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GTA Sex Game Leads to ESRB Fracas
At first, it was nothing more than a rumour. A "sex mini-game" in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, left in the code for the PC version and unlocked by inquisitive players. Then, as more and more information became available it seemed as though the sex game might be real. This revelation has lead to California Speaker pro-tem Yee blasting the ESRB for their apparent slip-up in examining all the content in the game. The ESRB has responded by pledging a "thorough and objective investigation" of the claims to get to the bottom of the situation. Commentary is available from Joystiq, GamesAreFun, and Buttonmashing.
Did the ESRB rate the mini-games that came with MS office apps, namely the flight sim with Excel and the DOOM clone with Word?
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
How can the ESRB or even Rockstar be blamed for this? They removed the content from the game itself, its not their fault some gamers found a way to put it back in. Its funny how these people jump on anyone at anytime for no reason at all. The game is rated mature, and unless I live in some Bizzaro World im pretty sure just about every 17 year old has either had sex or seen porn.
think of the children!
BilldaCat
So what's the problem again?
I hear that there's also a code you can enter into Leisure Suit Larry that unlocks a secret driving game.
Video of the sex game, apparently.
Really. No Kidding.
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
Either way, one hell of an Easter egg!
Honestly, I don't see how the ESRB could have known this stuff was there, without hacking every part of every game file. To get this stuff you have to manually change a couple game files. If it's something you have to consciously hack, and can't even get to in the course of (even wacky) gameplay, then it's not really part of the game.
Yes, the designers shouldn't have shipped the game with that stuff anyway, but that's not ESRB's fault, that's the coder's. Using this to scapegoat the ESRB is stupid.
While I think it was probably bad judgement for the creators of the game to put this in the game, it's not like this is really part of the game anyways, kids aren't going to come across the in normal play or anything. I mean, surely any person who would go through the trouble it takes to get to this easter egg would be able to find far more graphic things on the web.
The game is already rated M because of its violence, but sex in said game has the California legislature up in arms? Of all the "bad things" in the game it's the sex that's supposed to have pushed up to Ao?
http://files.gtanet.com.nyud.net:8090/gtasa/videos /hotcoffee.wmv
Next time use coral.
Nobody young enough to be traumatized by a "sex game" should be playing any of the GTA games at all to begin with. Once again, blame parents.
rooooar
As a parent, this concerns me.
I don't care if my child carjacks a senior.
I don't care if he runs over innocent bystanders.
I don't care if he joins the mafia.
I don't care if he kills police oficers.
I don't care if he picks up prostitutes then kills them to get their money.
I don't care if he takes a golf club and starts clubbing to death pedestrians.
But he may never, over my dead body, have adult on adult, consensual sex!
Clearly this game was misrated! It's rated "M" implying that it's suitable for no one under 17 when obviously it should get the highest rating of "AO" to reflect that no one under 18 should play it.
THAT EXTRA YEAR MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE!
If you have to actually mod the game to "unlock" this then I don't see why this is the ESRB's business. The game Rockstar shipped deserved the rating it received. The game with the porn in it is a result of modification by the end user and therefore a different game from the ESRB's perspective. You could easily mod quake 3 so that, I don't know, all the textures are hardcore pornography, but that doesn't earn quake 3 an "adult" rating.
But, of course-- and this incident just goes to show this-- the ESRB isn't actually about allowing gamers to be informed about their purchases, or about allowing parents to responsibly monitor and regulate the video game usage of their children. Those things are just halfhearted side effects. The ESRB is about feeding and indulging hysteria and media hype concerning video games. With this goal in mind, of course, the ability to mod a game to unlock or insert porn becomes very much the ESRB's business.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Because of people like Leland Yee, the American version of Sonic Gems will be significantly different than the Japanese version:
Sonic Gems Collection US = no Streets of Rage
So, Leland Yee can sit back and laugh, haw haw.I know my girlfriend's 10 year old daughter wouldn't be very interested in Streets of Rage, and I seriously don't think it is going to "affect" her if it were in a game. (Oh look, the little cartoon people are beating each other up, heaven forfend!) This particular case affects mostly people like me, older gamers who really want to play old Genesis games that we may have missed the first time around (I never got Streets of Rage III or Bonanza Brothers.) More broadly, it will effect games that aren't guaranteed sellers and cause the whole market to become more homogenized (while still being just as offensive to those of you who hate the ultra-violent games that are a license to print money.)
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
The ESRB rates what's submitted to them. Excel wasn't submitted hence no rating.
,it should have gotten an AO, Adults Only.
The issue with GTA:SA is that it was submitted and given an inappropriate rating. It recieved a MA, Mature Audience, and, __based on the ESRB's own published criteria__
Exactly. This is like getting all high and mighty because an NC-17 movie has unadvertised sex in it that was left on a master replication print that differed from a screener print. There are no stronger rating in games or movies, so what exactly is the ESRB expected to do? Apologize saying, "Oh, we're sorry. That should have been Stronger Sexual Content"?
... okay, I could understand why certain people were upset by that incident. But in this case it's nothing more than the Indecency Policeman getting on his moral high horse in order to make it seem as though he's oh-so-very-worried about the delicate values of the people that he so caringly represents. {/SARCASM}
... Yee's a D-California??? And he's worried about indecency? Wow! Who would have thought! (Yes, humorless mods, that's a joke.)
The game is not directed at kids and should not be purchased by kids. It says so right on the damned box!
Adding a topless woman in a frame of The Rescuers (Disney)
Wait a minute
Once again, a politician is out to make a huge fuss to prove to his constituency that he's worthy of re-election. "Molehill, I'd like you to meet your replacement, Mountain. Mountain is going to be my new Public Relations chief and head of my re-election campaign."
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
"M" is no one under 17
"AO" is no under 18
So to clarify, running over people, shooting people, killing police officers, stealing cars, etc. are all okay if you're 17. Consensual sex, on the other hand, you have to be 18 for.
The ESRB is a response to kneejerk politicians. Furthermore, the formation of the ESRB was like an admission of guilt. It is an officially accountable target for any critic of videogames. It will never matter what they do.
I just got the game for the pc, and every time I play it I have to wonder how many things I would have enjoyed were taken out because of this promise of doom is held over the head of any company that tries to create an AO rated game.
I'm tired of it, I'm an adult and I want to play adult games. End of story.
The US has strange attitudes about sex and violence. GTA:SA has (appropriately in my opinion) an M rating. The game allows you, if you choose, to:kill other gang members, cops and innocent bystanders in lots of gruesome ways (including setting them on fire or beating them to death with a big purple dildo); become a pimp; have sex with hookers; visit a strip club and get private dances; and lots of other mayhem. As part of the plot you need to kill or seduce a waitress at a casino who is into bondage.
But all of that is done without any nudity. Oh, but now it is revealed that if you hack the game you can see a blocky, pixellated bare boobie. Quick, somebody whip up some righteous indignation and start a fedral investigation! 17-year-olds need to be protected from boobies!
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
If you play the game backwards, satan is telling you to be nice to old ladies ...
There seems to be one here, but I have not tried it.
http://files.gtanet.com.nyud.net:8090/gtasa/videos /hotcoffee.wmvCoral Cache Version (I averaged 63KB/sec, right before I submited on this post).
Now, perhaps if this was the My Little Pony game and there was an easy hack to allow my little pony to join a donkey show in Tijuana and violate the PowerPuff girls in graphic detail with animations of horse-jism and blood squirting out of Buttercup as she's bent over the back of a chair and held down by the Mario Brothers and introduced to the animal kingdom then I could see some cause for concern. But for fuck's sake, it's GTA III. Leland Yee is a worthless, grandstanding sack of shit and what's amazing is that with this tantrum of his he manages to stand out from the other worthless, grandstanding sacks of shit that comprise the state government of California.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
Try going to the OED. It's "pro tem". I *do* trust the Oxford English Dictionary.
Also, it's "a lot".
This is potentially the death knell for the ESRB. They are quite explicit in their direction to companies submiting games - all content, regardless of how it is accessed must be submitted for rating. Indeed, I'm not even sure if the ESRB gets playable versions of the games, they ask for footage of the most extreme sex and violence in the game. (They have guidelines to let you know what's significant.)
The only enforcement power that the ESRB has is the promise that if you try to trick them they will refuse to rate your games. If they won't rate your game you can't use their trademarked logos on your games. If you don't have a ESRB logo on your game the major retailers will refuse to carry your game.
So, here's the problem. GTA 4 is going to come out sometime. When it does there will be huge demand for it. If these claims hold true, the ESRB has a choice - either refuse to rate the game, and risk undermining their authority if stores carry the game anyway (and stores have to choose if they want to sell the game themselves, or risk introducing their customers to the competition if they are forced to buy the game on the Internet), or rate the game anyway and lose the only enforcement tool they have. Either way you have a neutered ESRB.
Why do we care? Because just like the movie ratings, the game ratings aren't in existence to be a form of thought police - they're there to prevent the goverment from creating thought police. Right now creating and selling an unrated game means you don't have access to Wal-Mart; if the government was in control your unrated game would be banned outright. Goodbye indie game scene.
The ESRB itself is agnostic about what kids are playing at what age - they just want to make sure that no one goes home and is surprised by what they've purchased. If this report is true, that's one hell of a surprise.
Walmart (and some others) refuse to stock AO titles. Means if your game gets an AO rating it's inaccessable to a large part of the market.
Same thing with NC-17 ratings on movies. The problem isn't that kids under 17 can't see it, there are plenty of older movie goers, the problem is most theatres will refuse to show it.
http://www.esrb.org/esrbratings_guide.asp#symbols
M is defined as "Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content, and/or strong language."
AO is defined as "Titles in this category may include prolonged scenes of intense violence and/or graphic sexual content and nudity."
So, how exactly does GTA:SA violate M, and why should it be in AO?
- Walk up to a random character. For the sake of illustration, let's say it's a female.
- Start mashing buttons. Your character begins punching the female in the face, interjecting with expressions like, "You're just a bitch!"
- Chase the character around while still mashing buttons. You will win the "fight." She will then fall over backwards, exposing her panties.
- Keep mashing buttons. Your character will then begin violently stomping the disabled and compromisingly-positioned female in the crotch, while yelling more epithets.
- At some point, the female character will die (become immobile and cease making noise). If you then step back, you will see a pool of blood emanating from the character's crotch area, where you were stomping on it.
Wait, so where was I going with this? Oh, right -- depicting sex in a video game is bad.Breakfast served all day!
Anyone remember the first Larry game, where you died if you forgot to put on a condom? And got beaten if you forgot to take it off? That sure was a responsible game.
Wait, so where was I going with this? Oh, right -- judging a game based on 15 minutes of play time without reading the manual, trying any of the objectives, or even having the slightest idea that there could be a concept for the game is a stupid idea.
If you watch to the end of the video, you'll see the note saying "Remember, nice guys finish last".
Hey, that's good -- she should enjoy it too, fellas. I don't see the problem, they're teaching positive sexual relations here.
( Perhaps everybody's up at arms because here in America, we do it missionary only, and *only* when we need a baby. )
lorem ipsum, dolor sit amet
however sex does carry with it certain responsibilities
::biggest_rolls_eyes_ever::
Yes, and beating the shit out of someone or shooting them several times in the chest has no long term reprocussions at all.
The *real* reason why sex is abhorred and violence is glorified is because we're a bunch of puritans in comparison to the rest of the world.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
http://einsteinsbreakfast.com/officegames.html/
Boobs gets you at least a PG13 rating; enough of them, on screen sex, or "full frontal" female nudity tends to get an R. Show genitals (penis or labia), you're going to get an NC17 or X rating unless it's really short and nonsexual in context-- in which case you might get away with an R.
Yes, we Americans are, on average, completely whacko. And we invented nuclear weapons! Why the hell haven't the rest of you invented interstellar travel yet???
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
My understanding is that the video game developers are required to submit footage from the game that is representative of the maximum level of offensive content the player is going to experience, and the ESRB rates the game based on submitted footage. If the developer doesn't disclose some content that is more offensive than what they submitted to the ESRB, it's their own fault.
From what I read, it seems the code in question was blocked off, and it takes a mod to unlock it. So the material submitted for examination would be what the normal player is going to see. It really depends on whether the game developer intended for the "mod" to be discovered and made public. There are a number of people out there disassembling game code for cheats and finding things game developers would prefer they didn't.
Clearly they should be required to put a new warning label on the game:
"Caution: Altering this game may affect game play."
I know it doesn't seem to be altering the game, per se, and it's using built-in but inaccessable content, but really. If using some third-party hack to access game content needs to be rated, why not using some third-party hack to retexture everyone so they're naked? Should all games then get an "M" rating? If this were part of accessible game content, I could see the problem.
The unspoken assumption underlying all of this brouhaha is that there is something wrong with a game of this type, and especially that there is something wrong with kids and teenagers seeing it.
I've never been convinced that this assumption is in any way valid. I didn't believe it when I was a kid, and I don't believe it today. It isn't that I think any of this is particularly good for kids, or for anyone as far as that goes. The point is that it is not harmful either. If anything it is neutral, which means it just doesn't matter. It doesn't matter any more than anything else anyone sees. Sex is an ordinary part of life for all of us, not some deep dark secret that must be kept hidden at all costs. Attempting to hide things that are sexually explicit from someone because of their age is a monumental waste of time. Not only are you going to fail for the most part (unless you lock them in a closet), but there is nothing to be gained even if you were to succeed. Of all the things that are a danger to a young person, seeing naked bodies and sex portrayed on a computer screen isn't one of them.
When I was a kid I used to think that the sex-phobia exhibited by adults was a sham, a put on, a ruse, a pretention that served to obscure their underlying malice towards the young. I reached this conclusion based upon a simple assmption: no one could actually be as stupid as they were behaving.
I was 30 years old before I finally realized that yes, people really could be that stupid, and that stupidity can even infect an entire culture. Never understimate the destructive power of idiots in large groups.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
If the only reason sexual content is censored is to prevent children from mimicing them and making poor sexual choices, then why can't women's breasts be seen on TV? Why do they automatically raise the rating of any game/movie? I'll tell you why: this culture obsessively sexually represses itself. Many other countries are much more open about sex, and many have less problems with STDs and teen pregnency than the US. This is not about role models, this is something much deeper.
Ignorance kills, complacency kills, hatred kills, but usually not the ones guilty of them.
Here's a mirror to the video:
http://basharteg.com/hotcoffee.wmv
Here's a mirror of the video:
http://basharteg.com/hotcoffee.wmv
Maybe he should come down with an STD if he fucks every skank in the neighborhood. Or maybe he can be have his cash taken away to support the kid he fathered.
I haven't played San Andreas (been waiting for the PC version's price to drop), but with the population I've seen in GTA3 and Vice City, the whole population must be sterile. (Or at least half of it.) Everyone apparently reproduces by full body mitosis whenever you turn your back on them. Even their clothes get in on the cloning action.
As to STDs, I don't know what ones you think you can catch from the sex depicted in those two games. You're just sitting motionless in the front seats of a car while its shocks bounce it around. The characters don't even touch each other. As far as I can tell, it's the car that's getting off!
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
GTA, which is packed to the brim with blasting heads off with sniper rifles and running over cops, leaving bloody smears gets an M rating. Fine. But as soon as you throw in some cheesy videogame softcore porn it's suddenly horribly offensive and in need of an investigation? Right.
There's also a pretty realistic living hell in Windows ME
I think it was more like this:
Boss: "Hey, did you get the gore level turned up like I asked?"
Developer: "No, I've been working on this bonus level."
Game: *squeak squeak squeak*
Boss: "Take that the fuck out. This is going to ship to the US, and those wankers can't stand sex."
Developer: "Comment out this line, and this line, and this value can never be true, so it's out. Perfect."
Or maybe - just maybe - the fact that it's a black pixel fucking a white pixel from behind is what's really giving the Puritans a wedgie. As someone else said, in America it's only married couples of the same race but different sexes that have sex, missionary only, and only to conceive.
Of course, if you think that sex is only useful for conception, there have been serious omissions in your education.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
"Maybe it's some of these weird USA cultural things?"
Yes. Yes it is.
In the U.S., if you can get laid in high school, you don't do anything else. The culture is so obsessed with popularity that the only people who have time to think about anything else are the rejects.
That's why the U.S. has so many varieties of geek. Computer geeks, sure, but math geek, science geek, band geek, drama geek...
There's no reason for a guy who plays saxophone in the school band to be considered undateable. Playing the sax is attractive. It's just that only unattractive people take the time to learn something like this.
The U.S. school system is so broken, foreigners can't even begin to grasp it. The only thing U.S. high schools can still do at this point seems to be keeping the horny and attractive teenagers mostly away from the adult population.
This "anti sex" culture in Government will change... Here is why.
The current generation in the United States has access to the internet. Now, you can find whatever you want on the internet, this should be obvious. Indeed, you can often find sexually explicit material on the internet when you are not looking for it.
So, now we have both sexes viewing sexually explicit material when they choose to do so via the internet. (I can remeber being excited in the early 80s managing to locate a copy of penthouse, which myself and my friends would stare at in amazement...)
However, the current generation that is in government was not raised by these standards - they are far more conservative when it comes to sex. Therefore, they choose to ban it to 'protect the kids' or whatever.
However, as this generation ages, having had more exposure to sex and nudity, and being far more tolerante of it, so will the current policies surrounding it.
So, yes, the US government is very reactionary to sex, but this will change - it MUST change because the current younger generation just won't tolerate it when they age.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
So, the big deal is not that there is sex in GTA. You can make a game with sex, and you can sell it. Nobody is stopping you.
The big deal is this: Parents are trying to raise their kids responsibly by monitoring their media... their TV, their movies, their music, and their games. They don't necessarily want to stop their kids from listening to an album, or playing a game. They just want to know what the heck their kids are getting into. Just a little help, like a rating system, and a way to stop kids from getting particularly graphic content. You may not like it, but that's what parents want.
Like all other media, parents want laws to force game manufacturers to label their games, and game sellers to restrict sales to minors. The game industry has argued in response that we don't need laws because "we can police ourselves" via the ESRB.
Well, the ESRB blew it big time, although apparently through no fault of their own. This GTA hack is a glaring example of the failure of self-policing. The ESRB was set up to stop parents from demanding media control laws. Now the ESRB has failed in their mission, and parents are going to start demanding those laws. So the ESRB is furiously trying to protect its reputation.
I work at a large game company (not Take-Two/Rockstar). We are required to reveal all hacks, easter eggs, hidden features, etc. to both first-party (MS, Sony, Nintendo) and the ESRB. There can be no content on the disk that is not reported to these folks, or there a serious consequences. (I'm told they're serious. I don't know what they are.) If Take-Two did not reveal that this content was on the disk, they have defrauded the ESRB. That's bad news for Take-Two and their cash cow. If this content is on the Xbox or PS2 media, they defrauded MS or Sony, who are now liable for the explicit content. That's really bad news.
That's why this is a big deal.
Side Note: This is not censorship. Nobody is banning any games. Adults can buy whatever games they want. Restricting sales of adult games to kids is no more censorship than restricting sales of porn or booze. The censorship argument is a Take-Two argument to whip up support for anything-goes game development so that they can continue to make piles of money selling porn to kids.
Assuming the donwloaded video is a real depiction, there is certainly nudity. Starts off with nude woman giving a blowjob (we don't see any of his naughty bits). He grabs her head and starts pushing on it, then she gets up and wipes her mouth.
Then there's a scene with them having sex - apparently, you control the rhythm with the up/down controls, and can change between 3 different positions. Again, the woman is nude, the man is fully clothed. There's an "excitement" meter, which when it peaks out results in the woman crying out and "expressing her enthusiasm", with some hokey feedback saying "That's the spot! Remember, nice guys finish last. You the man, oh yeah, you the man"
You think that would make it AO?
Sure, there are times when players just "go nuts", start messing around and go on random killing sprees, seeing how much carnage they can commit before being caught or killed - but if you persist, the consequences will always, always catch up with you.
Unless you have a tank.
Which, once again, conclusively proves - the one with the bigger stick makes the rules.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.