would be lost on large portions of the populace, because ALL they would see would be her body, and not be able to sympathize with the character that resides in that body at all. And not through any perversion of their own, but simply because they are perfectly normal human beings.
