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Rockstar's Road To Ruin
Via GamePolitics, an exerpt from an upcoming Wired print magazine article on Rockstar's slide from grace. The article outlines a number of the problems we've discussed here on the site, such as their numerous lawsuits, the 'Hot Coffee' scandal, and stock-option problems. At four pages it's only a teaser for the longer article in the magazine, but it's still very much worth taking a look. "The irony is thick: The company that defined virtual criminality is now associated with the real thing. Rockstar and Take-Two executives declined to answer questions for this article, but their rich and troubled story is revealed by official documents and former employees. It seems the blokes forgot that in life, as in Grand Theft Auto, there are repercussions for the choices you make."
As far as I am aware, Rockstar still makes blockbuster games which afford them a healthy income. How, precisely, does this constitute "ruin?"
I don't know of many game dev house's that have succeeded in creating a game that can combine aspects of multiple genre's(racing, rpg, action, 3D 3rd person, sex) into 1 game seamlessly and have it be fun at the same time(see universal combat for reference about that approach failing)So whatevs, there problems are mostly based around their success(s)in that regard and that's what sell games. What's going on with them is a reflection how our society treats things that are successful against the better wishes of those who dictate the status quo.
I wouldn't call it the Hot Coffee "Scandal" so much as the Hot Coffee Farse. Disregarding that fact that ILLEGAL reverse engineering is required to view the Hot Coffee minigame, the original minigame itself contains NO NUDITY. If clothed people bumping into eachother should be marked 18+, kids won't be able to buy many videogames anymore. Nudity is acheived by editing the models as well as enabling the minigame in the first place. Saying RockStar is somehow at fault here means every software/game publisher ever is just as liabe - you can add pornography to anything. The whole deal is stupid for so many other reasons as well - horrific violence is ok but small amounts of sex isn't? What the fuck. How many people do you expect to beat to death with a baseball bat in your life? Now compare that to how many people you expect to have sex with. Point made. Also, no "concerned parent" can whine about this. "Oh my god, with GTA:SA and unrestricted internet axis, my children can see porn!". The internet has porn, RockStar is not at fault for that either, in case you wanted to claim it was. ~nog_lorp