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Video Game Scandals Are Boring
The Guardian Gamesblog has an editorial up registering the author's frustration with VG-related scandals. From the article: "No matter who weighs into the arguments, however, be it Hilary Clinton or the latest pious whining superstar of the American Religious Right, one fact remains: the videogames industry just can't do scandal. Let's face it, a few laughable scenes of polygonal coupling does not a Watergate make. Even the troubled relationship between Jude 'mind-blowing in bed' Law and Sienna 'pictured without engagement ring' Miller is more interesting than this limp tale of adolescent sex fantasy, Christian self-righteousness and coding."
I mean, like, can you believe that the princess ran off with that big dragon, only to leave her darling plumber behind?
The last thing anyone wants is another stupid "scandal" that doesn't matter for anything.
$Subj. Oh, And why should I care? /. editors, please hook up with a clue supplier. This article is nothing if not flamebait. Pah.
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
The Parents Television Council, one of several media watchdogs that have criticized Rockstar and the ESRB, called on the game publisher to recall the game and offer refunds.
"I tip my cap to that first step of showing responsibility," said Tim Winter, the council's executive director. "Phase two needs to be absolutely getting to the bottom of this coding issue. How did it get into that game? How did it get past the ratings board?"
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I just have to ask:
How did this game get into the hands of someone Younger than 17 to cause all this?????
How is it, that it is now an ADULTS only game when it consisted of Shooting, Pimping, Drug Trafficking, Carjacking....etc....???????????
Why do we refuse to ask these questions...rather than "How did the code get there anyways?"
These statements from persons who obviously never coded anything show pure ignorance. However, this ignorance is going to cost Game Companies, Publishers, Distributors a LOT of time and Money. All because rather than ask the Parents of children to do their Jobs, our government feels they have enact laws to "prevent" this stuff.
BORING?!? I don't consider watching the basic 'freedoms' being taken away 'Boring'. I consider it a very scary situation as I wonder what else they are going to be taking away. Maybe thats the whole problem....people cannot be bothered with anything NOT involving instant drama....in the Immortal words of one H. Simpson...."SHINY!"Have we become a Nation of Homers?
You keep going until you die..."Me".
Stories about blog entries about video game scandals that appear on Slashdot are even more boring.
Seriously though, the outrage over GTA's sex game (or should I say 'Crude Polygon Stacking Game') is purely politcal, not moral. A sex scene in an adult video game is to be expected. From TFA: "...sex in a GTA game - should we really be shocked by that? Frankly, I'd be more shocked to discover that Rock Star hadn't considered such a feature."
This whole 'scandal' reminds me of the scene in The People vs. Larry Flint where Flint is before a crowd asking which is more obscene: scenes of people being tortured and beaten, or scenes of people having sex? Sure, there was a brief uproar when GTA came out, but people eventually accepted the violent content and went on with their lives. But sex? Oh dear Lord, whatever will we do? Grow up.
-William Brendel
It's that no one thought of and made popular a good name for the scandal ending with 'gate'. HotCoffeeGate?
Also, it's hard to get much out of a scandal with nothing but a faceless corporation- part of a good scandal is the very accusation is almost a scandal in itself (try saying to your co-workers, 'what do guys think of that traitor, Karl Rove?' vs. trying to explain the intricacies of Rockstar putting a hidden less-than-hardcore sex mini-game into a video game). The conservatives should have singled out the CEO or lead programmer or something and demonized a specific individual from earlier on.
for the "Christian self-righteousness" comment. This fiasco has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with a few vocal minorities who think parenting is a job best left to regulations and rules.
If anything, the conservative "Christian" circles I used to run in advocated taking personal responsibility for the activities of their children, including the content of the videogames they played.
It's a game called Grand Theft Auto, and they're surprized when it's not a pure, nice, and clean game? It's a game about doing illegal things anyway. If you can pick up the cart and read on it that it's about Theft, don't be surprized when you steal cars and do less-than-righteous stuff. man.
Luke
----
If you also have a website that's geared for computer newbies, get a hold of me. Maybe we can partner up or something.
And yet, the Guardian and Slashdot both continue to run stories about this "scandal", fueling the fire.
Were all the news media outlets to ignore these tempests in teapots, they would blow over in seconds.
Instead, the media outlets do whatever they can to pump them up into full blown hurricanes.
www.eFax.com are spammers
I blogged about this here, but this is all about the 2008 US presidential election. Hillary Clinton knows that if she wins the primary, her Republican opponent will attack her on family values. She's positioning herself as a centrist, value-driven candidate (along with her support of the war in Iraq) to take the bullets out of her future opponent's gun. This has absolutely nothing to do with video games. It is all about pouncing on an easy issue.
Nonperiodic Central Trajectory
Riiiiight. Because if someone is self-rightious, he *must* be Christian. If someone tries to turn the latest "OMG Think of Teh Childaran!!11one" issue into her own personal gain, well, that's just because she's a religious nut, right? I mean, Hillary Clinton is known for being a pawn of the Relgious Right.
Now, I agree that this whole issue has been blown waaaaay out of proportion, and I agree with the author that this is one of the dumbest "scandals" I've heard in a long time.
But let's put the blame where it belongs: 1. Rockstar for putting something stupid like that in the game, and 2) self-seeking politicians who want to leave a "legacy" of "protecting the people from themselves". This isn't a "right/left" issue... this is a "freeedom/government regulation" issue.
Your points stand on their own; why injure your own moral high-ground with rediculous generalizations and unnecessary jabs at religious beliefs?
multifariam.net -- yet another nerd blog
No matter what kind of fines and punishments R* gets for the scenes, all the publicity created by the scandal certainly will attract enough customers to more than cover the expenses. And my bet is that it was perfectly intentional...
Just imagine - if the scenes were there, included legally, rated 18, achievable without a mod - who would ever give a shit? They are crap and insignificant, so they'd go as a short paragraph in every "in-depth review" and 15 mins of play of an average teen. Nobody would give it another thought. But now, a discovery, a controversy, who is guilty? Why this could happen? And suddenly the scenes are a nirvana of the gaming community, and sales skyrocket. Or at least installations. (Remaining in the depth of the spirit of the game, I'm NOT going to buy a legal copy...)
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Linking frontpage stories from personal blog rants is boring.
...video game scandals and political debates over video game controversy are boring is because nobody believes that they're dangerous enough to do anything about it on the censorship side. I remember the big PTA rally against GTA when they first found out that you gained life by getting a hooker into your car and you got bonus points for killing her afterwards. But do the consersatives really believe that these games are harmful? Not enough of them.
It is true that there are those who have been either abandoned or neglected by parents to the point that media is the child's prefered family, comfort, mentor and friend. Personally, I would hope that we could create some kind of media literacy campaign to help parents do their job better.</pipedream> But that isn't going to happen, and for those that have no good parenting to teach them, the media takes over and can give very dangerous messages to 5 year old minds that were given no other form of morals to rely on.
Honestly, I think if these groups understood how bad the parenting situation really is, they would band together and vote to impose fines for selling games to people under the age required by rating with a severity comparable to that of fines for selling cigarettes to minors. But these parenting groups won't do because they don't want to admit two things:
1. There are a frightening number of parents who don't raise their children properly.
2. These games, in the lack of good parenting, can and do teach children dangerous lessons when they get games intended for audiences far older than them.
Nobody wants to think that something known as a 'game' can be as harmful as drugs. The pro censorship groups think that tightening the rating on games will just fix everything, but it won't when nobody follows or enforces that system. If they created a system that actually has legal penalties for providing games to people under the limit dictacted by its rating, that would actually help achieve their goals without trying to make all games either rated E or AO. But none of these soccer moms think these games are really 'harmful', just offensive and calling them dangerous is a good excuse to get rid of them.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
to most people, however it is getting more coverage here than any scandal in recent history. This is not suprising as this is a news site for nerds. My mother who is by no means a nerd and I had a long discussion over the phone about it, basically we discussed most of the points made on slashdot (she brought up a few of the better ones herself). This boring scandal should show just how large the video game industry has become and how serious the non-gaming public is begining to take the video game industry.
Most Americans just don't seem to care about their rights (and responsibilities) being eroded. The GTA:SA "scandal" dealt with freedom of speech and parental responsibility, neither of which interest the populace.
In the wild, the mother bird feeds the baby bird food that she's already eaten. Human parents should take similar responsibility for the information their children are ingesting. Or to remove a layer of abstraction, parents should simply play the games their children want to play to evaluate them for themselves; or at least watch them being played a couple of times.
rooooar
"Christian self-righteousness"
It's Hilary Clinton who started making a big deal out of this, NOT the christian right. Please note her slide to the right for her run for the white house. Then please note her sprint back to the left so everyone in the US can have free health care!
What the editors and most people on slashdot fail to realize, likely because they cannot get over their own rejection of God, is that real Christians are not "self righteous" in fact the two are mutually exclusive.
Christians by definition realize that we are NOT righteous, nor can we be on our own. In fact nothing we can do will make us righteous. Instead we are forced to rely on a foreign undeserved righteousness.
Hebrews 7:
Melchizedek was king of Salem and priest of the Highest God. He met Abraham, who was returning from "the royal massacre," and gave him his blessing. Abraham in turn gave him a tenth of the spoils. "Melchizedek" means "King of Righteousness." "Salem" means "Peace." So, he is also "King of Peace." Melchizedek towers out of the past--without record of family ties, no account of beginning or end. In this way he is like the Son of God, one huge priestly presence dominating the landscape always.
You realize just how great Melchizedek is when you see that Father Abraham gave him a tenth of the captured treasure. Priests descended from Levi are commanded by law to collect tithes from the people, even though they are all more or less equals, priests and people, having a common father in Abraham. But this man, a complete outsider, collected tithes from Abraham and blessed him, the one to whom the promises had been given. In acts of blessing, the lesser is blessed by the greater.
Or look at it this way: We pay our tithes to priests who die, but Abraham paid tithes to a priest who, the Scripture says, "lives." Ultimately you could even say that since Levi descended from Abraham, who paid tithes to Melchizedek, when we pay tithes to the priestly tribe of Levi they end up with Melchizedek.
If the priesthood of Levi and Aaron, which provided the framework for the giving of the law, could really make people perfect, there wouldn't have been need for a new priesthood like that of Melchizedek. But since it didn't get the job done, there was a change of priesthood, which brought with it a radical new kind of law. There is no way of understanding this in terms of the old Levitical priesthood, which is why there is nothing in Jesus' family tree connecting him with that priestly line.
But the Melchizedek story provides a perfect analogy: Jesus, a priest like Melchizedek, not by genealogical descent but by the sheer force of resurrection life--he lives!- "priest forever in the royal order of Melchizedek." The former way of doing things, a system of commandments that never worked out the way it was supposed to, was set aside; the law brought nothing to maturity. Another way--Jesus!-a way that does work, that brings us right into the presence of God, is put in its place.
The old priesthood of Aaron perpetuated itself automatically, father to son, without explicit confirmation by God. But then God intervened and called this new, permanent priesthood into being with an added promise:
God gave his word;
he won't take it back:
"You're the permanent priest."
This makes Jesus the guarantee of a far better way between us and God--one that really works! A new covenant.
Earlier there were a lot of priests, for they died and had to be replaced. But Jesus' priesthood is permanent. He's there from now to eternity to save everyone who comes to God th
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It didn't work for Lieberman either in 2000(when he was Gore's running mate and they were collecting Hollywood's campaign contribution checks while still criticizing the content of the movies), or in 2004(when he quit a month into the primaries as he was getting his ass kicked by Howard Dean, Wesley Clark, John Kerry, and John Edwards).
And it won't work for Hillary in 2008. Her chances of winning were slim to none to begin with, but now she guaranteed her defeat in 2008.
Oh, it seems you were living under a rock for the last three years as the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that ruling, and a federal judge in Washington state threw out a similar law in 2003.
== BearDogg-X ==
Umm, Hillary is far from the "Religious Right". As a matter of fact, most of the people that have been complaining about the game are special interest groups on the left side of politics claiming, "won't somebody think of the children?!?"
Video Game Scandals Are Boring... yet, Slashdot's been reporting the Hot Coffee case, what, five times ?
Since when was Hillary Dubya's right-hand man? (And yes, I do mean man)
Is there really so little going on in the computer games industry that this is the most important thing happening still?
GameSpot has a news item that indicates the ESRB has officially slapped the AO rating on GTA San Andreas. Looks like a lot of retails are starting to pull it.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
The mainstream press mentioned it in passing, but most of the coverage has been in games journalism.
I guess the mainstream press found it hard to get much milage out of "Absolutely shocking game found to be slightly more shocking".
This is not correct - the real reason behind the lack of scandal is because there is no scandal.
I've told one of my parents - one who does critical views of politics (which sometimes differ from mine) about this. He simply laughed, because there isn't much difference between the Mature (M:17+) and Adults Only (AO:18+) ratings. The only way it could be a scandel is if the game was rated either as Teen (T:13+), Everyone (E:any age) or any other similar rating.
I said this before, and I'll say it again: 13-17 is considered a large gap, while 17-18 is considered a trivial.
Very impressive use of the "no true Scotsman" fallicy. That should invalidate your post too much for me to bother responding, but sometimes I can't help myself.
Non-belivers (or even liberal believers) can have problems with things that conservative Christians (or memebers of other religions) do because they disagree with it in principle. It doesn't have to involve some imagined guilt or chip on our shoulder for 'regecting god'. In fact, some of people don't even think there is a god to reject. And it is pretty hard to feel bad about rejecting something you don't think is there in the first place.
Saying there isn't a God when there is is in fact rejecting God ...
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So responding directly to an article is trolling? Fortunately the alternative to rejecting the truth is an eternity in hell, so there is no need for me to get angry with you. Your choice is simple, Hell or the service of the God who created everything.
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Let me respond in kind with a:
"Whooooooga booga!@#" to you to, buddy.
See, this is the "self righteous" attitude that the original poster was likely commenting on.
Guess what... there are millions of people out there with views different from your own. Many of them are likely very decent and moral people (following in the "do unto others" mentality - even without Jesus!).
And now, throwing caution in the wind of being modded down to troll or worse, I ask that you kindly stick your God, Hell, and whatever service you are referring to, straight in your pooper.
Actually, if we want to get really careful with our language, I will slightly correct what I said originally. I can (and should) reject things that are not real, e.g., the tooth fairy.
It is nothing personal against the tooth fairy. I just reject the notion that such a thing exists.
I probably would have gone for "off topic" due to the amount of time spent going off on a tangent. Your own perspective of what you and other Christians believe is on-topic, but why you believe it is off-topic, especially when it takes that long to say it.
I assume you meant to write 'the consequence of rejecting the truth'. What is so fortunate about people like me going to hell? You're telling me that without intentionally harming anyone else, I'm bad and will go to hell. That sounds awfully self-righteous to me. Saying specifically that God knows I'm bad and am going to hell doesn't make you any less self-righteous because use of the word "knows" tells me that you believe it as well and carries the same message: "I know you are bad and going to hell."
Here's what I don't understand. If God created everything wouldn't that mean He is responsible for creating skepticism in people? Why would God (especially the infinitely loving and forgiving God that described by Christians) sentence one of his children to an eternity in Hell just for behaving the way he was created to behave? Note that I'm not rejecting the idea of God but rather the notion that I must believe with absolute blind faith in what some organized religion tells me.
This is probably vastly off-topic but oh well... Maybe I'll get an informative reply (not expecting one).
They hid content from the ESRB, something they had to know would cause problems. That is their culpa. They get blame for that.
You mean if I bought an R rated movie and it turned out to be NC-17 I should get angry?
But I'm getting more than I originally paid for!
If I bought a Muture game and I didn't see one drop of blood or here at least an F word or two then I'd be rather irrate.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Real christians do not try and legislate morality outside the church
No see thats the point christians realize that any righteousness that they or anyone else can have must be foreign, and cannot be from themselves.
Why does it matter what I think? You going to hell or not is in God's hands and quite honestly I have no say in the matter. I do know that God is consistant and has said that there is only one way. The one way is through the redeaming work of Christ on the cross, His subsequent resurrection and ascention and His eventual return. That honestly is the only hope that any of us have.
Let me give you a finite example by giving you my take on this whole GTA/ESRB/Rockstar/ Hillary clinton/ everyone else thing.
1) I do not like the game, played it once just to take a look see and didn;t like the game play style or anything about it.
2) The game got an M rating IIRC which means that it was intended for 17+ year olds If it had the tea tiome segment enabled would it have still gotten an M rating? I think that would likely be the case or it simply would have been not rated.
3) that said (2) Rockstar did disable the "mini game"
4) ESRB has withdrawn the rating... Well that is there business but if it would have gotten the rating with the mini game in then they sould not have done so, if they would have not rated it had the game been public then maybe but I still think they are giving into pressure and I don't like it.
5) Hillary and most others are making a big deal about this because they want their names heard in the press.
6) Overall I would never buy the game, and I would hope that no one else would either. That being said you can spend your money on whatever you want to, and so long as it does not harm another person, or give the potential of harming another person/ people group I really do not expect that I would need to step in and stop you from doing it. Instead I would rather bring people to know Christ and have a relationship with Him, then they wouldn;t want to play this game either. Convert enough people and rockstar suddenly doesn;t sell any games and I don;t have to worry about it anyways.
7) In the same light I can and may take time to go through what is bad or wrong about the game, but unless I bring the focus back on Christ the prevous 6 points I made kicj in and it is all pretty useless.
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I would never ask anyone to believe with blind faith. There is a point where faith must take over, but let me describe it with a little astronomy.
... Logic operates in a similar way, from this thing then this other must occur logically speaking ... Well today we know that those two stars are not necessarily close together and most likely not right next to each other. I propose that logic may be 3 dimensional also so that things that appear to be right next to one another may not be and things that appear far apart also may not be. This is the realm of faith for me.
... So I take it on faith.
Christianity is a rational religion. From a particular world view and rule/ moral set everything starts to make sense. Are there somethings that deny rationality? Certainly there are since rationality is based on history, empiricism and logic, while if there is a super-natural (and I would propose that there is) the super part means it denies both logic and empiricism (since miracles by their nature do not tend to be repeated for experimentation if they did they wouldn't;t be miracles or super-natural but rather natural)..
Anyway, I promised an astronomy illustration.
Logic is like astronomy years past. In years past we believed that the stars were basically fixed and in a shell around the earth. So you should be able to navigate from one star to another around the shell example: see those two stars that are right next to each other? well from there go
Where does this all come down to? For the most part christianity is rational and it is certainly consistent. That said there are some things that you just simply have to accept about it. Example the Trinity. The trinity is consistent and fits in with christianity just fine but it is not logical and I do not completely understand it. One God three persons
Have I said anything that is informative, or have your expectations been fulfilled?
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especially when it takes that long to say it.
Technically, he didn't "say" all that... he just pasted in things other people have said. The big post was a massive mash of copyright-infringing plagiarism.
Paste a few clauses into google to see where they came from (although maybe the original author approved duplication for evangelical purposes, but it's still dishonest to omit attribution, especially in this context)
I don't know what you were reading, but the only things I quoted are: Hebrews 7 (which I did cite) and the post I was replying to.
Now if you are accusing me of plagiarizing God by quoting and attributing scripture then I suppose it should be noted that He did in fact approve it for evangelical purposes.
So what exactly did I not properly attribute?
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So what exactly did I not properly attribute?
Learn to quote, and learn a little HTML. If 95% of your post is a paste from some other page, that's a signal you should just link to that page, and not waste our time and space.
Oh, and as for the criminal copyright infringement, that's because you used the New International translation, which was published in 1973. Only versions published more than 97 years ago are in public domain and legal to use here.
1) I did quote
... don;t just go and make up crap about someone saying it. Learn to be a bit more accurate.
... At least in the US where I live and the servers are located is a crime its called slander.
2) I know a lot of html and have been using sgml probably longer than you have been alive (for more than 30 years)
3) Wrong version and I followed proper style for it as directed by its publishers.
Just because you don't like a message
Oh and accusing someone falsely of a crime in a public forum
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