I’ve been saying for weeks that the the thing most industry people don’t get about the Hot Coffee mod is that it’s not about sex. I know it’s hip to fliply say “There’s sex in my violence!” and talk about how we have a double-standard and we’re puritans about sex but love our violence. Continue reading
Category: Games and Politics (Page 7 of 9)
On the day that Rockstar is downloading what may be the least downloaded patch in history, which will ‘fix’ GTA:SA so the Hot Coffee mod will no longer work for it, it’s pleasing to note that a jury of our peers has rejected the claims of an Alabama man that GTA made him kill 3 cops.
While the judge barred jurors from hearing testimony linking the 2003 shootings to the game, defense lawyer Jim Standridge reminded them that Moore, after his arrest, told police “Life is a video game; everybody has to die sometime.”
But don’t worry, the victims are still going to try to sue Rockstar. Nice position to be in – BOTH sides try to blame you.
I’ve been collecting links and whatnot related to the Hot Coffee Incident for my own research purposes, and to share with others who may be looking for a cohesive timeline and some of the more coherent analyses on the subject. If anyone has any good links, or compelling points in the timeline I missed, noting them in the comments would be dandy. Continue reading
Overall, I’m quite frenetic lately. Work has amped up at Wolfpack for a presentation we have to give in a month. We’re now at the ‘okay, what’s our design REALLY?” phase that follows blue sky thinking. In other words, it’s dream-crushing time!
In other news: I’m doing more game design stuff outside of work. Continue reading
Sara points out that China has just banned children playing games where they can Player Kill.
Effective immediately, all minors are banned from playing online games in which players are allowed to kill other players, an activity that has been termed Player Kills (PK). China’s Ministry of Culture (MOC) and Ministry of Information Industry (MII) have also ordered the country’s online game operators to develop identity authentication systems that prevent minors from playing games These authentication systems would require all players to first enter their Citizen ID Card numbers before being allowed to play games that allow Player Kills. No timetable was given for when these authentication systems must be implemented.“Minors should not be allowed to play online games that have PK content, that allow players to increase the power of their own online game characters by killing other players,” Liu Shifa, head of the MOC’s Internet Culture Division, which drafts policies governing the online gaming market, told Interfax.
“Online games that have PK content usually also contain acts of violence and leads to players spending too much time trying to increase the power of their characters. They are harmful to young people.”
Say what you will about Jack Thompson and Hillary Clinton — at least there’s a debate over here.
So, the House of Representatives is now involved in protecting us from ourselves, passing a resolution to recommend to the FTC that they look into what the hell Rockstar was thinking. Idlenews has the best analysis and commentary. And for those who want to blame liberals or conservatives, the vote was 355 to 21.
Clearly, the logic is that games are kid things, and kids don’t vote. This logic is staggeringly wrong – the average age of a gamer is 30, says the ESA — and the whole trail of politician-think would be hilarious if it wasn’t threatening my rent check. Continue reading
Needless to say, the Hot Coffee incident has now gotten everyone to pitch in their two cents. It’s impossible to link them all, so I’ll just link the good ones I’ve found.
Ron Gilbert points out a Game Revolution article that discusses the overall trends in violence and teen violence. He mentions the same data that I off-handedly mentioned earlier (that teen violence has been steadily decreasing since 1993 and is at it’s lowest point ever), but sorts through it more carefully, and provides helpful charts to illustrate it. Money quote:
If I may quote directly from the D.O.J. report, “Recently, the offending rates for 14-17 year-olds reached the lowest levels ever recorded.” In other words, the Playstation era has, in fact, produced the most non-violent kids ever
So, Jack Thompson is still a tool. Now, though, he’s a tool focused on bigger game: the Sims 2, which I’ve noted previously, has breasts and is still rated Teen. Which of course, leaves me in the unusual position of rooting for Electronic Arts.
The interesting thing is that there’s a cheat code built into the game, which will unpixellate the naughty bits. This stands in sharp contrast with GTA: SA, where a patch is required for the PC version and the purchase of a Gameshark is required to unlock the content on the console. Metafilter helpfully provided some screenshots of what you’ll see if you do so. Be warned, though, you’ll go straight to hell if you see such naughty pictures! Let’s hand the soapbox over to Mr. Tool! Continue reading
So, I tivo’d the ABC News snippet about GTA that I was pinged about yesterday. It was fairer than I thought it would be, and I have to give Jake Tapper, the reporter, props for actually pursuing and presenting the industry’s point of view, albeit somewhat shallowly. Still, watching it reminded me of why I don’t watch news on TV anymore — 2 minutes on a story just isn’t enough time to go into depth on any topic. While that’s passable for ABC News, who has 30 minutes to present all of a day’s news, it’s somewhat shocking to me that 24 hour news services like CNN and FoxNews don’t do a better job. But I digress.
At one point, the story cut to a mom playing a game, who mentioned that she was now worried that all games a kid bought had hidden Easter Egg content. They then cut to an interview with Jacques Servin, the programmer who was fired from Maxis for an easter egg involving dancing ‘beefcake’ in SimCopter. He alleged that evil, child-corrupting easter eggs are ‘everywhere’. Funny, the only example other than GTA anyone could come up was his own easter egg, with could be shown, uncensored, on ABC News. Pixellated beefcake in 1996 graphics isn’t going to tittilate anyone. Put another way, we have two data points 10 years apart. Let’s keep some perspective. Continue reading
So the ESRB has officially pwn3d Rockstar. ABC News pinged me this morning to ask me some questions about the Hot Coffee circus sideshow (I wonder what they googled to find me). So far, on the blog I’ve been avoiding much more than being snarky on the whole Hot Coffee thing, but I noticed that most other devs have wanted to retreat from saying anything more concrete than ‘this whole situation makes me sad.” So I thought I’d actually post some opinions on the topic. You know, for posterity. Continue reading
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