Privates Message Board

If your only exposure to Size Five’s size five this esteemed periodical, you may believe that it is little more more than a flimsy excuse for us to make jokes about willies. Not true. Last night, at the British Academy Children’s Awards, Privates won in the ‘Learning – Secondary’ category. This involved beating off competition from the likes of erstwhile Naked Chef and Turkey Twizzler basher Jamie Oliver. You can see footage of Dan Marshall’s acceptance speech and a brief interview by selecting the category on the right here.

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#dlc Zombie Cow Studio's vagina-based shooter Privates grows a pair and then some next year, when the free game finally gets its inevitable dick-based downloadable content. More »

Zombie Cow's educational, dirty-minded twin-stick shooter, Privates, will see its rich, lore-filled universe expanded sometime next year with a free DLC expansion. Cow's Dan Marshall explained on the developer's blog, "we've decided to go all-out and make a whole new adventure, this time set inside a gentleman's bits," which may be the first and only time you'll ever hear a video game creator make that claim when referring to one of his studio's projects. Soak in this moment. Really soak it in.

Of course, the expansion won't just add the novelty of its new, phallic setting -- it will also "cram in new gameplay mechanics, new enemy types, new locations, and a new player character." Keep an eye out for the add-on sometime around Easter next year. But hopefully not on Easter, because we can't imagine anything more alarming to find in our baskets than a big pile of STDs.

The UK's Channel 4 is ceasing 4iP, its £20m digital innovation fund. The division was responsible for digital innovations like AudioBoo and Privates. Any projects currently in development will finish and the remaining 40 percent of the fund will be redistributed.

We remembered that Channel 4 was funding Introversion's Chronometer, but studio co-founder Mark Morris tells us it "never got taken forward beyond the concept stage." Morris elaborated, "Sad news about C4 though, they were doing some good in the business."

In a not-so-stunning turn of events, it seems that the battle to release Zombie Cow's genitalia-based shooter Privates on Xbox Live Indie Games has been lost. Zombie Cow announced as much this morning, saying, "The guys at Xbox have been amazing. They've been really helpful and supportive throughout, but ultimately have advised that the game wouldn't pass the Indie Games Peer Review process."

Given the previous warnings saying as much, Zombie Cow wasn't exactly blindsided by this news. "It's a shame, but it's something we'd always pretty much assumed would happen," says ZC's Dan Marshall. He also assured fans that, since releasing the game on PC, the studio has been "improving it and getting it running on as many different systems as possible" as to fix various bugs.

For its part, Microsoft told Joystiq, "This game 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."

#xboxlive The final verdict is in, and Xbox Live has said no to Zombie Cow Studios' Privates, the "educational" shooter set partly inside a woman's vagina. No hard feelings. More »

Privates, the latest opus from British indie devs Zombie Cow Studios, creators of such irreverent adventure games as Ben There, Dan That and Time Gentlemen, Please is now available to download for free through the television station which commissioned the game, Channel 4. We've been playing it for a half hour or so, and can confidently say it's the best comedic, educational run-and-gun shooter set inside of a human vagina that we've ever played.

In all honesty, Privates is actually a fun little game with clever touches to make it a legitimate tool for teaching teens about sex -- for instance, you have to scan enemies (HPV, herpes, sperm, etc.) to learn more about them, informing you and the rest of your squad about their real-life symptoms and in-game weaknesses. It's fun, enlightening, chock-full of humorous dialogue, and, yes, it also contains a level titled "Campaign in the Arse."

#nsfw Get ready to have sex ruined for you forever, as we take a trip deep inside an infected vagina in the first level of Zombie Cow Studios' Privates. More »

#clips No word if Microsoft has changed positions on Privates, the irreverent safe-sex-themed game still being produced for PC. Zombie Cow Studios has gone ahead with this trailer anyway. "Don't touch it, you don't want it growing all up your balls!" More »

So ... Privates is a game about tiny marines invading the human body. More specifically, it's about invading the private parts of the human body. We've seen screens before, but now you can see it in motion thanks to the magic of video. Suffice it to say that the game, much like anatomy itself, looks kind of gross and silly.

Frankly, we can see why it might have trouble passing peer review on Xbox Live Indie Games. At least the PC version is still comin... er ... will still be released.

#newsflash Micro-marines in condom helmets tromping through a landscape of pubic hair will not be part of your Xbox 360 experience, according to a Microsoft statement on Privates, a title being developed for the PC and Xbox Live Arcade. More »

Though we're deeply fascinated with the concept for Zombie Cow's next quirky project, the genital-exploring twin-stick shooter Privates, we hadn't considered the hurdles this type of mature innovation might face. Seattle PI recently posited the question of whether the game would even be allowed to launch on Xbox Live Indie Games, to which a Microsoft representative replied, "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."

Zombie Cow co-founder Dan Marshall (of Ben There, Dan That fame) told Seattle PI, "There was always going to be a risk it won't pass Peer Review, but obviously we'll do whatever we can to get the Xbox version out," later adding, "it'd be a shame if a huge number of teenagers missed out on some quality gaming and vital education because of some abstract, cellular-level innards and pubic hairs." Even if the game's educational nature doesn't win over the Xbox Live peer review process, the game will get a free PC release courtesy of UK's Channel 4.

[Via Kotaku]

Get a grip.

#xbox360 Attention! This is Privates, a new game from the developers of Time Gentlemen, Please! coming to the PC and Xbox 360, one that will give many hardcore video gamers a second chance to encounter a vagina. More »

Look at our Privates.

A game which aims to poke a little light where the sun doesn't shine.