however, i think they should embrace the AO label. i’m working on a short piece for TGQ about that, and i’m not really sure if it’s possible to pull off but i think there’s room for a dual edition of the next GTA.

But you are right that people’s attention spans being so short, so whatever controversy may just peter out in due fashion, and that politicians only use it to nab extra votes on the campaign trail.

As for lazy, dipshit parents, I should be able to hit their kids as well. I swear, sometimes I just want to kick the little fucks whenever I see them lounging in a stroller. At least the ones that are five years old and clutter up subway cars with their nonsensical screaming in-between bites of their Big Mac.

A) rockstar is going to get fined to shit and back, and may fold depending on how badly the FTC rules against them and how badly the lawsuits unfold. GTA’s vile content is actually a plus in that second part; how can the woman buying something named after a felony expect to claim punitive damages based on distress inflicted?
B) the mid-term elections will go off with this as a minor flash point.
C) people will forget about it until 2008. then it can start anew, assuming it has as much pull as people think it does. which i don’t, and frankly, it’s already sunk under the radar as far as the non-game population goes, which is all the politicians care about.

i think video game violence desensitizes children to real violence until said children get punched in the face. then the difference becomes quite clear.

so the answer is simple; parents need to beat their children more often. or at least let the little fuckers take their lumps when they run around acting like tyrants.

Basically, Hot Coffee is a mini-game from Grand Theft Auto San Andreas in which your character goes over to his girlfriend’s house to replenish strength by getting some “hot coffee” a.k.a. hot sex. The mini-game was removed by Rockstar before its final release for perhaps obvious reasons, but the code was left on the game disc, which was later discovered and made playable by some hackers. Because of this hidden content, many parents groups and political factions called for the banning of the game, and when the USRB decided to re-classigy the game from Mature to the extremely taboo Adults Only, it was removed from shelves all across the country.

The banning of San Andreas was a huge moral victory for the aforementioned groups and now they’re using the newfound momentum to further their agenda. That includes not just banning all violent games but stopping them from even being made, via government intervention (of course). It should also be pointed out that Rockstar does not exactly look sympathetic in many gamers eyes when they denied any connection with the Hot Coffee mod when it first appeared, and even had the gall to blame its creation entirely on hackers. Then there’s the USRB which is supposed to be the authoritative word on video game ratings which re-evaluated a game due to outside public pressure, and based the new rating entirely on content that isn’t in the game proper.

The thing that most people don’t about the USRB is that they base their grade entirely on a ten minute clip of the game that’s provided by the game’s creator. They never even actually play the game. That’s like the motion picture association rating a film based on its trailer. A few people try to defend the practice by stating that its difficult to play every game from start to finish, and my attitude is that if the USRB is serious about what they are doing, and the industry is serious about using USRB for the purpose of self-regulation, then they had better just get some extra people to play all the games that come their way, which isn’t exactly the most difficult job in the world, and it’s not like there’s a thousand new games coming out every single day.

But yeah, due the USRB’s rather idiotic grading system, you get some glaring flaws. And when you look at the fine details, it gets even more absurd. Sorry, but there’s no way in hell that Shadow the Hedgehog should get an E rating. I don’t care if he’s just shooting at robots or unidentifiable and unrealistic blob creatures. The fuckers carrying around a realistic handgun.

2. I miss the RSAC rating system. You had a better idea what you were dealing with on that one. Besides, how do you justify giving both Claw and Gruntz an E rating (“Animated Violence” – cartoon characters with swords and guns and bombs for one, childish clay-figure-like humanoids beating each other with gauntlets and baseball bats in the other) while Grim Fandango, which has very little actual violence, get a T rating (“Animated Violence” – of which there was very little, “Suggestive Themes, Use of Tobacco & Alcohol” – meaning that a little sin is “more adult” than a lot of violence), Sid Meier’s Pirates also has an E rating (with the same stuff as Grim Fandago except without the word “Animated” in front of the violence, and with a lot more violence and less sin than Grim Fandango), and the CSI games get an M rating? It’s not about violence, it’s about gore.

-David

And even I do agree that video games can have a desensitizing affect on children when it comes to violence, more so than movies for example, since video games are so participatory. But I still think its a joke to believe that games brainwash children and make them do evil deeds. If a game is all that’s necessary to “set a child off” like that, then I think its safe bet that if it wasn’t a video game, then it would have been a movie, or a rap/heavy metal song, or comic book perhaps.

Growing up, my parents let me see and read and hear whatever the hell I wanted, regardless of how mature whatever it was I was taking in. My parents took the time to let me know that such and such was not real and not to imitate what I saw in real life. Plus they had faith that I was mentally and emotionally stable to take what I took it. And in the end, I feel like I’m a fairly stable adult who contributes to society in a positive way. Now maybe I wasn’t like every other kid, and not all children should be able to watch and listen to the stuff I grew up on, but that makes total sense; every child is different, no one is going to absorb and process things the same way. So why have these idiotic rules that seems to based upon grand, and completely wrong, assumptions?

The ESRB’s game rating are there to help parents, and it seems that some are not taking the time to use them to make purchasing decisions. And just becomes some parents are lazy or ill-informed does not mean that everyone else has to suffer.

I believe the USRB rating can be enforced a bit better, but the real concern here is that this whole Hot Coffee scandal is starting to turn into a giant witch-hunt, which many including myself would not like to see happen. Its very easy to do very bad things all for the sake of “protecting the children”.

Yeah, being a parent is difficult some will say. My response to that is, well Sherlock, when has it not been difficult?

Oh and PAINPAINPAIN, thanks for the heads up, they’ve all been fixed. Its a WordPress bug… very annoying.

I do believe that encouragement of violence via videogames DOES decrease the sense that violence is such a bad thing. More kids today think that beating the crap out of someone is okay and that you can get away with it.

I’m looking forward to Bully because it’s been compared to the classic Skool Daze on the ZX Spectrum. I’ve heard of crazy stuff involving videogames and guns, though nothing as obvious as GTA. I remember reading something about some kid shooting his brother because he lost at Mario Party or something. Surely if the father of the firearm kept it properly locked and hidden, this wouldn’t of happened.

I always believe that videogames are a soft target and an excuse for shitty parenting.

he argues using the same emotionalism as any nannystate crusader – whether it be against guns, or smoking, or drugs, or abortion or whatever – most of which is completely impossible to argue against outside of taunting. and taunting is fun, but mr. thompson lives on that sort of negative attention.

of course, i could always ask him about janet reno.