'Privates' to be kept Private?

Tuesday, May 25, 2010
There is a decent chance that Zombie Cow's 'Privates' will not pass the peer review on Xbox Live. When I first saw the press release for it I was intrigued by the premise. Zombie Cow described 'Privates' as,
"...a funky little game about tiny little condom-hatted marines going right up peoples’ rude areas and shooting all the nasty chompy things that tend to live there if you’ve been carelessly putting bits of yourself in silly places."
It sounds like a fun, if unusual, game and I like seeing developers push the envelope.

Condom capped privates marching dutifully across a pubis in search of evil STD beasties.

Honestly it confused me that this game might not pass. Sex and video games are nothing new, they are paired together and rated with an appropriate Mature all the time. It seems however the Xbox Live Indie Game guidelines are a bit more restrictive than one might expect in an industry that leans heavily on pixelated tits.

Add to the mix that Zombie Cow developed this game with the U.K.'s Channel 4 as an educational endeavor with the Personal, Social and Health Education guidelines of the British gov's National Curriculum in mind.

While no absolute verdict has been passed the outlook isn't good. In a release to the seattlepi.com an Xbox Live spokesman stated,

"This game has not been submitted to our pre-publication peer review process, and it has not been approved for distribution on Xbox Live Indie Games. We have guidelines in place that closely track requirements of content ratings boards worldwide and, among other things, prohibit the publication of strong sexual content.

While we haven't seen this game, we can confirm that if it is consistent with the description we have seen on the Internet, this game would not pass peer review and would not be permitted to be distributed on Xbox Live."

Doesn't exactly raise the confidence does it?

While waiting on a verdict looks like I'll just have to get it on with any number of characters from Dragon Age, or Aphrodite in God of War III, or Madison in Heavy Rain, or well, you get the idea.