So when a teacher wants opinions on topics that people tend to shy away from like sex, religion, and politics, the question can be asked and the students can answer anonymously via the clicker.
Yeah, just what we need -- more sex, religion and politics in the classroom.
These are all topics that require maturity before they can be understood. If kids are too embarrased to answer questions about such topics, then they're not ready to be learning about them. And I don't see how personal questions like the examples given in TFA fit into the curriculum.
The device is great -- instant feedback on a large scale can have its uses in the classroom. But the ability to avoid touchy subjects isn't one of them.
The Christian faith (who's political wing is the Republican party) for some reason believe that sex is bad and that pornography is somehow immoral. I don't know how they reached that conclusion, after all, one need only look as far as Job's daughters antics in the book of Genesis to see that the Bible is no authority on sexual morality. Without wanting to be flame-bait, the Republican part engages in what I call "henry ford" freedom: You can have any freedom you want, as long as it's Republican.
Do you Christian-bashers not even bother to read the summary now? This is a Democrat -- a northern Democrat, no less. I guess as soon as you hear the words "senator" and "pornography," it's like ringing a bell for Pavlov's dog.
Oh, and for the record, Job was never mentioned in Genesis. You're probably thinking of Lot's daughters, who got their father drunk and slept with him in a misguided attempt to preserve his lineage, and whose descendents were looked down upon for it. If you're going to play the "Christians don't even follow their own sacred texts" card, you probably ought to know what the hell you're talking about first.
I wish I had a mod point. But more than that, I wish I could shake your hand. Nice to see some logic here rather than the usual knee-jerk "fight the man" attitudes.
Throwing you on the friends list for that comment alone may be a little hasty, but I'm doing it anyway.
Anyway is it not her fault for buying a 14 year old a game desgined for 17+.
That's right! Parents should just trust the ESRB rating, with no thought of their child's individuality or maturity level, because all kids are exactly the same.
Hey, maybe we can go right ahead and make it illegal to sell M-rated games to minors, since obviously no one under 17 can handle it.
I'm writing because Rockstar Games North is at the center of a shitstorm. The Hot Coffee minigame you included on the disc you sold has propelled you to the front page of Slashdot and made life a living hell for other video game publishers.
While it cannot be denied that much of the current political firestorm that you are involved in is led by opportunistic politicians (like Senator Clinton) in need of a demon to fight, there are still a few points of contention.
You included the sex game on the disc, regardless of how well it was hidden, and it can be accessed without modifying the game's code. On top of that, you lied about it when it was found, claiming that the content was added by third-party modders. Some see fit to give you the benefit of the doubt when you say it was part of the game that was scrapped and was never meant to be accessed, but seeing as how you were less than truthful about the content's origin, you understand how others might be hesitant to believe you.
Of course, you'll still enjoy a surge of support from dozens of Slashbotters whose concept of business and ethics begins and ends at "fuck the man." They'll make ridiculously grandiose statements about how GTA is "the most aesthetically important piece of art since Andy Warhol was alive" and wax poetic with stirring Braveheart-style soliloquies about "fighting the good fight" (though they won't mention that whole "lying to the consumers" part). They'll ignore your own part in this just so they can take a stab at the older generation and feel superior. And they'll mod down anyone who points out your own ethical shortcomings, for attacking their sacred cow of video games.
Meanwhile, the rest of the video game industry, the retailers, and the gamers themselves will suffer for your actions. They'll have to live with the raised level of scrutiny coming from concerned parents who were none too pleased to find out that there was more to that disc than they originally thought. Had you just put the minigame in without hiding it, and taken whatever rating it got you, there probably wouldn't even be a controversy. You might even have still gotten an M if you had just been up front about it. Then we could point to the rating and its content descriptors and tell those "concerned parents" that hey, they knew what was on the disc when they bought it. That is, if that was even necessary -- they probably wouldn't even be upset about the sexual nature of the content if they knew about it when they bought your game.
Of course, now that they know they've been tricked, it sure does seem important.
But who cares, right? You already made that fat stack of cash. You didn't violate any laws, so the House of Representatives can't really do anything to you. The best they can do is start passing laws forbidding retailers to sell M-rated games to anyone under 17. Or force the ESRB to be accountable to some government agency. But that's somebody else's problem, because your game already sold. Right?
We defended you, Rockstar. When people talked about how violent your games were, we noted that your games were no more violent than what could be seen on television, and that if there was a real concern, the ratings system was a reliable gauge that parents could use. But you threw that right out the window, and in the process single-handedly destroyed the best defense the video game industry has against the thought police. Why? For a publicity stunt? A marketing ploy? Or just because you were too lazy to remove something that you knew would cause a political firestorm?
You screwed us, Rockstar. Now I only hope that someone does the same to you.
Orwell was obviously an anti-communist. He was a left-wing anti-communist.
Please note that I was responding to the grandparent poster's assertion that he was a "Godless anti-state commie." I never claimed anything more than the obvious fact that Orwell was decidedly anti-communist.
The first anti-communists were on the left
No, the first anti-communists were on the right. In fact, by 1947, the only major liberal organization that had denounced Communism was the Union for Democratic Action. They figured out that reflexively fighting the right out of habit on this one wasn't going to fly, and in 1947 they renamed themselves to Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) and expanded their role towards recruiting other liberal organizations in opposing communism. Within 2 years, the ACLU and NAACP were on board, and the left managed to outpace the right on this front, but it took time.
The problem here is that you've been taught to associate liberalism, the left, communism, and socialism together as though they are all the same thing.
Huh? I made no such assertion. It was the person I was responding to who lumped communism in with liberalism. Look, my point was simple:
1. Orwell was not a communist. 2. Using quotes by Orwell to bash current U.S. foreign policy (in particular the war on terror) is dishonest. He clearly advocated the use of force against external threats.
Honestly, it sounds to me like you and I are in agreement on most of this. You are pointing out that Orwell's political ideals can't be so easily be claimed as right-wing, and I am saying that he wouldn't have held much esteem for today's left, either.
Don't you dare try and claim Orwell for the right. He's a Godless anti-state commie, thank you very much.
I call bullshit. You might consider picking up Orwell's "Notes on Nationalism."
"The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States."
He didn't much care for lefty peaceniks, it would seem. So using his quotes to bash current U.S. policy is somewhat disingenous. I'll buy that he was more populist than your average conservative, but you're going to tell me that the man who wrote Animal Farm was a communist? Get real.
Hacking the savefile is no different than hacking game. It's a hack. The content cannot be viewed by playing the game through any avenue presented by the content provider. Without alteration of some sort, that scene is not accessible. Period.
By that logic, hitting the "start" button to start the game is a hack. You don't have to alter the save game file, just like you don't technically have to insert the disc into the console. Unless, of course, you want to access the content that's on the disc you bought.
And that's what this is. It's accessing content on the disc that Rockstar sells. Just because Rockstar doesn't make it easy to get to doesn't make it any less a part of the product they sell.
Many times components of a piece of software cannot be completed in time or doesn't meet some requirement (maybe in this case exceeded the M rating). So it is removed, but the way in which it is removed is uaully removal of the calling functions rather than outright removing all pieces of code because they would require a great deal more regression testing to ensure that there were no impacts to the rest of the game (which may lead to a push in the delivery date). I suspect that this is likely the cause of the code being in the game.
If so, then why did Rockstar lie about it? They claimed early on that the content was not in face part of their code, but it clearly was.
No, Rockstar didn't deceive anyone. When you went out and bought the game, there was no possible way that you were going to get exposed to this "sex scene" without knowingly going out of your way to enable it. No possible way. Therefore, the sex scene was not part of the "content of the game", and therefore Rockstar did not deceive anyone about the content of the game.
Bullshit. The content is on the disc, and that makes it part of the package that Rockstar sells. It's content that was made by Rockstar and included in the game, regardless of whether it has to be unlocked by a third party. You're going to tell me that the company that regularly gets attacked for the content of their games had the purest of intentions in leaving the minigame on the disc? At best, they were negligent. At worst, they were downright malicious.
You don't need a mod to enable the content; all you need is a savegame file with the minigame unlocked. Right now, that means downloading an edited savegame file or editing your own, but considering that Rockstar wasn't forthcoming about the content of the disc, do you really trust them not to have thrown in a way to unlock the game without editing the savegame file? There could be an as-yet undiscovered cheat code, or any number of other possibilities. Rockstar sure as hell isn't going to be up front about that now.
But even if you give them the benefit of the doubt, they screwed up royally, and deserve to have the game re-rated. And they deserve a lot more scrutiny by the ESRB in the future, for pulling this little stunt. As the grandparent poster said, the minigame doesn't bother me nearly as much as Rockstar's willingness to hide it on the disc as a surprise for unwitting parents later on down the line. Everyone (including myself) who defended Rockstar in the past by pointing to the ratings system has had their argument shot down by none other than Rockstar themselves.
Well, when I say "outrage," I don't mean at the sexual nature of the content, but rather at Rockstar's mishandling of the issue, so don't read too much into that.
You make a point about the sex seeming like not such a big deal when compared to the rest of the game, but I can also see why parents would be more worried about sex than violence. I know a lot of 14-year-olds who can handle violence responsibly -- in fact, I would argue that simulated violence is a great way for many older kids to take their aggressions out in a safe, controlled manner. But I know of almost no 14-year-olds who can handle sex responsibly.
And though simulated violence can satisfy your aggression, simulated sex (or porn, etc.) has the opposite effect: it stimulates the libido. In fact, the porn industry argues that this is the primary benefit of what they produce.
So I can understand why sex is a bigger issue for many parents. It's a lot easier to keep kids from being violent than from being sexually active. You can give them plenty of outlets to take out their frustrations and aggressions, but there's really no substitute for an orgasm. Many parents just don't want to add fuel to the fire, be it for religious reasons, or simply because their kids aren't mature enough to handle sex responsibly.
So live in a city. You can whine that your job requires you to be in a different location, but that is still a choice you made -- your job above your location. Me, I chose to live where I live, and I see no reason why you can't do the same. Your choices have been limited only by you, not anyone else.
You seem to think that you are owed more options, and you are not. Wal-Mart doesn't owe you the ability to buy NC-17 movies. But hey, their loss is Amazon's gain, right?
You do have options. But hey, if you prefer to bitch, it's a free country.
The code doesn't have to be altered in order to actually play the minigame. Which means that the code, as it exists on the disc, UNALTERED, includes that minigame. Rockstar made the sex game and included it in the finished product, not "t3h h4xx0rz." Get it through your skull.
Maybe Rockstar intentionally left the minigame on the disc as a joke or publicity stunt, or maybe they just decided to pull that part of the game and truly never intended it to see the light of day. Considering how they've tried to obfuscate this entire ordeal, I'm not inclined to believe a word they say, but even if you give them the benefit of the doubt, the distinction is moot, because it's still their screwup.
They're the guys that regularly get attacked about their content, and they weren't more careful about cleaning up their shipping product? At best, they were careless. At worst, they were downright malicious.
The rest of the industry ought to be disowning Rockstar right now. They have singlehandedly weakened the entire industry's greatest defense against the thought police. I wouldn't be surprised if several other big name studios put out a press release condemning Rockstar's actions and vowing not to do the same.
it isn't "easily accessible", it's NOT accessible unless the goddamned program is changed. Which is what this patch did.
People who don't understand what they are talking about really should shut up about stuff like this.
I agree. Howsabout you start?
You don't need a patch, and you don't need to change the program itself. All you need is a savegame file with access to the minigame unlocked. This is why the console versions will also be receiving the AO rating.
Regardless of how accessible it is, the content itself is on the disc. It is part of the product that Rockstar sells. When you pay money for it, you are buying what's on the disc, sex game and all. That is the distinction the ESRB is making.
Why? They gave GTA:SA the M rating based on the footage that Rockstar provided, and Rockstar wasn't forthcoming about the content that was on the disc -- even if the mini-game wasn't easily accessible, now all it takes is a modified save game file. Why shouldn't the ESRB revoke the rating?
Regardless of whether you think the footage is "dangerous to children" or whatever, the fact of the matter is that Rockstar misrepresented themselves and their game, and now that they've been caught, the ESRB is entirely within its rights -- in fact, if the ESRB hadn't done this, then there would be no validity to the rating system that keeps those political monkeys off the industry's back.
As far as I'm concerned, Rockstar got what was coming to them. Their peers in the video game industry should be outraged that they would pull the wool over the eyes of the ESRB, which exists to help protect all of them from being regulated by would-be thought police.
Here's a question for you: How does Walmart exist?
Walmart exists because we, as society, say it serves a useful function and thus let it exist. I agree that 'people' should not have to sell what they don't want to sell, but Walmart is not a people. Walmart is a self-organizing system we set up to serve our needs. It should not be making moral judgements.
Au contraire, Wal-Mart is still owned and controlled by people, and those people have every right to make moral judgements about what they want to sell. Mind you, Wal-Mart's concern is more for their customers' sensibilities than their own, but they still have the right to make that decision.
And it's not too hard to imagine a future where the whole country shuns someone, and they die of dehydration in a ditch, via perfectly legal voluntary shunning. No one will sell them food or water or let them on their property. See the problem?
I disagree. It is incredibly hard to imagine a future like that because no one thinks alike. In order for every single person to shun a human being they would all have to agree that the person was worthy of being shunned. It would take quite an offense to do that. And even if it were possible, to disallow it would be to deny that society the right to make its own decisions. You would be denying individual people's rights to choose who they associate and deal with. That's a cost that far outweighs the prevention of a hypothetical situation that would never happen in the first place.
Walmart is too powerful to allow it to voluntarily shun games, and it's getting more powerful.
Bullshit. Wal-Mart doesn't have any control over the decisions I make as a consumer -- I've managed not to come into contact with Wal-Mart for several years now with no problems. As it stands, Wal-Mart is already suffering from growing too large too quickly, and from the resentment of consumers who don't care for Wal-Mart's tactics. If you don't like how Wal-Mart shuns certain media, then you have the right to shun Wal-Mart.
On top of that, Wal-Mart's shunning of various material provides other retailers with what is essentially the perfect business opportunity. We have a local music store that thrives because it markets itself as a more complete alternative to Wal-Mart, with a vastly superior selection of music. There is no reason any other business can't capitalize on Wal-Mart's dropped initiative. If they can't, then perhaps Wal-Mart was right to refuse to sell the product in the first place, because it doesn't sell.
And my hatred of voluntary rating systems is fueled more by movie theatres, where it's already happened...you cannot make an NC-17 movie in this country and have it in any theatre except the twenty porn theatres still open in various major cities.
This is FUD. That didn't stop Pedro Almodovar, whose latest film, "La Mala Educacion (Bad Education)" has seen quite a bit of success in the U.S. despite its NC-17 rating. Or the arthouse cinema down the street from me that shows nothing but alternative films, including some rated NC-17. Again, they capitalize on what other theaters refuse to promote.
Correct. I was not referring to you, but to the parent poster.
I absolutely loath 'voluntary' rating systems that result in censorship. And, yes, it is censorship when large chains will not carry your product unless you alter it, even for sale to adults.
Wal-Mart has every right not to sell something they don't want to sell, including AO-rated games. If the ratings didn't exist, Wal-Mart would still find a way to discriminate based on content. If you don't like it, then don't shop at Wal-Mart. I haven't for years, and it's been great.
Don't get me wrong, I also dislike voluntary rating systems, but that is because they are arbitrary and not terribly useful to me as a parenting tool, not because they result in self-censorship. Censorship only becomes opressive when it comes from the government. Wal-Mart is still within its rights.
However, this is almost totally unrelated, as what people are talking about isn't in the game. It requires external software to enable.
RTFA. All it requires is that you download a savegame file with the minigame unlocked, or that you edit your own savegame file to unlock it. I agree that this minimizes the impact, but the content is still on the disc you bought. It's still part of the package that RockStar sells.
And the only reason 'teen pregnancy' is a problem is because we refuse to recognize that teenagers have sex. Heaven forbid parents put their foot down and say to their daughters 'If you want to continue to live in this house, you'll go on the pill'.
It's the job of parents to teach their children to be responsible...when they're 16 years old, it's a rather late to be saying 'I absolutely forbid this action'. It's now time to be saying 'Here is how you do this action responsibly'.
Okay, this is exactly what I'm talking about. You are now telling people how to raise their children. You are doing the exact same thing as the politician in this story.
Most parents want to decide for themselves what is best for their children. I am not terribly sympathetic to those who rely on a ratings system to discern content, but those who do expect that system to be consistent and effective. In this case, the ESRB has failed.
My original point was simple: kids want to have sex a lot more than they want to kill people. On top of that, one of the main purposes of pornography (as defined by the porn industry itself) is to assist in sexual stimulation. There's nothing wrong with that, but that's why many parents consider sexual stimuli (like pornography) to be less appropriate for their children, and that's why it receives a higher rating than violence.
The answer to this is not to tell people that you know what's best for their children, whom I will note you have never even met. It's to make sure that the ratings system is either consistent and effective, or to remove the ratings system entirely. As a practical matter, the latter option will likely lead to government censorship, which is far worse than the self-censorship that you abhor.
I'm on your side here, but you have to understand that it is necessary to make the values of free speech attractive to parents who would otherwise support politicians like the one in this article.
Well said. Ars is a fantastic technical resource, but I don't think they're up to snuff when it comes to business world commentary.
The reasoning put forth in the article that Apple was too demanding doesn't hold when you consider IBM's "Power Everwhere" strategy. The parent poster is right -- IBM could've pushed the 970 into other markets, but they failed to reach 3 Ghz and couldn't sell it. Calling it a custom job for Apple after the fact is just sour grapes.
IBM can whine, but they used Apple to catapult themselves to the top of the list for custom processors for things like the XBox and the PS3. Once they had those contracts, Apple was a fish they could throw back. Bait, if you will. Meanwhile, the XBox 360 is water-cooled, and the Cell chip that powers the PS3 is not a viable desktop processor.
And let's not forget that the PPC970FX is horribly underpowered. Clock-for-clock, the G5 is shows no major real-world performance improvement over the G4. The main reason the G5 is so great is that it hits clock speeds up to 2.7 Ghz. The G4 is a full 1 Ghz behind. But the 970FX, IBM's "low-power" chip, is clocked even lower than the current G4, and its power consumption is STILL higher than the Pentium M. Meanwhile there are new G4 chips out NOW that reduce power requirements even more drastically.
The only thing the 970FX brings to the table is 64-bit compatibility, which is only necessary if you have more than 2 GB of RAM -- not a likely prospect in a laptop. The fact of the matter is that IBM's "low-power" offering is the weakest of all major chip manufacturers. Even Freescale is ahead of them. Intel is just plain out of their league.
With that in mind, Apple's reasons for moving to Intel were exactly as they stated -- better performance per watt. IBM couldn't hit the goal, pulled the plug, and is now trying to blame Apple for the fallout in order to save face with other clients.
And remember that wanting to have sex is Wrong(TM).
Ah, the Slashdot double standard. You jackasses will argue until you're blue in the face that video game companies should be allowed to put whatever content they want in games, especially since there's a voluntary rating system. But the minute that system slips up, you're ridiculing the sensibilities of the parents who trusted it.
It is exactly your attitude that gives credence to people like the politician in the article.
Many folks are fine with their 14-year-old kids playing GTA, despite the "M" rating, because they know their kids are smart enough to be able to discern the violence in the game from the real world. But it requires a higher level of maturity to handle sex responsibly, and that's why people are wary of exposing their children to graphic sexuality -- for fear that those children will seek it out before they're able to handle it in a mature fashion. Consider that there are far more teen pregnancies than school shootings.
I'm not saying you shouldn't be able to play a sex mini-game like this, or that RockStar shouldn't be allowed to sell it. I'm saying that RockStar misrepresented themselves and their game, and many parents are going to feel betrayed and lose faith in the ESRB as a result. And when that happens, no one should be surprised when the censorship police show up.
My kingdom for a mod point. Could you be more wrong?
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.
No, the reason why sex is given a higher rating than violence is actually much simpler. Ask yourself these two simple questions:
1. How many times have you watched graphic sexual content (pornagraphy, whatever) and wanted to have sex yourself during or after viewing it?
2. Now how many times have you watched a gunfight and then wanted to go kill someone?
If the goal of the ratings system is to set age-based limits, then I have to agree with the ratings boards that graphic sexuality is less desirable for my children to see than graphic violence.
If Stallman and his ilk had had the simple foresight to refer to it as the "software freedom movement" or some such instead of the "free software movement," then it would've been a lot easier to promote the F/OSS agenda. There are plenty of ways to express the concept of freedom in software without confusion. You'd think Stallman would've seen this.
Slashdot Mirror
So when a teacher wants opinions on topics that people tend to shy away from like sex, religion, and politics, the question can be asked and the students can answer anonymously via the clicker.
Yeah, just what we need -- more sex, religion and politics in the classroom.
These are all topics that require maturity before they can be understood. If kids are too embarrased to answer questions about such topics, then they're not ready to be learning about them. And I don't see how personal questions like the examples given in TFA fit into the curriculum.
The device is great -- instant feedback on a large scale can have its uses in the classroom. But the ability to avoid touchy subjects isn't one of them.
The Christian faith (who's political wing is the Republican party) for some reason believe that sex is bad and that pornography is somehow immoral. I don't know how they reached that conclusion, after all, one need only look as far as Job's daughters antics in the book of Genesis to see that the Bible is no authority on sexual morality. Without wanting to be flame-bait, the Republican part engages in what I call "henry ford" freedom:
You can have any freedom you want, as long as it's Republican.
Do you Christian-bashers not even bother to read the summary now? This is a Democrat -- a northern Democrat, no less. I guess as soon as you hear the words "senator" and "pornography," it's like ringing a bell for Pavlov's dog.
Oh, and for the record, Job was never mentioned in Genesis. You're probably thinking of Lot's daughters, who got their father drunk and slept with him in a misguided attempt to preserve his lineage, and whose descendents were looked down upon for it. If you're going to play the "Christians don't even follow their own sacred texts" card, you probably ought to know what the hell you're talking about first.
"Ma'am, did you purchase this game for your grandson?"
"Yes, I did."
"Ma'am, did the game packaging have an ESRB rating of M on it and did the back of the packaging say why it's rated M?"
"Yes, it did. My grandson is mature beyond his years, however, and I didn't think there was any content on the disc that was inappropriate for him."
"Ma'am, did you even look at the box when you purchased it for your 14-year-old grandson?"
"Certainly. And nowhere on the box does it state that the content on the disc includes simulated sex."
You had better believe this woman has a case. It won't go to court, but that's only because Rockstar will most likely offer her a settlement.
I wish I had a mod point. But more than that, I wish I could shake your hand. Nice to see some logic here rather than the usual knee-jerk "fight the man" attitudes.
Throwing you on the friends list for that comment alone may be a little hasty, but I'm doing it anyway.
Anyway is it not her fault for buying a 14 year old a game desgined for 17+.
That's right! Parents should just trust the ESRB rating, with no thought of their child's individuality or maturity level, because all kids are exactly the same.
Hey, maybe we can go right ahead and make it illegal to sell M-rated games to minors, since obviously no one under 17 can handle it.
Just agreeing with the other AC. This was hilarious, and possibly a little insightful.
I'm writing because Rockstar Games North is at the center of a shitstorm. The Hot Coffee minigame you included on the disc you sold has propelled you to the front page of Slashdot and made life a living hell for other video game publishers.
While it cannot be denied that much of the current political firestorm that you are involved in is led by opportunistic politicians (like Senator Clinton) in need of a demon to fight, there are still a few points of contention.
You included the sex game on the disc, regardless of how well it was hidden, and it can be accessed without modifying the game's code. On top of that, you lied about it when it was found, claiming that the content was added by third-party modders. Some see fit to give you the benefit of the doubt when you say it was part of the game that was scrapped and was never meant to be accessed, but seeing as how you were less than truthful about the content's origin, you understand how others might be hesitant to believe you.
Of course, you'll still enjoy a surge of support from dozens of Slashbotters whose concept of business and ethics begins and ends at "fuck the man." They'll make ridiculously grandiose statements about how GTA is "the most aesthetically important piece of art since Andy Warhol was alive" and wax poetic with stirring Braveheart-style soliloquies about "fighting the good fight" (though they won't mention that whole "lying to the consumers" part). They'll ignore your own part in this just so they can take a stab at the older generation and feel superior. And they'll mod down anyone who points out your own ethical shortcomings, for attacking their sacred cow of video games.
Meanwhile, the rest of the video game industry, the retailers, and the gamers themselves will suffer for your actions. They'll have to live with the raised level of scrutiny coming from concerned parents who were none too pleased to find out that there was more to that disc than they originally thought. Had you just put the minigame in without hiding it, and taken whatever rating it got you, there probably wouldn't even be a controversy. You might even have still gotten an M if you had just been up front about it. Then we could point to the rating and its content descriptors and tell those "concerned parents" that hey, they knew what was on the disc when they bought it. That is, if that was even necessary -- they probably wouldn't even be upset about the sexual nature of the content if they knew about it when they bought your game.
Of course, now that they know they've been tricked, it sure does seem important.
But who cares, right? You already made that fat stack of cash. You didn't violate any laws, so the House of Representatives can't really do anything to you. The best they can do is start passing laws forbidding retailers to sell M-rated games to anyone under 17. Or force the ESRB to be accountable to some government agency. But that's somebody else's problem, because your game already sold. Right?
We defended you, Rockstar. When people talked about how violent your games were, we noted that your games were no more violent than what could be seen on television, and that if there was a real concern, the ratings system was a reliable gauge that parents could use. But you threw that right out the window, and in the process single-handedly destroyed the best defense the video game industry has against the thought police. Why? For a publicity stunt? A marketing ploy? Or just because you were too lazy to remove something that you knew would cause a political firestorm?
You screwed us, Rockstar. Now I only hope that someone does the same to you.
Orwell was obviously an anti-communist. He was a left-wing anti-communist.
Please note that I was responding to the grandparent poster's assertion that he was a "Godless anti-state commie." I never claimed anything more than the obvious fact that Orwell was decidedly anti-communist.
The first anti-communists were on the left
No, the first anti-communists were on the right. In fact, by 1947, the only major liberal organization that had denounced Communism was the Union for Democratic Action. They figured out that reflexively fighting the right out of habit on this one wasn't going to fly, and in 1947 they renamed themselves to Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) and expanded their role towards recruiting other liberal organizations in opposing communism. Within 2 years, the ACLU and NAACP were on board, and the left managed to outpace the right on this front, but it took time.
The problem here is that you've been taught to associate liberalism, the left, communism, and socialism together as though they are all the same thing.
Huh? I made no such assertion. It was the person I was responding to who lumped communism in with liberalism. Look, my point was simple:
1. Orwell was not a communist.
2. Using quotes by Orwell to bash current U.S. foreign policy (in particular the war on terror) is dishonest. He clearly advocated the use of force against external threats.
Honestly, it sounds to me like you and I are in agreement on most of this. You are pointing out that Orwell's political ideals can't be so easily be claimed as right-wing, and I am saying that he wouldn't have held much esteem for today's left, either.
I call bullshit. You might consider picking up Orwell's "Notes on Nationalism."
He didn't much care for lefty peaceniks, it would seem. So using his quotes to bash current U.S. policy is somewhat disingenous. I'll buy that he was more populist than your average conservative, but you're going to tell me that the man who wrote Animal Farm was a communist? Get real.
Hacking the savefile is no different than hacking game. It's a hack. The content cannot be viewed by playing the game through any avenue presented by the content provider. Without alteration of some sort, that scene is not accessible. Period.
By that logic, hitting the "start" button to start the game is a hack. You don't have to alter the save game file, just like you don't technically have to insert the disc into the console. Unless, of course, you want to access the content that's on the disc you bought.
And that's what this is. It's accessing content on the disc that Rockstar sells. Just because Rockstar doesn't make it easy to get to doesn't make it any less a part of the product they sell.
Many times components of a piece of software cannot be completed in time or doesn't meet some requirement (maybe in this case exceeded the M rating). So it is removed, but the way in which it is removed is uaully removal of the calling functions rather than outright removing all pieces of code because they would require a great deal more regression testing to ensure that there were no impacts to the rest of the game (which may lead to a push in the delivery date). I suspect that this is likely the cause of the code being in the game.
If so, then why did Rockstar lie about it? They claimed early on that the content was not in face part of their code, but it clearly was.
No, Rockstar didn't deceive anyone. When you went out and bought the game, there was no possible way that you were going to get exposed to this "sex scene" without knowingly going out of your way to enable it. No possible way. Therefore, the sex scene was not part of the "content of the game", and therefore Rockstar did not deceive anyone about the content of the game.
Bullshit. The content is on the disc, and that makes it part of the package that Rockstar sells. It's content that was made by Rockstar and included in the game, regardless of whether it has to be unlocked by a third party. You're going to tell me that the company that regularly gets attacked for the content of their games had the purest of intentions in leaving the minigame on the disc? At best, they were negligent. At worst, they were downright malicious.
You don't need a mod to enable the content; all you need is a savegame file with the minigame unlocked. Right now, that means downloading an edited savegame file or editing your own, but considering that Rockstar wasn't forthcoming about the content of the disc, do you really trust them not to have thrown in a way to unlock the game without editing the savegame file? There could be an as-yet undiscovered cheat code, or any number of other possibilities. Rockstar sure as hell isn't going to be up front about that now.
But even if you give them the benefit of the doubt, they screwed up royally, and deserve to have the game re-rated. And they deserve a lot more scrutiny by the ESRB in the future, for pulling this little stunt. As the grandparent poster said, the minigame doesn't bother me nearly as much as Rockstar's willingness to hide it on the disc as a surprise for unwitting parents later on down the line. Everyone (including myself) who defended Rockstar in the past by pointing to the ratings system has had their argument shot down by none other than Rockstar themselves.
Well, when I say "outrage," I don't mean at the sexual nature of the content, but rather at Rockstar's mishandling of the issue, so don't read too much into that.
You make a point about the sex seeming like not such a big deal when compared to the rest of the game, but I can also see why parents would be more worried about sex than violence. I know a lot of 14-year-olds who can handle violence responsibly -- in fact, I would argue that simulated violence is a great way for many older kids to take their aggressions out in a safe, controlled manner. But I know of almost no 14-year-olds who can handle sex responsibly.
And though simulated violence can satisfy your aggression, simulated sex (or porn, etc.) has the opposite effect: it stimulates the libido. In fact, the porn industry argues that this is the primary benefit of what they produce.
So I can understand why sex is a bigger issue for many parents. It's a lot easier to keep kids from being violent than from being sexually active. You can give them plenty of outlets to take out their frustrations and aggressions, but there's really no substitute for an orgasm. Many parents just don't want to add fuel to the fire, be it for religious reasons, or simply because their kids aren't mature enough to handle sex responsibly.
I don't doubt that they made the game, then decided not to have it in the final game.
Ah! Now we're getting somewhere. I posted a comment in response to someone else about that very issue, you can check that out if you like.
I see the problem.
You live in a city.
I do not.
So live in a city. You can whine that your job requires you to be in a different location, but that is still a choice you made -- your job above your location. Me, I chose to live where I live, and I see no reason why you can't do the same. Your choices have been limited only by you, not anyone else.
You seem to think that you are owed more options, and you are not. Wal-Mart doesn't owe you the ability to buy NC-17 movies. But hey, their loss is Amazon's gain, right?
You do have options. But hey, if you prefer to bitch, it's a free country.
Somebody's been drinking Rockstar's Kool-aid.
The code doesn't have to be altered in order to actually play the minigame. Which means that the code, as it exists on the disc, UNALTERED, includes that minigame. Rockstar made the sex game and included it in the finished product, not "t3h h4xx0rz." Get it through your skull.
Well said.
Maybe Rockstar intentionally left the minigame on the disc as a joke or publicity stunt, or maybe they just decided to pull that part of the game and truly never intended it to see the light of day. Considering how they've tried to obfuscate this entire ordeal, I'm not inclined to believe a word they say, but even if you give them the benefit of the doubt, the distinction is moot, because it's still their screwup.
They're the guys that regularly get attacked about their content, and they weren't more careful about cleaning up their shipping product? At best, they were careless. At worst, they were downright malicious.
The rest of the industry ought to be disowning Rockstar right now. They have singlehandedly weakened the entire industry's greatest defense against the thought police. I wouldn't be surprised if several other big name studios put out a press release condemning Rockstar's actions and vowing not to do the same.
it isn't "easily accessible", it's NOT accessible unless the goddamned program is changed. Which is what this patch did.
People who don't understand what they are talking about really should shut up about stuff like this.
I agree. Howsabout you start?
You don't need a patch, and you don't need to change the program itself. All you need is a savegame file with access to the minigame unlocked. This is why the console versions will also be receiving the AO rating.
Regardless of how accessible it is, the content itself is on the disc. It is part of the product that Rockstar sells. When you pay money for it, you are buying what's on the disc, sex game and all. That is the distinction the ESRB is making.
Well said. My sentiments exactly.
This makes me want to kill the ESRB board
Why? They gave GTA:SA the M rating based on the footage that Rockstar provided, and Rockstar wasn't forthcoming about the content that was on the disc -- even if the mini-game wasn't easily accessible, now all it takes is a modified save game file. Why shouldn't the ESRB revoke the rating?
Regardless of whether you think the footage is "dangerous to children" or whatever, the fact of the matter is that Rockstar misrepresented themselves and their game, and now that they've been caught, the ESRB is entirely within its rights -- in fact, if the ESRB hadn't done this, then there would be no validity to the rating system that keeps those political monkeys off the industry's back.
As far as I'm concerned, Rockstar got what was coming to them. Their peers in the video game industry should be outraged that they would pull the wool over the eyes of the ESRB, which exists to help protect all of them from being regulated by would-be thought police.
Here's a question for you: How does Walmart exist?
Walmart exists because we, as society, say it serves a useful function and thus let it exist. I agree that 'people' should not have to sell what they don't want to sell, but Walmart is not a people. Walmart is a self-organizing system we set up to serve our needs. It should not be making moral judgements.
Au contraire, Wal-Mart is still owned and controlled by people, and those people have every right to make moral judgements about what they want to sell. Mind you, Wal-Mart's concern is more for their customers' sensibilities than their own, but they still have the right to make that decision.
And it's not too hard to imagine a future where the whole country shuns someone, and they die of dehydration in a ditch, via perfectly legal voluntary shunning. No one will sell them food or water or let them on their property. See the problem?
I disagree. It is incredibly hard to imagine a future like that because no one thinks alike. In order for every single person to shun a human being they would all have to agree that the person was worthy of being shunned. It would take quite an offense to do that. And even if it were possible, to disallow it would be to deny that society the right to make its own decisions. You would be denying individual people's rights to choose who they associate and deal with. That's a cost that far outweighs the prevention of a hypothetical situation that would never happen in the first place.
Walmart is too powerful to allow it to voluntarily shun games, and it's getting more powerful.
Bullshit. Wal-Mart doesn't have any control over the decisions I make as a consumer -- I've managed not to come into contact with Wal-Mart for several years now with no problems. As it stands, Wal-Mart is already suffering from growing too large too quickly, and from the resentment of consumers who don't care for Wal-Mart's tactics. If you don't like how Wal-Mart shuns certain media, then you have the right to shun Wal-Mart.
On top of that, Wal-Mart's shunning of various material provides other retailers with what is essentially the perfect business opportunity. We have a local music store that thrives because it markets itself as a more complete alternative to Wal-Mart, with a vastly superior selection of music. There is no reason any other business can't capitalize on Wal-Mart's dropped initiative. If they can't, then perhaps Wal-Mart was right to refuse to sell the product in the first place, because it doesn't sell.
And my hatred of voluntary rating systems is fueled more by movie theatres, where it's already happened...you cannot make an NC-17 movie in this country and have it in any theatre except the twenty porn theatres still open in various major cities.
This is FUD. That didn't stop Pedro Almodovar, whose latest film, "La Mala Educacion (Bad Education)" has seen quite a bit of success in the U.S. despite its NC-17 rating. Or the arthouse cinema down the street from me that shows nothing but alternative films, including some rated NC-17. Again, they capitalize on what other theaters refuse to promote.
I think you have no idea how I feel about this.
Correct. I was not referring to you, but to the parent poster.
I absolutely loath 'voluntary' rating systems that result in censorship. And, yes, it is censorship when large chains will not carry your product unless you alter it, even for sale to adults.
Wal-Mart has every right not to sell something they don't want to sell, including AO-rated games. If the ratings didn't exist, Wal-Mart would still find a way to discriminate based on content. If you don't like it, then don't shop at Wal-Mart. I haven't for years, and it's been great.
Don't get me wrong, I also dislike voluntary rating systems, but that is because they are arbitrary and not terribly useful to me as a parenting tool, not because they result in self-censorship. Censorship only becomes opressive when it comes from the government. Wal-Mart is still within its rights.
However, this is almost totally unrelated, as what people are talking about isn't in the game. It requires external software to enable.
RTFA. All it requires is that you download a savegame file with the minigame unlocked, or that you edit your own savegame file to unlock it. I agree that this minimizes the impact, but the content is still on the disc you bought. It's still part of the package that RockStar sells.
And the only reason 'teen pregnancy' is a problem is because we refuse to recognize that teenagers have sex. Heaven forbid parents put their foot down and say to their daughters 'If you want to continue to live in this house, you'll go on the pill'.
It's the job of parents to teach their children to be responsible...when they're 16 years old, it's a rather late to be saying 'I absolutely forbid this action'. It's now time to be saying 'Here is how you do this action responsibly'.
Okay, this is exactly what I'm talking about. You are now telling people how to raise their children. You are doing the exact same thing as the politician in this story.
Most parents want to decide for themselves what is best for their children. I am not terribly sympathetic to those who rely on a ratings system to discern content, but those who do expect that system to be consistent and effective. In this case, the ESRB has failed.
My original point was simple: kids want to have sex a lot more than they want to kill people. On top of that, one of the main purposes of pornography (as defined by the porn industry itself) is to assist in sexual stimulation. There's nothing wrong with that, but that's why many parents consider sexual stimuli (like pornography) to be less appropriate for their children, and that's why it receives a higher rating than violence.
The answer to this is not to tell people that you know what's best for their children, whom I will note you have never even met. It's to make sure that the ratings system is either consistent and effective, or to remove the ratings system entirely. As a practical matter, the latter option will likely lead to government censorship, which is far worse than the self-censorship that you abhor.
I'm on your side here, but you have to understand that it is necessary to make the values of free speech attractive to parents who would otherwise support politicians like the one in this article.
Well said. Ars is a fantastic technical resource, but I don't think they're up to snuff when it comes to business world commentary.
The reasoning put forth in the article that Apple was too demanding doesn't hold when you consider IBM's "Power Everwhere" strategy. The parent poster is right -- IBM could've pushed the 970 into other markets, but they failed to reach 3 Ghz and couldn't sell it. Calling it a custom job for Apple after the fact is just sour grapes.
IBM can whine, but they used Apple to catapult themselves to the top of the list for custom processors for things like the XBox and the PS3. Once they had those contracts, Apple was a fish they could throw back. Bait, if you will. Meanwhile, the XBox 360 is water-cooled, and the Cell chip that powers the PS3 is not a viable desktop processor.
And let's not forget that the PPC970FX is horribly underpowered. Clock-for-clock, the G5 is shows no major real-world performance improvement over the G4. The main reason the G5 is so great is that it hits clock speeds up to 2.7 Ghz. The G4 is a full 1 Ghz behind. But the 970FX, IBM's "low-power" chip, is clocked even lower than the current G4, and its power consumption is STILL higher than the Pentium M. Meanwhile there are new G4 chips out NOW that reduce power requirements even more drastically.
The only thing the 970FX brings to the table is 64-bit compatibility, which is only necessary if you have more than 2 GB of RAM -- not a likely prospect in a laptop. The fact of the matter is that IBM's "low-power" offering is the weakest of all major chip manufacturers. Even Freescale is ahead of them. Intel is just plain out of their league.
With that in mind, Apple's reasons for moving to Intel were exactly as they stated -- better performance per watt. IBM couldn't hit the goal, pulled the plug, and is now trying to blame Apple for the fallout in order to save face with other clients.
And remember that wanting to have sex is Wrong(TM).
Ah, the Slashdot double standard. You jackasses will argue until you're blue in the face that video game companies should be allowed to put whatever content they want in games, especially since there's a voluntary rating system. But the minute that system slips up, you're ridiculing the sensibilities of the parents who trusted it.
It is exactly your attitude that gives credence to people like the politician in the article.
Many folks are fine with their 14-year-old kids playing GTA, despite the "M" rating, because they know their kids are smart enough to be able to discern the violence in the game from the real world. But it requires a higher level of maturity to handle sex responsibly, and that's why people are wary of exposing their children to graphic sexuality -- for fear that those children will seek it out before they're able to handle it in a mature fashion. Consider that there are far more teen pregnancies than school shootings.
I'm not saying you shouldn't be able to play a sex mini-game like this, or that RockStar shouldn't be allowed to sell it. I'm saying that RockStar misrepresented themselves and their game, and many parents are going to feel betrayed and lose faith in the ESRB as a result. And when that happens, no one should be surprised when the censorship police show up.
And all your sarcasm does is egg them on.
My kingdom for a mod point. Could you be more wrong?
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.
No, the reason why sex is given a higher rating than violence is actually much simpler. Ask yourself these two simple questions:
1. How many times have you watched graphic sexual content (pornagraphy, whatever) and wanted to have sex yourself during or after viewing it?
2. Now how many times have you watched a gunfight and then wanted to go kill someone?
If the goal of the ratings system is to set age-based limits, then I have to agree with the ratings boards that graphic sexuality is less desirable for my children to see than graphic violence.
If Stallman and his ilk had had the simple foresight to refer to it as the "software freedom movement" or some such instead of the "free software movement," then it would've been a lot easier to promote the F/OSS agenda. There are plenty of ways to express the concept of freedom in software without confusion. You'd think Stallman would've seen this.