Another blow for game devs in general

#41 These ratings are not legally binding. They are recommendations only, much like those of the movie industry. It's up to the store owners (movie theatre owners) to decide if they want to enforce the ratings.

#42 In Australia, the instant some software is modified (patches, mods, what-have-you) it becomes unclassified. This means that whatever it was classified is no longer relevant. The long and short of it is that parents shouldnt allow their kids to modify these games if they want to be sure of the content (as shown by the classification).

I dont think there is anything wrong with it at all... I certainly wouldnt care if (assuming I had some) my teenage kids saw this kinda thing. I mean, these people are fully clothed! Its not sex! Its not even explicit! Theres some rubbing and thats it. The controls are up and down, with some changing of positions!

There is a patch that makes the girls naked, but that has nothing to do with rockstar.

You can shoot a guys head off, but as soon as two fully clothed people start rubbing up to each other its adults only? WTF ESRB?

#43 The rating system is a whole different kettle of fish - as Penny Arcade points out (http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php?date=2005-07-21) the difference between getting M and AO is pretty arbitrary. I'd imagine the process is something like movies - it gets bounced back for some cosmetic changes and to make the board look like they do something - then gets stamped with M.

What I'd like to know is the thought processes behind how someone might have thought that those parts would have made it into a M game - "As long as we texture them with clothes on... Then someone would have to mod them nekkid so its okay"??? WTH...

#44 People have two and only two rights a priori - The right to self-ownership (to not have their person aggressed) and the right to property (to not have their property aggressed). Nothing in this game aggresses anyone's person or property. In fact, a game or piece of software by itself could never possibly aggress an individual's person or property Therefore all legislation proposed here and against games in general is inconsistant with these two rights. Such legislation is not only inconsistant with these two rights, it actually violates them if such legislation is acted on (fines aggress one's property, arrest for not paying fines aggresses one's person).

The answer is clear - legislation against this game or any game is a violation of the right to self-ownership and the right to property.

#45 Er, when did we walk over the border to the land of Philisophical Pure Forms? The right/ability of the state or other bodies to act pre-emptively to prevent harm to person of property is normally taken forgranted.

Things that violate self-ownership/right to property:

Airport Security
Breathilizer Tests
Terms of Service Agreements
Driver Licences
Taxes

As far as I figure, the only a priori right a person has is the right to drop dead. Everything else has to be balanced against the rights of his fellow persons. At any point granting a certain right at the expense of other rights becomes too high a price to pay. Where that point is always up for debate.

#46 A priori, people have more than the right to drop dead. They have the right to defend themselves and their property against aggressoin. This is based on the axioms of human action. Read Murray Rothbard's "Man, Economy, and State" online at mises.org to discover this for yourself.

www.mises.org/rothbard/mes.asp

#47 Which doesn't lead to legislation against games being immoral or violating rights - you have the right to resist (and be squashed) but it doesn't make the action wrong.

My point is that we are coerced (violent action) as a regular part in society. If you rob a bank, police come and take you away. As far as the axioms are concerned, one thing has nothing to do with the other. Each action is invasive - yet one is accepted, and one is not.

Ratings systems and the like are an attempt to prevent fraudulent aggression on the mind by the government. Even if it doesn't exist - which is why activists sound so howl at the moon...

#48 The other thing that this has accomplished...The game got changed from M, to AO...17 vs 18. All this fuss, over ONE FREAKING YEAR. One year. Hillary Clinton, who I never seem to stop losing respect for, finally got her poster child for her video game adjenda. (Who will be the MPAA/RIAA one, I wonder...man I hate that woman.) I don't understand how you can see a real person naked in an R movie at 17...but you can't see people with no genetalia bumping together in a video game. I don't know why Rockstar stood for this. They could have won this, and that makes me dislike them even more. They should have used this for the beneift of the rest of the industry to do the opposite. To say: Look. This is a raited M game. If you parents don't want your kids playing it, than don't buy it for them. If you buy them 'Silence of the Lambs' and they watch it, you aren't going to blame the studio who makes it if they go killing people. Enough with blaming video games. Strike back at the politicians riding on scapegoats to their own gain. Nobody has a case against Rockstar in this. There is no case, and yet they chose the path that makes them, and their own industry lose. Sad, it's very, very sad.

#49 Preach brotha Wilson Preach!! :D

#50 I usually like Hillary and Chuck Schumer but I hate their stances on violence and sex in the media. They have a real Right Wing attitude when it comes to that. Again I point out that politicians love this kind of issue. Its an easy thing to have an opinion on. Who would fault someone who wants to "protect our kids."

The media has been all over GTA the past few years and still parents buy the game for their kids. WTF? Parents can't say they are uninformed. If they have no idea what the games are about, take some f#$#ing interest in what your kids are up to.

As far as if Rockstar is at fault for the Hot Coffee thing. I think that they are not at fault since it could be said that their software has been reverse engineered and is against the EULA. So in fact the end user is the one that should be in trouble.

So why was the content there? I'm guessing it was a feature that was disabled at the last second in order to make a deadline. We as "developers" can sympathize with this since only a handful of us has even released anything. On the other hand my wife made a good point that I have a totally different perspective. Most people don't know how much work it takes to finish a game or how much time it could take to remove features or modify them especially in a large scale game. Heck even alot of us don't.

#51

Quote:If you put your name on a disc and sell it you better be prepared to be responsible for whats in it.

Whos fault is it is really besides the point in this day and age of liability. This simple statement rules all.
You put it out there in the hands of others, get ready to be responsible for everything in your game.

#52 Wow just checked ESRB's web site and it showed grand theft auto 1 (17+) and grand theft auto 2 (13+) ??? wondering how they are rating the games?

also I strongly do belive that the sims should be set to adult as well because they just programed in a blur to hide the parts.

#53 I suppose that the gov't will get it's nose where it doesn't belong as usual. Be ready for a video game version of the FCC. Another waste of money by our wonderful government. I'm sure some politicians relative will be paid a hefty salary to head the commission. I'm becoming really ashamed to say i'm a United States Citizen.

#54 Here's my opinion on the entire GTA thing:

GTA was released with an M rating, which means 17+ - this is the equivalent of a rated R movie.

This mod came out that allows us to fuck our bitches. I can name countless rated R movies that were fucking bitches.

The M rating should stand, mod or no mod.

Now, as far as Rockstar's position. They shouldn't have lied about including the code. The code was there, and yes I feel they are responsible for it, as it was included on the disc. I think companies should be responsible for everything on the disc and nothing more.

So, althought it required a mod to open this sex scene, the sex scene was still on the disc and therefore Rockstar is responsible. But, as I said above, I still don't think it deserved an AO for that.

AO should be for the games like Leisure Suit Larry, Strip Poker, etc. Where you're only goal is sexual stimulation.

#55 I guess I don't get the point of the EULA... if you agree to the terms in the Agreement, then you can't alter the game - plain and simple. If you break the Agreement then you've broken your end of the deal - isn't it as simple as that? I don't care if Rockstar put extra content on the disk if it's not accessible in the version that I bought or subsequent official patches. If I go poking around the disk or downloading mods, then I've broken my agreement. It's a gentlemen's agreement, as I'm sure Rockstar WANTS us to download mods to extend the game. While I don't doubt for a second that they knew the content was in there, by the very law the ESRB wants to abide by (and maybe change), the EULA should protect Rockstar, IMO.

If it comes down to ignoring the EULA and going by the pure content on the disk then does that mean Garage Games must start putting out notices that their game content or content packs may have nudie pictures? Sure enough, I loaded up the skin file for the Character content pack (Bravetree's girl) and you can remove the Girl's clothes using PSP (or Adobe, I'm sure). The clothing is a simple layer than can be turned off and I can resave the skin and play as a nudie girl. That means they are distributing naked skins! But, who really cares about that? This was even meant to be a mod, meant for me to open up and learn from. But by modifying the original content (content that was *already there*), I've broken the official agreement.

Personally, I like Pat Wilson's comments - all this "news" and hype over 1 year on a game that *everyone* should know is very, very mature. If you go by the intent of the ratings and not the letter of the law, so to speak, then AO is for the truly adult oriented games. Thus far, that's generally porn. I haven't seen it so I can't say, but is the hot coffees mod so bad that it escalates the game to AO, equivalent to a porn game? This question is mostly moot but intriques me because I like to think that things are generally fair and that the intent of the law is more important that following it exactly. Meaning, even if the ESRB is right and the hidden content should be considered for the final rating, is it so bad as to dictate an AO?

-nerseus

#56 Well, a EULA has absolutely no meaning in court. As a consumer, the only reason you have to click the I Agree button is so the Next button will activate.

#57

Quote:
I don't agree with your analogy about weapons locked away, though. I know there may be guns in locked gun vault, not that there may be illegal material for minors to view embedded and triggered to open upon command in a video game. I can conceptualize it, but don't expect to find it; whereas, I'd expect to find a weapon in a locked box. Who 'released' the key to the "locked box".

The analogy is perfectly fine:

Sex scenes == guns
Locked code == vault (never said it was a gun vault, btw)
Hot Coffee == vault combination

So, I enter the locked vault's combination (or hack it) to get at the guns. However, to say that you're ignorant to the fact that there is hidden code locked inside game code is crazy. You may have hacked the safe to find there was nothing in it -- no guns. Would that send you into a psychotic rage because it didn't fit some preset expectation for what should be in the vault? Uh oh.. the Engineer is changing the Matrix as it exists...

Look, the sex was locked inside the game. Someone unlocked it and shared his combination with the world. It's that simple. If Rockstar deliberately put sex scenes into their game and deliberately made them inaccessible, then the person who hacks their game is the one who's responsible, not Rockstar.

- Brett

#58 I dunno, Dan. I'm pretty sure the Girl pack has that skin so that you can make your own skins that reveal as much skin as you would reasonably need. Then again, it may just be because artists like naked people. Man I should have been a photo major. When I took photo classes we got to sit for hours looking at naked people from a slide projector and get credit for it. Now tell me, reasonably, even if they aren't particularly attractive naked people, would you pick learning about OS thread scheduling, or looking at naked people...scheduling...or naked people...

Man I did college all wrong.

#59 Awesome. Well it's open season on games now...next up the Sims 2...


http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/07/22/news_6129609.html

Quote:
...
In a manifesto sent today to press outlets, Thompson focuses on dismantling the Entertainment Software Ratings Board and exposing what he calls the industry's "latest dirty little secret." The secret's out now, and it involves nude sims.

In the statement, Thompson says, "Sims 2, the latest version of the Sims video game franchise ... contains, according to video game news sites, full frontal nudity, including nipples, penises, labia, and pubic hair."

The Sims 2 is a "life simulator." In the game, players steer their digital beings around their cyberlives. Actions include everything from the spectacular (getting married, having children, receiving promotions at work) to the mundane (cooking microwaved meals, going to the bathroom, mopping the floor). Such activities, as in real life, sometimes require nudity. EA circumvents inappropriateness by "blurring" out the nether regions, almost to a comical sense.

Knowing that the game is popular among all ages, EA has even taken steps to ensure that Sims fans aren't exposed to indecent depictions. In the recent expansion pack, The Sims 2 University, gamers can send their teenage sims off to college. However, instead of packing the expansion with "keggers" and "reefer," EA chose to use juice and bubble blowers.

Thompson doesn't seem to care. He cites a cheat code that can remove the blur that covers the nether regions. "The nudity placed there by the publisher/maker, Electronic Arts, is accessed by the use of a simple code that removes what is called 'the blur' which obscures the genital areas. In other words, the game was released to the public by the manufacturer knowing that the full frontal nudity was resident on the game and would be accessed by use of a simple code widely provided on the Internet."

It's not just the adults that are liberated from their wardrobes. Sims kids can also be nudified, "much to the delight, one can be sure, of pedophiles around the globe who can rehearse, in virtual reality, for their abuse."

Were this to be true, Thompson would have his smoking gun, and EA would be forced to recall all copies of The Sims 2. However, it's what's under the blur that Thompson's after. And what happens when the blur is lifted? A simple mannequin-esque smooth body, according to EA.

Jeff Brown, vice president of corporate communications at EA, in response to the accusations, told GameSpot, "This is nonsense. We've reviewed 100 percent of the content. There is no content inappropriate for a teen audience. Players never see a nude sim. If someone with an extreme amount of expertise and time were to remove the pixels, they would see that the sims have no genitals. They appear like Ken and Barbie."

Thompson doesn't buy it. "The sex and the nudity are in the game. That's the point. The blur is an admission that even the 'Ken and Barbie' features should not be displayed. The blur can be disarmed. This is no different than what is in San Andreas, although worse."

[UPDATE] Thompson this afternoon updated his earlier statement, saying he is aware certain mods only remove "the blur," but adds that "Electronic Arts has done nothing about this." Thompson's new conclusion: EA is "cooperating, gleefully, with the mod community to turn Sims 2 into a porn offering."

Total bullshit. There you go, defenders of this decision. There's a patch for WoW to have naked characters as well...that's next on the block. Seriously. At what point do you stop? Sure, you couldn't stand behind GTA...what about The Sims 2? The precident is set.

#60 I like the part where Sims 2 is a pedophile training tool. Someone needs to snipe that guy, and say politics made them do it, so we can ban the sale of politicians to anyone over 18.