Another blow for game devs in general

#101 The lawsuits have begun.

#102 My hope right now is that this get so ridiculous so fast that it implodes in the anti-game movement's face.

This class action lawsuit is essentially compiling a list of people dumb enough to buy GTA for their 14 year old kids. To have such a list might just work in Rockstar's favor. If there's enough people to classify as a class action lawsuit who ignored the M rating to begin with, clearly the threat to public harm doesn't reside with the game developer nor did the initial ESRB rating have much clout to begin with.

#103 Honestly, Im still nursing my throbbing headache at the fact "sex", however you would define it for video games, is the difference of one year of age in recommended restriction yet it is enough to blow up the government, lawsuits, and retailers like this episode has with San Andres. Im literally struck stupified by the intolerable amount of ignorance America is demonstrating right now ...

#104 I'm a bid proponent of writing your representative, Allen Boyd probably receives a letter from me once a month. Yesterday it was a letter on why the F/A-22 and JSF F-35 programs should not be dropped.

Today at work I'll be working on a letter with my opinions on this ruling. I'll paste a form letter version here for you guys to use, and a link to the page where you can quickly find your representative, and paste it into the form.

I plan to cover three topics: the enhancement of gaming through mods and how this ruling destroys that, a movie to game rating comparison, a statement on EULA's and why they should be held as a legal contract.

I'll try to keep from referencing one portion to the next, so some of you can delete out the portions you don't agree with. Modular design? lol

I don't know, I'm feeling very strongly about this topic. Maybe the startup of a non-profit org. is in order. A thousand people under one banner sounds a lot louder than 1,000 individuals, especially when you have the industry backing you.

Games have done so much for me as a person. I have met some of the nicest people in the world, my best friend met his wife through Counterstrike on XBox Live, I've gained a vast amount of knowledge just through the mod scene. It's a shame to sit idly by and watch the destruction of such a good thing.

#105 "is the difference of one year of age "

And in a bit of irony, 17 is the age for consensual sex in some states (New York for one, I believe. Last I checked, there were more than a few people living there).

And of course you can join some National Guards if you're 17 provided you get a letter from your parents, or just wait a year and join any branch of military.

So in one hand our society deems it OK for persons of that age to go out and have sex and kill people ... but are apparently appalled at the concept of them doing it virtually. But a mother buying such a game for her 14 year old kid ... well, clearly that's just her God-given right.

All pretty ridiculous.

#106

Quote:Really, it is similar to suing a web browser manufacturer for the ability of their product to display the pornographic content that you or your child willingly searched out on google. It makes no sense - you cannot expect a publisher to be responsible for third party modifications.

I thinks thats a fairly accurate analogy...

Web browsers are released, people make "webpages." They create images (pictures, created images, porno, non-porno) and code (ordering the images, some online games, text accompanied by the images, formating) to be rendered by the browser.

Games are released, people make "mods." They create images (nude skins, regular skins, icons, inteface images) and code (script to drive the images and content) to be rendered by the engine.

Seems pretty close to me :)

#107 It's a drastic oversimplification, Matthew.

It's completely ignoring the framework many games provide in order to support mods, the fact that you agree to a user license everytime you install a game related to the kind of user content you can create, and the fact that games are rated by a standards board. All things not present in creating a porn site. You don't create a porn site with Internet Explorer. They're completely divergent, whereas a mod is completely inherent. If you remove Internet Explorer, you still have a website. Remove the game engine and you don't have a mod.

A better analogy is that browsers are responsible for what people can and can't do with their plugin technology ... which they are. Or that P2P companies are responsible for allowing people to exchange IP material, which the law has increasingly supported.

#108 Well in truth you don't create a mod with a game engine, you use the game engine to run the mod... skins are created in image editing tools (Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, GIMP), Models in 3D Modeling programs (3DS Max, Maya, Blender), and script in text and/or script editors (Notepad, Wordpad, Textpad).

In fact both web page development and mod development share many of the same tools.

Actually if you remove the web browser you don't have a webpage. With nothing to render it, it becomes a bunch of images and code... which coincidentally is the same thing a mod becomes without the game engine.

#109 You do create a mod with a game engine, that's what makes it a mod. You're using the game engine code, you're using the game assets, you're modifying what is there. In many cases you are required to use compilers and programs provided with the game to get the mod to do anything at all.

Heck, I couldn't even make a simple map or mutator for XIII, even though it ran off of an nearly identical build from the same Unreal engine I had been modding for simply because they had left out certain key parts from the game.

You can make a skin in Photoshop, but without knowing what the engine expects from that skin it's pretty useless. Which is the difference between drawing nude pictures in photoshop and creating a skin for the express purpose of working with the confines of a specific game. They are not identical tasks.

And a web site will work with any web browser that approaches it, but if you remove the game engine then the mod is completely useless. Heck, you could even browse porn images from a porn site without visiting them yourself. It's night and day from a game mod. You can't replace Half-Life with Unreal and then play Counter-Strike. Without Half-Life, Counter-Strike would not have existed, just as without Unreal Tournament there could have been TacOps. You can't even take the skin from one game and simply place it into another.

This analogy only works if you set aside the 1,000 differences between one to another. By your analogy, I could post porn right here and right now and nobody would expect GG do anything about it. You can't blame someone for using their forums to distribute porn, now can you? But the fact is they would and they should because they've provided a framework for me to share that porn with the rest of garagegames.com and they have a responsibility and reason to insure that I don't do just that.

The only real defense someone has for posting a porn modification right now is decrying, "you didn't tell me I couldn't do that" ... which, btw, is pretty much exactly what Rockstar could have said to the ESRB. And such a defense will probably work as well for a porn modder that it did for them. Because one of the more interesting aspects of some EULAs is that they are allowed to be modified.

So no, a game mod ... or even a skin, is not the same thing as a web page or a photoshopped JPEG.

#110

Quote:You do create a mod with a game engine, that's what makes it a mod. You're using the game engine code, you're using the game assets, you're modifying what is there. In many cases you are required to use compilers and programs provided with the game to get the mod to do anything at all.

With web pages your using HTML, CSS, and many other rendering code... that you don't create... You have to use a specific format, specific syntax to call upon the rendering system. Though much simplified web pages are still rendered, styles, placement, fonts, colors, images...

Quote:It's night and day from a game mod.

Not as much as your making it... in the basic concepts of the two it is very similar... obviously a game engine is more complex, we all know that.

Btw there are different browsers that read and do things differently, fortunately there is a standard in content taken to a browser... unfortunately Internet Explorer doesn't adhere to it. You can take the same 3D models, the same skins and save them out different (given some modification to the models probably) and put them in a different engine, it all comes from the same source programs.

Quote:You can't replace Half-Life with Unreal and then play Counter-Strike.

No but you could switch out skin assets to make them run around nude... then send that to all of your friends and play a porno version of them. That isnt' the makers of Half-Life's fault, its the person who created the content... much like you can make your own web browser, or view (like Flash Viewer) to view content however you want, but if someone makes a porno webpage its not your fault.

The difference between webpage and games is complexity (of course) as well as webpages being more standardized.

Quote:By your analogy, I could post porn right here and right now and nobody would expect GG do anything about it.

Umm.... no. When did I ever mention Garage Games site, or the forums lol. For one forums have an agreement when joining, two they can remove it or remove you, three websites do have a standard, though very loose, there are certain things you can't put on a website.

I'm going to stop responding to you ;) You seem to make up my arguments and argue them, *shrug* have a blast.

#111 I agree with Matthew, they are virtually the same.

You don't create a mod with a game engine. You create a mod with a programming language (recently most games use Visual C++ for their modding) and then it is then compiled. Even if it's compiled at run-time, most all games these days use someone else's compiler or parser (ie. WoW and LUA).

Now, look at a website. You don't create a website with IE. You create a website with a programming language (ie. HTML, PHP, ASP) and then it is parsed. Most website are parsed at run-time, using the rules laid out by the W3C. The leaders in the web browser industry don't even make their own parser for these rules, but use one that is widely available (IE using Mozilla).

You can make an image in Phothop, but without knowing when the engine expects that image is pretty useless. There isn't a single browser or game out that supports a PSD, and many other file formats.

A web site will work with any browser yes, but so will any mod. You stated if you take away the engine, then the mod is useless. The same holds true for websites. Remove all browsers, and what is that website? An ugly text file. Now, let's remove all browsers and add in a new browser that confines to the rules of that website. Looky there - that website now has meaning. Go take a look at OzTF for Quake. They added support for Half Life maps to Quake. The same can be done for a mod. If I rip out Counterstrike from Half-Life, and then write an engine that confines to the rules of that mod, you can expect it will work.

The reason you are not seeing the correlation between the two is because there is a governing body in web design, called the W3C. All web browsers must work the same, virtually.

Now, if you look at it from a backwards perspective (I have a mod, make an engine to run it; I have a website, make an engine to run it), they are very much the same.

#112 Wow. I've been reading this for an hour and I still couldn't finish it. First let me say that I would never buy a game that rockstar made (for my kids or for myself). I consider that my resposibility. Changing the rating was pointless. It's been said about a million times on this forum, but honestly, it only one year difference.

On the other hand it might make a difference. When I was growing up (not too long ago), my dad wouldn't let us buy M rated games. Ever. No exceptions. He didn't care how old we were. I imagin there are parrents out there who would let there kids watch R rated movies and play M rated games but not M17 movies and AO games. So the rating change may do some good. On the other hand it has opened up the flood gate for law suits. I'm not sure if RS will loose money or not, but those who would buy the game probably still won't and those who did probably still don't mind.

Is there a double standard? Sure. But just because we feed the kids one kind of poison does that make it right to give them another? Wouldn't it be better to stop giving them the first one?

I guess my only real point is that some parrents do use those ratings.

By the way I work for UPS and you can't ship loaded guns. I was once nearly killed buy a lawn mower blade flying out of a box. The lesson: Be careful what you ship.

-Peter

#113 You don't create a mod with a game engine. You create a mod with a programming language (recently most games use Visual C++ for their modding) and then it is then compiled. Even if it's compiled at run-time, most all games these days use someone else's compiler or parser (ie. WoW and LUA).

Incorrect. All mods rely on the game engine code to function, or the parameters of a game engine to display skins, maps or models. Either way, you are creating a mod with a game engine, for a game engine. Once again, that's why we call them mods. It doesn't matter if you are using Lua, Python, C++, UnrealScript, QuakeC, or whatever - you're just using whatever works within the framework of the engine to get your mod to run (which was the point I was making).

Go take a look at OzTF for Quake. They added support for Half Life maps to Quake. The same can be done for a mod. If I rip out Counterstrike from Half-Life, and then write an engine that confines to the rules of that mod, you can expect it will work.

You could never remove Counter-Strike from Half-Life and rewrite a whole new engine to make it run, not without reverse engineering the engine in the first place or completely rewriting the mod. Which was my point in the first place. Adding Half-Life maps to Quake is utterly on the other side of the spectrum, considering they are largely similar formats to begin with.

The reason you are not seeing the correlation between the two is because there is a governing body in web design, called the W3C. All web browsers must work the same, virtually.

Now, if you look at it from a backwards perspective (I have a mod, make an engine to run it; I have a website, make an engine to run it), they are very much the same.

Actually, every web browser works very different. And I know this because I've spent about a decade working on them. And by on them, I mean ... against them. Heck, I wrote on of the first cross-browser script libraries in existence. I've also been modding since Counter-Strike was in early beta. In fact my spare time since college has been roughly allocated to one task or another. Comparing the W3C to the ESRB is, I'm sorry, completely off-base. The W3C is a body of industry leaders who attempt to hash out their differences in the hope of a standard that at best most will agree to most of. The ESRB is a content ratings board intended to give consumers a brief but accurate overview of a game experience. If you want to compare the MPAA to the ESRB, ok ... but the W3C is an utterly different beast.

Simply because one thing renders something, and another thing also happens to render something, doesn't mean those two things have much in common. Unless you were talking about taking the Mozilla code and writing a modification for it that would pornify every site it browsed to or perhaps making a skin for FireFox which had nothing but breasts on it, you can't make an accurate comparison.

As I said a while back, what you guys are compeltely ignoring is all the work and framework that goes into making engines more moddable. It's not true that every game is just as moddable as the other, in fact nothing could be further than the truth. Like I pointed out, even on game based on almost the exact same engine may not be as moddable. How can you compare that to a website, which is designed to virtually ubiqitious in it's ability to be seen? In terms of user content they are on utterly different ends of the spectrum and to say that a game company shares no more responsibility than a web browser maker is equally precarious.

You're talking about different technologies, created in different ways and regulated in different ways. The analogy is amusing, but inaccurate.

#114
:)

#115 I'll chime in to say that my web browser analogy is probably not the most perfect comparison. It is very difficult to find a direct comparison in other media (almost impossible in non-digital media). [sarcasm]While we're at it (making weak analogies, that is), why not have film manufacturers, or pencil and paper manufacturers police how people use the media they provide? Who knows what sort of smutty drawing kids might be able to get ahold of! [/sarcasm]

The web browser was the best I could think of. Hopefully someone can think of something more direct, but I think games are in fact a pretty unique case. Mostly I just wanted to point out the hypocrisy inherent in blaming user created and distributed content on the publisher only in the game industry while holding the manufacturers of other media apart from the content created on those media.

It is frustrating to imagine having to be responsible legally for all user-made content. Obviously this would be bad for the industry, but I think the real losers here are gamers - rather than be able to share unique and original content, an entire medium is to be censored because some jackass will always be out there to make a mod with a nude skin or some other offensive content, and some unsupervised kid will eventually get ahold of it.

The problem is not with the tool, but with the people using it. Force mod-makers to credit-card verify age before distributing AO mods, or risk being sued directly, rather than placing the burden of watchdog on the publisher.

#116 I know I'd say it was the last....but, LOL: What secret compartment, and how do you unlock the provided smutty drawings in a pencil; and what manufactures includes the secrets??

I really think the entire point is being missed on the subject: "You can't say one thing and do another; without expecting to get nailed to the floor." Software, automobiles, etc...contracts, don't care what 'widgit' we're selling...or set of rules that we are operating under. If you lie, deceive, mislead, expect to have to answer for the actions.

#117 I guess that's the real issue. Did they lie, decieve or mislead?

#118 The problem is not with the tool, but with the people using it. Force mod-makers to credit-card verify age before distributing AO mods, or risk being sued directly, rather than placing the burden of watchdog on the publisher.

And were it not for the ESRB caving in, that's probably what we'd see. Laws like the one in Illinois were already starting to make stuff like that a good idea anyway.

Also, we should remember that sexually explicit mods are pretty rare. With the exception of the gajillion nude skins and porn tags, it's almost never done. And this is more and more true as the mod community sees itself as amatuer game studios looking to break into the market ... and a porn mod wouldn't look as good on the resume as something like Red Orchestra.

So for games like UT2004 or Doom 3 which, IIRC, already have a M rating, they probably wouldn't have too much watchdogging to do. Update the EULA, inform the community that hosting porn skin and mods would be bad, and then keep an eye out. I can't speak for Valve or id, but I know Epic has close enough ties to the mod community that it wouldn't really be that hard. It sucks they would be put into that position, but it wouldn't be that bad.

The real suckage here is the chilling effect this might have on upcoming engines. Moddability was quickly becoming something that nearly any PC game should look at, and slowly console games were dipping their feet as well. Now a smaller studio might decide it's not worth the legal risk, especially if the game is intended for a less than M rating.

I guess that's the real issue. Did they lie, decieve or mislead?

Maybe someone who has worked more closely with them can elaborate better, but from what I've read on the ESRB it really sounds like Rockstar is getting a bad rap here. It looks awful on paper, and their craptacular PR spin did them no favors, but in reality I don't think they could have meant much harm.

ESRB doesn't rate an entire disc. They don't even play the game. They have publishers send in highlights and answer questions to describe the gameplay. So the question really boils down to: should we have expected Rockstar to send in a highlight for gameplay that wasn't accessible?

The answer I guess is whether people really believe Rockstar intended for this content to be found. I've read a lot of conspiracies on this, but I've also read the statements from the mod community that unlocked it. And they stumbled on it completely by accident while poking around the code while looking for something else. None of what lead to Hot Coffee was easy, and it took extremely talented hackery to get it done.

So I'd be on the side of ... they were stupid, yes. But not really out to cheat the ESRB. At any rate, why would they? What possible motive do they have for putting a clear blockbuster at risk?

#119

Quote:
I guess that's the real issue. Did they lie, decieve or mislead?

Sure.. that's a big issue. However, even if they lied or decieved, it should only be a focus on Rockstar or Take-Two. But, this is going to grow into an entire campaign against games. There'll be some committee that will spring up that will be government monitored that will become mandatory for getting a rating before your game can be sold.

Why should any different practices be invoked against games than against, say, movies or music? The ratings in both of those are voluntary as well, and remain healthily so. I still point to the fact that this is due to a lack of parent's paying any attention to the fact that they are buying games/movies/music like this for their kids.. case in point from that lawsuit article:

Quote:
A woman upset that she bought the video game "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" for her 14-year-old grandson... Cohen said in the suit that she bought the game in late 2004 for her grandson when it was rated "M" for mature, for players 17 and older.

So... ummm... yeah. She bought a game for her 14 yr. old that was marked for 17+ year olds. And now she's suing because it contains sex scenes. I still don't understand how genatalia-free digital depictions of humans are considered graphic, but I'll leave that up to the experts. Back to the point though -- if someone is able to bring a lawsuit that she knowingly purchased mature content for her immature grandson, then where, pray tell, will this end?

This is (interestingly) like the "hot coffee" lawsuit against McDonalds. Some woman sues McDonalds over burning herself because she's holding a device (made for hands) with her crotch. And she won... so, I'm assuming this lady will win even though she bought this game for a minor. I guess I should a) make a child and b) make him smoke and drink. When he's dying of a rotting liver and lung cancer, I can sue the tobacco and liquor industries because I disregarded the notices that these are not meant for sale to minors.

This world spins more and more out of control... and no one is trying to stop it -- they're actually helping it happen.

#120 Actually read somewhere, last night, that Rockstar never claimed they didn't put the code in the game, but the media misquoted them and ran with it. I'll hunt for the quote...