GTA and the ESRB

[Catiline]

See here, http://www.esrb.org/about_updates.asp#7-20-05

GTA San Andreas has been reclassified as an AO in the US.

More menacingly for games long term, and why i'm posting here is the following part of the statement

'Furthermore, the ESRB calls on the computer and video game industry to proactively protect their games from illegal modifications by third parties, particularly when they serve to undermine the accuracy of the rating'

wooohooo, lets lock everything down. Lets see you complain about CA then :)

i should state a degree of interest here, I'm mate's with a school friend of the guy who started Rockstar which has given me some entertaining insight into this...

[edyzmedieval]

Man,

If I want to get GTA San Andreas, I have to get it fast.....

[Geoffrey S]

It seems a bit strange to base the age rating on the possibility of certain mods; if this were applied to all games any game featuring buxom female characters and enthusiastic skinners (just about any modern FPS) would have to be rated differently, if you get my drift...

[Steppe Merc]

Yeah, Morrowind would be screwed...

But what rights do they have to call modders illegal? We're not selling it, are we?

I don't particullary care for GTA or those sort of games, but I am worried about how it may effect games that I like.

[Crazed Rabbit]

I believe that GTA had the 'AO' stuff already, and was just 'unlocked' by a mod.

The real problem is what Cataline stated, that ESRB seems to want to crack down on mods. Since it'd be impossible just to stop bad mods, all mods would be skewered.

Crazed Rabbit

[IliaDN]

What is AO?

[Geoffrey S]

Adults Only.

[IliaDN]

Thanks.
As for the game - I abondoned at the flight school.

[Spino]

Rockstar games really shot themselves in the foot with this incident. Either they thought themselves too cute and clever for their own good and this unlockable content would simply fly under the radar of the 'powers that be' or a few programmers quietly slipped this stuff into the game without telling anyone. Lots of games ship with hidden content and features that are either inactive or are left overs from earlier builds. Just look at the stuff modders have discovered when perusing through the files for RTW. There's a good chance GTA:SA's racy content was never detected because most of the development staff and the beta testers never knew the codes to unlock it. Take Two's execs must be positively livid over this, it won't be long before the axe falls on a bunch of heads at Take Two and Rockstar Games. What's worse is the negative effect this is going to have on the gaming industry.

Compelling or forcing game publishers to 'lock up' their games and curb modding doesn't stand much of a chance. Speaking purely in terms of the bottom line the potential impact on sales thanks to user made mods is simply too great for publishers to ignore.

[Blodrast]

shrug, I don't really see how they can enforce this.
take any piece of software, reverse engineer it, and voila, you have a mod.
besides, there's mod-making tools for lots and lots of non-straightforwardly-moddable games...once something like that is out, anybody can create mods of their own...

sure, changing the rating as in this case can and will hit companies, but not all games necessarily have "unacceptable" content...
And, just like Steppe said, there's "nude" mods pretty much for any game that has a chick in it... and because of this thingie called internet, they will always be "widely spread" (duh).

[Mongoose]

LOL-I guess this means any game with a female character is going to get rated "AO"

That or they have try to stop modding...wait...doesn't EB plan on adding a special skin after release for the "Gasaetae"?

[Marshal Murat]

Then RTW is going to be pulled becuase of "male genitalia" in the game!
Then ABC is going to do something about video games, and the harmful effects on people.

[Steppe Merc]

It's not going to be a special skin. It's going to be natrually naked.

[King of Atlantis]

ESRN is stupid. One of the things that is keeping the computer game indusrty alive over systems is the mods..

[Marshal Murat]

I'm suprised it took this long to find out about the mod (hehehe)

[The_Doctor]

I thought it was for the PS2?

[Murmandamus]

shrug, I don't really see how they can enforce this.
take any piece of software, reverse engineer it, and voila, you have a mod.
besides, there's mod-making tools for lots and lots of non-straightforwardly-moddable games...once something like that is out, anybody can create mods of their own...

A mod is something external that is added to the game to modify it in some way. An easter egg is something that is already in the game and is unlocked. So, I'm a bit confused here. Why is this being called a mod when from everything I can read on it, it's quite clearly an easter egg.

Pretty low of Rockstar to try and blame "hackers" for something they clearly put in the game themselves. It wouldn't surprise me if it was intentional anyway. I wonder how many people went out and bought it because of this. Any publicity is good publicity.

This isn't the first time something like this has happened either. I remember there was a game where some devs put in an easter egg that made a parade in the game a gay madigras with something like a 1 in 1000 chance of it being played. They got sacked for it.

[Marshal Murat]

Sim Copter I think.

I say its a mod, because as you said, easter eggs are unlocked. This couldn't have possibly have been unlocked, but modded to be unlocked.

[Blodrast]

I don't think there's much point in getting stuck on exact definitions and semantic subtleties, but the point is that a mod CAN add something that doesn't already exist in the game, or can CREATE nudity (or whatever other objectionable things).
To be technical about it, it can't be considered an easter egg since it couldn't have been unlocked, just as Marshal Murat pointed out.
And there's been lots of nude/gross/explicit mods for plenty of other games out there. Nude quake characters would be one of the more popular ones, I suppose.


Either way, it's not very important. The point is that IF this request of ESRB is actually implemented by game makers, it will do nothing but hinder the game industry, because:
1. it will stop game creators from making easily moddable games, a perfect example of this being the text files in RTW. Most nude/gore/whatever unacceptable mods do not come from this kind of moddability.
2. it will not stop people who reverse-engineer the games from creating mod-engines, or implementing the very things that the ESRB is concerned about.

So all in all, it would do nothing but hurt. My opinion, of course.
But then again, why would y'all expect that the decision factors in ESRB are more than simple bureaucrats, for whom logic is not exactly their strong point ? ...

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

I think it could be considered an Easter Egg. Who says they have to be unlocked? The hidden Amazons in Rome: Total War don't have to be unlocked, and they can be considered an Easter Egg. The Egyptian Protectorate message is one too, in my opninion. "All your base are belong to us" is not a standard or historical message. And since it is not advertised or enumerated as a feature, I think it could be classified as hidden.

Wikipedia's article on Easter Eggs

In computing, Easter eggs are messages, graphics, sound effects, or an unusual change in program behaviour, that occur in a program in response to some undocumented set of commands, mouse clicks, keystrokes or other similar stimuli intended as a joke or to display program credits. A former use of the term Easter egg was to describe a message hidden in the object code of a program as a joke, intended to be found by persons disassembling or browsing the code.

So the ESRB is wrong for cracking down on mods, but only because that's the press this is getting. It's been mislabelled, and modifications can only stand to lose.

Stupid Rockstar.

[Papewaio]

It is an Easter Egg for coders.

So by giving it to mods they have endorsed mods bypassing the ratings.

If the mods did it independently well that is another case.

Independent mods is like a kid getting a crayon and drawing an x-rated picture of mummy and daddy.

Giving them the images is like giving a kid a crayon and a join the dots x-rated picture of mummy and daddy.

Rockstar is guilty of the later.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

That's a good analogy, Pape.

OT: You have to have the second highest (or close to it) post counts. I just noticed that. But you're still 3k behind JAG.

[Navaros]

Rockstar games really shot themselves in the foot with this incident.

on the contrary: Rockstar benefitted tremendously. they got themselves months worth of free publicity from every source imaginable

now that they got 'caught' and are being 'punished', they will just censor the game in the same way they censored Vice City for being too controversial

the censored San Andreas game will have an M rating, then it's business as usual for Rockstar

Rockstar loses nothing, and gains a ton of publicity/word of mouth

[Papewaio]

OT: You have to have the second highest (or close to it) post counts. I just noticed that. But you're still 3k behind JAG.

Too busy making babies to keep up the post count

[Productivity]

Way to concentrate on something that is relatively harmless, but let this get by with minimal fuss.

Should this be in the Backroom?, it's primarily politics even if it is somewhat based on games.

[discovery1]

No one will buy that racist game. Not only is it racist but I can guarantee you that the graphics are terrible and the story nonexistant.

That is probably why no one cares.

[Fragony]

Well you can pick up hookers, slit the throat of a grannie or chainsaw a police officer to death. That kind stuff gets a 18+ rating in movies in the usa if I am not mistaken, so why not in a game.

[Proletariat]

Good point. You can steal cars, assassinate cops, kill hookers, and now all of a sudden this game has crossed the line?

BFD.

[Geoffrey S]

It's not just a matter of whether it encourages violence or not. Games, more than any other medium, draw people into their world. In this light I find it absurd that so few games actually have age restrictions, more so the fact that shops rarely enforce these restrictions. Just as young children shouldn't really be allowed to watch various horror films they shouldn't be allowed to play a game like GTA San Andreas. Games have grown up, yet many parents and apparently politicians don't seem to recognize that games need similar rules to movies. It would also help if game developers realised this.

Bah, that didn't come out too clearly. Basically the point I want to make is that games need to be taken seriously as an entertainment medium, along with the fact that games with adult themes should be for adults only.

[Blodrast]

The idea of labeling and giving ratings, I agree with. The way it is implemented in reality, I don't. I'm not gonna go into detail exactly why, because it would be a very long post probably. Therefore, I am against labeling and ratings.
I'll give two illustrative (I think) examples below. People can draw their own conclusions from this...

I remember having seen "Commando" (it's like 15 years old, with the gov'nor of California); if you haven't seen it, Arnie takes on an entire army by himself, and, not surprisingly, wins. Well, as you may imagine, the movie is entirely about fighting.
As a kid, I'd watched the movie a few dozen times, so I knew it pretty well. There is a scene where Arnie goes into a tool shed, closes the door (!), the enemy soldiers surround the shed and fire half a million rounds all over the place. Then they go inside to see the body, and, surprise, Arnie is alive and well and kills them all with tools from the shed (hatchet, knife, saw, etc). Not really gory or anything, imho of course. In the censored version, you get to see the soldiers surrounding the shed, you get to see them start shooting, you get to see one of them go to open the door after they stop shooting, and then you see Arnie walking away from the shed with a dozen corpses on the ground. WTF ? What's the point in showing the movie at all if you simply cut out a bunch of fight scenes ?! What are we supposed to watch it for, witty dialogue and great landscapes ??

I can also recall NYTimes' comment about "The Day After Tomorrow", and the fact that it has got a very lenient rating (G or something). It was something along the lines of "well, it's the end of the world, half the world is destroyed, billions of people die, but there's no nudity or drugs so it's okay" (cynical, obviously).

I'm afraid my personal opinion (and, as usual, nobody else has to agree with it), is that all this rating business is just hypocrisy. "Oh, we rate the movies/games, so it's out of our hands, our conscience is clean if the kids grow up into criminals, I mean, we rated the damn things, how can we be guilty of it ?! We're good parents, we're taking care of our country's youth !". Puhleeze.
I grew up watching probably more than your average kid's share of movies with violence, drugs and especially horror (no sex, admittedly :P) and such, and I haven't grown up into a criminal, I don't do drugs, I don't have a criminal record, etc, etc.
So that is not the problem, nor are the ratings a solution.

edit: oh well, it looks like this is kinda moving away from games...I guess it might be moved I suppose. Sorry if I caused that.