janelane wrote:

The civil lawsuit was filed after the disclosure of the sex scenes in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, released in 2004. The existence of the scenes, accessible to knowledgeable players using third-party software, drew fierce condemnation from lawmakers and sparked a frenzy online. The suit accused the game’s makers of defrauding buyers by failing to disclose the scenes.

"Wag of my finger" to the designers for putting in the sex scenes, and another "wag" to the purchasers for not expecting the absolute worse that the designers could dish out.

-janelane, all my games are rated T

I really don't understand what the problem is. First, you had to modify the software of the game to get access to these "sex scenes." They were not part of the game and not easy to access. Second, the consisted of fully clothed sprites bumping and grinding. I don't understand why this is more offensive than the rest of the game. The idea that viewing this would be somehow harmful to teenagers is completely nonsensical.

I hate puritanical Americans and crooked lawyers.

janelane wrote:

The civil lawsuit was filed after the disclosure of the sex scenes in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, released in 2004. The existence of the scenes, accessible to knowledgeable players using third-party software, drew fierce condemnation from lawmakers and sparked a frenzy online. The suit accused the game’s makers of defrauding buyers by failing to disclose the scenes.

"Wag of my finger" to the designers for putting in the sex scenes, and another "wag" to the purchasers for not expecting the absolute worse that the designers could dish out.

-janelane, all my games are rated T

I still think it's a load of bullsh*t.

Let's draw a parallel... Let's pretend this sort of retroactive assessment applied to movies.

Let's say someone makes a movie that has a lot of violence, a boat-load of swearing, and a hardcore sex scene. First pass through the ratings board gets it an X.

The producers then begin a serious hack and slash session, cutting the movies length by ten minutes, removing all the hardcore sex, an especially grotesque murder, and about half the swear words are toned down, getting the movie a PG-13.

The movie is a blockbuster hit, raking in $25 million in the first weekend, with hundreds of thousands of viewers.

Six months later the "Director's Cut" edition starts going on sale, which is "Unrated".

A certain asshat lawyer files a suit, with a few dozen district attorneys in right on his heels with criminal charges, because the mere existence of the unrated Director's Cut means they've actually been showing hardcore pornography to minors--and said minors are pretty pissed because they didn't actually get to see it, but were cited for sneaking into an X-rated movie anyway.

Wikipedia article:
The possibility of enabling the minigame by changing a single bit of code shows that the sexual intercourse content is part of the game's original data, and not new content inserted into the game by the mod. However, it is not possible to access the sexual content simply by playing the game as intended by the developers, because it was fully disabled and the bit cannot be changed by normal gameplay. The fellatio animations are however clearly visible in the background of an early mission, "Cleaning the Hood", even in the re-released game. This may explain why the mini-game was not simply removed when the decision was made to cut it from the game: its assets were in use elsewhere.

Spoiler: If it appears that I'm taking both sides on this issue, I probably am.

I love several E-rated games (just about anything involving Nintendo's mascot, Mario), but I also love M-rated games (such as GTA, Resident Evil, Silent Hill, etc.). The hidden Hot Coffee minigame in GTA: SA doesn't bother me at all, nor would it, had it been openly available during normal game play. My PS2 version is the original, unmodified version, but I've never been interested enough to unlock it. There's already enough wild content in the game, and a sex scene seems tame by comparison.

I don't see how a 17-year-old (as opposed to an 18-year-old) would be adversely affected by the extra content (those under 17 aren't supposed to have any version of the game), but we have to draw the line somewhere, and I agree with Janelane's implication that Rockstar should've taken the trouble to completely remove the questionable code before the initial release, assuming that they wanted the "M" rating instead of the "AO" rating. The publishers are cognizant of our social environment (silly or not), and they're familiar with the current rating system (accurate or not), so they should've expected the controversy once word got out. Of course, that could've been their goal all along. Sometimes, controversy makes for great marketing.

On the other hand, I agree with Dagmar, in that this was made out to be a much bigger deal than it really was, and some "asshat lawyers" and the socially repressive, sexually frustrated groups they represent, were using this situation to attack mature video games in general and get feathers in their caps. Intentional or not, Rockstar made a mistake, but it was a minor mistake. It's not as though they released Bible Black with an "E" rating.

Decius wrote:
I don't understand why this is more offen... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]