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by
Joe - jgand@pcfootball.net
7-24-05
 So,
how do you like your coffee?
This
whole thing is such a mess that I hardly know where to start.
But I guess that I can start with one party that’s
involved…
Thanks
a lot RockStar!
Way
to stand by your customer base and not throw them under the
bus in a lame attempt to save your own ass! Thanks to you
trying to blame the whole “Hot Coffee” mess on the mod
community, you’ve made us all look like a bunch of perverts
who have nothing better to do with our time then create
mini-games that “corrupt the morals of youth”.
I
hear Hillary Clinton is passing out the Hemlock to everyone at
e3 next year…
But
it’s not just the fact that RockStar turned on its customers
and tried to put the whole blame on them. There are a lot of
things about this whole situation that bothers me. First and
foremost it makes all of us gamers look bad – again! It
makes it look as if we are tying little kids into straight
jackets, forcing their eyelids open, taping a controller in
their hands and forcing them to play “M” rated titles such
as GTA: San Andreas,
Doom 3 or Manhunt while an
attendant sits beside them putting drops in their eyes a la A
Clockwork Orange.
Quite
honestly, I think that is how Leeland Yee and Hillary Clinton
thinks of us right now. At least that may be what the general
public thinks of us…
…and
that is not right!
None
of us are a threat to society and I don’t know of anybody
either on these boards, or at BlindSideBlitz, Football-Freaks,
MaddenMania, MVPMods or at any other gaming website that has
been influenced by a video game to commit criminal acts or has
influenced someone else to break the law.
All
we want to do is to play football games on our computers or
our console systems. Some of us also enjoy playing Baseball,
Hockey, Soccer, Basketball and a host of other sporting titles
that are out there. Some of us enjoy altering or editing the
files that are in the game to make the game much more
enjoyable. I’m still entering the real names of players on
the classic rosters in my AllTime Teams mod for Madden 2005.
StruttDaddy’s rosters are now legendary in the Madden
community, and gommo’s Roster Editor has been a Godsend to
all of us who want real names and numbers with our football.
Unfortunately
I have a feeling that if some very ambitious politicians and
political activists have their way, then we may all be
re-classified as criminals and deviants very soon.
Now
I know what some of you may be thinking, you’re thinking
“Oh come on now BigDaddy, you’re just paranoid.”
Well
you’re right, I am, and I think I may have reason to be.
It’s not as if this is without precedent you know.
Think
back to the aftermath of the Columbine shootings in April
1999. People were so paranoid about the need for safety in the
schools and preventing a repeat of what happened in
Littleton
that extreme measures were taken and a lot of innocent people
got hurt. Stories came through about students being pulled out
of class because they were wearing a black trench coat. Some
kids were suspended or expelled because they were into Goth or
listened to Marilyn Manson. Kids were threatened by Principals
and school administrators, and in some cases by their own
parents, if they did not give up their computer or their video
games. Kids who were unpopular or were being bullied were now
under suspicion for being the next Dylan Harris or Ryan
Kleibold, and were under constant surveillance because they
could snap at any time.
The
conditions are ripening for another “witch hunt” of this
magnitude. Only this time it’s not going to be the freeks
and geeks in the schools that are going to be under suspicion.
This time it is going to be the 38-year-old salesman who
enjoys a little Madden
every once in a while, or the 28-year-old secretary who enjoys
playing Sly Cooper and
the Theivius Racoonus to unwind at the end of the day. It
could even be the 52-year-old businessman who just can’t get
enough of Donkey Konga,
or his 15-year-old granddaughter playing Final
Fantasy X.
This
has the potential to effect all of us because there is nothing
some “do-gooders” like doing more than latching onto a
cause, defining their target and then painting everyone who
happens to call themselves a gamer with the same “moral
values” brush and criminalizing our hobby.
I
don’t know about you guys, but I don’t want to be
considered some kind of moral degenerate simply because I like
to play the ’72 Dolphins against the ’85 Bears every once
in a while.
So
who do we have to thank for the mess that we may all have to
deal with very soon? Well let’s take a look at the prime
suspects…
-
RockStar
– Now they would be the prime ones to blame since they
were the ones who put out GTA:SA in the first place. But
before anyone starts jumping up and down on their graves
just yet, there are some answers that I would like to have
first:
-
Was
the sex mini-game deliberately put into the game as some
kind of “Easter Egg” for someone to find? (I would
ask Sen. Clinton and Jack Thompson to please reserve
comment at this time until I ask all of my questions.)
-
Was
the mini-game written to test the code of the game,
inserted into a beta and then forgotten about when it
went into production? Could something like this have
gotten past the testers and quality control?
-
Was
this some kind of revenge from a disgruntled RockStar
employee against his/her supervisors or against RockStar
itself?
These
are the kind of questions that I would like to have answered
before I am called to testify before a Congressional Hearing
on the gaming activities that I enjoy in my spare time.
Personally I really don’t feel that I should have to justify
to the nation why I enjoy entering in the real names of
retired football players, or the construction of baseball
rosters that brings the players from yesteryear together with
the players from today. Nor should any other mod maker have to
justify or defend his or her activities which take place in
the privacy of their own homes.
Speaking
of modders, that brings me to suspect #2…
-
Patrick
Wildenborg
– Who is Patrick Wildenborg you might ask? Well he’s
the genius Dutch programmer who created the “Hot
Coffee” mod, that’s who! After looking him up on
Google I found his website which contained the following
statement: “All
the contents of this mod was already available on the
original disks. Therefor the scriptcode, the models, the
animations and the dialogs by the original voice-actors
were all created by RockStar. The only thing I had to do
to enable the mini-games was toggling a single bit in the
main.scm file. (Of course it was not easy to find the
correct bit). The Nude models that are used as a bonus in
the Quick action version of the mod, were also already
present on the original disk.
But all this material is completely inaccesible in an
unmodded version of the game. It can therefor not be
considered a cheat, easter-egg or hidden feature. But is
most probably just leftover material from a gameplay idea
that didn't make the final release. I would really like to
stress that this material is only accessible after
willfully applying the hot coffee mod (or something
similar) to the game.”
Well
that helps us all out Patrick, thanks so very much! There’s
something that I don’t understand though – how do you go
looking for something like this in the first place? I mean the
game’s not enough for you, you have to go looking for some
porn in a video game? Dude, if that’s what you wanted there
are plenty of other places where you could find it! I mean for
God’s sake man, you live in
Amsterdam
! You can’t walk down the street without finding a sex shop
on every corner for the love of God!
I
know that dude probably didn’t realize what kind of furor
this would cause here in the States and elsewhere. But the
least you can do is give somebody at RockStar a “heads-up”
as to what your mod can do before you make it available for
free.
-
Sen.
Hillary Clinton (D-NY)
– Now as a Democrat I can’t think of anyone else I
would rather see get the nomination of my party in 2008 to
go up against Rudy Gulianni. However, I think that the
Senator is committing political suicide if she thinks she
can use an anti-gaming platform to catapult her back into
the White House. Now I know that she wants to introduce
legislation that will restrict the sale of violent video
games to minors. Note to Sen. Clinton: do all of us gamers
a favor and be very specific when you write this bill!
Don’t just say “violent video games” and assume that
it means every game out there that is rated “M”. One
person’s violent video game is another person’s sports
title. After all Senator, football is a violent game, is
it not? There are depictions of violence in Madden
NFL 2005, are there not? So this must be a title that
should not be allowed into the hands of children even
though the game is rated “E” for Everyone. Do you not
agree?
Another
thing, I don’t think that a lot of gamers will appreciate
being vilified and used in order to secure yourself the
nomination. A lot of these gamers just happen to be adults,
and I will bet you anything that a good majority of them are
registered voters in
New Hampshire
,
Iowa
,
Michigan
,
Pennsylvania
,
Ohio
,
Florida
,
Texas
,
California
and
New York
. These are all states which you will need in your corner if
you hope to have any kind of success on Super Tuesday.
Think
about it.
-
Jack
Thompson
– Ah yes, heeeeee’s baaaaaaack! The man who hates all
video games and thinks that we are all murderers, rapists
and terrorists. This shyster has had a vendetta against
the video gaming industry and video gamers in general
since he was embarrassed in 1999 when his lawsuit was
thrown out in
Paducah
,
Kentucky
. He has also tried to convince all of us that Columbine
was caused by Doom,
and that all violence in children can be tied to video
games.
OK
Jack, then how do you explain Brenda Ann Spencer, who took a
rifle that she got for Christmas and headed to Cleveland
Elementary School, where she killed two men and injured eight
children and a police officer because she didn’t like
Mondays? This happened in 1979, waaaaay before anyone had ever
heard of Los Santos.
How
do you explain Larry Duffin, Jack? The little shit was the
class bully in my time and he used to take special delight in
pounding on me all the time, calling me “faggot” whenever
he did. You think he was influenced by the GTA series? I went
to school with the AntiChrist in the 70’s, Jack! How was his
behavior influenced by a video game?!?
Now
Jack’s back and looking to raise some more hell, or at least
put us all into it.
Now
what does this mean for the mod community? It could mean a lot
of trouble for all of us if certain people wanted to get their
15 minutes of fame. Someone with an agenda could go to the
NFL, MLB or EA Sports and say to them “you know they are
infringing on your copyrights, don’t you? What are you going
to do about it?” Then they could come to us and tell us to
take the rosters down or face a lawsuit that would destroy all
of us. They could also tell us to stop using screenshots of
the games or stop talking about the games altogether unless we
did it at one of their own sites.
What
about for other mods in other games? What about mods for Star
Wars Galaxies, Battlefield 1942, Half-Life, and numerous
others out there? If the “Hot Coffee” mod can do this to
RockStar, what could all of those other mods out there do to
all of the other games that are out there? Shouldn’t they be
taken off of the web and the websites they are on shut down as
well before they do any permanent damage to the industry?
Am
I paranoid? Yeah, maybe I am.
But
maybe right now when we are about to face a crisis in the
video game industry that could have far reaching consequences
for all of us, maybe a little paranoia is a good thing.
It
might be the only way we are all able to stay online…
Until
next time…
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