Hey all, just thought I'd drop in and say that #91 is a fantastic article. For reasons which will become clear, I obviously think this whole controversy is absurd as well. I've also got a number of points about this whole situation you all might be interested in.
First off, something of an introduction. My (online) name is illspirit, and I'm one of the small team which helped find and create the Hot Coffee mod, as well as a webmaster on the site which first published it. The first thing I'd like to point out is one that the media have all but overlooked, and one that you may or may not have discovered for yourselves. In the original code for the "coffee" scenes which are contained on the retail discs, there is no nudity whatsoever.
Of the six girlfriend characters in the game, five of them are clothed, with the most scantily clad being either a girl in a bikini, or one in a half shirt and underwear. The sixth girl is a mess of unfinished and jumbled textures who doesn't even have a proper face. The male player character involved in them is fully clothed as well (jeans, shirt, and shoes).
Off the top of my head, I can think of three other titles which openly contain interactive sexual scenes and/or mini-games with full frontal nudity or topless females that are all rated M. One of these titles also contains large ammounts of graphic violence which is far more detailed than the rather cartoony stuff found in GTA (EG, severed limbs and bloody gibs). Then there's also an M rated BMX biking game which features naked female riders and videos of real life strippers. I imagine it would be inappropriate to publicly post links to said games here, but if anyone wants to know, just ask.
So, that said, nothing in the default "coffee" scenes even comes close to what the ESRB has already deemed acceptable for other M rated games. Or even close to some of the sexual scenes found in San Andreas or Vice City already for that matter. As such, there really would have been no reason for Rockstar to hide the code to avoid a rating. Given the unfinished/dodgy texturing, and the fact the scenes are unpolished to the point of being almost unplayable (initial reaction from the gaming press was that they looked horribly amateur), it would seem to me they disabled it simply because it just wasn't finished. Had they completed and used it in the final game to begin with, I see no reason why the ESRB would have given it an AO.
And as for the version of Hot Coffee with added nudity, well, EA has stated publicly that the adult modifications for The Sims aren't their fault, and nobody has really attacked them any further over it again. Byte for byte, the changes in our "nude patch" are about the same as the filesize of changes needed to mod The Sims in the same fashion. And considering The Sims 2 ships a skin editor, anyone with Microsoft Paint could make changes to that game in a fraction of the time it took us to butcher the files in San Andreas. And we've had several years of experience with the GTA's file formats.
At any rate, not only do I think people are making a proverbial mountain out of a mole hill, I feel that the ESRB only re-rated the game to AO under political pressure. Pressure by politicans and critics who are conveniently ignoring titles which prove the Hot Coffee content in San Andreas is nothing new or shocking which has been surreptitiously slipped into a "kid's game" which kids shouldn't have been playing to begin with. A game, which most of the media fails to mention already had a warning for "stong sexual content". And in some cases, some of the more vocal critics are well aware of the evidence that this type of content is not new for an M game, yet are leaving that part out in order to sensationalize the whole ordeal.
Whatever the case, Congress looking to prosectute Rockstar for putting rather tame "adult" content in a game which is obviously already for adults is utterly insane. If it holds up in court that fully clothed digital actors having simulated sex is in fact "hardcore pornography" and inappropriate for ages 17+, what's next? Will they use this precedent to prosecute half of Hollywood for distributing love scenes with
real naked people in R-rated movies? Now, I'm all for keeping GTA out of the hands of kids, but to persecute one company for content which is just fine in other M-rated games just seems a ludicrous waste of tax dollars. 'Tis also frigtening to think of where else this sort of legal precedent could be used.
Oh, and on a side note, a number of the stores (both online and brick-and-mortar) which have pulled GTA from the shelves for being "pornographic" still carry the other titles which actually contain nudity and sex during normal gameplay. One of which is based on, and named after a popular adult magazine of all things. How does this make any sense?
by txa1265 » Mon Jul 25, 2005 3:28 pm 
