Hot Coffee and the official stance by the ESRB

[Razer]

As noted by Dai in the other Hot Coffee thread, the ESRB's official statement to Gamespot was interesting. http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/07/21/news_6129557.html

I decided to start this here instead of continuing that thread because I think I'd rather deal with the official stance on the rerating as opposed to the whole (overblown) Hot Coffee issue.

After reading the statement I notice that the ESRB's rep (Patricia Vance) pretty much stuck to corporate press and said all the right things to not offend Rockstar while also removing all guilt from the ESRB and their decision/stance. I don't feel any need to harshly criticize this tho. The ESRB rerated GTA NOT because it was a "bad thing" to have the Hot Coffee section on it but simply because it became accessible (thru mods). At first I was against her opinion that it was all the fault of the modding third party using community and not Rockstar's. Then I actually looked at it from both sides. She's right. The ESRB's job is to rate each game. If there is code on there that is never meant to operate, they should not rate it. Period. It's not part of the game. Thru normal play that mode will never come up so you can't fairly include it in the rating of the product. Now this assumes that Rockstar did in fact turn pointers away from the code instead of simply bypassing it. Admittedly, they should have removed it entirely but anyone that codes knows how hard it is to retro a completed program and then ensure that no loose or dead ends exist. It's nigh impossible in today's deadline driven world. You can also argue they should have never coded it in the first place but let's assume that they did mean to have it in the game and release it as an AO rated game. That argument now goes out the window. The foremost thing we must remember is that they had every right to produce the game any way they see fit. Had they decided to have CJ run around fisting underage boys, that would not have been an illegal thing to do. It simply had to be divulged. I might not have liked it. You might not have liked it. But they had the right to do it.
So keeping the thought that they did indeed write code to point the gameplay away from that section then they did not have to submit that section for rating. Vance's statements allude to the fact that they might have known that Rockstar did have that code on the game but since it wasn't going to be accessed (thru normal gameplay) then it became irrelevant. I agree with them The ESRB's job is to rate each product for what the end user will experience.

Rockstar's responsibility falls into the "They shouldn't have done it, they shouldn't have left it on the disc" area. I'm not going to touch that one. I have the game and the means to crack it but I am actually in no rush to do it. Someday when I am bored I might but I have a girlfriend and I'm not 12 years old.
Of course that leads to the question..."So someone who plays this game is old enough to violently steal private property, kill innocent human beings, and have sex unseen within a car but not old enough to handle seeing very poorly depicted sex?" Being 17 is too young to handle this but being 18 is fine, apparantly. But I won't touch that either.

[Silver Adept]

I still think it interesting - the game as playable is an M-rated game, and the ESRB changes the rating based on that by utilizing a device designed to access things not in the game or to change the settings of the game you can get to this sexual minigame. And not even that, but because the technique for modding it became widely distributed. I got the distinct impression that if "Hot Coffee" hadn't been spread across the internet, then there wouldn't have been anything at all. But it got widespread distribution, enough that Influential People noticed.

The ESRB was created in response to the government getting close to a decision to regulate game themselves. Was this Hot Coffee mod the straw that would have broken the camel's back? If the ESRB didn't change the rating, making an argument that you have to mod the game to get to the AO content, would the government have stepped in?

It sounds like this was a Cover Your Arse move more than anything else.

[Shino]

government's getting involved. Great! So you mean my hard earned tax dollars are going to you to investigate a company to see if they tricked the rating system b/c of a crappy unfinished sex minigame.

I WANT MY MONEY BACK!

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/07/25/news_6129723.html

[Silver Adept]

Ack, the idiot's from my state, too! This sounds more and more like it was the excuse the government wanted to intrude on things.

If they investigate this, they should go back and check out the film industry - somethin gets sent, gets rated, goes back to the cutting room floor and takes stuff out, re-submits, gets a different rating. How is this game any different?

[Razer]

The dumbest thing is the investigation itself. They're checking to see if Rockstar deliberately decieved the ESRB and tried to get a better rating by making the offending content unaccessible. Does this make sense?The fact that they made it inaccessible means that they knew it was too adult (too crappy?) otherwise they would have just hidden it as an easter egg or something. It's not like anyone on the ESRB could have found it as such. How many games do they play?

Politics...poliD-CKS is more like it.

[Shino]

[Shinigami Banchou]

[Nogrick]

You know, they could be looking into spending money on education or ridding the US of poverty, but they have to push morals on everyone.

[Shino]

[Andsectoid]

If someone informed the ESRB that guilds in WOW organize "Drunken Naked Dueling" would they investigate Blizzard for it's adult content?

I think this whole thing is just ridiculous.