Sundown

Well, nothing's impossible. Some things are much more difficult than others, so much so that it's not done often if at all, even if they are vaguely similar. You're right. It's not as hard as I originally stated if we're just talking about games of a much smaller scope than GTA on hardware that's much more limited, mostly programmed in assembly to start with. I didn't have those examples in mind when I first stated that, and I probably should have been more specific. No. But we weren't solely talking about how easy it is to code for a particular platform. We were talking about how easy it is to get into an existing program and make more than confined, surface changes, and thus, how hard it is for such hacks to be made, or at least I was. I wouldn't say hacking new features into Berzerk on crummy, arcane hardware was an easy feat. But the scope of the hardware you have to understand is actually quite small, and the machine code you're parsing reveals what it's doing more readily than the compiled assembly of a on a much larger system. Thus, I would venture to say that adding voice synthesis in Berzerk is a more likely, and thus easier feat than adding new voice synthesis routines for CJ into GTA. Programming the voice synthesis itself for the PS2 or PC would be infinitely more straightforward. Getting it into GTA would be the difficulty. And we're also not talking about code that's merely "messy". We're talking about a codebase that as several hundred times larger. Take a 50 MB executable-- average by today's standards. You have 390,625 times more data to parse through than your 128 byte program. Yes, you don't have to parse through ALL of the code, but it's size and complexity just makes it that much more difficult to find what you're looking for. I'll go one step further and offer that if I were to write Berzerk for Windows using DirectX that merely attempted to clone the 2600 version, adding something like voice synthesis to this compiled binary would be a more difficult feat than doing it on the 2600 version itself. Our firmware engineers regularly send us digital timing ram-- instructions for our programmable video timing generator-- and they're not too long. I can probably parse through it and figure out what it's doing if I took the time to learn the firmware. But take that code, multiply it by 390,000 times, make chunks of that code refer to other chunks of that code, shuffle it around a bit, and my chances of knowing what the heck I'm looking at and where to find all the things I'm looking for go down drastically. Sometimes it's difficult enough to parse through the source code to figure out how to integrate new functionality, especially if the project's very large. Now try to do the same with code in compiled assembly. As I understand it, Atari programmers generate the vsyncs and keep track of 37 scanlines either by sending 37 wsyncs or using the Atari's internal timer. The latter lets you do some logic before the blanking period ends. The software doesn't need to be "informed" of anything, as it's driving the TV and rasterization itself. How to do all this is all pretty well documented, and I'd found that it was described pretty decently in a couple pages of text. Anyway, I'm not at all saying the sorts of hacks you note are easy. The older hardware was definitely harder to program for, but much easier to hack into. Modern hardware is generally easier to code for by far, especially with the natural languages that are available, but hacking the binaries is difficult beyond modest changes to variables, conditionals, and jumps. You know, I'll go ahead and concede that it's doable to append routines that get run at a specific point of a program that's easy to find. But adding functionality that shares data properly with the existing program, is tied to the game mechanics, and is actually triggered when something specific happens in the game begins to make the task of knowing what to do with the existing code many times harder. I keep referring to hacks of that nature because that's the sort of hack we were discussing in the first place. The challenges are different. Neither are "easy". But that doesn't mean one can't be much harder than the other. I would agree that if you knew exactly what changes to make to the existing code, integrating new functionality and instructions in a modern program would be a breeze. But doing that is sometimes like hunting for a particular piece of hay in a barn of haystacks. Interesting. Guess Australia has a different philosophy from the ESRB. Too bad they hate guns. -Al

Ah. I suppose I can see why GTA might get an AO while God of War wouldn't. Boobs outside the context of sex--M. Interactive sex with no visual counterpart--M. (Which is similar to GTA's buying time with a prostitute, although slightly more interactive.) Interactive sex with actual visuals--AO. Not saying these standards make sense, but that seems to be what the ESRB is going by. Still extremely minor compared to adding new play modes or full minigames. Would we agree on that? Actually, it is. I think we're going into the territory of "is too!" and "is not!" All I can say is that in my experience and knowledge, having been versed in MIPS assembly (which I believe many of these consoles run on), my (albiet limited) familiarity with compiler technology, and some direct experience hacking data files and looking at hacks that have been done by others, I would assess that making significant and extensive changes to a binary executable such as adding a whole minigame and splicing it into existing code compiled from a natural language is orders of magnitudes more difficult than hacking data files. If this assessment isn't one you give much credit to, despite the fact that it's related to what I sorta do for a living, then either you've already come to your own conclusion on how difficult inserting gameplay elements from scratch into a game like GTA is (not old console games that are much more simple and written in assembly to start with and thus not prone to what compiler optimizations can do to code), or I guess there's something I just don't know. And the latter is a very possible thing. At any rate I wasn't talking about moderately simple, classic japanese consoles that are programmed in assembly for hardware that's a whole less complex than what we see today. Okay, yes, I concede that hackers can go as far as hacking new text routines into old games that are moderately simple. But the scope of that is orders of magnitude smaller than the sorts of modifications we were originally talking about. Actually, the 2600's constraints make it easier to hack, not harder. The whole system is rather simple, there's not nearly as much code to look at, and the original machine language *is* the platform's language and what the games were programed in in the first place. It doesn't even *begin* to compare to the compiled code of a much more complicated game with a much greater codespace from a natural language with a compiler that optimizes and shifts instructions around at will. Yes, adding speech to Berzerk is impressive. But the impressive part is the programming efficiency and prowess with crummy hardware, not in the actual part of hacking we're discussing the difficulty of-- how to decipher the meaning of the code you're looking at, figuring out where to insert new functionality, and doing it properly so it doesn't break anything. I just realized that you were still referring to simple console games that were orginally programmed in assembly, which I'll agree is much easier to work with: Moving data is a relatively simply matter, so long as all the pointers to it are also updated. Them "ripping out" entire routines and replacing them with entirely "new" ones isn't a feat of greater complexity than adding code. It in fact makes their job easier. And now I think about it, adding new functions wouldn't be that difficult, if the new functions were appended at the end of the code space or somewhere free in the ROM, with jumps to it at the right places. All simple changes in comparison to inserting minigames in a recent compiled title. A primary difficulty in the latter is figuring out where you are in the code, and what it's actually doing. You don't know for sure that you're dealing with the game's code for sound just because it's writing to such and such a register. With so many levels of abstractions in the code itself due it's scope, and with whatever libraries that might have been compiled in, it's just not as straightforward as navigating an old console game's assembly code. Whoops. I was talking about games for the PC, that actually compares to GTA in complexity and in the way it was programmed. And I'd say that sifting through raw assembly in a game that was programmed in assembly, is of limited complexity and length, on hardware that is rigid and unchanging-- a certain address, register, or interrupt always corresponds to a specific piece of hardware-- is much easier than doing the same with: A game whose codebase is several orders of magnitude larger, is written in a natural language, compiled by a compiler that optimizes and shifts instructions in ways that obfuscate the original logic and flow of the code, with game code lying many layers of abstractions away from the hardware, on a platform whose hardware is much, much more complex, and what hardware even exists and where it's located is might not be a given, such as on the PC ( although the APIs abstract much of that away). An old console's hardware might be poorly understood, but they're still relatively simple and limited in complexity, and understanding them is more of an excercise of finding documentation, experimentation, and observation. In fact, the raw code sometimes is an aid to figuring how such hardware works. But I suppose if you simply feel that the difficulty of what your friends do in classic console hacking, as impressive as it all is, is truly representative of the difficulty and possibility level of other forms of hacking-- that because it is close to the epitome of what would constitute difficult hacking, all other types of hacking, no matter how involved and complex and how different in nature, are thus possible and even probable, then there's not much I can offer that would persuade you otherwise. *shrug* I guess I'm still waiting for someone to hack me new gameplay and content into the binary of a recent game that didn't have it compiled in already. They can have all my candy when they do. -Al

Is that what the problem is? Boo. Hey, never said any of it was simple. But it's doable enough that it's done with regularity. Compression is a doozy, but there are ways to crack it. And while data might be intermingled on a ROM, an experienced hacker can still figure out whether he's looking at data or looking at code. But all this magickery still doesn't compare to inserting the scads of new instructions, routines, and artwork needed to create the sort of stuff we're talking about into an existing binary. Which is why you don't see it done often or at all. A binary file is a little like a datafile where every chunk of data can point anywhere else in the file, with several ways of choosing where it points at any turn, where the data can modify itself, and where there's no structure, rhyme, reason, repeatability, or pattern you can confidently rely on to tell where you even are. In addition, most of the values being changed will render the program useless, and if you so much as move the data chunks around in order to accompany new instructions, they break. Data files, console or otherwise, aren't nearly as indecipherable as the series of opcodes that make up binary executables. Seriously. It's not even the same thing. Not all of a ROM consists of assembly opcodes in whatever machine language the game is compiled for. Like you say, some of it is data. Data formats can be cracked much more easily than the assembly instructions can be changed, moved around, and pointers and addresses recalculated to accompany changes and additional instructions-- and data is what ROM hackers are mostly working with, if I understand you right. This is why you don't see new minigames being made with regularity by ROM hackers, or on any platform for that matter where the none of the game's code is readable, either in script or uncompiled form. And what changes you do see are little confined changes that can be accomplished by reasonably straightforward methodologies, like say translations. Even in your experience with console modders, you can see that changes to assembly code and inherent functionality have always been extremely minor. Poke a bit here, change one instruction to skip over a whole series of instructions there to bypass a CD check. But changes to data files are widespread in comparison and almost the entire domain of modding, at least for those games that don't have SDKs or expose their mechanics through scripting. There's a reason for that. Is God of War's minigame really that naughty? -Al

Ah gotcha. Translations, as difficult as they are, are still a world of difference from adding new gameplay mechanics, scenes, and interactive content written from scratch. Sounds to me that one "simply" needs to decipher the file format, much like how many folks have hacked into various texture formats in other games, then reencode new translated data. It's not easy, but it's still a far cry from inserting minigames that weren't there, as no new routines need to be implemented and inserted. Hacking into data files is a whole lot more doable than altering an executable's instructions in a significant manner because data files tend to have some semblance of structure and format. By spotting repetition and patterns, you can start to have an idea on how the data's organized. Code in a binary executable looks like gibberish in a hex editor and non-sensical when disassembled, and the volume to parse through is unwieldy in today's games and application. Assembly is extremely difficult to decipher unless you have good references of what you're looking at. Like the actual source code. *cackles* Last Crusade? Well, I do agree that Rockstar probably wasn't trying to subvert the system. And I don't feel like the rating was changed simply to blame Rockstar, although they do end up footing the bill. It's unfortunate for Rockstar, yeah... but hey... psst. Don't put porn on the disc if the box says there ain't none. At least things'll be more clear cut on this sort of thing from here on out. They. Are. SO. NOT. Cuddling. O_o If they were then guys would be a lot more eager when their girlfriends "just want to cuddle." And again, I'm really curious if the M version of Leisure Suit Larry can be hacked to the AO version. If it can, then we can point at the ESRB as being unfair if it doesn't re-rate LSL alongside. And if it can't, then it does show that at least one company is aware of the pitfalls of putting porn on a disc that doesn't carry the AO rating. Heh, thanks for going at length with me on this JB0 and Mike. Swell of ya. -Al

I thought Quake 1 was always in 3d. And programming 3d movement in what was already a 3d graphical engine is pretty straightfoward, even from scratch. So long as you have access to the code, scripts, and SDK that lets you made modifications on where to place the camera and player entity, of course. Not sure what I was supposed to see on that page, but if you're talking about adding functionality to old, simple, 2d sprite based games which are programmed in assembly to start with, sure, it's possible. But doing the same with a very complex game programmed in a natural language and compiled to a binary is a little bit removed. I can't recall one single binary executable hack that adds notable additional functionality which wasn't already in the binary in some form, by way of extra code, for a title of moderate complexity on the PC for the last 5-10 years. *shrug* I don't know offhand, but the ESRB interview alludes to this having occured, although no games have ever had their entire rating changed, because the content in question was only enough to change the content descriptor, not the rating category. I don't know how replacing one rating with another makes the old one invalid and worthless, in so far as letting the customer know what's in the box if they at least understand the general implications of the older rating. That's was its primary job, right? The game industry doesn't pile on every uncompleted feature and leave trash on the disk just because they can. That's just bad development no matter where you come from. More than likely, they leave in debugging tools and unpolished functionality primarily for their own amusement, as easter eggs, for debugging, or if they believe development will continue at some later time, like you've suggested. So what I'm trying saying here is that cleaning up code is just as common a thing as leaving something in. Rockstar's mistake was that they didn't choose to clean up something that might affect the rating, and it's not a foregone conclusion that just because Rockstar made a sex minigame, given the industry's practice, it thus would have ended up on the disc. It's on the disc because they were careless with something they should have been careful about, and their cavalier attitude about leaving explicit sexual content on a disc for a game unrated for such lead to thier decisions. As software engineers, it was entirely within their power, practice, and routine to either leave it in or take it out. They chose poorly. Then why was the ESRB created, and for what purpose are its ratings, if not for the customer to understand what's in the box they're buying? Serious question, I really don't know. Because it seems that you're suggesting the ESRB primarily exists to serve some purpose outside of actually letting folks know what's in a game, and that this end isn't or shouldn't be its ultimate goal, and thus its ratings shouldn't be slavishly tied to the principle of keeping customers informed-- but to some other ideal of setting rules and stamping boxes and then being forever done with it, based on the rules and policies of a given time-- that these ratings should then be immutable regardless of what comes to light about what a customer is actually taking home, who put it there, whether it's accessible, and how available the means to do so are, so long as the developer didn't mean for it to be seen. I guess we just simply disagree in principle on how things should be rated, even if I'm not yet firm on what GTA's rating should actually be. -Al

Bad comparison. Quake has it's own publicly documented scripting language, SDK, compiler, and built from the beginning to be easily moddable. I could more easily write a flight sim in Quake than I can even begin to tack on a mini-game of any sort into something like GTA. Inserting actual lines of code-- additional instructions to what was already compiled in the binary-- is much harder than you suggest. It is possible however to intercept calls and that sort of thing, or hack into DLL's, but the work is not trivial either. From your description, it sounds like the original mod simply toggled a few more additional bits, and perhaps changed the file pointers and filenames in the compiled binary to load nude models and/or textures instead of the clothed ones-- no new lines of code would even be needed. This is a moderately trivial hack, at least compared to adding extra code or crafting a minigame out of thin air and getting it to still work within the original game. It's pretty apparent that the Hot Coffee modders didn't do much more than find the right places to poke and poke them, and make a few name or index changes in a hex editor. All of Rockstar's talk about modders having to decompile, recompile, and insert complex code is rubbish to obfuscate the issue. Actually, more accurately, the AO rating penalizes Rockstar for not having the foresight to consider that it might not be a good idea to leave objectionable material that could change a rating on the gold master. It's not some giant undertaking to remove incomplete code. We software engineers do this on a very regular basis, and it's pretty routine. I don't know what the ESRB's stance on hidden content was prior to this incident, but games have been re-rated in the past. And I don't know if the ESRB reserves the right to re-rate based on clarification of policy and new information and that all ratings are potentially in flux, but apparently they think they do. Now I'm curious as to what the ESRB would have rated GTA had Rockstar disclosed the hidden content to them. It would have given Rockstar more ground to stand on. Alas, we'll never know. At any rate, the ESRB doesn't see itself as simply setting rules that publishers have to meet in order to achieve a certain rating for marketability. If that were true, then expecting an old title to meet criteria for a rating set today would be absurd. However, the ESRB also feels responsible for making customers aware of the actual content in a box that might be accessed. Under this principle, their perogative to re-rate a game based on what comes to light about the content on disc makes a little more sense. I'm not. The ESRB's clarification of policy seems reasonable to me, and I don't think rule changes are inherently a bad thing. If publishers don't want to get in trouble, don't freaking put porn on the disc. It really is that simple. If the ESRB starts making unreasonable requests, then I'll show concern... but it's too early to say that the sky is falling-- that the ESRB bends to every whim of the anti-gaming lobby. Why? Because, I dunno... somehow in my addled thinking, holding developers accountable for the junk they let get on the disc that people do get at seems to make a whole lot of sense. Whether they should or shouldn't be getting at it, and whether the users have to break an agreement they don't even read to get at it is beside the point. Personally, I think the new rule changes are good ones. They clarify things and don't allow for vaguarities and misunderstandings that allow this sort of thing to happen in the first place. And hopefully they'll make changes of policy less necesary in the future. Actually I don't find the game itself as distasteful as Rockstar's attitude in general. Like I've detailed in the last several pages, I don't have any real opinions of Rockstar's "innocence or guilt" outside of their dishonesty to the media and public about what responsibility they had in the content getting there. I certainly don't believe them to be attempting subverting the rating system. For what it's worth, I'm actually extremely apathetic to what befalls Rockstar as a result of the controversy that they're at the center of. Whatever happens is at least partly the result of their own doing and practices, so I don't see them either as a victim nor as them deserving punishment for making questionable games. I simply think that rating content for what's actually on a disc and holding developers accountable for what allow on them isn't crazy talk. If it costs Rockstar money to be held accountable, well sucks a little bit to be them. *shrug* -Al

Well, from the end user perspective it's largely the same, I suppose. Yes. But ESRB is attempting to hold the publisher responsible for what gets on the disk. It's not rating so much on the basis of what you have to do to get porn in your game. It's rating on what porn is or isn't on disk, and whether you're actually buying porn with your game when you purchase it, regardless of whether you actually end up viewing it or not. And while a sex mod could have been created on the PC by a third party without Rockstar's involvement (although I doubt hackers could have created an entire sex mini-game with all of its complexity by themselves), the console version allows one to access content that wouldn't have been available had not Rockstar put it there in the first place. So who do you hold culpable? So in GTA's case, a user couldn't ever have simply downloaded a patch to enable the specific content in question on the PC or PS2. And couldn't ever have downloaded a patch to access objectionable content of that complexity and interactivity. The AO rating holds Rockstar accountable to this fact. I know. GTA just happens to be the unique case where the mostly-finished mini-game would actually affect the rating if it had been made available. The amount of work a hacker has to do does make an actual difference in practice. The more work a hacker has to do, the long it takes, and the less likely a mod simulating the nuances of sex will be produced and made available. While in theory, the end user would do the same thing-- download the mod, and install said mod... there are very few sex mods of the complexity of GTA's minigame created by third parties. I've never actually encountered one that did more than make characters naked, show naughty clips of people having sex as a video incorporated on some billboard or TV in the game, or fudged with art assets to convey something sexual. I'm not sure how far the Sims II mods go, though. Actually, what the ESRB is "supposed" to do is defined by the ESRB itself, not by our high minded ideals of what rating media should or shouldn't involve. So right now, according to the ESRB it's "supposed" to rate games by the content on the disc. The ESRB is holding publishers and developers accountable for how objectable content gets to an end user. If developers want to put naughty bits on a disc that might or might not be accessed, then the disc will be rated accordingly. From now on, the ESRB is also mandating that publishers disclose knowledge of content that might affect the rating, whether it's enabled or not. Furthermore, I don't think in GTA's case, it was really as complicated to unlock the minigame as Rockstar wants us to believe it was. It's extremely difficult to insert your own code into a compiled binary. More than likely, all of the code was in place, waiting on a flew flags to be turned on. The hackers simply found the right bits and flipped them on. Simply put, if a developer wants to put stuff on a disc and risk users accessing it, then they're held liable if users find out about it. If they don't want users to access said content, then take it out completely. ESRB's current policy doesn't even really acknowledge modders, other than the fact that their work might allow existing content to be accessed. If the content is on disc, then it'll be considered in the rating, period. If the content is not there, then it won't. In doing this, they leave behind any of the vaguarities of rating based on "potential content" (a term I initially thought suitable in describing how games might be rated, but now realize the weakness of). Thus, we simply won't have your hypothetical case of every single game being rated as AO simply because it's possible to mod them. We do have games like GTA being rated as AO because actual objectionable content exists in a recognizable form on the disc. Honestly? I'm not quite sure what GTA:SA's rating should be. I'm not sure if interactive sex, where you control each thrust, but are yet fully clothed should rate (not to mention that games are rated differently from movies as a whole). But as easy as it is to spin the ESRB's actions to make it appear as if they're simply caving in to pressure to save their own hinds, and as fun as it is to be cynical about any sort of policing body, I think their motivations go beyond that. The ESRB took decisive action on content that was there, that was produced by the developer, and that was getting to the public albiet through a third party. And I'm guessing that the ESRB took actions because it felt them responsible ones. Yes, it's messy, and yes, it brings up all sorts of questions on what ratings should involve, but in the end the system's improved. The ESRB now requires that publishers disclose hidden content, and have made it clear to them that they will be rated accordingly, so that this sort of thing doesn't happen in the future. And feh, Rockstar is no victim. Rockstar is a game company that's cashed in on our society's fixation with vicarious criminality and sexuality, and has gotten increasingly brazen about what sorts of content it places in its games (albiet good games). While I won't say that they deserve what they got (and it's hard to say that given all of the cash they've still made even after this fiasco), I certainly won't shed many tears for them. Certainly not after how they've attempted to mislead the public through their nebulous statements that anyone with the tiniest bit of technical knowhow could see past, and how they've attempted to dodge even the tiniest bit of responsibility. Rockstar is no victim except to its own brazenness and carelessness. They got cocky, ambivalent, sloppy, and are now paying for it... even if the reaction to what they had done might be a little disproportionate. -Al

For what it's worth, in the ESRB's own words: "Undermines the effectiveness of the rating" is probably the most cogent argument I've seen supporting GTA being re-rated. The ESRB simply rates for what's actually on a disc and if it can be gotten to. Not on why it's there, how it got there, what the original intent was, what discrepancy there is between the hidden content and the target audience, or how to get at it. Simplistic, yes. But there you have it, the ESRB's policy. When developers allow objectionable content on a disc, they take the fate of their game's rating into their own hands. Link to the whole article: http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/07/21/news_6129557.html And the government is being silly. It's highly unlikely that Rockstar did what they did in order to circumvent the rating while making porn available to the masses. But let's waste some money making sure. -Al

And my point was that there's a difference in hacking a game and adding pornographic content created by a third, unauthorized, party-- and prodding a simple bit to access porn created by the developers themselves. Yeah, I'd agree that target audience matters. I'd say that it probably matters more than whether a user has to perform an incantation to get at the content or not. Cheat codes and development aids are a different animal from actual content that could affect a game's rating... especially content that lets you control every pelvic thrust. So in retrospect, I think GTA's guilty of more than sloppy development. They're at least guilty of sloppy development involving objectionable material. I don't think the fact that kids see sex elsewhere makes for any sort of argument on how entertainment should be rated. And I don't think anyone's claiming that the game somehow offends virgin eyes, and if they do, they're silly. Regardless, I don't think whereever else kids might get access to objectionable material is even remotely relevant to deciding what the appropriate action should be. Well, I'm guessing that many of those who are finding the sex minigame unacceptable are those who were uncomfortable with the game's premise in the first place. And many of those who are perfectly fine with the minigame's inclusion were already endeared to the game. I don't think anyone out there has drastically changed their tune to the game over the sex minigame. And of course we know the thing that actually offends some isn't the monogamy. The offense is in the portrayal of explicit sex acts as entertainment (and made available to those who might be minors). For what it's worth, many of those who value monogamy also value sex as something so intimate and personal that it shouldn't be experienced except by two people in the actual act with each other. Here, ultimate monogamy means having the one same partner for life, and not just having one partner in any single period of time. In this view, sex shared with a third party is not truly monogamous, and sex experienced vicariously in a video game or movie is a cheapening of real and actual monogamous sex, even when it pretends to portray such a thing. Does the sex mini-game do even that? I assume you can continue to access prostitutes throughout the game if you wish to. At any rate, it's not like society actually shuns depictions of monogamy and embraces gangland violence... our attitudes regarding sex rise from the original belief that in its very depiction and vicarious participation, we actually undermine the core of its monogamous nature. Society's desire for freedom from sexual mores has brought us to where we are today-- where whatever's left of these attitudes manifest themselves as knee-jerk reactions, and we're offended at the sight of sex without knowing why. We've never had such strong sentiments about the depiction of violence, however-- where we feel watching violence and criminality actually undermines peace, or that it inherently causes lawlessness and harm to others. Been there, done that, cursed the board. Aww, gundammit. I'm doing it now, too. Attention Invision! I HATE YOUR QUOTE PARSER! --^-. .-^-- 314081[/snapback] Tell me about it. Seems like one broken quote command mucks all of them up in this new version of Invision. -Al

I personally can't stand Jessica Alba, but I'm not sure she's ever been accused of being a good actress, or at least enough to be overrated as one. I haven't seen enough of Cuthbert to say one way or another, but I do think she would have made for a better Sue Storm in F4. It's not that Jennifer Lopez can't act. It's that she doesn't. She's shown that she's a great actress when she actually cares to act, putting out decent performances in what were otherwise crappy little movies back in the day when her career didn't consist only of dating celebrities and showing up on magazine covers. But I guess "can't" and "won't" doesn't make much difference in the end. -Al

But at the same time, most of the content was created by the developer. From a distributor/publisher/author PoV, the content was placed there by themselves. If we rate media purely on what's needed to be done in order access the content, then we should have no concerns if some company started to release children's games with hours of hardcore porn encoded that can be accessed by a registry tweak. Sure, it'd be silly to rate Tomb-Raider AO because of a nude patch, but if the criterion lies solely on what action the end user must take-- on whether the action is documented or not-- then we should have no problem with games rated for children with hidden porn. So I guess we'd agree here that games shouldn't be rated solely on what end-user actions are required to access certain types of content. I'd agree that intent should factor in on how a game's rated... but the consumer doesn't care whether Rockstar meant for the content to be there, but whether it is there, and whether their child can get at it easily. In addition to looking at the end-user action needed to unlock certain content and the intention of developers when they placed it there, I feel that content authors should have some level of responsibility over what they knowingly allow on a disk. It's sloppy development at best and a somewhat cavalier attitude towards the rating system at worst. I don't think media frenzies are a good measure of large-scale parental concerns. "Parents Distress Over Online Porn" does not make for a very interesting headline or story, and just because we don't see such media coverage doesn't mean parents don't care wholesale. A better headline would have been "No, Duh!" Shock is a stronger indicator of initial reactions to new developments than it is an indicator of concern over persistant problems. School peer-shootings no longer shock us as they once did, but I think parents still care deeply for their kids' safety at school. A. Most people don't use them. B. They're legendary for their ineffectiveness. But we were discussing whether parents were concerned, not whether such measures were effective. I believe the market for them indicates a concern over children accessing porn. Whether they're used probably says more about whether parents find such software too intrusive and too ineffective, and whether they trust their own attempts to monitor their children's net use. And yes, there are lazy parents out there. But I wager that many of those lazy parents still "care" on some level. And they have kids that are quite adept at sneaking things in behind their backs. True. So should we stop rating entertainment as a measure to help parents parent? Should we make widely available to kids all the things they'd be sneaking around their parents backs anyhow? The following arguments against rating GTA as AO-- "Kids see harder-core porn anyway." "You can't stop them however much you care." "They're already sneaking worse things behind your back"-- can also be applied towards other titles and genres. We can even apply this rationale to towards pornography itself. Kids can get the stuff for free and much more easily online. So why rate adult DVD's and magazines? Why make it illegal to sell such material to children? I just don't find the "kids might be getting at worse if they're inclined" argument a particularly good one for justifying passivity and inaction. It does however, do a good job of making us feel better about doing nothing, because we've already concluded that nothing can be done. Now, I'll concede that rating something like GTA as AO might not be an appropriate action. But even so, I still think this defeatist line of thinking is a little weak and one that says more about amblivalence and our culture's love for being flippant about real issues, than it really does about what should or shouldn't be done to help parents along. Even if GTA shouldn't be re-rated and taken off Wal-mart's shelves, the fact that some kids are seeing porn online should not be the reason why. We shouldn't be using poor reasoning to reach correct conclusions. Not if we're rating on content--code, artwork, animations-- that's actually placed there by the developers. Then only cases like GTA are potentially AO... although this brings to scrutiny how much end-user or third-party action is necessary for a title to be rated adult-only. But if we don't rate at least somewhat on potential content, then that means developers are free to do much worse than GTA with impunity, and leave much more explicit material hidden on disk, so long as their content is not accessible through "normal play". I'm not sure that's a good thing either. Perhaps the best thing would be for publishers to police their own studios, and demand that no content should be left in the final gold masters that could affect the rating, hidden or otherwise. But I'm not sure what motivation they'd have to do that, outside of the one the ESRB just game them, rating essentially on potential content, I mean. So does the retail version of LSL allow you to change it to the AO version by simple tweaking? If so, it does show an inconsistency in how GTA:SA and LSL were rated... but at the same time, it's pretty obvious what sort of content you were going to get in LSL. Sex, and maybe more of it. GTA is more about senseless violence, criminality, and brief sexual innuendo. And it's because of its mainstream acceptance and the fact that somehow one doesn't naturally expect more explicit sex in the game, for whatever reason, that we have the media frenzy we do. -Al Edited to fix quotes and grammar. =P

Agreed. But I don't necessarily think that a decent parent should have to be aware of hidden content in a game that his or her child might know about. Said parent should be able to tell what is and is not in a game by what's advertised or noted on the box, by a few mainstream reviews, and by watching or playing a little bit of the game with their child. I'd agree if they were parents of 10-year olds. But what about those of 14, 15 and 16 year olds, who might be a little bit more relaxed about their kids being exposed to certain levels of violence and sexual content but still uncomfortable with actual interactive virtual sex? Obviously there is a difference between buying time with a prostitute, with most of the action merely implied, and showing the actual sex act, even with clothes on. If there was no difference, and there's no line between the two, then the sex minigame would have been left in game as is instead of being tucked and hidden away. Rockstar for one seems to have thought that there was a difference, and that the difference would affect their rating. Why are we then so shocked that the game is receiving the rating that Rockstar anticipated receiving had the sex minigame been made available, now that it's been exposed and is being made available, requiring only a simple patch to activate it? And regardless of what we think of said "odd parent", what they deem appropriate or not is their call. It doesn't really follow that we shouldn't label media for what is actually on the disk (readily available or not), and let them make the final call, just because we disagree with their ideas about what's right or isn't right for the child, and where they draw the line. How about the kid whose parents actually monitor their internet usage and for whom downloading gigs of porn isn't quite as easy to get away with as a simple patch for a game? Or the kid who doesn't have an internet connection but who can get the patch slipped to him easily from a friend? Er, I imagine many parents are flipped about that sort of thing. There is a market out there for software that blocks adult sites from access. And there are parents who seem to care about what their kids are consuming. I guess I don't see why labelling a game for what's potentially in it is such a futile thing if it helps make parents aware of what's contained and aids them in drawing their own lines of acceptable versus unacceptable content. Now whether polygonal, interactive sex with all of your clothes still on deserves an AO rating is another matter, of course. Curious... What rating did the most recent Leisure Suit Larry title garner? Did it have content comparable to GTA's minigame? -Al

I'm not sure I follow the logic of "Kids can get worse online, so it's okay to allow them to get at milder stuff that they still shouldn't be getting at... " That somehow just because kids can find explicit porn on the net, other media and specifically GTA shouldn't be rated for what content it actually (or in this case, potentially) has. A decent parent would regulate or at least attempt to regulate their child's internet usage, and the AO rating helps such parents shield their kids from further objectionable material accessible through a different source. Someone who doesn't want their children exposed to sexual content past a certain level doesn't want them to be exposed to any of it, and we don't generally make decisions to ignore caution simply because worse things can happen. Yeah, that's an odd parent, who's uncomfortable with poorly simulated virtual sex but okay with their child vicariously experiencing gang violence and slightly tamer sexual content... but they do exist. And at least the current rating allows them to decide what their kids see without being intimately versed in GTA's controversy. It's an additional aid to help them parent as they see fit... and I thought that's what we all were mostly for. Just out of curiousity... of those of us who are in this thread mocking distributors, parents, and legislators for their actions and reactions over a video game, how many of us are actually parents to kids old enough to play them? -Al

Well, the lie wasn't that third parties hacked or modified their code, nor was the lie that these actions are illegal and against the EULA. The "lie" lies in their attempt to make it seem as if they had no part in the creation of the content-- almost as if they're shocked that the thing even exists in their game-- when in fact, they probably spent more time, effort, and manpower on the sex minigame than the hackers that enabled it by prodding the correct bits to turn it on. "Hey... how did that get there? Hackers! Vicious hackers. Really." No matter how we dance around the semantics, it's obvious Rockstar wants us to believe something that is simply not true-- that the game wasn't put there mostly by their intent and effort. Yes, while the scenes are not techincally "in the released game" if you play through it normally, the content is on the released disks, and could be accessed with a little bit of work. Actually, it's more akin to finding that there's an undocumented explosive device built into your driver's seat. Sure, it's off and won't activate unless you change your radio station to 99.1FM at 3:52 am while driving backwards over 30 mph and doing the hokey pokey. Sure you're mostly safe. But what the heck is it doing there, and who put it there in the first place? What would a sensible reaction in this scenario? To question the automaker and question why the device was installed, I imagine. And maybe to have the car affixed with big warning labels that declare it "potentially explosive", even though the chance of the device going off are extremely slim... oh, because customers tend to care about that sort of thing. The new AO rating accomplishes roughly the same function. If the scenes are truly "not in the game", and Rockstar is truly not responsible for them being there, then we should be perfectly fine with Disney encoding snipits of porn on disks of Bambi, Lion King, and My Little Mermaid that can't be accessed unless a specific sequence of inputs are entered on the DVD player. But I suspect most parents just won't go for that. -Al

Because the actual content-- artwork, textures, models, animation-- of the Tomb Raider "nude patch" wasn't created by the developers of the game. They were just silly textures created by a third party to replace the originals. Here we actually have adult content being created and distributed by the authors of the game that can be accessed by performing minor modification to the game's code. Sure, much of the ballyhoo over this is silly. The content is accessible only to someone actively looking for it, and capable of running the hack that enables it. But Rockstar showed a marked lack of integrity by implying that "sophisticated hackers" were responsible for this content, that these alleged hackers made extensive modifications to the code and data to produce the risque scenes in question. Their claims were designed to deflect responsibility, and their vague allusions to "hacking" and "code modification" were designed to lead the average non-programmer to think that Rockstar was totally uninvolved in how the scenes got there, without them actually saying specifically so, and thus being caught in a direct lie. Of course it turns out that most of the content and artwork was actually created by Rockstar themselves, and it required only minor bit twiddling to coax them out. So the thing that bugs me isn't so much the fact that these scenes exist, unaccessible until you go significantly out of your way to enable them. Allowing this sort of thing in your game is either genius or foolish depending on your view and on how things play out. But it bugs me much more that Rockstar won't own up and be upfront with their customers. The game's rating being changed to AO doesn't make much sense, seeing as the AO content isn't actually accessible in normal use-- but a big part of me is amused to see this happen as a result of Rockstar's schtick and their unwillingness to take responsibility. I suppose the reason it's being re-rated is this: There is adult-only content in the game, and the fact that it exists and how to go about getting at it is now public knowledge. Sure, a savvy kid who can unlock this content probably can find more explicit stuff himself on the net... but that doesn't mean that we shrug and hand him more similar stuff just because he can. And while the Mature rating should already prevent the same kid from buying the game himself, the AO rating would clearly warn a parent who for some reason isn't familiar with the game and this issue explicitly, when his or her kid might be. We can argue that a decent parent wouldn't purchase Mature games for their kids in the first place, or we can point out the silliness of our culture for its attitude towards violence versus its attitude towards sex. But in the end, ratings convey to the customer what sort of content is to be expected. And the new AO rating allows the parent to make the final call based on what actually is there, even if they're not aware of the controversy and nuances surrounding a game. -Al

Gold. Okay, at first I was wondering how it was even possible for someone to translate a film that's in already in English to English so badly... then read that the subtitles were actually translated from the Chinese translation back into English. Okay, that starts to make a little more sense-- but to arrive at those English translations from any language... I just couldn't figure it out. And I especially couldn't figure out how they ended up with all those instances of the f-word that they didn't match the original dialogue in any way. Then it dawned on me that in Chinese, the word "to do" is the actually the same word as the f-word. Apparently, they simply ran the Chinese subtitles through something akin to bablefish, except with the Andrew Dice Clay filter turned on, that rendered all instances of "do" into the f-word, regardless of context. So "R2, what are you doing?" becomes "R2 do you is effing". Awesome. -Al

If you're talking about M7 as "Macross exactly as it's meant to be, if given a few more episodes", I still find that a stretch. Yes, Kawamori has stated many of the original Macross ideas (that he apparently thought worthy enough to cut out) reappeared in M7, and that to him, M7 is a little closer in some ways to his "original vision." But I hardly buy that the Macross SDF we know and love-- the one that was actually made-- would have turned into a fight of mystic energies, with love and emotion reduced to some commodity that can be bottled and stored, and a battle of clownish and garish robots with boobs against goofy monster aliens. In fact, everytime they had the opportunity to introduce any of the above to SDF, they didn't. The tacked on episodes. DYRL. Flashback 2012. If anything, the presentation got grittier and less fanciful and mystical. Why? Because the creators apparently thought at the time that such mystical themes didn't fit with Macross's already established style. They had to create an entirely new series with a totally different aesthetic to fit all that in 15 years later, because it would have clashed badly with what they'd already made. Besides, what was "supposed" to be doesn't necessarily make what "should" have been. And even if the new elements could have worked as a sequel to Macross SDF, IMO too much time has gone by to change the premises of the series without alienating at least those to whom akward changes like these are jarring. Like midichlorians, or something. -Al

Having tried several MMORPG's, and actually wanting to like SWG the most, having dedicated the most time, energy, and money to it... I can safely say that it's the most horrid game of its genre that I have ever played. Well the most horrid one that's made by a well funded company with a decent license, anyway. I've played AO, CoH, WoW, FFXI, and Guild Wars... and although I have certain issues with each of those games, they are all infinitely better designed and implemented than SWG. The two things that SWG does far and above better than all those games are character customization and the number of player moods and emotes. Other than that, I can't really recommend the game over any others in terms of gameplay. There may be habitual whiners for whom complaining is a lifestyle, but SWG doesn't receive criticism from them alone. It rightfully deserves most of the flack it gets, IMO. I'm convinced that the Devs no longer care. They're more interested in adding PT stuff because it's "cool", tying in with the hype over the new movies, and rationalizing away everything that feels wrong to anyone who remotely cares about Star Wars immersion... than they are in actually visually presenting something that feels like the OT. -Al

But the Force had been kept as largely abstract and mystical in the films for over 20 years. Then Lucas felt the need to make it all hip-pseudoscientific-like, with a discription that, like you say, actually explains all of nothing-- which is precisely the problem. Midiclorians were injected only to make the Force seem scientific and empirical, and thus only served to wear away at the original presentation of the Force while adding nothing in return. Except as a silly plot device for Qui-gon to determine that Anakin is "The One". I mentioned Tolkien's kids only because he's not in any capacity to write LOTR sequels himself. And if did actually do what was described, it would be just as abominable, if not more so. Yeah, thankfully midiclorians were largely ignored through the second and most of the third movie. Well there was that brief mention about how Anakin was made, but I just shrugged as thought "Whatever." The idea that he was "made" by the Sith is slightly interesting though. -Al

Yet many of the same folks hate the Spiritia element in M7 not because it relies on the mystical, but because it attributes something that is rather mysterious-- love, emotion, music-- to some made up energy, and then quantifies it as something near-physical, pseudo-scientific, and can actually be empirically measured. Just like how they take issue to midiclorians. Plus those that hate on M7 for its mystical elements hate it not because they dislike all things not "scientific and realistic" in principle. They just dislike that sort of thing in their Macross, which had previously established an internally coherent universe in which such mysticism is either non-existant or extremely subdued. It contradicted in style what came before it. Just like how they might take issue to midiclorians. The Force had previously been a vague and mystical force that just "was" transformed into something slightly less abstract and more pysical with Ep. 1's pseudoscientific technobable. If Tolkien's son were to write a "sequel" asserting that all the magic in the LOTR trilogy was due to alien genetic manipulation, and that such manipulation resulted in the abilities to perform feats that seem "magical", Tolkien fans would be rightfully outraged. -Al

That's a little bit simplistic, and shifts the blame of the game's state on the players more than it really should. I've been there since launch, and player outcry has always been directed at the fact that the game was terribly designed, more complex than the developers had ability to manage, and plagued with massive imbalances. Every fix to an existing imbalance would just produce another. It's blatantly obvious that the developers neither play or understand their own creation. Complaints were fair and on target... because the game was, in fact, poop. The main people who were able to enjoy it at length were those who either didn't have a critical eye for gameplay and design, who were willing to live with and perhaps even happily exploit the imbalances, who weren't particularly concerned with the purity of their Star Wars experience, or just had a very high tolerance to gameplay flaws and massive breaks to immersion. Oh yeah, and those who were just trying to pick up that cute green twilek in Coronet cantina who's actually a dude in his forties eating cheetos in his underwear. Where it's at now isn't because players whined or inadvertently asked for something and managed to get it. It's where it's at because the same design team that brought the us the horrid game in the first place are still at the reigns-- and they're just as unable to implement engaging game mechanics and compelling content as they've ever been. -Al

The irony is that Neeson is a better Qui Gon in Batman Begins than he was in Ep. I. Hearing him spout about fear and the danger of losing oneself to his anger... in the middle of a swordfight no less... Just makes us realize how much better he could have been in Star Wars with some real direction. Bale as Wayne was great. One of my few complaints is that the action scenes were a little hard to follow. They were mostly just closeup flurries of black rubber and people falling, which worked well enough... but I would have liked a few scenes that showed the action more clearly, perhaps slowed down a tad, or more shots where Batman's form and pose shows up distinct against the background. Comics have always given lavish attention to dynamic poses and shots, laid out on huge panels that awe you with power and emotion. Would have been nice to seen a tribute to that sort of presentation in the film, especially as it got so much else right. My other complaint is that Bale's forced growling as Batman made me want to chuckle at times. I know it's supposed to add emotion, power, and frightfactor to his alter-ego-- and it was a nice link to Keaton's Batman-- but think I might have preferred a more reserved and composed delivery. I think we've found the perfect actor to play Solid Snake, though. -Al

Luke had whine moments. In comparison to Anakin, he was a reasonably well adjusted human being with a few reasonable reactions and moments of weakness that I can empathize with. And Luke by the end of ROTJ was anything but whiny in his collected and resolved confrontation of Vader and the Emperor. And I don't consider yelping while being repeatedly struck by lightning whining. Anakin's excuse of being whiny and arrogant in AOTC doesn't really work for me... or at least it's not something that I particularly sympathize with. Teenage angst, as real as it might be, is still largely annoying and unbearable to watch in a semi-protagonist that I'm supposed to empathize with. It's just as annoying seeing it in real life kids, and it's entirely stupid how that sort of stuff is, even realizing that I wasn't all that different. Yes-- his whininess is due to him being an angsty, horny, powertripping teenager. But that's not a viable excuse... that's the entire problem in the first place. He's an immature jerk with evil and murderous tendencies. Knowing that doesn't make his behavior okay. It just does not make for a very compelling character, to me anyway. Anakin's own disturbing, narcissistic behavior doesn't end with adolesence... it actually continues and becomes magnified well into his 20's in Sith. Here, he no longer has the pat teenage excuse for his behavior... but yet, his whininess continues somewhat, and his neurosis actually grows worse. I can't think of a remotely reasonable pardon for cold bloodly killing a literally unarmed Dooku after he'd thought about the implications of the act. Anakin went far beyond having any legitimate excuse for his attitude or behavior, at least two and a half times throughout the movies--when he killed Dooku in cold contemplative blood, when he killed kids, and to a lesser extent, when he killed an entire village of sand people in anger. And in his final confrontation with Obiwan, with his petulant teenage "I hate you!", which is really, really unbecoming in the 20-something year old he was supposed to be by then, he was whiny to the last. If Luke was "whiny", then Anakin is many times that-- and an unstable, obsessed, ungrateful, gullible, narcissistic, pedicidal psychopath to boot. -Al

The US really is not that far behind. Our teen, underage stars are constantly presented as sex symbols of one form or another, whether subtly or blatantly. The media certainly doesn't shield young celebrities from being treated or tought of as such. Yeah, the stars might give lip service that it's all just "cute" and "in fun", but it's pretty undeniable that the acceptable age of women as sexual objects in the media is getting pushed lower and lower. -Al

Hah, I dunno. Sam was just too much Sam to me. He was just too much of his hip-cat self, though I've seen him do generals and hostage negotiators with a flair that I think would have worked with his Jedi. And ya know, Hayden just came off creepy and disturbed to me. I didn't see much of Luke in him, especially since luke was mostly rational, reserved, sucked up a lot of his own pain, and didn't fall into murderous rages very often. Even vader seemed rather reserved and quiet in his wrath, and I didn't see much of Vader's introspection and thoughfulness in Hayden. Okay, maybe his struggle between being mostly sane and a murderously disturbed psychopath reminded me of Vader's struggle between good, paternal love, and galactic conquest. Wait, no it didn't. What's weird is that while we think of Luke as this whiny farmboy/Jedi throughout the entire OT, he was whiny for all of a few seconds in the beginning of ANH. Maybe for a few soul-searching minutes on Dagobah. And maybe when he got his hand cut off by who turned out to be his own dad. But for what horrible things have happened to him, he just pretty much sucked it up for the rest of the three movies. I went back and watched ANH and a bit of ESB, and he didn't seem especially whiny at all. But Hayden had a movie and a half of whinyness for Luke's few seconds, much of which he outgrew after leaving Tatooine, and was absent completely in ROTJ. Maybe it's just because Luke's delimmas and decisions were ones were could better empathize with. Saving your friends by fighting evil. Making what appear to be pretty rational and decent decisions-- that being unprepared, actually lead to the Dark Side. Anakins choices and concerns weren't as easy for us to empathize with-- your teacher holding you back from being uber, your teen angst, your massacre of an entire village in rage, your fixation on some Queen several years older, saving your wife by turning against your friends, killing kids, and embracing a master you know to be well, just not quite right... your creepiness in general. -Al