The past few weeks have seen an uproar in the American gaming industry. With most of the game development happening there, the issue is something that affects gamers everywhere. A game mod called “Hot Coffee” was created by a dutch modder for the game GTA San Andreas which unlocked some explicit scenes in the game. The problem is that, this was a game that was rated as playable by those 17 years and older. It has now been declared an adults only game. After accusing the modders of adding the explicit content, Rockstar, the company which makes the game finally accepted that the content was already present and was only unlocked by the mod.
Though this is something that has put the spotlight on Rockstar for now, I don’t think anybody can deny the underlying focus on the video game industry as a whole. The general perception is that gaming is a mindless exercise and that idea will only get strengthened by this episode. I’ve generally noticed that the over-reaction to such incidents is common, but fail to understand why. It has already been politicised by Hillary Clinton, Australia has outright banned the game and a grandmother has sued the company, though she bought it for her 14 year old grandson in the first place. A reply to the call for studying the effects of gaming can be found here.
Am I really to believe that the only source of explicit content for a 17 year old in the US is a game? I’m sure that the effort involved in downloading and installing the mod, playing the game for hours to get to the relevant part, and then watching a cartoon like scene, is not more than just getting onto the internet and typing a few words, or switching on the TV. Maybe the whole issue is not about the content, but the fact that Rockstar lied to the rating board. Much like the fact that nobody minded that Bill Clinton did what he did, but that he lied to everyone about it. Convoluted logic that I’ll never understand.
Another interesting issue was the reason behind Rockstar’s decision to leave that portion behind when it was not part of the game. Speculation that it was done on purpose and left as bait for the modders apart, I learnt the real reason from an explanation by a game developer. It’s every software engineer’s best friend – code reuse.
By the way, apologies to Manoj Shyamalan for murdering his most famous line.