Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Right now in the video game world, not much else needs to be said does it? This game is attracting more attention and more flack than any game certainly in recent years. How often do you get Hillary Clinton and Rick Santorum on the same side? That should tell you something.
Senator Clinton is calling for the FTC to jump into the soiree the ESRB is currently investigating. The whole issue at fault is almost lost since Washington dove into the mess but we’ll take a shot at explaining it all.
This delightful game called Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (GTA:SA) has been on the market for a while now. The Grand Theft Auto series traditionally encouraged wholesome American activities like carjacking, theft, murder, gangsta killing, drug use and the frequent services of prostitutes. GTA:SA left none of these by the wayside and included a few new points like corrupt cops and the sex scenes can now be heard. BUT wait there’s more!
Your $44.95 and some quality time at a mod site can get you tons of new variations, including an incredibly hot sex scene between your character and his ol’ ladies. You don’t just get to HEAR the booty call, you get to WATCH the booty call. It’s better than late night skinamax because you tell the characters what to do. I’d suggest a few commands but they would get my story an AO rating too.
Anyway, this “Hot Coffee” mod written by some Dutch game players who got board adds the ability to view this adult material in the game. The controversy is whether or not Rockstar, the makers of the game put the content in or if the hackers completely rewrote portions of the game in order to add this content. Rockstar says one thing and the gamer geeks said another. They claim the content was already in there and they created a key to unlock it.
As someone suggested too me, probably what happened was this. The programmers probably did originally create the content as part of the game. The execs at the company, realizing just such an explosive situation might occur nixed that portion of the content. The programmers then got rid of it, sort of. In many cases, it’s easier just bury that bit of code somewhere in the game that won’t be used and essentially go around it. The code isn’t officially part of the game so the 12-year-olds bent on maiming gangstas in the streets won’t get to watch the “hot action”. But then one of the programmers or someone else who knows may have let it slip on some forum somewhere that there may be a little bit of code not used in the game that’s still in it that might contain some interesting interactive portions.
Now, let’s look at the overall picture here. First, parents really might need to be spending some time figuring out what their children are doing on their computers. Check out their downloads, see what games they’re playing and randomly checking their disks. Kids will hate it but if you want to monitor these things, you need to get a bit more tech savvy and stay on top of things. At the very least, read the labels on the boxes of the games they’re playing. M does not mean minor, it means mature. It’s not for people under 17, the same as an R rating for the movies.
The other thing is to hammer the retailers. If Wal-Mart and others are going to mass market this game, which is fine, make those retailers responsible for this too. My 14-year-old can go buy the game somewhere in many cases and they don’t check ids or anything. These companies keep the games under lock and key to prevent theft but they won’t follow some basic guidelines on purchasing. It’s not that hard people.
If they try to buy a game marked M for mature, then unless they have an ID or they look under 25, don’t sell it too them. They can do it with cigarettes and alcohol. Those substances are against the law for minors. Retailers should start monitoring before something on these games becomes federal law. If I, as a computer gamer am old enough to buy the game, then I probably won’t care to show my ID. Even a college ID would work.
As Senator Hillary Clinton, D – NY, Senator Rick Santorum, R – PA, and other politicians get on board and begin pressuring the FTC to get involved in this issue, retailers and others need to get a little more aggressive in policing themselves so the federal government won’t have too.
The eggs in the game are amusing from time to time if you get at them and mods are great but what people on the other side must realize is that many people don’t always enjoy this type of content and while parents have a responsibility to their children, some have societal responsibility to keep certain things out of the reach of children because, regardless of what some may think, these things do mess with people’s heads, if for no other reason than desensitizing to many things and in the end, it lowers the value of a human life. I guess in the end, what I’m trying to say is blame for things like this can’t be laid at the feet of any one person or group, it’s a societal issue.
John Stith is a staff writer for murdok covering technology and business.
