Derwood

Your thoughts?

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Derwood

I'll pipe in first. I think it's Rockstar's fault. First, they left that mini-game in there (I think hoping people would find it). Second, I think that someone at Rockstar made Hot Coffee possible.....someone doesn't just write a patch for a piece of code they didn't know existed to open a mini-game no one had heard of. Clearly this was R*'s way of boosting sales (and buzz) around a game that had run its course after a year on PS2.

I still think Hillary should eat a dick up till she hiccups.

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shakran

I blame the parents. What kind of idiot says "well a game where you kill everyone you can, beat prostitutes with a baseball bat, and glorify gang warfare is GREAT for little johnny, but if it says anything about sex it's evil!"

GTA is not meant for children. At all. Ever. The company doesn't SAY it's meant for children. It's a game for adults. Any parent giving their impressionable little kid this game is a fool.

As for who released the unlock patch, I doubt it was Rockstar. The guys who write the god-mode/infinite ammo/etc trainers have to decompile the game and read through the code. I'm sure one of them stumbled across this code, got to wondering what it was, and wrote the patch.

Rawb

My thoughts are this:

The Hot Coffee mod is totally overblown.

Yes, Rockstar wrote it, they at one time were probably going to have it be an interesting little mini-game in their overall game. I'm guessing, that between all the murdering, drugs, robbery and other senseless violence that they wouldn't have figured it would have changed their rating for the game at all. Then they went to the ratings boards, got shut down, and then they fixed it in the fastest possible way for them. All of the content (textures, animations, code for the gameplay) was already put in to the build system, and noone is willing to take it out completly because noone is willing to risk that it will break something and they will have to take the blame. (Have you seen the nipple texture? it looks like it could have just been a reused dirt texture, seriously.)

I also believe (and this is where I may be wrong) that the actual mod itself was found by another individual without any help from Rockstar (who had probably forgotten that the code was even still in there, otherwise they probably would have taken it out for the PC release). Perhaps someone was browsing through the textures, and noticed some o-faces for the characters, and wondered if there was something going on while your camera was in the other room. Or perhaps it was a boredr Rockstar employee, it doesn't really matter.

The fact of the matter is:
This game was rated for people aged 17 and up.
This game is now rated for people aged 18 and up.
One year difference, I'm not really seeing it myself. 17 year olds can see non-pixalated boobies in rated R movies (also 17 and up), so does that one year really make any difference?
Why is there so much fuss in a game about some titties in a game where you can shoot cops or random innocent people for fun? It just doesn't make sense to me. No sense at all.


And on another note:
In order to get the Hot Coffee mod, you must get it off of the internet. You may have heard that the internet is full of pornography, and I will attest, that there is much pornography to be had on the internet. I would suspect that any kid who has enough access to the internet to be downloading the Hot Coffee mod already has viewed a lot of pornography, and this isn't going to be much of a shock to them.

ratbastid

Exactly right. Typical American sex-paranoia.

Damn these right-wing jingoist puritan Amurricans. They're giving the rest of us a very, VERY bad name. The rest of the world is laughing at us while they wring their hands and clean their guns.

Martel

Um, yeah, except that Hillary Clinton wasn't exactly right-wing the last time I checked.

Right, left, they're both just as bad as the other. You've got people making fun of Ashcroft for covering up the naked statue in the courtroom and you've got Hillary Socialism Clinton campaigning for the very same thing. Right and left makes no difference on this issue.

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hulk

I blame the media. Totally misquoted Rockstar and ran with it - they never claimed it wasn't in the game, but that it wasn't accessible. What the modder had to do was decompile the software, which is not only a Bad Thing but utterly removes any liability held by Rockstar. All that's unlocked is some scripting, an indoor set and animations. Nudity wasn't included, that's been created by other third parties, the 'sex' that's there normally is fully clothed. Much, much less obscene than in other 'T' games, say, The Sims.

Code-wise, all that'd be in there would be camera controls and references to various animations. Rockstar didn't do anything terribly evil by leaving it in there.

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Xazy

Sorry got to agree, they disabled it. it is not a 'part of the game.' To me this is parents who do not want to monitor their own children, and want to blame anyone and everyone for their bad parenting!

Even without that game, they still had violence, car jacking, sex with prostitutes. Oh no there is a bit more nudity in the hooker ~twirls finger in the air~ !!

shakran

And speaking of patches, let's remember that Tomb Raider had the nude patch as well. Should the game's creators be blamed for creating the game platform that people used to strip Lara of her clothes?

It's all so ridiculous. . .

zen_tom

The people responsible for the controversy are those in the media for whipping this all up. Hillary certainly has a valid legal concern in that games companies are able to pump their games full of illicit content that could be unlocked later by usage of an 'unofficial' patch. That does not mean that R* have done this, but it is certainly possible. It would be conceivable that software could be released in the future that is targeted at, for example, minors, but when patched is able to deliver inappropriate content.

The controversy is not about the sex, but about the fact that the current legal system does not provide a framework that accurately matches the facts about the video game industry. Current laws borrowed from the movie and video industry since the late 80s are starting to fray at the edges - and it is the job of people like Hillary Clinton to point out where the rug of the law leaves gaps. And however you look at it (forgetting for the moment whether R*, the modders, the parents etc. are *to blame*, but concentrating, as Hillary will be doing, on this issue of law) there are gaping gaps in the law around this area.

Lasereth

I agree completely. I couldn't have said it better myself.

-Lasereth

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sadistikdreams

I blame America.

Go look for my comments in the other 975029365938650265 threads about this.

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BigGov

I voted Hillary.

There are so many troubles going on in the USA currently, yet congress finds time to worry about steroids in baseball and sex in a game which two previous versions which have been around for many years allow you to pick up a prostitute, obviously have sex in the car (which provides a minor health boost), and then kill her afterwards for taking your money.

Without Hillary this would be a minor issue IMO, and she just wants face time in the media for caring about some little bullshit issue than something that is actually important going on in the USA today.

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wdevauld

Rawb and BigGov have it figured out. This 'controversy' is about a peice of code that allows two fictional-pixellated characters to have consentual sex. Apparently this is a problem.

In the same game you can shoot a cop in the face, steal his car and drive over his body until he's a bloody mess on the road. You can drive down the sidewalk for miles wiping out anybody dumb enough to walk there, and you can steal just about anything you want to help you out on a crime spree. Apparently this isn't a problem.

Why is consentual sex bad, while glorified violence is good?

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Derwood

As a voting Democrat, I can tell you that one of my biggest disappointments in the party is its consistent attack of media and entertainment as "ruining our children". Starting with Tipper Gore and the PMRC all the way up to Hillary Clinton. It seems like something a "conservative" person would be more concerned about, but Ms. Clinton has not scored many points with me recently.

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Stompy

It's certainly not Rockstar, that's for damn sure.

They might've programmed it in there, but the game as is (read: unmodified by outside parties) does NOT contain the controversial material. You can NOT access it without intentionally modifying the game. It doesn't do it on its own, YOU have to do it. The end.

I blame all the idiots in control that like to ramble off about stuff without actually knowing anything about what they're talking about. Politicians and the ESRB don't realize everything I described in the above paragraph, yet they're qualified to make decisions based on their ignorance? Hah. Right.

I also blame the morons all across the country that think sex is an issue to begin with. Our culture is screwed up and no one seems to be able to think outside of the box and question exactly what makes sex is so bad. If you see a boob on TV, big deal - really, but we like to pretend there's something wrong with it and hide it.

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feelgood

I blame everybody in this controversy.

Rockstar: As a game entertainment company, they do have a responsbility as programmers and when they decide that it's a good idea to add more adult material (along with killing people, jacking cars, etc) and hide it and call it "Hacker did it!!!" Yeah, that's a real dumb way of accepting their share of responsbility for providing entertainment to kids.

Hot Coffee Mod: I fail to see how they're responsible for it, they found something that Rockstar hid in the game and made it public. Period.

Left Wing, Right Wing, Up Wing, Down Wing, Center Wing: Everybody overreacts, one way or the other, people are gonna find out about what sex is all about and finding it within a video game, especially ones filled with violence, isn't surprising.

Parents: Weren't they the one who lets their kids purchase the game in the first place? Especially games filled with extreme violence?

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shakran

Oh please. This isn't a kid's game. It's an adult game. R* should not have to make a game appropriate to all age groups if they're targeting adults. Or are you advocating that we also get rid of all movies that aren't G rated?

It's ridiculous to get angry at a game that depicts such horriffic acts of violence not because of the violence but because of a code fragment that has to be activated via a 3rd party patch. That's insane.

Moskie

I had to vote Rockstar, only because, had they handled things differently, this controversy would be non-existent. In a perfect world, game companies could put anything and everything in a game. But as it is today, they've gotta play along with the politics. A small blunder like this sets everything back.

The fact that this content is only accessible via a mod is moot. The people involved here (Hillary) can be assumed to be technological morons, and all they need is the notion that this sex game is on every GTA disc. So game companies have to keep what's happened here in the back of the minds from now on, learn some lessons, and hopefully the industry can get out of this without too much damage.

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wolf

As far as getting the whole "Hot Coffee" thing blown out of proportion I blame the media. All they did was advertise the fact that the mod was out there. Half the kids in the world watched the 6:00 news and said "Holy crap you can have sex in GTA?!" Then went and downloaded the mod. Please, I would love to see the sites history after it aired. You can't tell me that kids are getting carded at the movie theaters or at blockbuster. So kids can go and see Antonio Bandaras and Angelina Joliet bang in just about every manner in Original Sin, see Sharon Stone flash the world in Basic Instinct, but OH MY GOD don't let sex be in a game!! Blowing cops heads off with a sniper rifle and watching the blood squirt sky high, that's OK, but not sex!!!!!!!!!!!!! Screwing prostitutes then bashing their brains in to get your money back plus the money she has is OK, but not actual sex scenes. Let me tell you half of the kids playing that game probably know more positions than Mommy and Daddy anyways. So if you're really worried about them looking at boobs that look like they were drawn on an etch - r - sketch, trust me there are bigger problems.

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tspikes51

One thing that I think people are failing to see is that it was probably much easier to take out the part of the code that allowed the player to access the mini-game than it would have been to remove it completely. Mind you that the programmers can't just go into a program, highlight some code and just press delete, especially with mini-games. I think that when Rockstar sent the game to the ESRB for its screening, it was probably given an AO, but Rockstar wanted an M, so they went for the quick fix so as to not delay the launch date. The fault goes to the plantiff.

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muckluck

If a kid can access the mod, then they can access the massive amounts of free porn on the inernet. Shakran made a good point about the violence, glorifying gang war and beating a prostitute with a baseball bat is alot worse then a little sex. Any 14 year old in this country has probably seen some form of pornography, so what's a little pixelated porn? I think this whole thing is stupid and overblown, and all parties are responsible.

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hulk

Problem with that, feelgood, is that Rockstar didn't hide it, they removed access to it with no intention of anyone ever finding it. The modders, well, they decompiled the damn code and released something that would not have seen the light of day otherwise. If you're going to blame one of the two, you have it backwards.

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"'There's a tendency among the press to attribute the creation of a game to a single person,' says Warren Spector, creator of Thief and Deus Ex."
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MooseMan3000

So where's the "Centuries of Christian doctrine leading to a totally ass-backwards notion of sexuality in the United States" option? That's my vote. Sex is, for some reason, one of the most taboo subjects out there - sure, there are indications of it in popular media, and probably a majority of advertisement is sexually oriented, but when it really comes down to it, nobody wants to talk about it. People are ashamed to kiss in public because of what other people think. The publications that claim to genuinely talk about sex (i.e. Cosmopolitan) are in fact sensationalist and completely disgusting (1,000,000,064 ways to make your man completely lose his individuality and opinions and instead do whatever you tell him). That's where the real problem is.

When it comes to the immediate situation, however, two parties are equally at fault, neither of which are on the poll: sensationalist media and ignorant parents. The media has a long history of misrepresenting lots of different things solely for ratings. True journalism is awfully hard to come by these days when Fox has a "news" program. The media totally misled consumers, politicians, lawyers, everyone involved. Everyone here should know that.

Which brings me to my next point; people who haven't played the game nor spoken to/read from people who have played the game have no basis for their opinions. How can Hillary Clinton "demand" that the game be rated Mature? Has she played it? Does she know anything about the plot? How about the gameplay? Does she know that the main story of the game revolves around you cleaning up San Andreas and ridding it of the drug and alcohol culture that it has sunken into? Clearly the answer to all of these is "Fuck off, bitch. Do some reading before you open your mouth. Unless it's to suck your husband's dick, which you obviously never do. And you wonder why he cheats on you." But I digress.

Getting back to who's at fault. The other people responsible are, of course, the parents. See, as one example, the thread about the 85 year old woman suing Rockstar because they "misled" her about the game. Every advertisment for the game showed the main character stealing at least one vehicle, carrying and firing weapons, and gratuitous violence and explosions. The entire series revolves around the ability to steal any car, at any time, and do whatever you want with it, and that includes running people over, doing drive by shootings, and having sex with hookers in the back seat, then running them over to reclaim your hard earned cash. Explain to me exactly which part of the advertisment campaign led you to believe that the game was suitable for your (sheltered, prissy, bound to be emotionally scarred by poor parenting) grandchild.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, you bitches.

feelgood

Hiding something = making sure nobody would find it

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hulk

Making sure nobody finds it, true, but with the intention of having access to it, still. Otherwise, no point in having it in the first place.

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Derwood

Have you people seen this mini-game? It's tamer than most soap operas!

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wolf

Well actually that goes back to tspikes comment earlier. They had a release date set. Once they knew that the mini game would push an AO rating, they really didn't have time to delete it out. He is right it isn't like you can go into a game's code highlight the offensive code and press delete, lots of other things wouldn't work.

If you check out the history of GTA III there was some code that people found about an online community game like Unreal Tournament or Everquest. The code was hidden when Rockstar decided not to go that route with the game (probably because online gaming was in its infancy then). They have a long history of developing things and then hiding the code that they don't want to include in the final version. Just because it was there doesn't mean that Rockstar expected someone to find it and get it to enable on everyones game.

We'll probably never know the true reason for the code being developed in the first place. Maybe the were thinking about two versions AO and M+, or the developers just thought it was funny and put it in there then hid it once they were pushing the final release.

I see your point, if you didn't want someone to find it, then take the time to delete it completely. They may not have thought it would get out to the masses.

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t3m3st

I wish they had put some sort of disclaimer on it. "Game experience may change during online play". But I guess there was no online play. How about "Game experience may change when game is modified by end user."

I wonder how many of these parents are freaking in situations where the game itself was downloaded by their child...

"I demand this game be taken off the shelves!!!1"
"But mom, I got it off Suprnova!!1 omfgbbqwtf, n00b"

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RogueHunter65

I would blame the American people. I think this is a further example of how we are becoming a nation of pussies. Gimme a break. Nobody is forcing people to play the game. If you object to people watching sex in a video game, don’t download the patch and/or play the game.

I think that there is nothing wrong with Rockstar video games for putting sex in their game. I think that they were expressing themselves and making a statement. It is their first amendment right to put sex in the game. I think they are a very patriotic game company. God bless Rockstar video games and God Bless America!!!!!!

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Dizzet

Well Rock star games have makede the game with the adult only sign so can´t se its their fault...

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Gatorade Frost

I'll say it's hand's down Rockstar's fault. Mind you I think Congress shouldn't be involved, but it's still Rockstar's fault. They have laws basically saying that the company has to include everything when the game's being judged and looked at for content and rating, and they clearly didn't do that, and now months later that's out in the open that Rockstar went around the rating system to include pornography that would have changed the rating on the game.

It's like a movie company throwing in a sex scene into a PG-13 movie after it's already been rated then expecting to get away with it.

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Derwood

Pornography? CJ is fully clothed and the women look like blow-up dolls. It's so unbelievably not porn. It's more tame than Friday nights on Cinemax.

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astrahl

A bit off topic, but I am getting tired of the male programming industry pulling shit like this just to get their shriveled up, underworked rocks off. As a female gamer - I have seen the nude patches and over-boobed fem characters as a blight on the industry's fairness to women. I cant tell you how many times I have been verbally assaulted (sexually) in online games. Male gamers - mostly youngish - are treating and acting towards fem characters and fem gamers in a horrific manner.
It helps to make the gaming an unsavory environment. I've talked to other fem gamers online and all have experienced the same thing...red flag people...big red fucking flag.

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Coppertop

End
User
License
Agreement

Read it sometime.

Seriously.

hulk

You have to remember, though, that gaming is by a large margin predominately male. Developers are going to appeal to said majority because that's where the money is, saying the sexual undertones in many games is a blight is akin to saying that scantily-clad women don't belong in men's magazines.

Another point to note, too, is that younger gamers generally treat everyone with disrespect, like to cheat a lot, cannot understand that someone's better than them and generally a lot of 'omfg c4mp3r f4g H4C|<3R@!!@#3'.

No, it'd be like cutting the scene from a movie, someone breaking in and finding that footage, recutting it into a bootleg copy of the movie and redistributing it.

And again, there are no laws when it comes to ratings, only guidelines and policies. Perhaps this will boot someone into action and set boundaries will come into play, but as it stands it's entirely up to the industry.

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Lasereth

The sex isn't in the retail game. It was left in the game due to time and money constraints in a locked, inaccessible format. Some nerd overseas got extremely bored and unlocked it. That sex scene shouldn't even be considered part of the game...it's not in the retail version.

-Lasereth

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shakran

Read that one twice. It's important. It's not in the retail game. Rockstar is not responsible for what people do to the game after it's off the store shelves. The only thing all the whiners can accomplish here is to force game manufacturers to be much less mod friendly in the future lest someone do something that some idiot finds to be naughty.

Kiss custom planes in Flight Simulator goodbye, kiss custom weapons and levels in online shooters goodbye, and in fact kiss online games goodbye period, because what if little johnny is busy fragging the enemy when someone with the user name "ilikefuckingwomen" logs on and poor innocent Johnny sees it in between firing RPG rounds?

It's time for the easilly offended to go back in their closed off little world and practice their shock reactions to themselves rather than bothering the rest of the rational world with them.

snowy

I blame the parents. Parents shouldn't be buying this game for kids under the age of 17. I've played GTA: SA and frankly, were I a parent, I doubt very much I would even buy it for a teenager. Parents need to take more responsibility for what their children see and do.

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astrahl

How are little girls and young women and adult women supposed to get into gaming with that kind of bias? What motivation does a woman have to pick up a game with titties jiggling around all over the place?? Why are boys getting the good games and women are force fed, fricken Barbie dream house!?!?

I love games and the women I know online love games...
You can't use the "boys will be boys" excuse for that kind of blatant disrespect for women. I have no problem with beautiful women in games, why do they have to be so blatantly "used?"

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Maybe Maybe...
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