I held off as long as I could, because I think this issue has already received far too much attention, but I just couldn't keep from throwing a post up here about it.
I am referring to the whole hubbabaloo concerning Rockstar Games and the 'Hot Coffee' hack [NSFW] to their Grand Theft Auto 3 game, and the recent announcement today by the ESRB.
On the boards I read the voice of reason seems to be peeking through, but I'm not so sure about the general public. Good old Senator Clinton (among many others) has latched onto this with all her might. It is obviously the most pressing issue she could be facing right now. I mean, it's not like there are any other issues facing this country, right?
Let's step back and get a good perspective on this. A game was produced where the objective is to steal property, cause serious injury or death to other humans, generally disregard all laws and personal rights. Oh yeah, and you can beat anyone or anything with a giant purple dildo. That's all cool, ESRB gives it a nice M 17+ rating. However, the second we see some pixalized, partially clothed, completely uninteractive sexual activity in the game, it suddenly needs to be AdultOnly and banned.
I will concede the moot points of some that this is the correct action of the ESRB given their rating system. Yes, sexual activity in a game would constitute an AO rating. That's where I stop agreeing though. First, this was a hack put out by some third-parties who found some unused code in the game and created a patch to access the videos. Let me repeat, for the deaf senators in the room: Rockstar games did not intend this to ever be accessed. As someone who writes code for a living I know all about various corporate decisions that result in all kinds of commented out and inactive code being in a final product. Yes, not cool or allowed for a government, mission-critical application, but perfectly acceptable for a recreational end-user application.
Now, the next and more relevant point. This is the part that has been discussed to death on places I frequent, but since it obviously hasn't sunk in with the American public I will post it again. Why should sexual activity be considered adult-only, but not extreme and pointless violence? One is required if we wish the human race to continue, generally is pretty enjoyable, and doesn't appear to damage others in most cases. The other has no actual benefit. I'm not saying we need to ban violence because that is ridiculous, just get our priorities in line. Nipple slips are not the end of the world, neither is a little sex. The only reason we feel otherwise is years of twisted viewpoints being pushed down.
Leave the game alone. Hilary, quit wasting taxpayer money and go sit on your husband's face. BooYah!
5 years ago
3 comments:
I'm not saying that they should or should not change the rating, but I'd like to add that in Sims 2 you can score points by "Woohooing" as many people as you can convince to strip down in as many places as you can get them to strip down including public places. And to compare this to GTA it's only rated Teen, although since you can make them get married I guess that makes it ok, right? Granted Sims 2 is a bit less violent, but then my question is if it's ok to have crime OR sex in a game, but having both is bad?
Violence is always acceptable, but sex is never. That's what the prudes would tell us.
I forgot to add the bit about the Sims, good addition.
...And yes, the "pretty enjoyable" comment was completely for effect. For someone who ponders it as much as I do, I would hope that to be true ;-)
I'm against the AO rating, with or without the extra "content".
I've got more to say on this topic, but I'm going to let Lyrics Born express it for me...
"You see a role model
we can all follow
full throttle
so we don't bother having to create our own model
that we go by
a fall guy
I can hold accountable
because I don't want to hold the bottle for my own child"
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