Thursday, 21 July 2005

The Grand Theft Auto wars

Hei Lun Chan, on the brouhaha surrounding the videogame Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas:

I know those against government regulation will rightfully say that it should be up to parents, not the government, to determine what kids play. But if you want parents to be involved, you have to give them an accurate ratings system, since you can’t expect them to research every game’s content. And if the industry isn’t even competent enough to do that, then they really don’t have much to complain about.

The larger sociological questions—why we would rate a game that rewards extreme anti-social behavior as merely “Mature” and worthy of being sold at Wal-Mart, while adding a bit of simulated sex to it makes it “Adults Only”—are a bit beside the point; the ratings system exists, Rockstar Games was supposed to comply with the system, and the company didn’t.

Update: More common sense from Michele at ASV.

3 comments:

Any views expressed in these comments are solely those of their authors; they do not reflect the views of the authors of Signifying Nothing, unless attributed to one of us.
[Permalink] 1. flaime wrote @ Fri, 22 Jul 2005, 11:28 am CDT:

Rockstar did comply with the ratings system. The “explicit sexual content” is the result of a mod, created by users, not from Rockstar.

 

The “explicit sexual content” was on the CDs and DVDs that Rockstar shipped, all the mod did was fiddle some bits in the code so it was accessible.

 
[Permalink] 3. Insider wrote @ Thu, 28 Jul 2005, 12:48 pm CDT:

There was enough information on the box (M rating) to know whether or not you wanted someone to play it. The only way to get to the disputed content was to download a code off of the Internet where explicit material is certainly more readily available. This is a stupid lawsuit.

Stupid Does as Stupid Sues
 
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