Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO - News) announced today that the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) has changed the rating of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on all platforms from "Mature 17+" (M) to "Adults Only 18+" (AO) because of the so-called "hot coffee mod," an unauthorized third party modification that alters the retail version of the game.
What exactly is so bad about this? It has a different rating. So what? The ESRB is doing their job. From the ESRB website
The ESRB rating system is designed to give parents the information they need to evaluate a computer or video game before making a purchasing decision. The ratings are not meant to recommend which games consumers should buy or rent or to serve as the only basis for choosing a product. Rather, parents should use the ESRB ratings in conjunction with their own tastes and standards and their individual knowledge about what's best for their kids.
ESRB recommends that parents learn about games before making a purchasing decision. Game reviews printed in newspapers and publisher web sites can be excellent sources of information. To search for games that are appropriate based on age categories and content, use our online ratings search feature.
ESRB also urges parents to talk with their children about their favorite games. Playing the games with your children helps stimulate those discussions, and playing games as a family can also be a fun way to spend time together.
What all of that means is that the ratings assigned by the ESRB are intended to be used as a guide, such that the consumer has a general idea of what to expect. Parents that are using these ratings in place of discretion appropriate for the individual child are taking a general recommendation and treating it like the gospel.
Additionally, the ESRB is not in the business of modifying games. Their job is not to find content that is not accessible through game play. The argument that the content is accessible through game play is nonsense. A patch was required in order to access the scene in question. For the ESRB to apply unofficial patches to a game at any point during testing would be completely unethical. It is doubtful that anyone on the ratings board sees code regularly as part of their job; there is simply no need.
The purpose of the ESRB is to evaluate a game for content and issue a rating to inform parents of what to expect. With what was known at the time, this is exactly what they did. Take careful note: in light of new content discovered in this game, the ESRB has changed its rating. This is not arbitrary; ratings are determined based on the material in a game, and this game now meets the criteria for an AO rating.
Furthermore, the magnitude of this issue the result of little more than Hillary Clinton's political campaign. Were this a truly important concern to the former first lady, this type of video game modification would have been under fire years ago. The patch for The Sims that caused all of the characters to walk around completely naked
has long since been forgotten.
This display of political impropriety is clearly an attempt to insert Senator Clinton into the limelight to gain press attention in preparation for a presidential election, at the expense of the public perception of the ESRB's integrity. In spite of Clinton's disingenuous actions and the difficult situation they have created, the ESRB has handled the matter exceptionally well.
What's a safety store? I don't think I've ever seen one of those. The closest thing I can think of is a hardware store, but those are generally unsafety stores.
I'd be willing to bet that a $12 price tag would be possible. They probably make their money the same way the game console people do, losing money on the hardware and making profits on the software/content.
...so would it really be that hard to make it cross-platform? I think they're losing a lot of geeks who would run it, if not for the fact that's it's Windows-only.
PeaceFire distributes a free program called the Circumventor which can be used (by running it on a server in a free country) to safely and securely proxy out of a firewalled nation like China.
Do you know if there's a *nix equivalent of this?
-Ben
While I'm all in favor of gas economy, I have to wonder how much more unbiased fans of these cars are than (potential) opponents of them.
As it is in the government's best interest for us to keep buying gas, they have an incentive to understate fuel economy in very efficient cars. This is not to say that they actually do it; merely that they have a reason to.
However, fans/drivers of the cars might be rounding their numbers or interpolating them from memory, for example. This is not a scientific study, and it is important to remember that.
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I'm not sure I understand. From TFA: What exactly is so bad about this? It has a different rating. So what? The ESRB is doing their job. From the ESRB website What all of that means is that the ratings assigned by the ESRB are intended to be used as a guide, such that the consumer has a general idea of what to expect. Parents that are using these ratings in place of discretion appropriate for the individual child are taking a general recommendation and treating it like the gospel.
Additionally, the ESRB is not in the business of modifying games. Their job is not to find content that is not accessible through game play. The argument that the content is accessible through game play is nonsense. A patch was required in order to access the scene in question. For the ESRB to apply unofficial patches to a game at any point during testing would be completely unethical. It is doubtful that anyone on the ratings board sees code regularly as part of their job; there is simply no need.
The purpose of the ESRB is to evaluate a game for content and issue a rating to inform parents of what to expect. With what was known at the time, this is exactly what they did. Take careful note: in light of new content discovered in this game, the ESRB has changed its rating. This is not arbitrary; ratings are determined based on the material in a game, and this game now meets the criteria for an AO rating.
Furthermore, the magnitude of this issue the result of little more than Hillary Clinton's political campaign. Were this a truly important concern to the former first lady, this type of video game modification would have been under fire years ago. The patch for The Sims that caused all of the characters to walk around completely naked has long since been forgotten.
This display of political impropriety is clearly an attempt to insert Senator Clinton into the limelight to gain press attention in preparation for a presidential election, at the expense of the public perception of the ESRB's integrity. In spite of Clinton's disingenuous actions and the difficult situation they have created, the ESRB has handled the matter exceptionally well.
What's a safety store? I don't think I've ever seen one of those. The closest thing I can think of is a hardware store, but those are generally unsafety stores.
Use a floppy or CD based installation. Leave that hard disk out. When that's on, there are no moving parts at work
:)
Call me crazy, but last time I checked, floppy drives and CD drives both made things spin. In the case of CD drives, things spin very fast.
I do like your idea though.
I'd be willing to bet that a $12 price tag would be possible. They probably make their money the same way the game console people do, losing money on the hardware and making profits on the software/content.
From http://portables.about.com/od/portablevideo/a/flju icebox.htm:
So that seems like it might work.
-Ben
http://opendildonics.org/
-Ben
Maybe it's because everyone's already written the HTML books.
-Ben
I had the same thought when I read that...
-Ben
...so would it really be that hard to make it cross-platform? I think they're losing a lot of geeks who would run it, if not for the fact that's it's Windows-only.
-Ben
-Ben
I just wonder what they're doing with all of this data. Between zip code and links visited, you could assemble some pretty interesting demographics.
-Ben
So did my cat. It was really cute watching him eat a slice of pizza bigger than him. But I digress...
-Ben
Aren't you supposed to rip band-aids off quickly and get it over with?
PeaceFire distributes a free program called the Circumventor which can be used (by running it on a server in a free country) to safely and securely proxy out of a firewalled nation like China. Do you know if there's a *nix equivalent of this? -Ben
While I'm all in favor of gas economy, I have to wonder how much more unbiased fans of these cars are than (potential) opponents of them. As it is in the government's best interest for us to keep buying gas, they have an incentive to understate fuel economy in very efficient cars. This is not to say that they actually do it; merely that they have a reason to. However, fans/drivers of the cars might be rounding their numbers or interpolating them from memory, for example. This is not a scientific study, and it is important to remember that.