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I think it should be Mature

It depends on what you think the ratings system is there for. Really, an AO specification seems silly to me. The analogy to movies would be NC-17 vs. R; when they're in the theatres, NC-17 prevents parents from choosing to let their children see the movie, while R prevents children from seeing the movie without their parents (in theory, at least). But video games go home with the user, and M rated games aren't supposed to be sold to the under 17 crowd, anyway. I don't see the difference even in the theoretical way that these things are enforced.

Based on content, I don't think that the GTA games are appropriate for anyone, myself included. That didn't stop me from playing Vice City and enjoying it, but it does make me question whether my little brother, age 14, should have access to this kind of trash. This isn't going to be a popular answer with most of the people on this board, but I really don't think that these games should be played by minors. Since the practical effect of an AO rating would keep this stuff out of the hands of minors to a greater extent than would an M rating, I guess I'd vote for that.

Then again, the reasons being given right now for switching to an AO rating are stupid--content that's locked away and can only be accessed with a third-party cheating device and/or a hack? Please. That's like walking onto a nude beach and then trying to arrest someone for indecent exposure.

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Veni, vidi, dormivi.

Quote (karasuman @ 20th August 2005 16:36)

Then again, the reasons being given right now for switching to an AO rating are stupid--content that's locked away and can only be accessed with a third-party cheating device and/or a hack? Please. That's like walking onto a nude beach and then trying to arrest someone for indecent exposure.

Seconded. That's definitely pushing it, and quite a sickening display of ignorance.

The "Hot Coffee" patch unlocks a (bad) sexually explicit series of events in the game that are normally absolutely impossible to unlock. No code leading to them. At all. Without various manipulations that void the term of service the player agrees to by buying the game, it's impossible to see this.

So I'm walkin' down the street to my friend's, right? And some hobo comes over and, in one swift motion, yanks my jeans and underpants down. Should I be arrested for being a dangerous sexual predator because I'm naked underneath clothing that cannot be removed without violating my rights (or copious amounts of alcohol)?

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

Quote (Silverlance @ 20th August 2005 17:27)

So I'm walkin' down the street to my friend's, right? And some hobo comes over and, in one swift motion, yanks my jeans and underpants down. Should I be arrested for being a dangerous sexual predator because I'm naked underneath clothing that cannot be removed without violating my rights (or copious amounts of alcohol)?

Then again, how did that content end up in the game in the first place. You're naked under your clothing, yes, you can't help that. You did not CONCIOUSLY make yourself naked under there. As y'all have stated and as the news media have even stated, that content is only unlocked. Based on this, I can only assume that someone(s) in the original game programming team CONCIOUSLY put that content to be unlocked by us gamers. Am I correct? **shrugs** A hobo pulling down your pants...that certainly is funny, though, nyuck nyuck nyuck .

And karasuman, by age 14, I, for one, already knew the difference between right and wrong. Not being prone to the level of chaos depicted in the GTA series, GTA probably should be little more than a guilty pleasure at that point. Ultimately, it depends on how impressionable he actually is.

At any rate, unless the unlocked scenes get to hard-core pornography levels, I suppose the game should jest be rated M.

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Console RPG Cliches

It's more likely that it's a leftover that was part of the main game once, that was incompletely cut out. You see this kind of thing fairly often - the remnants of the cut Hidden Palace Zone in Sonic 2 is one of the more famous examples.

What gets me about this issue isn't just the unlocking difficulty factor. It's the craziness of a game full of violence, murder and other antisocial (to put it mildly) behaviour having its rating upped because of an almost-fully-clothed press-left-and-right (so it appears from screenshots) minigame.

The answer to keeping games like this out of the hands of minors with no parental consent is to tighten controls, rather than rerate on the basis of very little. All the anti-gaming media figures seem to be crowing about how this is a victory for keeping evil games away from little Timmy's hands. Hi. It was already rated M. One year's difference in eligibility. Little Timmy shouldn't have been playing it at its previous rating.

Quote (Tiddles @ 20th August 2005 19:31)

All the anti-gaming media figures seem to be crowing about how this is a victory for keeping evil games away from little Timmy's hands. Hi. It was already rated M. One year's difference in eligibility. Little Timmy shouldn't have been playing it at its previous rating.

I think this is where we can seperate people into two camps.

The first is the typical game who feels that the problem isn't the content: it's the distribution, and people not taking responsability when they screw up and buy a game clearly marked unfit for their kid.

The second is, well, the people who make these kinds of purchases, and who either do so because they're not aware of the ratings or because "all the other kids have it" and they end up giving in to their kid's demands. Or for those who don't have kids, who just see the facet of this presented by the media (ie, "this game is violent... <tinyhushedwhisper>but it's clearly marked as such and should never be sold to minors</tinyhushedwhisper>)

Seems the problem isn't just that people don't pay attention to what they give their kids, but also that they seek to place the blame on the wrong thing. Really, this whole "M" thing is just a way of making everyone feel better about themselves and like they did something important.

"There. Now it says M. ...So yeah, you still want Grand Theft Auto: Tokyo for your birthday, Timmy?"

If people ignore the ratings in the first place, even if they use a hidden, unaccesible scapegoat to vent and as an excuse to "punish" the game, what's it going to change for John Doe who'll buy the game for his son because it's the hottest thing on the video game market?

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

I mostly agree with Karasuman that it's pretty stupid how the AO/M ratings work anyway, but I voted AO.

Personally, I think it should've been AO even before the Hot Coffee mod was discovered, just because of the INSANE amount of violence, cursing, and pretty much everything else that was in it. Adding a little minigame that doesn't even have nudity in it is hardly a reason to bump up a game a notch, but MAYBE it'll stay that way, even after it's removed...

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Distant hills wear a shroud of grey
A lonely breeze whispers in the trees
Sole witness to history

ICO-You were there-

Now, I don't know what Adult or Mature ratings mean themselves, but here's my take on GTA.

As for quality and depth of gameplay, GTA scores extremely high. I haven't played it myself (despite my owning GTA:VC (Vice City [Miami]) as a gift from a friend), but I've seen GTA:SA (San Andreas) and I think that the game is incredibly detailed and well-designed, with numerous gameplay possibilities in mind in a game with such free decision-making.

However, my main beef comes with the content. I haven't seen enough of GTA to see anything sexually suspicious, the sheer amount of (often needless) violence and anarchistic/mafia-like intention in the game is enough to make me dislike it. While some people argue that kids can and should learn not to imitate what they see in on TV, in a game, in a movie, etc., who doesn't? To this, let me point to those thousands upon thousands of children who attempt to re-enact the (cough*long-and-drawn-out*cough) final lightsaber battle from Star Wars episode III. And I cite myself as an example, too; I may be in college, and a legal adult, but still, after seeing (in speed runs) and messing with Samus's 'shinespark' technique in games like Super Metroid and Metroid: Zero Mission, I started to imagine charging a speed boost in a hallway at my school then shinesparking the rest of the way to my class. If I were a few years younger, I'd probably have tried to imitate it in real life (to no avail, of course). So, stuff that's seen does get at least a few fans who try to copy it. There's a little bit of mimic within each of us. Problem is, one such person is enough to wreak a nice chunk of havoc in a city, and then consider the thousands of people who play GTA games. (And I won't even mention what some people, normally of sound judgement, can do when angered.)

Now, I don't like how a handful of knuckleheads would have to cause people to be so scared of a very well-crafted series of games like the GTA series. But I will NOT propose any policy changes by the public or society in order to cope with this situation. I really don't understand it well enough to come to a conclusion.

On the other hand, my comment about the GTA series's developers is that they should have been using all this huge amount of time and effort on something better than GTA.

And a word to those who take GTA as the poster-boy (poster-game?) of violence in videogames? Well, there's always Counterstrike and those types of games, so GTA isn't the only violence-for-the-sake-of-destruction-or-pleasure game. However, there're also a whole bunch of games that don't glorify violence; this includes not only ancient classics like Pong and Tetris, but also games like Super Mario 64, Super Mario RPG, Pokemon, Final Fantasy VI, and even to some extent the Metroid series (which is based not in shoot-em-up (as it may seem at first glance) but in adventure and exploration).

Are videogames violent, though, or do they have to involve SOME degree of violence to be fun, in most cases? Well, even in the case of most movies, there is some conflict that has to drive the story. It's kinda hard to get a story out of everything being just fine. But Disney movies have violence, too, right?

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 21st August 2005 07:08

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so there's a sex scene in the game that can only be access by hacking. i seem to remember a pc game a while back called Gothic 2 in which you could pay for a hooker, take her to your room and watch your character have sex with her in full CG. i also remember that game getting a M, or even worse it might've been a T.

as for the violent content, i say it's fine. these game's aren't being sold to kids without a parent. so obviously, they cant get it unless their parents dont mind them seeing things like this. also, it's by no means the most violent game. how about Postal 2 or Soldier of Forune? i mean, you can blow a head off anf watch the spinal cord dangle on the ground. how the hell does that now get an AO?

This post has been edited by Malevolence on 23rd August 2005 23:15

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moé in the streets, senpai in the sheets

If God of War, Playboy Mansion, The Guy Game and Leisure Suit Larry are all rated M then there's no reason to rate San Andreas AO. I think that's arguement enough. Just for the record, I hate GTA so don't think I'm taking up for it because I think it's a good game.

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Climhazzard is the timeless evil robot who runs some of the cool stuff at CoN (mostly logging chat, since there are no quizzes at the moment), all the while watching and waiting for his moment to take over the world. -Tiddles

Quote (Galsic @ 20th August 2005 17:58)

Then again, how did that content end up in the game in the first place. You're naked under your clothing, yes, you can't help that. You did not CONCIOUSLY make yourself naked under there. As y'all have stated and as the news media have even stated, that content is only unlocked. Based on this, I can only assume that someone(s) in the original game programming team CONCIOUSLY put that content to be unlocked by us gamers. Am I correct? **shrugs** A hobo pulling down your pants...that certainly is funny, though, nyuck nyuck nyuck .

And karasuman, by age 14, I, for one, already knew the difference between right and wrong. Not being prone to the level of chaos depicted in the GTA series, GTA probably should be little more than a guilty pleasure at that point. Ultimately, it depends on how impressionable he actually is.

At any rate, unless the unlocked scenes get to hard-core pornography levels, I suppose the game should jest be rated M.

Just because they put the program there doesn't mean they put it there so that it could be unlocked. Tiddles' explanation is probably the right one--they put the content in the game at first, and then decided that they didn't want it to be accessible, so they removed access. I would even venture to guess that they sealed it off in order to avoid the problem they're having right now. As Tiddles points out, GTA: San Andreas would hardly be the first game in which content was dummied instead of deleted.

I didn't say anything about your ability to judge right from wrong. The "video games make people do bad things" is a straw man that's pretty easy to knock down. The real problem with content like that in entertainment venues is that it normalizes violence, drugs, sex, and general cussedness. Seeing it on the streets isn't nearly as shocking if it's right there in front of you in GTA, and once the real thing isn't shocking anymore, it becomes more prevalent not as a result of someone seeing it in a game, but as a consequence of our general culture becoming more accepting of immoral behaviour.

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Veni, vidi, dormivi.

I voted M for the simple fact that this " hot cofee mod" is not as bad as half the game. Good lord, this means fornication is worse than killing dozens of random people in the street!

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What if he shot you first instead of your secretary?

I suppose I'd have to catch the bullet, wouldn't I

I'm not really sure how to vote on this. it is a difficult topic. Part of me says it's stupid to rate it AO because of this one little thing and that people need to take responsiblity for themselves and their kids. The oppressive dictator in me wants to say, punish the parent who buys this game for their kids.

As a retailer of games for a couple years I have time and time again warned parents about the content of these games and the truth is, they really don't care. They only care when their kid screws up and then they don't take responsibility for it.

I don't know. I really don't know.

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Elena Indurain

Currently Playing: Suikoden II