DeaconKnowledge
Member
Probably because it isn't on-screen like Hot Coffee, but I would say GoW's sex minigames are still more 'graphic' than this
Haha the graphics in that game were so bad.
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Rockstar: "Hot Coffee" scandal was an attack on videogames
- Thread starter shinobi602
- Start date
Haha the graphics in that game were so bad.
Freeza Under The Shower
Member
Seems like a sensible opinion.
in other news, I just figured out what this avatar means:
Feels...wooaaah tripping... man.
in other news, I just figured out what this avatar means:
Feels...wooaaah tripping... man.
Valjean Lafitte
Banned
Good thing Jack Thomspon was disbarred! He said things about video games that I didn't care for, so he was CRAZY!
Saying things I disagree with doesn't make him crazy, but harrasing everyone, including fellow lawyers and judges presiding over his cases, definitely qualified him as crazy. Well, and the fact he was so obsessed with media corruption.
The devil created sex to corrupt us, didn't you know?
faceless007
Member
It certainly was an unjustified moral crusade by the media and hurt video games in an entirely undeserved way, but I can't help but assign a little blame to Rockstar for being dumb enough to design, program, and implement such a juvenile idea in the first place, even if they ultimately took it out. They had to know that despite the M ratings, a lot of their fan base were 12-15-year-olds whose parents didn't know any better. Even if the game had been rated AO and completely blocked off from minors, it didn't reflect well on the maturity of video games.
It was kind of amazing that they thought lying like that could ever work.
MrCunningham
Member
Seems like he's just reminiscing about the past. But in all seriousness the events of the Hot Coffee mod only benefited Rockstar and didn't harm them at all. After the controversy hit, GTA:SA sales completely exploded and drove the game to being one of the highest selling video game titles of all time. That sort of controversy was just free publicity for Rockstar and it did nothing but good things for the company image. Rockstar completely lives up to their company name, like a true rock star, controversy only makes them look more appealing in the eyes of the public.
Also GTA IV has one of the greatest tributes to the whole hot coffee incident.
Hillary Clinton dressed as the Statue of Liberty:
She's also holding up a cup of hot coffee.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
What a late response.
Actually Jack Thompson was the best person to have going against videogames. You want someone that incompetent representing that side in the eyes of the press. Now if someone more intelligent comes to fill the vaccuum of space he left we are in for a world of pain.
MrCunningham
Member
Didn't Saint Row's the third already do something like that? If Rockstar wants to push the true boundaries, all they have to do is include children in GTAV. Could you imagine the shitstorm that would happen if people find out that you would run over children and mow them down with machine guns in the latest GTA?
I'm not suggesting they should do that. But it would make some headlines, for sure.
SlowRevolution
Member
I don't know. If it's just a random mom or dad who doesn't really care about gaming, hearing "you can have sex with other characters" is enough to set off an alarm if the source is the news, I doubt a lot of them take the time to look into Jack Thompson or look into the story more. It's way easier to just not buy that game for your kid and get annoyed about it than it is to take time out of your day to keep up with the story. I think you just hear less rants against games because they're getting more accepted now and it's not as easy to rile (normal) people up about things in general.
Also GTA IV has one of the greatest tributes to the whole hot coffee incident.
Hillary Clinton dressed as the Statue of Liberty:
She's also holding up a cup of hot coffee.
How did I not know about this....
Beelzeboss
Member
Red Dead Redemption already did it.
Are you sure you're not thinking of the dude/stranger who loves a horse and has sex with it? Was there another dude who fucked dead bodies also?
KojiKnight
Member
No one was upset that Jack Thompson was a lawyer against video games... they occasionally come and go... but with games now officially under the protection of free speech, I think that's now finally put to rest.
No Jack Thompson got the hate he did because he had a VENDETTA against the industry and every person in it. If you ever want a good laugh, read his e-mail correspondance with VGCats. This guy sent an e-mail calling a WEB COMIC creator out for supporting games, insulted him, and in later responses told the VGCats creator to stop harassing HIM (again, Jack Thompson started it and there was an e-mail trail to prove it) or he was going to sue him.
The man was a looney... It's one thing if a lawyer is out to get money, that just means he's (probably) a successful lawyer... this many was out to destroy the gaming industry and it eventually cost him his career all because he didn't know when or how to stop.
No Jack Thompson got the hate he did because he had a VENDETTA against the industry and every person in it. If you ever want a good laugh, read his e-mail correspondance with VGCats. This guy sent an e-mail calling a WEB COMIC creator out for supporting games, insulted him, and in later responses told the VGCats creator to stop harassing HIM (again, Jack Thompson started it and there was an e-mail trail to prove it) or he was going to sue him.
The man was a looney... It's one thing if a lawyer is out to get money, that just means he's (probably) a successful lawyer... this many was out to destroy the gaming industry and it eventually cost him his career all because he didn't know when or how to stop.
Scott32020
Member
The creepy grave robber guy, I forget his name, he also said "I'm gonna rip you apart, piece by piece...!" in the trailer.
EDIT: looked it up: Seth Briars
plagiarize
Banned
i'll never forgive the ESRB for turning their back on Rockstar over this. the content was in no way AO. the ESRB blows.
As soon as I saw the thread title I thought to myself that these days it wouldn't cause much of a stir, but of course this is post hot-coffee. For better or worse it's part of the the evolution of society's relationship with games.
Funny to remember how controversial back then some people made this issue to be; such an over reaction to what amounts to some stupidity.
Because someone asked him about it.
Funny to remember how controversial back then some people made this issue to be; such an over reaction to what amounts to some stupidity.
Because someone asked him about it.
Iacobellis
Junior Member
Wow, seven years already? I'm sure Rockstar could get away with a mini game like this in GTA V.
Does anyone else remember when G4/Tech TV had a special on videogame violence and controversy due to the Hot Coffee incident? I think that special covered what Hot coffee was also, it aired right as the Hot Coffee stuff was revealed.
Also here's Adam Sessler vs. Jack Thompson on Attack of the Show in 6 or more years ago, still satisfying to watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFJc1Tf4TYY.
Also here's Adam Sessler vs. Jack Thompson on Attack of the Show in 6 or more years ago, still satisfying to watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFJc1Tf4TYY.
KojiKnight
Member
ESRB sets their ratings based on screenings of content to "average" people. That is why you can have some really weird variations of ratings for games (Starcraft 1 for example scored an M rating initially, Brood War scored a T rating as an early example, though you still get it occasionally for newer games and a later re-release put SC1 down to T).
Any form of on screen sex during PS2 guaranteed an AO... maybe not now... I can't think of a game since then that has done on-screen for comparison.
The creepy grave robber guy, I forget his name, he also said "I'm gonna rip you apart, piece by piece...!" in the trailer.
EDIT: looked it up: Seth Briars
He didn't have sexual relations with dead people, he was just a lonely creep who talked to the dead. I never interpreted him as a necrophiliac.
plagiarize
Banned
fully clothed dry humping is not something that would get a film an R. let alone an NC-17.
IC_Champion
Member
It was a Stranger (side-mission) that Marston had to help. Early on, you had to collect flowers and take them to this old guy to give to his wife.
KojiKnight
Member
Film isn't an interactive medium, also of note it's not 2005 anymore. Attitudes towards gaming has changed as kids who were preteens during Hot Coffee are now adults.
Also, if the dry humping ended in loud orgasms on screen, yeah it would get R.
Carnby
Member
I know I do. They made an example out of Manhunt 2 and told Rockstar censor it or we'll give it an Adults Only rating. That game wasn't great, but not seeing any of the death scenes didn't help.
faceless007
Member
Well, it might, depending on the context. This film almost got an NC-17 for such a scene. The documentary "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" has a few more examples of this. Goes to show that the MPAA isn't much better than the ESRB.
Unforgettable.
Mammoth Jones
Member
This. I was never as disgusted with the hypocrisy of the media and peoples sensibilities than when I saw the whole "hot coffee" mod scandal.
What a non-issue.
Reminds me of the Mass Effect "graphic sex scene" scandal from Fox News....
I dunno, Jack Thompson may've sufficiently sullied it long enough for no one to really try before the trial. Or we DID have some people more competent... who already acted as much as they could and didn't make complete fools of themselves like Leland Yee, whose own legislature was what SCOTUS threw out. I also suspect that if anyone's successful in the future (in the US anyway) it's going to be in more of a general "morality in media" angle, trying to get everything hit for it rather than focusing just on games.
Or maybe they'll just go on a crusade against kids getting to play online because of predators and being a bad influence on their behavior, and honestly I think it's kind of irresponsible to let a kid have voice communication in an online game without supervision, albeit this may be more for the sake of everyone else.
I dunno, I think some of those are also the least likely to care in the long run, they'll have their 15 minutes of being offending then forget it ever happened. Though I guess some are in the position to be overprotective with kids, but I suspect such kids wouldn't get to play video games for very long period.
Yes, but Rockstar lying over all the content being put in by "hackers" was an attack on gamers.
http://www.joystiq.com/2008/05/03/rockstars-dan-houser-disses-casual-gaming-explains-process-of/
Houser seems perfectly willing to attack large swathes of gaming himself in a much more direct manner.
Houser seems perfectly willing to attack large swathes of gaming himself in a much more direct manner.
I like this guy even more.
I thought we were defending gaming in here? Or is just our little corner of gaming we care about?
I'm always amazed at how quickly people turned on the idea of expanding gaming beyond the "hardcore." I definitely remember a time -- as recently as the PS2 era -- where people were very excited about the future growth of gaming. Apparently, when people embraced the idea of "growth," they basically just meant they wanted the games they already liked to sell even more, for their girlfriends to start playing God of War and their grandfather to start playing Bioshock and their little sister to buy a PS3.
Once it was clear that they would instead be playing Farmville, Wii Sports, Nintendogs and Angry Birds, suddenly lots of people decided they'd rather gaming stay entirely dedicated to their demographic after all.
I don't see what this has to do with the topic though. His personal opinion on games isn't nearly as damaging as how Jack Thompson or company for example wanted to portray what videgames are and what they don't do.
And I don't know many casual games that would need to be defended in same vein as other games, that being said I don't play that many casual games myself.
I'm a little confused at what you're trying to say. I get that other people earlier in this thread were talking about growth or the lack thereof or something.
I guess I am connoting defense in a slightly different manner. I would not equate my disinterest in casual gaming to what Thompson intended to do. It's just a shallow sentiment on an emotional level.
Not the most professional of answers, but it's not really an attack on a part of gaming, as it is stating a stance by which he wants his company to adhere to, when a lot of people seemed to jump on a different bandwagon.
He also says that Nintendo is doing something different "which is fantastic" and implies that it simply isn't their thing.
That said, Dan Houser may very well be a dick IRL, as a lot of rumors seem to suggest.
I'm not sure I agree on which is more damaging (nor would I know how to measure such a thing), but regardless the question isn't which hurts more, but whether or not they are "attacks."
Houser is pretty explicitly attacking casual gaming.
I'm saying that many people who want to defend "gaming," including Houser, are really only interested in defending their particular type of gaming, and are perfectly willing to throw other types of gaming they don't personally appreciate under the bus.
How is he throwing it under the bus? He said he doesn't want to support that type of gaming with his company, and also said that if Nintendo wants to, that's "fantastic".
Isn't that just expressing a personal opinion on what you think gaming should ideally be about? Like people that love Deus Ex and dislike CoD, saying "fuck that scripted corridor game, if XYZ want to play it that's fantastic, but i'm not going to".
Isn't that just expressing a personal opinion on what you think gaming should ideally be about? Like people that love Deus Ex and dislike CoD, saying "fuck that scripted corridor game, if XYZ want to play it that's fantastic, but i'm not going to".
His full answer isn't really that bad in my eyes.
"Fuck casual gaming" is a bit much, but I wouldn't be surprised about many developers feeling like that. Especially since he's the vice president of a company like R*, he doesn't want casual gaming to gobble up developers like them.
Though I really hate the term casual gaming. It's too vague and has lost a lot of meaning over time. Hell, I'm sure in some way you could call Grand Theft Auto casual gaming. My dad is one of those "buy one or two games every few years" because of some TV commercial gamers, and he loves GTA.
"Fuck casual gaming" is a bit much, but I wouldn't be surprised about many developers feeling like that. Especially since he's the vice president of a company like R*, he doesn't want casual gaming to gobble up developers like them.
Though I really hate the term casual gaming. It's too vague and has lost a lot of meaning over time. Hell, I'm sure in some way you could call Grand Theft Auto casual gaming. My dad is one of those "buy one or two games every few years" because of some TV commercial gamers, and he loves GTA.
Well, here's a larger excerpt from the interview:
He is very clearly saying the direction his studio is striving for, not for what gaming should be or how gaming should evolve. He's saying explicitly what he aspires to do.
So when his team's vision and motives were called into question for the Hot Coffee incident, it felt like one videogame was going to be used for the prosecution of all games. More was being put on stake than just San Andreas.
So his comment about casual games doesn't really feel like a contradiction really, more of a snide remark about how he treats his own projects.
I remember last gen (ps2 days), on the forum i used to visit prior to Gaf, "casual gamer" was a term (often pejorative, unfortunately) reserved for those people playing stuff like FIFA, Need For Speed, GTA and nothing else (what now are most CoD players, basically).
So it's kind of hilarious.
I think you (and others) are right. In context, those remarks are noticeably less hostile. This invalidates my point and I am largely wrong.
Eh, it's about joystiq's fault by 100%. They should've had more detail about the interview than just that one line.