I think Danceswithcats has too many skeletons in his closet for that.
Isn’t the issue not GTA San Andreas itself but a free download, something most any kid knows how to get, that contains the sexually explicit material? I’ve never played one of these but isn’t what has raised the issue of regulation in fact just a “sex patch”, not the console or software themselves?
You can count on it.
From what I gather, you still have to own the game, and only the PC (computer) version. The sex scenes are in the game, just not normally accessible by the user. The “Hot Coffee” download is just a patch that enables these hidden parts of the program.
This is how I read it, anyway. With the rating level the game already has, I can’t understand the furor. It’s like saying kids are getting ideas from reading “Hustler”, when “Hustler” isn’t supposed to be available to kids in the first place.
I really dislike Hillary because she strikes me as an opportunistic hypocrite politician.
In other news, snow is white!
sigh
I thought all the GTA games were rated “Mature”, meaning you had to be at least 17 in order to buy it.
50% of kids between 7 and 14 were sucessful in purchasing Mature games and 70 something % in that age group had played them before. This if my memory serves correct from last night’s CBS broadcast.
I frequently criticize right-wingers for their failure to speak out strongly against their leaders and candidates when they do clearly objectionable things, so I should step up and do the same for my party:
This is bullshit. It’s one of dozens of reasons why I hope Hillary doesn’t make it through the Presidential primary.
Sounds like the laws in effect need to be enforced instead of worrying about the content of games not meant for kids in the first place.
I realize it’s probably not realistic to assume that no kids will ever get these games (the only time I ever saw GTA played was by a 12 YO, bought for him by his mom…), but liquor meant for adults finds it’s way into the hands of kids, porn meant for adults, etc.
And FWIW, I don’t really care for a game where killing cops and hookers is the objective, that seems worse than porn to me. If Hillary was going to level her lance against a windmill, I’d rather she left the porn out of the equation.
Is it a law? Or is it some voluntary industry guide line?
Maybe they think it needs to be rated the next higher lever (the highest), AO (adults only). Then you should be 18 to play it, not just 17! Yeah, huge difference. Good thing all kids reach the exact same level of maturity on their 18th birthday, or this system might not work.
Apparently it’s not against the law. I guess “guidelines” is the word I should have used, along the lines of minors going to NC-17 movies or buying explicit lyric CDs.
That makes this whole argument even more bizzare.
Sorry for stating something that was not true.
Is a new law really the answer? Since we’re supposed to be in a free market economy, why doesn’t Senator Clinton just suggest to all the concerned moms and dads out there to just boycott the stores that ignore the guidelines in favor of ones that follow them?
The object of the game isn’t to kill cops and hookers. During the course of the game you go on missions in order to advance the plot, receive cash, and to acquire property and territory. Granted sometimes during those missions you’ll have to either flee from the police or occasionally run them down but I don’t recall any mission where you killed prostitutes. That’s just something you could do for fun though it doesn’t advance the plot.
The appeal of GTA isn’t just the violence, adult language, or sexual dialogue. The appeal of GTA is having a whole city for you to roam around. In the latest GTA, San Andreas, you start out in a city like Los Angeles, you can roam around in the country, and then go to fictional versions of San Francisco and Las Vegas. Your character can walk into buildings and get different tattoos, a variety of new clothing, some crazy haircuts, a gym to exercise, and even something to eat. If you eat to much your character gets big and fat but if you exercise enough you get all big a muscled. It’s almost like Sim Crime.
It might not be your cup of tea and that’s ok. I just want to point out that there’s a lot GTA has to offer aside from capping cops and running over whores.
Marc
I wonder sometimes if we’d be creating monsters if all of the ways of controlling children were as effective as the lawmakers and busybodies would like them to be.
If we could end up with people turning 18 who had no exposure to sexuality other than what their parents told them, how incredibly screwed up would kids be?
Because parental responsibility is a foreign concept at this point.
You know, I don’t have a huge problem with the game being rated M, because Rockstar did remove access before they shipped the PC version (I’m not sure it’s even in the console version, and I know it’s gonna be difficult to access.) If you’re serious about policing game mods, then every nude skin for The Sims and Quake III needs to be destroyed too.
OR, we could just finally go back to the concept of parental responsibility, and then little Jimmy won’t be playing GTA to begin with.
Maybe the kid I watched placed too much emphasis on killing cops and hookers. He was killing the hookers for their cash, IIRC.
I didn’t mean to come across as a prude, I’ve played violent video games where killing was the only objective. I was trying more for the “I don’t really care for impressionable adolescents playing games where killing cops and hookers is part of the action. I am confident with my level of disconnect at my age to realize killing space aliens isn’t something I’ll likely do. Hopefully no kids will mistake the consequences of what happens in a game with those in real life, but I’ve seen kids do some pretty stupid things with less encouragement” type angle.
That’s exactly what torques me. I don’t have a problem with the game itself–my husband owns and plays it often, and I think it’s fine for adults–but that they seem to be so “OMG SEX!!! WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!” while ignoring the very violent nature of the game. Plus, labeling a mod that they have to seek out and install themselves as this huge menace is really idiotic. Hello, why does a kid have the game in the first place?
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again:
IF it’s not coded into the game and you must download a third party Mod to use that offensive feature, I don’t see why it’s the fault or resposnibilty of the company that designed the game other then the mod-maker.
I remember once reading on a christian review website complaining about Tomb Raider because there was a Nude patch. I wrote in and corrected him saying that the Nude patch was a third party application and that the designers had nothing to do with it, therefore it wasn’t a legimate criticism. I eventually got an e-mail back from him saying that he didn’t realize that.
Isn’t saying a game is bad because somebody can hack into it or modify it make it dirtier like saying a book is bad because someone can take a pen, cross out words in the text and replace them with dirty words?