Beyond Two Souls controversy

Hey guys. Have you heard about the recent controversy about found nude image of Ellen Page in Beyond: Two Souls? A hacker used debug console to reveal the digital nude body of Ellen Page and leaked the photos online. Everybody's really upset about this, especially Ellen Page since she might sue Sony and Quantic Dream because of it.

While the whole story is unfortunate, I think a lawsuit against Sony or Quantic Dream is a bit unfair. First, the body of the character probably doesn't belong to Ellen Page herself and belongs to a body double. Also, those companies didn't leak the photos or discover it, some perverted hacker did. I don't know, the whole thing seems a bit ridiculous.

What do you think about it?

First its not actually the nude body of ellen page, its a nude representation of the character that its partly built to resemble Ellen page, meaning only her face the rest is a 3d model.

But noone but Ellen Page is upset over this since everyone knows its not really her. Sony is just trying to protect themselves incase of a potintial lawsuit, and looking at the american legal system, i wont be surprised if there actually would become a case out of this.

And what i think.... well nothing but else that it confirms to me that Page is to full of herself and is a horrible unintelligent person who thinks to highly of herself.

Agreed. Especially about Page. I liked Juno as much as the next person, but the whole "Naughty Dog stole my likeness" thing I found very off-putting. But hey, I guess if you manage to position yourself as bland and generic enough, every similar type is a representation of you, right? Isn't that what they call "making it all about you"?

One has to wonder though; why did they take the time to fully articulate the entire anatomy? I guess you could say it was because they didn't know what angles the camera would eventually take so better to be covered for all eventualities. But it's still pretty suspect. I can't help but imagine that either someone at Quantic was using it to get his jollies off or released it on purpose. Mindless speculation of course, but still. I can't help it. There's no other way I can reconcile the logic of it all.

Or it could simply be a misunderstanding... but that's not nearly as fun to gossip about now is it?

"ZOMG Ellen Page lives inside my bluray disc!!1" She must be really small!!1"

Yep, when your whole and only persona is being the average girl next door, its hard not to have one or a few that is the same. something i think Page is forgetting a lot these days.

As to the animation, hmm i think its done because it makes it look my real and also it would be pretty annoying having to go back and redo the character if the need for something thats not there arises.

But what i dont get is why even allow the development tools to be in the game when its released? i know last minute tweaks and all, but how hard could it be to just remove them, because that is what some hacker got access to, but on the other hand it was on a hacked console with a pirated game, so how much should the developers really be to blame for that. i guess we'll find out if this actually goes to court and Page does sue Sony.

First of all, hackers don't exist. That's a term from the 80s, while they were still actual. Nowadays, anyone who considers himself a hacker is merely a self-inflated douche with little to no understanding of computer science or software engineering. Second of all, he didn't "hack", circumvent, decrypt, decompress, decode and/or find a way to formalize an interpretation of the game's 3D format or any piece of the game files (since without a good way to inspect the binary disassembly catered for the Cell processor, you'd have a difficult time figuring out the format of a 3D model). He just stumbled upon a way to trick the camera of an early release version of the game to expose the geometry of the model, a detailed approximation of a female body — not the body of Ellen Page.

I don't think a lot of it. Ellen is making a fuss. She's cute. She shouldn't be ashamed of a naked body. And the trigger-happy artist... He shouldn't have wasted precious development time modelling pieces of geometry the user is not intended and/or will never see in the final game.

It's a bummer the hackers couldn't find a way to leak out William Dafoe's naked body :(

Actually you are wrong, because he did circumvent the normal barriers that are in place to prevent people from most if not all dev tools. Normally a dev would just pull the dev code and thats that, but Quantic seem to love those shower scenes and if i recall there was also something about Heavy Rain and a shower scene.

But hackers do exist its just that most out there are nothing more than kids who found a program on the net and call themselves hackers. That how ever isent always the case and some like the guys who hacked the playstation or geohotz who broke the iphone are by the dictionary term a hacker.

In a way, I can understand Ellen Page. It seems pretty off-putting to put someone's head on a naked body. Of course people will assume that the body belongs to the actress, and she knows that people will make this assumption. The idea of someone "getting their jollies off" by watching this is also probably a thought in Ellen's head, and that is pretty repulsive. I hardly believe she was naked for the photo shoot. But since this is more than some poor 90's photoshop-editing, and actually crafted to look extremly well put together, it's easy to see why some would make this assumption.

The question concerning the agenda of the artist: I merely believe he made an anatomically correct shape, and why should he censor or hide certain parts? They were never meant to be seen. Or perhaps that shape/figure was created as a base for the later, clothed "Jodie". I don't think they made seperate models for Mass Effect during the cut-scenes... if you get the dev. code and rotate the camera, I bet you could see that the characters do have legs in many of the torso-showing cut-scenes. Sorry..I digress....slightly.

Regarding the Naughty Dog-incident: I "believe", not 100% certain, that Naughty Dog altered the shape of Ellie due to complaints by Ellen Page. I don't know if this serves as an admitance of " yes, we did use your likeness".

Personally think they should of used Imogen Poots (28 weeks later, Fright Night) instead of Ellen Page, the character would of suited her down to the ground. While we on the subject of Beyond Two Souls I got a few things to say. First, I didn't like Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophesy) or Heavy Rain although I tried to get into them, I couldn't stand a game made up completely of quick time events. I had all but given up on Quanticdream but something compelled me to give Beyond Two Souls a try anyway. I'm glad I did...

It's fantastic, it actually made quick time events into something enjoyable and got a perfect balance of story telling while still feeling like a game. I want more, It's made me glad of the previous two games they did as they are like a learning curve, and now I see what they were trying to achieve. Now I can't wait for their next project and I hope they build up on this unique genre because we need more of this. I always wanted to like this company for trying something different, now I can.

Actually, the only thing I was wrong about is writing without citing proper sources since I cannot have my real life authority as a software engineer and computer scientist under a pseudonym, which I intend to keep. Even more so, I don't have the post count or Gamespot presence of some of the other members to have my word accepted as based in fact. Instead of giving you the good old condescending classic of "I'm a professional, trust me", let's start over. First of all, it is a common misconception what hackers are (or more appropriately, were). Hackers, by the widely accepted notion (of people who actually matter), were names appointed to many a computer enthusiast who were part of the early groups which were among the earliest adopters of computers, people into software development and making computers jump through hoops (testing their limits). There is also a duality of the term with security experts, mostly appointed by mainstream media from the same misunderstanding you come from, and most of them don't appreciate the title.

Even the most infamous "hacker" of them, Kevin Mitnick, was actually a phisher, a fraudulent person who played on people's trust and trust-generated stupidity. Find out more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing

Malicious computer engineers who tamper with software are actually called crackers. Cracker is any person who uses its knowledge to tamper with software in a way which circumvents the developer imposed restrictions by means of modifying the vanilla instructions of the software's executable or other binaries. This includes, like I mentioned before, unlawful scanning of the binary for decryption keys used internally to decrypt, decompress, decode and use actual assets which are the property of the developer. More over, the more fatal illegal action, is actual cracking and redistributing of software with its security layer broken. Nowadays, this is a tedious art which requires a lot of patience and even more luck to track down a decryption key, and most of it just comes down to an error on the developer's part. That's why the infamous illegal binaries are actually called "cracks". For the hacker term bit ambiguity, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(term) and go straight to the references. The guy you mention, geohot, who is a cracker, he's probably going away to the pen for some time for publishing the security decryption keys for Sony's platform, the PS3, which is a serious crime recognized by law in the US.

Don't trust a random guy on the internet, check. Even though I'm good for it.

So, which is the anonymous nude enthusiast?

Neither. As I said, and I checked this on more than one source which confirms from first parties ( Sony / Quantic Dream ) and third parties ( Respected gaming news websites ), he's neither. He's just an asshole, a person who was granted early access to a console and a version of the game that didn't fully remove the debug menu that with a little stupid luck granted him access to the said debug menu. Literally, an ingame debug menu. He had no contact with the actual files or has written tools to interpret them. He violated the trust put in the press by Sony and the 3rd party developer, Quantic Dream. And this incident will probably hamper future trust between media and developers, as they can't be trusted.

The interesting thing about cases like this is that video games are an artificial representation of an image of a person, i.e., not a photo. Normally, you would expect Paige to be able to sue in a case like this, but past precedent actually suggests she has no such rights in this matter because when you use a representation of a person's image, for example a painting of that person (as was the case in the matter of a Tiger Woods painting) , the display of said image is actually protected under the First Amendment and therefore not subject to publicity rights suits.

The one other case similar to this was the one involving Jim Brown when he tried to sue EA over his inclusion in Madden and the following is some of the court's ruling:

Madden NFL is not Anna Karenina or Citizen Kane, but it is nevertheless an expressive work and entitled to the same First Amendment protection, the court said, citing Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Ass’n, 131 S. Ct. 2729, 2733 (2011), an unrelated case involving video games.

Given the acknowledged centrality of realism to EA’s expressive goal, and the importance of including Brown’s likeness to realistically recreate one of the teams in the game, it is obvious that Brown’s likeness has at least some artistic relevance to EA’s work,” the court said.

@fieldofview:

Interesting write-up.

Still, I don't blame Paige for being pissed and if she sues I hope she wins. Pain is the best way to teach companies (and people) to avoid being stupid or careless in the future.

@Jacanuk:

I totally agree about Ellen Page being full of herself. I didn't really like her before because, honestly, every role she played since Juno was the same character, just a young girl who's too smart for her own good and is independent. I think the only time she played a different character was in Beyond, which was a very good portrayal and I was starting to like her again. But with her attitude and the stuff she does, first the "Naughty Dog stole my image" fiasco and now a potential lawsuit against Sony and Quantic Dream, I am getting to not liking her again.

@fieldofview: Although you are right about the initial definition of 'hacker', that term has changed since then. Similar to how the term 'gay' has changed since the 20th century. Hackers were revolutionists then but society now recognizes the term as an infamous title for people who operate outside the regulations of computer systems for the sake of profit or in this case...yeah.