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Rockstar Investigated Over GTA - Vice City
Jubii writes "Seems the State of Florida is about to investigate Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for possibly violating state hate crime laws. This comes right after Rockstar and Take-Two issued an apology and a promise to remove offensive dialog found in the game. This could cause significant changes for 'mature' games in the future." Since Rockstar has already apologized and pledged to update the game, is it just me, or is the state of Florida only looking to line its pockets with some best-selling game profits? Update: 12/12 00:19 GMT by S : Haitian community leaders aren't satisfied either, saying "the manufacturer's pledge to change future editions did not solve the problem with games on store shelves now."
When I played VC, I *never* once thought, "hey, those haitians, they're pretty bloodthursty!" And you wanna know why? Cuz it's a GAME, not a how-to guide or a travel brochure!
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
How much have the people who are making these claims looked into the game? That game bashes pretty much every group out there. You have the religious right guy talking about the commy Reds and his statue/spaceship, a goth guy that goes outside when it rains or he needs milk, some happy woman who's just.. Disturbing, NPR like announcers who are money grubbing [edit].. And that's just from a radio station. So, if that game is guilty for hate crimes, it sure isn't guilty for discrimination, because it hates everyone. It's humor, guys. Get over your ego.
Things like this make me doubt the future of the human race.
This statement is false.
Inciting people to violence against a particular ethnic group would be a hate crime, but "KILL ALL THE HAITIANS!" is a fictional utterance by a fictional character in a dramatic work of fiction. It is clearly protected speech. Florida is smoking crack.
you know what? i wish more people just watched southpark and shutted the hell up. the hate crime episode in this case particular.
it's not just about it being a funny show.. it's the social commentary that makes it great.
anyways, how long has the game been on the shelves? hmm? a freakking long time perhaps hmm? somebody fishing for extra points somewhere hmm? being kyle's mum hmm?
it's largely a parody of stereotypes anyways(the game).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Quick google search turned up Wired News:Games Elevate Hate to Next Level, hate crime games have been around for quite some time, most don't make enough money to interest lawyers and groups that are playing the "victim" card, but are actually playing the "I want money" card.
Now that Rockstar has caved and announced that the dialog will be removed, what will it be replaced with? I mean, you can't just dump the player into a situation with no objective, that was the purpose of the phrase in question in the first place. In today's America, there is no proper solution. SOMEONE would find SOMETHING wrong with some little bit of something totally trivial, as they have here. Add in a bit of whining and complaining to some sympathetic politician, and nothing is safe.
I would pay more retail if it meant it went into some kind of defense slush fund just for these kinds of suits at this level/quality game.
If they asked for donations for a defense fund for this game I would put up some money, as very rare an occasion as that would be for me.
If we don't pay to support the games we like, and want to see more of, the litigation and new laws will bog them down and keep developers away. A few victorys with a 10$/game defense fund for the next Manhunt could go a long way twords keeping games free from political influence.
Hate (alone) is not illegal. In fact, criticism of people based on race or whatnot is quite legal, First Amendment-protected speech (as long as you don't violate slander/libel laws, of course).
Hate crimes refer to a specific class of crimes that are always illegal, but have punishments elevated by being classified as a hate crime.
If you kill someone, you might be looking at, say, a second-degree murder charge. However, if it is found that you killed the other person because you hated the color of his skin and killed him *for that reason*, then you may be charged with a hate crime, and may undergo nastier penalties.
The rationale, as far as I know, was to prevent racial violence against blacks in the South by jacking up punishments against their attackers. Now, I suspect that a lot of this is emotional and not particularly well-founded, but there is some argument. The idea is that you don't want to make penalties worse than necessary to discourage people from committing the crime. If you have a group of people that have a much higher punishment threshhold before they will stop committing a crime (the KKK, for instance), it might be nice to punish them and them alone more harshly.
I'm not saying that I agree or disagree with this approach (I tend to think that at the least, hate crime laws are quite out-of-date and produce nasty social artifacts), but it isn't quite as scary as attempting to outlaw your thoughts or verbal/written expression.
May we never see th
I'm not entirely sure why the above was modded as flamebait. Paragraph by paragraph, I agreed.
/.) that doesn't negate personal responsibility. So while I support groups that advocate game ratings and such, this is nucking futz. Put money into community centers or whatnot if you think it's that important to build love between groups.
Videogames are easier targets than movies or music because, by and large, the developers don't have as much money and they're viewed as 'bad' forms of entertainment. Much like when speaking against pornography, it's an easy publicity move to take the moral high road against videogames. That isn't to dismiss what affect videogames may (and probably do) have on the players. I know I get wired after a long session of Battlefield 1942, and definatly think bad thoughts while driving after playing GTA3. (But their car looks so much faster! And why can't I hit that old bitty who's driving at 23 MPH in a 45 zone?!) But (as has been beaten to death on
And I agree that "community leaders" don't always speak for communities. I bet the Haitian "community" didn't give a rats ass about GTA3:VC. But some people can't stand to see others having a non-PC good time.... (PC meaning politically correct, although I suppose using an Xbox might be considered a hate crime....)
And Florida pushing for GTA restrictions goes back to videogames being easy to attack. As has been cried many times by many posters, here on Slashdot and elsewhere, PARENT YOUR FUCING CHILDREN!
And honestly, so am I. I had tons of fun playing and beating GTA3, and have been meaning to pick up GTA:VC for a while. I now have to pick it up, even if it sits on my shelf for a while before i get around to playing it, just so I can piss some people off.
-Trillian
No offense to Haitians or anyone else, but WTF took them so long to get pissed off and organized about this game? "Blah blah blah... its to late, they already made their money." Yea, why weren't you protesting a year ago when it would have been easier to resolve the situation? Anyone think Florida would be thinking about hate crime laws if this whole brewhaha happened a month after the game was released?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Or what about those games that depict World War II? Should the Germans or the Russians be pissed?
When I was looking up info on DukeNukem3D for a post, I noticed this nifty litte blurb for "Wolfenstein 3D":
Due to the game content, this game may not be ordered by residents of Germany.
I'm not going to look for other examples, but if they can't purchase the game...
This is not my sig.