How I find [CENSORED] game

[catmeows]

I could just overlook something but is it possible to find a [CENSORED] through SC search ?

[Einar Saukas]

No. Censured games are excluded from search results at SC.

But you can search a censured game at https://zxinfo.dk/ and then follow the link (under "related sites") back to SC.

[catmeows]

Ok thanks. I just wonder, would it be possible to list games without any media? Basically my problem was that I noticed a game missing when I searched by publisher So I was wondering what happened. Eventually I have found out the title is censored and found link on zxart.
I imagine this [censored] thing is due some legal stuff (to protect integrity of my 46 old soul) and I don't really care if title would be available but I would like to know that such title even exists. Just asking.... If It Is toho much work and you need to comply with a law, that's fine too.

[equinox]

Ok thanks. I just wonder, would it be possible to list games without any media? Basically my problem was that I noticed a game missing when I searched by publisher So I was wondering what happened. Eventually I have found out the title is censored and found link on zxart.
I imagine this [censored] thing is due some legal stuff (to protect integrity of my 46 old soul) and I don't really care if title would be available but I would like to know that such title even exists. Just asking.... If It Is toho much work and you need to comply with a law, that's fine too.

I have spoken with the archive maintainers about this too. I would appreciate some kind of search result message like "Here are 7 of 9 results -- the other 2 hidden due to adult policy". They don't even have to show us the other two. I just want to know that they exist, so I know I can try my search elsewhere.

These are not necessarily hardcore porn graphics (like you could achieve that on a Speccy... although Dave "Fudgepacker" Fountain did try). I'm pretty sure that pure text games with dirty words are sometimes blocked out like they never existed. Maybe even the one by the late lamented Daren of RZX Archive. (He blushed when I gave him his completed game to post up. Haha. I think it was a teenage relic.)

Anyway: fine, block 'em if you must, due to hosting policy, or local law, or mere Victorian prudism. But tell us they exist, for those who need to find 'em elsewhere: might be the original author, or an academic, or who knows. Banning and erasing is not how you solve a problem.

(USER WAS BANNED AND ERASED FOR THIS POST)

[equinox]

can't delete this now because the GIVE MEAT TO DOG text adventure man did a post and deleted it.

Let's introduce him to Inform 7 so he can write a huge sprawling open-world adventure where you can give 80 types of sausage to 70 breeds of dog.

p.s. TROWEL is in SHED but you have to examine it twice

[PeterJ]

@equinox,

Nice to wake up to this!

I've explained this to you a couple of times via PM, but here goes again.

I work in the education sector. The world is a very different place to what is was 20-30 years ago. Like many of you I talk about my hobby at work and tell people about the website. Some people would be offended by (and I know I give this example a lot), a game where the object is to hunt and kill homosexuals. I'm not willing to risk my livelihood for the sake of my hobby.

I would love for someone to take on the task of reviewing all games flagged as 'X' rated and we can create a short list of ones to remove the 'X' from.

For now, use the solution mentioned by Einar (this has also been suggested previously).

Regarding the comment below. You can't delete a post after two hours. Please email Dave or I and we can do it for you.

can't delete this now because

Finally, I think the idea of showing the number of titles excluded is a good one.

[equinox]

The world is a very different place to what is was 20-30 years ago.

Yes that's why we are here. Otherwise we'd be on HackerNews, or Reddit.

I would love for someone to take on the task of reviewing all games flagged as 'X' rated and we can create a short list of ones to remove the 'X' from.

Very tempted. But won't promise today. I could probably do some (non-magazine-style) reviewing/checking though... I love metadata... and I am a careful measurer (and can even program a tiny tiny bit).

Regarding the comment below. You can't delete a post after two hours. Please email Dave or I and we can do it for you.

Fairly sure you also can't remove a post if it's been replied to. And there was another post, but he was smart enough to zap it. Oops.

Finally, I think the idea of showing the number of titles excluded is a good one.

Thanks for listening!
I'll disrupt a thread again the next time I forget everything.
But after I properly catalogue all the adult titles.

[8BitAG]

can't delete this now because the GIVE MEAT TO DOG text adventure man did a post and deleted it.

Let's introduce him to Inform 7 so he can write a huge sprawling open-world adventure where you can give 80 types of sausage to 70 breeds of dog.

p.s. TROWEL is in SHED but you have to examine it twice

Well, I deleted the comment I made virtually straight away because I noticed it wasn't really adding anything to what Einar had already had pointed out further in the thread. Like Peter, I've worked in the education sector in the past so I completely understand his point of view.

I'm not quite sure how to take the additional comments you've since gone back and added into your post that are directed at me personally.

[equinox]

I'm not quite sure how to take the additional comments you've since gone back and added into your post that are directed at me personally. [...] Like Peter, I've worked in the education sector in the past so I completely understand his point of view.

Okay. Easy from the outside. I apologise, god knows I've benefited enough from your CASA works, I was out of line. Bye for now

[catmeows]

The world is a very different place

Is this all abpout AUTO censorship ? Like in "1984" ? Meh.

[1024MAK]

Maybe the term NSFW is more appropriate.

Regardless of what it is called, the available content is subject to whatever limitations or restrictions the website owner or administrator decides is appropriate.

Mark

[Ralf]

The world is a very different place to what is was 20-30 years ago

Exactly. You need to be much more careful nowadays than before. About copyrights. About porn.
About racism. About religion. About slightiest possibility of offending anyone with content you publish.

Imagine some dumb mommy learning that teacher of her kids hosts porn games on his website.
Doesn't matter that they are historic stuff, 35 years old. Games are for kids, right? So he delivers
porn to kids. Elementary, my dear Watson.

Check "cancel culture" in Google if you lived under a rock for the last 10 years. It's very easy to
get your life ruined nowadays if you say or post a thing that someone considers wrong.

I fully support Peter in his being careful. Maybe some tweaks could be done to existing solution but
I understand that making adult and other controversial programs fully available is not an option.

[catmeows]

Exactly. You need to be much more careful nowadays than before. About copyrights. About porn.
About racism. About religion. About slightiest possibility of offending anyone with content you publish.

Imagine some dumb mommy learning that teacher of her kids hosts porn games on his website.
Doesn't matter that they are historic stuff, 35 years old. Games are for kids, right? So he delivers
porn to kids. Elementary, my dear Watson.

Check "cancel culture" in Google if you lived under a rock for the last 10 years. It's very easy to
get your life ruined nowadays if you say or post a thing that someone considers wrong.

I fully support Peter in his being careful. Maybe some tweaks could be done to existing solution but
I understand that making adult and other controversial programs fully available is not an option.

You are talking like being conform with prudent, easy to offend idiots could bring anything good.

[firelord]

I believe that any porn spectrum title is Safe For Work (SFW). If someone catches you and take a picture, you can always say that you were looking at the last stage of Manic Miner. The SVGA era humans will not be able to tell the difference.
Even the Judge won't be able to tell if you were watching Samantha Fox or playing Manic Miner.
If this doesn't work, you can always say that you are mentally unstable
... 8-bit-7-color porn in 2023...
They might even give you free drugs!

[Lee Bee]

For what it's worth, may I offer my very humble thoughts on this issue, with tremendous respect (and love to the site!) This isn't to make any demands or complaints, only to offer perspectives which admin may find helpful (or not). I'll even keep my thoughts in spoilers…

Spoiler

On the issue of search results, I strongly agree with Equinox. One of the most infuriating things in the world is when a search result doesn't even tell you it's deliberately withholding things from you. We can accept "known unknowns", but what can be more irritating than "unknown unknowns"!

I'm not saying that obscene titles should have everything "out there on display" but I do think most people would find it preferable for search results to, at the very least, indicate when results have been omitted rather than acting like the games never existed.

This site is such a tremendous resource for the historical documentation of what is quite an obscure medium, so it just seems a terrible shame for the information to be incomplete.

For porn games, you certainly don't have to distribute the actual games, but a listing would be welcomed. Many would even appreciate a category for games with porn or nudity.

Protecting children

Now I'm actually someone who truly cares about decency and protecting children. Guess I'm in a small minority now. I don't like public obscenity and in fact I'm a bit of a Mary Whitehouse, often writing letters of complaint. I don't want to see heavy kissing on TV, for example, it's creepy. (I'm not against porn, I just think it should be private.)

But sadly, we do live in a different world now - a world where children not only have unlimited access to the most appalling adult content and bad language, but are expected to look at it.

To most of us here (in our 40s or 50s), entertainers like Roy Chubby Brown have always been considered "adult", and we'd naturally want to keep this kind of material well away from children.

However, to my utter dismay, these kind of acts are now being prescribed to small children. You only need to take a look at the cover of magazines aimed at 7-year-old girls and you'll invariably find Chubby-Brown-style entertainers on the cover, people like Ariana Grande and Olivia Rodrigo whose songs use words like f----g, motherf-----, bitch, d--- and n---a. These are words which the BBC INSTRUCTS children to go on YouTube and sing along to.

And let's not even mention the seediness of Tik Tok culture, which every child is now a part of.

So, the world has indeed changed, with the youngest children now being prescribed, and desensitized to, grotesque obscenity and sexualisation. Therefore the vast majority of people aren't going to bat an eyelid to pixellated obscenity in a Spectrum game. The idea is quite laughable. Not that I think graphic sex or violence should be openly depicted in the database - I don't.

But I really don't see the harm in at least listing the titles (censored if necessary) with a disclaimer that the game may be considered adult/offensive.

Moral outrage

As for moral outrage, well, everyone's morals are different. Society changes, history changes, political views come and go. Right now half the world is "left" and half the world is "right". Some believe fictional violence incites or endorses violence, others of us believe that's been consistently disproven, and people can separate fiction from reality. I've never finished a game of Commando and wanted to buy a gun and kill people.

It would seem a shame for a historical database to have to go down the route of having to make personal moral judgements about a game's contents based upon the whims of current-year politics (or the authoritarian oppression of Wokeism).

I mean, our history books would be pretty thin if we started removing all the events we personally disagreed with. We might find the Crusades or the Holocaust abhorrent, but we don't erase them from history. In fact, we hold it as important to remember the horrors of the Holocaust so that it might never happen again.

IMHO, merely listing a "homophobic" title is certainly not an endorsement of it, any more than listing a Vegan game is promoting Veganism. What if a gay activist was trying to research and highlight homophobia in games?

So, if this site considers itself as any kind of historical resource, my vote would be to include all titles, warts and all, with appropriate censoring or limiting some entries to titles only, so there are no "unknown unknowns"!

With love and respect,
Have a good day Spec-chums!

[Lee Bee]

My sympathies, Peter. Hard for many of us to imagine the environment within the academic system becoming so hostile that there could even be a remote possibility of anyone raising a complaint about a harmless database of primitive games. But you know your sector better than any of us. If you converted to Islam your career would be safe, as no one seems to have any complaints about a religion which stones homosexuals.

[Guesser]

I believe that any porn spectrum title is Safe For Work (SFW).

There's at least one which I believe is currently illegal to possess, though unlikely to be in the public interest to prosecute over.

[PeterJ]

@Lee Bee,

Both Einar and I have given a solution above for searching for X titles. I suggest you use ZXDK instead.

Your obviously not working in a world of pronouns, and policies for everything! I can assure you that it's not confined to education.

We now live in a world where everyone seems to take offence.

I'm agnostic by the way

[Lee Bee]

Just to clarify, I'm not interested in searching for x-rated titles, and certainly not complaining about the current policy, and wouldn't dream of asking you to take risks with your career. I merely wanted to share a few thoughts on the various issues raised in case they were in any way helpful. The most important takeaway is that I prefer "known unknowns" to "unknown unknowns" - it's helpful to know when search results have been omitted, even if the missing results can't even be named.

[PeterJ]

@Lee Bee,

If you read above you will see that I have expressed that the idea of showing a count of excluded titles is a good one.

[Lee Bee]

Indeed and I wanted to add my support. My thoughts on the issues are only shared in case anyone's interested, which is why I put them in spoilers.

[akeley]

The site/database's authors have every right to present the info however they wish, but I think such decisions warrant a disclaimer on the front page (similar to the Copyright Information). So if you want to omit some material, it should be mentioned there, otherwise the whole image of "The largest ZX Spectrum database in the world" is somewhat inaccurate. And it can prompt people to seek other resources regarding this matter, such as WoS.

[PeterJ]

It's referring to ZXDB being the largest Spectrum database in the world @akeley. You perhaps should have quoted a little bit more. What it says is 'powered by the open source ZXDB database - The largest ZX Spectrum database in the world!' We just use ZXDB as many sites do. We are not a database. ZXDB and this website are separate entities. This website just chooses not to include all titles from ZXDB in search results.

WoS won't show you any titles post 2013. ZXDK is a better option. However you can't download anything from there. You can link to us from ZXDK and access any title that way. All titles are here, you just can't search for them.

I've added the following to the home page:

Please note that you can't search for X-rated via this site. They are not omitted from ZXDB though, so we suggest you use a site like https://zxinfo.dk/ to search for such titles.

[PeterJ]

Exactly. You need to be much more careful nowadays than before. About copyrights. About porn.
About racism. About religion. About slightiest possibility of offending anyone with content you publish.

Very true. Sadly.

[hitm4n]

An idea springs to me, whether this would appease either side, who knows, but i'll add it anyway. Do, don't, i don't care...

Only forum registered members can search the database and get the dodgy results back IF they choose "Adult Content - YES" in their profile.
Anyone else, gets nothing shown.
And the adult content can still be image free, or just a link elsewhere...

Just an idea. Not even sure if doable (or worth it).