San Andreas receives AO rating

[Krusshyk]

Now I just want to see the porno part. Hubba hubba.

http://www.gtasanandreas.net/news/single.php?id=1469

Video at this site. It takes a couple of hours to download (everyone's hitting it)

I think that if content got into the game in the first place, it ought to have gotten submitted and the game rated as such in the first place, or edited out. Regardless of how you have to access it, someone put it in there giggling behind their hands knowing that someone would be able to later, even if it's obscure.

This is a good point, but now Rockstar might be suing the company that makes the software that allows you to unlock it on the PS2. The problem here is that the game, as shipped, cannot play the porn. It's not even an easter egg. You have to access it by hacking the code. I agree that it was probably intentionally left in there to be found, but I still think they have some plausible deniability. You, the user, have to basically violate the User Agreement to access the data.

I also think that this sort of thing is really, really overhyped... I think I'd be more worried that the game Grand Theft Auto appealed to my kid than finger pointing at the makers. Where I live, they're pulling it from the shelves and there's general sensationalism about "embedding pornography into children's toys." This was actually on the six o'clock news and I wanted to just go UGH. Children's toys. Grand Theft Auto. Right.

I agree that it's stupid to refer to GTA (any edition) as a children's toy. Just more intentionally ignorant media bias, so they can fan flames.

But it's being pulled off of shelves due to retail agreements. I think most game retailers get their stock through a retail distributor (even Best Buy and Game Stop), or it's some kind of alliance thing. They're being ordered to pull the stock as they have some sort of agreement with the ESRB, and are obligated to remove it due to the non-accurate rating.

As I posted somewhere else (GGA I think?), if I was a parent, and I was upset that my child who was under the age of 17 (<-- younger than the M rating) saw porn in that game, but was fine with them playing the game as shipped, well, I'd think that I've got some other issues going on that need addressing. It's not even hypocrisy. It's just downright shitty parents who are up in arms over this.

List of things okay for underage kids to do in GTA:

Gang bang drive-by shootings.
Sex with hookers in cars (action tastefully hidden!)
Beating hookers after having sex with them to steal their money.
Murder.
Assassinations.
Grand theft auto and larceny.
Vehicular manslaughter.
R rated language.

But graphic sex? OH NOES THINK OF THE CHILDREN.

Please.

Well...technically it's YOUR money...the hooker is just hanging on to it for a few seconds.

And I don't know that I could even classify the language as "R". Seriously, the F word is used so often, it makes truck drivers cry...

..in the first 5 minutes of the introduction.

[Dwilah]

http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/generic/7925/

Thanks, Illbleed.

[Jerrel]

ESRB boards that rate games either play very little or dont play it at all. Instead they view a vedio put together buy the company that has made a game depicting the things one can do while playing the game. So if a company has cut out something that they had in there the ESRB will not see it even if the coding is in there. This system does work because no company would e able to sale their product if they chose to decieve the ESRB.

As for kids buying this game. I have a friend who is a manager of an EB Games and he told me that when San Andreas came out parents were buying the game for their 8 year olds. When told about the content the parents often told him not to tell them how to raise their kids or just ingnored it. Most parents dont care if their kids play increadibly violent games as long as it gets them out of their hair.

[X'an Shin]

ESRB boards that rate games either play very little or dont play it at all. Instead they view a vedio put together buy the company that has made a game depicting the things one can do while playing the game.

Bzzzt. Thanks for playing. Wrong. Dude, there's TWO people on this board who WORK ON VIDEO GAMES. Like, ones you've even heard of and might have played.

As for kids buying this game. I have a friend who is a manager of an EB Games and he told me that when San Andreas came out parents were buying the game for their 8 year olds. When told about the content the parents often told him not to tell them how to raise their kids or just ingnored it. Most parents dont care if their kids play increadibly violent games it gets them out of their hair.

This? Fine. But stop presenting pure rumor and speculation as if it's fact.

[Isleh]

ESRB boards that rate games either play very little or dont play it at all. Instead they view a vedio put together buy the company that has made a game depicting the things one can do while playing the game.

Bzzzt. Thanks for playing. Wrong. Dude, there's TWO people on this board who WORK ON VIDEO GAMES. Like, ones you've even heard of and might have played.

I'm curious. What is the process?

The one thing that bothers me. If they never intended for it to be released to the public, why is it on the CD in the first place? This is content that *they* made right? Did the animation.. the voice acting, etc... Texture patch yes but voice acting?!? That was never supposed to be accesed? Well, if that is the case, why spend the resources and money?

Zannon compared it to arresting the parrents because their child may become a murderer. [ If they made the content and someone else just unlocked it, ] I don't think it's a fair comparrison mainly because that content didn't get in the game by accident and out of their control. This is more like building a bomb, placing it and then claiming they never intended to set the bomb off.

Maybe I'm wrong so I'll ask the experts. X'an, do you think that you could slip something like this into a game and your boss not notice.

If you did, and you sent your company lawyers into damage control overtime, when it became public, would you still have your job?

[Sai'nu]

I'll agree that if this is due to 3rd party add ons; It's highly stupid to do this. I don't think anyone other than the person doing the 3rd party stuff could be held responsible for that.

Now, just going by this game alone... Well, I qoute Vin Diesel from xXx (well... maybe a little bastardized qouting since I can't remember exactly his line), "You know Govenor Dick. He's the guy that wants to take video games off the shelf because he thinks it promotes violence in children. C'mon, Dick, it's a game! It's the only education some of us got!"

To me... I think that qoute from the movie nailed a lot of ground. Exactly how much of what is too much for whom? I think the government will always push for the extreme 'Let's safegaurd the explicit' myself. I'm not agreeing nor disagreeing with it... I just think that's how it's always going to be.

But no one can change the fact that sooner or later you figure out what sex is and what the four letter cuss words are. It's Life!

[X'an Shin]

I'm curious. What is the process?

You submit a build of the nearly final game to the developer and they play it on a dev system, same as any other submission process to Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo.

Most game devs already know what kind of rating they're going for. There's no surprises usually when you go for a rating. I know for a fact that we'll get an E rating on the game I'm working on because of the license involved forces us to control our content and aim for the E.

Maybe I'm wrong so I'll ask the experts. X'an, do you think that you could slip something like this into a game and your boss not notice.

If you did, and you sent your company lawyers into damage control overtime, when it became public, would you still have your job?

It doesn't quite work like that. There's 2 schools of thought on Hot Coffee:

1). It was put in as a full-feature intended for public consumption, but at the last minute Rockstar realized that it would get them an X rating and they pulled it. Unfortunately, pulling it would break the build, and they were already heading for the "submission process" with Sony, so they in effect "commented it out," which leaves it in the game, but the game can't call it into play. This keeps anyone from accessing it, and they don't create more bugs by attempting to remove it and delaying the ship process.

2). They put it in and hid it intentionally for the express purpose of someone finding it later and creating controversy.

Nobody got that in the game and managment didn't notice. You can't slip that amount of content in a game and hope to squeak it by the Lead Programmer or the Producers. It's just too large of a chunk of code. In Either scenario, Rockstar put it there intentionally.

Now, on the idea of what they did was morally reprehensable, that's pure nonsense. It's hidden, LOCKED content. You CAN NOT play it without modding your hardware or patching your software, thereby invalidating the End User License Agreement (typically known as a EULA) you automatically agree to by playing the game.

Kids can't play this content without specifically modding their game with outside help. The game as shipped can not play this sex game.

So while I agree it was dumb for Rockstar to put it in the game, Zan's right about parents trying to blame Rockstar. If their kid is playing it, there's something WAY wrong with their parenting, because the kid can't play the mod if they're not deviant already.

[Jerrel]

ESRB boards that rate games either play very little or dont play it at all. Instead they view a vedio put together buy the company that has made a game depicting the things one can do while playing the game.

Bzzzt. Thanks for playing. Wrong. Dude, there's TWO people on this board who WORK ON VIDEO GAMES. Like, ones you've even heard of and might have played.

X'an I'm talking about the body that gives vedio games their rating. Similar to the rating system in the movie industry, this body is seperate from the campany that puts the game together. So what does working on a game have to do with the process of rating a game? Answer, very little.

As for kids buying this game. I have a friend who is a manager of an EB Games and he told me that when San Andreas came out parents were buying the game for their 8 year olds. When told about the content the parents often told him not to tell them how to raise their kids or just ingnored it. Most parents dont care if their kids play increadibly violent games as long as it gets them out of their hair.

This? Fine. But stop presenting pure rumor and speculation as if it's fact.

Dude what the hell are you talkin bout now. I give a situation that occured to my friend and you say it rumor and speculation. Why cause you cannot conseive that a guy that works in a game shop might actually try to inform a parent about the game they want to buy little Jimmy? Or does my opinion "Most parents dont care if their kids play increadibly violent games as long as it gets them out of their hair," offensive and hence you try to degrade it but calling it rummor?

In either case I cannt see your petty gripe. Case one I give an example that you have no way of knowing weather its true or not. Is it in the realm of impossibility? No. It's not like I said that after he informed her she grew 10 feet tall and bit his head off. Did I say that very parent that bought it told him to f off? No I said a parent and elluded to other parents doing the same. No where did I say all parents did this. Case two is my opinion of parents who would, in the face of knowing what is in the game, still buy the game for little jimmy. Now if you have a problem with my opinion fine but to deem it "rumor and speculation" is simply rude.

[Hashum]

my two cents on this, frankly I think the game deserves an AO rating even without the third client mod. Frankly I think ESRB is far to easy on their grading scale.

Now as a kid I probably wouldn't have had a problem with it, heck I'd probably be pissed that they changed the rating. But now as a parent and knowing what I got away with or what I played I'd like to see ESRB ratings to crack down so that they give a fair rating of the game.

Not to say all the ratings are bad but I think the Teen rating covers to much, I think a few should get bumped to M or AO. After all this is suppose to be a tool to help parents determine what is appropriate for their child. And as it stands now I don't think it does that effectively.

[Skorixor]

ESRB boards that rate games either play very little or dont play it at all. Instead they view a vedio put together buy the company that has made a game depicting the things one can do while playing the game.

Bzzzt. Thanks for playing. Wrong. Dude, there's TWO people on this board who WORK ON VIDEO GAMES. Like, ones you've even heard of and might have played.

X'an I'm talking about the body that gives vedio games their rating. Similar to the rating system in the movie industry, this body is seperate from the campany that puts the game together. So what does working on a game have to do with the process of rating a game? Answer, very little.

jerrell are you serious? you're saying that working on the game has nothing to do with what rating it gets?

so I'm going to play a "game developer" for a moment...and I decide to put naked chicks kissing each other into x'an's game, during the cutscenes...

according to your logic, that would do nothing to effect the E rating it's going to get

/rolleyes


just because you know someone who works at a video game store, does not mean you know anything about the industry...leave that to the experts in their field...

[Jerrel]

jerrell are you serious? you're saying that working on the game has nothing to do with what rating it gets?

so I'm going to play a "game developer" for a moment...and I decide to put naked chicks kissing each other into x'an's game, during the cutscenes...

according to your logic, that would do nothing to effect the E rating it's going to get

/rolleyes

Here let me clearify. Working on a game has little to do with the process of geting a rating. Say I'm hired to do character designs for game x. I'm told to make them realistic and the game is going to be a survival game. So I design characters, heroes and villians, with a RE4 feel in mind. No where in the process do I come in contect with the actuall rating of the game. My designs will have an affect of the rating but I dont sit in the ESRB's office as the discuse what rating the game is gona get.



[quote="Skorixor']just because you know someone who works at a video game store, does not mean you know anything about the industry...leave that to the experts in their field...[/quote]

I'm sorry but where did I say that my information on the rating process is from having a friend that works at a game store? Before your roll your eyes at people make sure you understand their post first. I refered to an experience a freind had in selling the game and thats all. I did not say well I know a guy who works at a game store so I know how games are rated.

[X'an Shin]

ESRB boards that rate games either play very little or dont play it at all. Instead they view a vedio put together buy the company that has made a game depicting the things one can do while playing the game.

Bzzzt. Thanks for playing. Wrong. Dude, there's TWO people on this board who WORK ON VIDEO GAMES. Like, ones you've even heard of and might have played.

X'an I'm talking about the body that gives vedio games their rating. Similar to the rating system in the movie industry, this body is seperate from the campany that puts the game together. So what does working on a game have to do with the process of rating a game? Answer, very little.

As for kids buying this game. I have a friend who is a manager of an EB Games and he told me that when San Andreas came out parents were buying the game for their 8 year olds. When told about the content the parents often told him not to tell them how to raise their kids or just ingnored it. Most parents dont care if their kids play increadibly violent games as long as it gets them out of their hair.

This? Fine. But stop presenting pure rumor and speculation as if it's fact.

Dude what the hell are you talkin bout now. I give a situation that occured to my friend and you say it rumor and speculation.

Are you daft? Are you incapable of understanding basic grammar and sentence structure? I could care less about your opinion on your friend's game store experience. I said that example was FINE. See that word up there? Fine? What I deemed "rumor and speculation" is your presumption that the ESRB rates games based on "video tapes," or that they "don't even play the game at all." As I said, feel free to spout personal stories all you want. Stop pretending that you know what goes on at the ESRB, and speaking as if you're standing on any ground with authority.

So what does working on a game have to do with the process of rating a game? Answer, very little.

Read my reply to Isleh. If you think that game developers don't work hand in hand with the ESRB DURING PRODUCTION and just submit and cross their fingers and hope for the best at submission, you're kidding yourself. The arrogance combined with your ignorance has reached new heights.

But hey, feel free to keep on telling me how my industry works. I find this very entertaining.

[X'an Shin]

Here let me clearify. Working on a game has little to do with the process of geting a rating. Say I'm hired to do character designs for game x. I'm told to make them realistic and the game is going to be a survival game. So I design characters, heroes and villians, with a RE4 feel in mind. No where in the process do I come in contect with the actuall rating of the game. My designs will have an affect of the rating but I dont sit in the ESRB's office as the discuse what rating the game is gona get.

Here's where you don't get it.

By stating a "Resident Evil 4 feel" you've already put the E or T rating on the table. If the game isn't violent, you'll keep that rating. But say for instance the modeller is requested to make her look like a street hooker.

BAM, instant M rating. Wow, the modeller might have some impact on the game rating? No kidding! The pieces might somehow combine to complete a whole game? You don't say!

To pretend that developers don't already know what rating they're aiming for when they submit is pure, unadulterated FOLLY.

[Skorixor]

see, like I said, go to the experts...

he can't explain it much simpler....