Is anyone else disgusted by the GTA Hot Coffee Controversy?
Thank you Hilary Clinton. It's nice to see another politician who knows absolutely nothing about videogames go after them for publicity. And I thought that Joe Leiberman was bad back when Mortal Kombat came out...
The ESRB's decision to give GTA: San Andreas an AO rating for content that had to be hacked to access is ridiculous. I can understand asking Rockstar to remove the files from future versions of the game, but slapping an AO rating on the game to prove a point is lame beyond reason.
And obviously kids shouldn't be allowed to buy games like that. However, the real issue here seems to be that people like Hilary Clinton would like to see games like GTA banned outright. Once they ban half of the shows on prime time TV, I'll have more respect for that position.
I hope that in the Grand Theft Auto 6 Rockstar puts Hilary Clinton into the game so that I can shoot her.
ID:2326
 Jul 20 2005, 10:31 pm
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Jul 20 2005, 10:53 pm
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Kunark
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I wouldn't doubt that they do :P
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Haha I know. They're definitely going to have some sort of reference to her and this whole debate in the next game.
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I can't be mad at Hilary when there's a whole stupid world out there who will respond completely differently to an "Adults Only" label than they would to "Mature (17+)".
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I still think Hilary is stupid, though. I didn't know enough about Hilary to hate her, but she just spelt "COMMUNIST" in red ink, straight accross her forehead. Not that this even makes her a commie pig, but it shows EVERYONE how strict of a president she would be (resembling a communist). Maybe because she is just too into wanting more government involvement, but she just killed any chance she had of becomming president.
I can't even blame her for it, though. Games like that, regardless of the Hot Coffee balogna, should be played ONLY by kids 17 plus (like being 18 is a big difference from 17, what's up with that?), based on the moral stature of society. However, selling it in normal stores like that causes it to most definately get played by kids under that age. One thing that angers me is that they take the time to ban a good videogame from the market, and yet they make hardly any effort to clean up what is pornography, let alone aweful sites like rotten.com. I however, don't agree that violent videogames should be so looked down apon. There may be a thin line, where it isn't the same for some people, but I think that videogames are a blessing to society. Regardless of the fact that they keep kids away from sports activities, kids who sport really haven't decreased much in the past years. In fact, most schools have too many kids and end up cutting half of them. Videogames, I think, in fact help kids stay out of trouble, for it gives a safer, cleaner, non-illegal, non-truely-sinful way to be a sinner. Why go out and have the fun of a gang war when you can play it on TV and not get arrested? There are always those kids like the one in britain, though... THe one who played Man Hunt, and like the next day, bashed a kid to pieces in the park because he said "the videogame made it look fun". ...why can't we all just get along... | |
Communists aren't strict.
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You were being sarcastic there right Elation?
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Yeah, Hillary is a stupid so-and-so and would be up in arms about something stupid regardless of whether or not Rockstar "accidentally" rendered and scripted a sex minigame and snuck it into their finished release, but their colossally boneheaded move isn't helping anything. Rockstar (or someone at Rockstar, anyhow) made material that fell under the AO rating and put it on their distribution copy--why exactly shouldn't the game get rated AO? The fact that they didn't intend for it to be accessed is not as relevant as the fact that they distributed the content in the first place; if Rockstar can't be held responsible for the "inaccessible" content, then it becomes very difficult to hold anybody responsible for anything. I mean, if someone started up a child porn ring, except they distributed all the porn in .zip format, then hey--it requires third party tools to access! The distributors provide no tools for getting at the porn, so clearly they never intended anyone to access it!
I give 10 to 1 odds that Rockstar did the whole thing deliberately to stir up controversy and get more press for the game. In cases like that, I say they deserve any amount of backlash, plus a good swift kick in the balls as punishment for exposing the rest of the industry as possible collateral damage. | |
Yeah, I don't see why anyone would get mad that HC called Rockstar on their shennanigans. Would it be any different if a DVD had unlockable adult scenes and then whined if it got slapped with an "R" rating? When you get down to it, the ratings are pretty lax anyway; GTA would probably have been an R movie yet gets the game equivalent of a PG 13.
And what does any of this have to do with Communism? It's actually mutch closer to right wing moralism. The government in this case isn't saying anyone can't do anything. It just said that the rating a product got was BS and PRIVATE COMPANIES did the rest. I agree with Leftley that it was most likely a publicity stunt that seems to be backfiring a bit and costing the industry as a whole. | |
Well, I do agree. If they actually put it in there themselves, they deserve punishment. I thought it was added on by crackers.
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Why do left-wingers always find some way to blame things on right wing moralism? This has nothing to do with politics... minus the fact that Hilary Clinton is a giant douche.
M is the gaming equivalent of R. The majority of retailers don't carry games rated AO, just as they wouldn't carry X rated movies. If Rockstar purposely left that content on the disk in order to generate media attention, then they deserve what they're getting. However, I see no reason to believe that they did. I think that it's quite possible that the content was left over in the code and over-looked. It's happened a million times before with different games. Take Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver for example. The disc has tons of maps, weapons, dialogue recordings etc. that never made it into the final version. Hackers accessed these files to tinker around with and explore, just as they've done with GTA. In that, case, calling this content "unlockable" is innappropriate, because it was never intended to be accessible by anyone in the final product. In fact, it was accessed in violation of the end user license agreement. I agree with Hedgemistress though. The response from retailers etc. to the label change from a 17+ rating to an AO rating on a game that they've been selling for almost a year is pretty pathetic. If you've already sold 4 million copies, it's a bit late to save face. | |
"I agree with Hedgemistress though. The response from retailers etc. to the label change from a 17+ rating to an AO rating on a game that they've been selling for almost a year is pretty pathetic. If you've already sold 4 million copies, it's a bit late to save face."
Yep. Anyone who wants the game already has the game (well, had it. if my copy wasn't broken it probably would have been now that this all has went so out of scale) | |
k. so you're speeding a stolen sports car around a map with a street gang, glorifying murder and conspiracy, and using profanity regularly.
god forbid you might have a little sex. hillary clinton is fucking stupid, and this whole "oh no, not the children" censorship thing is bullshit in the first place. a rating change i understand, but hillary wants to start "cracking down" on video game companies and even putting bans into effect. give me a fucking break, bitch. remember when your adultering husband getting his dick sucked was the 24-hour-a-day news conversation for like a few months straight on network television? what about "the children" then? how about a michael jackson trial? why is it okay to put the *bad* side of sex on network TV every single day "for the children to see"? | |
Uh, Tactics... somehow, I really... really... really don't think the 24 hour news coverage of her husband's extramarital sex life was Hillary's idea, or even something she endorsed.
In fact, I'm pretty sure that if she had her choice of going back in time and removing the sex scenes from GTA or the Clinton sex scandal coverage from history... she wouldn't pick the GTA one. | |
ha ha you're a funny lady headmistress
lets not forget that her husbands sex scandal is what helped her to rake in millions from book sales, and catapult her political career... dumbass. | |
Wow. You sure told me.
Though, for the record, what you told me is a distortion of truth made even weaker by the "ha ha... dumbass" which only reveals that your opinion is not strong enough to stand on its own. :P But you still told it to me! Have a cookie. If you've been paying any attention to Hillary's career at all, you would have noticed that NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS, she turns it to her advantage. There's no scandal going on in her own life right now, so she picks "a tempest in a g-spot" at random and makes it her issue. Trust me: if she hadn't had her family's personal life dragged in front of the cameras in a crushingly embarassing way, she would still have the million dollar book deals and she would still be "the junior senator from New York." Trust me a second time: if she had her choice, her husband's mistress's dirty laundry wouldn't have been aired in public. | |
What really bugs me though is, even with the "AO" rating the "Hot Coffee" will be removed.
I think its really funny. The "M" version gets it, but the "AO" doesnt. | |
They're going to re-release the game in October with the content removed, and it will have an "M" rating.
Tactics, I don't see why you called Hedgemistress a "dumbass" out of the blue, but that sort of thing seriously ruins the conversation. Please don't. | |
Silk: Who said anything about it being the right wing's fault? Or about being left wing? Here in Texas, we call that kinda talk building a "straw man" ;-)
Yeah, I guess M may technically be designed to be closer to R, but in reality it functions like PG13, since retailers will frequently sell to those under 17. Do I give a crap either way? Not really; but I'm a pretty socially liberal guy who doesn't spend a great time worrying about video(as long as the govt. isn't paying out our money, it's cool :-)). But apparently many Americans do care, because many moralist politicians(including many right wingers as well as wannabes like Mrs. Clinton and "Cool" Joe Lieberman) as well as these business are pandering to them. So you get what we have here. That is really odd that the editions with the content will get a looser label than those without :-/ | |
See Silk's comment... there's no such paradox. The "edited" edition will have the same rating that it was originally given, back before the ratings board knew about this content. That's the purpose of the re-release... no board or government agency could force the company to remove the content -and- give them a higher rating. That's actually how this doesn't count as censorship... it's the distributor/publisher's choice whether to run it as it is, the government/pseudogovernment agency merely reacts to the publication.
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