Ellen Page recently starred in Sony’s video game Beyond: Two Souls, her likeness and performance captured and used for the CGI epic’s protagonist, Jodie Holmes. The game was a hit–popular enough for nude images of Jodie, generated by removing steam from a shower scene, to end up “leaked” online. As puerile as they were uncanny, however, no-one took much notice.
But then Sony did something really, really stupid: it threatened anyone publishing the images and ordered them to take them off the internet.
Besides turning nothing into news and making sure everyone would see the images, Sony’s hamfisted Streisanding drew deeper scrutiny of its own artists’ choices. John Brownlee, at Fast Co:
if [developers] Quantic Dream never meant for players to see Jodie Holmes naked, why did a Quantic Dream artist spend time painstakingly modeling her breasts, nipples, vagina and pubic hair? A 3-D model is usually as sexless as a wax doll underneath its clothing, because designing games is expensive, and creating assets for things players aren’t going to see is a waste of time. That a Quantic Dream artist would unnecessarily create a sexually realistic body for a 3-D model, then task Ellen Page to bring it to life without her knowledge, seems creepy at best, and a violation at worst.