[IPAndrews]

Originally posted by aldo_14
we're not talking pixellated CJ does Dallas here.

Actually I think a hardcore adult game is probably the best thing that could happen to the games industry when it comes to proving to the general public that the ratings system is and should be applicable to video games.

In reality though software houses are play-it-safe wusses and their middle of the road non offensive pap perpetuates the image that all games are aimed at kids.

[aldo_14]

I think there is at least one hardcore adult game somewhere; i believe I saw it on bluesnews or similar....... but no store on earth would stock it, so the ratings system would never be applied.

This is in the sense of hardcore porn game, of course.  Not, for example, just an adult game in the sense of what's allowed in an 18-rated movie.

[aldo_14]

Well, the forces of 1955 won;
http://ir.take2games.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=169278

To quote from what I posted on a BluesNews thread;
[q]This is ****ing daft.  So now developers are responsible for the stuff they actually remove from the game? (note; game, not 'code' or 'assets' or anything outside the specified normal access)  Looking at the wording of the ESRB statement, it appears that game developers are now being held responsible for any modifications that are created for their game, not just what the developer puts in the game.

"Furthermore, the ESRB calls on the computer and video game industry to proactively protect their games from illegal modifications by third parties, particularly when they serve to undermine the accuracy of the rating."

Not to mention the other obvious stuff; that you;d have to have internet access and intent to access (and with the net you have smut), or that in many states 17+ is over the age of consent anyways (so it's illegal to view poorly rendered dry humping, but not to perform the dirty deed itself).

On the other hand, I'm in the UK.  GTA has the standard 18 rating here, meaning it's a non-issue over here.  But given that the US is the worlds biggest player in the games market (in terms of sales & development), it still pisses me off.
[/q]

[IPAndrews]

They seem to have completely missed the point which is that rockstar provided their game with this content inside. The ruling though infringes on my right to modify a correctly rated game in whatever way I see fit. So for example I can't mod Summer Heat Beach Volleyball to make all the women nekked . That's bollocks of course because once I buy that game I own the binary and what I do with it is up to me. Of course games companies being wusses will probably go over the top to protect their games against modders now. Bad ruling. Idiots.

[aldo_14]

Content was made intentionally inacessible, though.  So the ESRB couldn't make a valid case of it as being game content when it had been intentionally locked off from use (use within the content of the EULA and normal gameplay); unless they expanded game content to include anything that could be reused by a mod.

Interesting thing is....
M is 17+
AO is 18+
Shops don't usually stock AO (why?!  18 rated movies seem to get along ok in other stores); but why have 2 ratings to cover one year of age difference?

And, many states (more than 38) have ages of consent of under 18; http://www.avert.org/aofconsent.htm

In these states, 17 is a fine age for consensual sex, but not for viewing (or rather, following a complicated set of instructions to activate and then viewing...) a crudely drawn minigame of sex between people with their clothes on.

[karajorma]

Originally posted by IPAndrews
They seem to have completely missed the point which is that rockstar provided their game with this content inside.

Rockstar may have written the content but they turned the feature off. It's pretty much the same as when you comment off code.

The game probably had a sex equivalent of the gore on/off option you find in certain games originally. When they decided to turn the feature off instead of spending time and effort they simply set the game to always assume that the sex option was set to off.

Quite simply that's what a lot of programmers would do to turn off a feature they no longer wanted. Why spend time and effort removing the feature and bug testing the removal when you already have code in place that you can make work simply by setting a variable?

Were Rockstar foolish for not seeing that this could happen, of course but let's not act as if Rockstar shipped the game expecting the mod to be used. We've got no proof of that.

I know a lot of people are assuming that Rockstar did this deliberatly in order to improve sales but I doubt it. The statement that they released saying that they didn't make the content is stupid if that's true. The content could easily be proven to be Rockstar's and this would damage them further down the line (which is in fact what has happened). Sales of GTA have no doubt improved but now they have to take in all the old copies of the game, resticker them and send them out. They've also said that they are going to produce a M rated version which will take over from the current version and will have the sex stuff removed (which basically means that piracy of the game will actually increase cause people will want the uncut version and won't pay for this one.)

[aldo_14]

Is there actually any way of accessing the content without breaking the EULA?  In which case what is the point of the EULA in legal terms?

[Turnsky]

you know, this wouldn't really be happening if parents weren't so bloody stupid and let their kids BUY the game..

and let's face it, The sexual "content" in the game can't be accessed "off the shelf" or rather, it HAS it in its code, but doesn't have it acessable to those who haven't got the mod..

[IPAndrews]

Wow. Everyone seems to be siding with Rockstar on this. Frankly I'm shocked. Oh well I've been in a minority before. It's not so bad.

[karajorma]

I think Rockstar were idiots to deny that they had made the feature then turned it off. I think they were idiots to try to blame the mod community for it.

But Rockstar aren't really to blame if people are downloading mods that allow you to turn on a feature that they turned off. If your children are accessing the net to download this sort of thing then they could just as easily be downloading much ruder games. The solution as always is to know what your 17 year olds are doing rather than expecting your PC\TV\Local police force to act as their babysitters.

[StratComm]

Originally posted by IPAndrews
Wow. Everyone seems to be siding with Rockstar on this. Frankly I'm shocked. Oh well I've been in a minority before. It's not so bad.

Quite frankly that's because many of us look at this from a technical perspective as much as a moral one.  The entirety of the GTA series has been about being as socially unacceptable as possible, and given the emphesis on day-to-day life in San Andreas (eating, working out, dating, etc) in all likelyhood simulating sex was seen as a natural extension at one point in time.  At some point, management decided that they could not get the game on store shelves with that content active and told the devs to turn it off.  Now Rockstar, like any software firm, is a company first and foremost.  Their priority is their bottom line.    And it's a hell of a lot cheaper to update one command in one particular place to disable a feature than it is to remove all traces of it, especially in a game as fundamentally complex (and interconnected) as GTA.

Now don't think I'm absolving Rockstar from responsibility in my book.  The scene is undoubtedly in horribly bad taste.  But the game deserved a AO rating to begin with, and all I can fault Rockstar for is not fessing up to that when they took it before the ESRB the first time.  (Well, that and then trying to blame the mod community).

And the ESRB should have handed down the AO rating based soley on the violent and criminal aspects of the game.  Changing a rating more than a year after initial release for a feature intentionally and completely disabled in the retail version of the game goes just one step too far, and sets a very dangerous precident for the future.

[Solatar]

I don't personnally know anyone who's going to return their copy of the game anyway (and believe me...none of these people could access the content/want to access it), and I don't see how that many people would. The only people that would return it would be the little kids that bought the game with their parent's money (who probably shouldn't have it anyway).

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by IPAndrews
Wow. Everyone seems to be siding with Rockstar on this. Frankly I'm shocked. Oh well I've been in a minority before. It's not so bad.

I simply think it's politically motivated rather than having any legal basis; IIRC the president of the ESRB even said, prior to this judgement, that developers could not be held responsible for the results of unofficial modifications.  Additionally, what Stratcomm said; this is not any worse than what exists already in the game and was previously classified for.

Personally, I think the ESRB should simply merge the M and AO categories into the equivalent of the British 18 rating, and be done.  I'm not sure what the fundamental difference between a 17 and 18 (M and AO respectively) rating is, given that in many states (the majority)  the age of consent is 17 or under.  It strikes me as sepecially ludicrous that it is legal to have sex, before it is to view it (in a crude, non-genitalia form).

To me the primary motivation behind targeting GTA and videogames in general is because it's easier to blame an demonizable entity than forcing stores to actually observe the ratings system, because the latter would more visibly cost (stores) money and force the ESRB, etc, to acknowledge the failure of parents to uphold their responsibility in this regard (and risk offending their key consumer group in this).

[Deepblue]

Sigh...

I think the ESRB should find a classification between T and M. Games like Halo and Rainbow Six 3 are distinctly different from games like GTA and GTA rip-offs.

And IMHO, a game like GTA fully deserves the AO rating.

[aldo_14]

If anything, the ESRB needs to drop M altogether.  It's a stupid rating, and I have no idea what logic is behind it, if any.

UK ratings have changed a few times (and several systems exist), but offhand they mirrior the movie rating systems; there's equivalents to U, PG, a 12+ rating, 15 and 18.  IMO it works perfectly (so long as enforced).  For example, GTA is 18, Rainbow Six is 15.  

The actual details are; http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/502556/026-7617986-1286022/026-7617986-1286022

That, incidentally, is why we're not going to see this 'hot coffee' malarky over here.

[Rictor]

Wait, why is anyone even preaching the sanctity of ESRB ratings? I mean, when Penny Arcade lays the blame at Rockstar's door, something is very wrong. Think back to when you were a young'un, and all the stuff you couldn't do or see because it would forever damage you poor little mind. Remember? You couldn't watch any of the good movies, or the late night TV shows, or (if they existed back then) the good games. I don't know about you, but really was a pain in the ass. Thankfully, my parents were common sense people, and trusted me to have enough character to deal with all the stuff life has to offer. But I can only imagine what it must be for someone who has Helen Jovejoy for a mom.

So why are we all, just a few short years later, imposing the same crap on the next generation? What's this I hear about "the stores aren't enforcing ESRB"? They damn well shouldn't be, or rather they have to since it's good business, but I don't see why gamers should genuinely support it. Do we have so little faith in kids that they can't be trusted to distinguish between games and reality? A handful of individuals, out of tens of millions, have perhaps been insipired to commit violence, but these individuals were already warped and would have snapped at some point, regardless of what anyone did. In other parts of the world, children have real problems: famine, dieasese, war, child abuse and all kinds of other crap, and they turn out perfectly fine. Yet experiencing simulated, low-polygon sex on a PC (with, might I add, extensive modification required to the game) will suddenly turn little Billy into a maniac? Give me a break. Next time I see a kid in front of an EB trying to dodge the same overconcerned bull**** we all felt in our youth, I'm going to buy him GTA and tell him to enjoy it.

[StratComm]

Ultimately the problem Rictor isn't the ESRB, or the government, or even parenting in this case.  The problem is that, for whatever reason, most physical retailers (as opposed to online ones, who don't have to convince their clients to pick stuff up off the shelf) refuse to stock adult-rated material, be it film, games, whatever.  (I lay particular blame here at Wal-mart, but then I just hate that chain in general).  But, for an equally retarded and flawed logic, they will sell Mature-rated games (R, M, etc).  So developers and publishers want their products to recieve that one-year-of-difference rating to get their products more visibility.  That's why GTA is (stupidly) not the highest rating, not because of some ESRB screw-up in the first place.  That's why both ratings EXIST in the first place.  The whole damned problem would just go away if stores (Walmart) would just stock adult rated content (lock it in a case or something, they don't seem to care about doing that with console games as it is) and be done with it.

And yes.  I like parentheses.

[Ford Prefect]

I'm curious as to why there hasn't been a comparable outcry directed at The Sims, in which you can quite literally order your characters into bed and watch them have sex.

[karajorma]

The thing is that the kids with Helen Lovejoy as a mum ARE going to grow up weird and twisted. I certainly don't want them getting hold of anything that would inspire them to commit violence

[aldo_14]

Games ratings exist for a good reason, especially with relation to younger, more impressionable children.  But they seem to be fundamentally flawed with respect to the ESRB; the ESRB has bowed to political pressure more than any legal reason, and the rating itself is disproportionate to not only the 'new material', but also contradicts the all-important age of consent in  a vast majority of states (not to mention it appears no worse than your average sex-ed video - presumably they still have it in the US?).

And any system having age ratings seperated by a single year is stupid; there is virtually no difference in my mind between 17 and 18 year old development to justify this.  And in a country where 16 year olds can drive, as well, it again seems a disproportionate amount of fuss.

On the side; surely Wal Mart stocks 18 rated videos & dvds?