Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas goes from
an M rating to an AO rating!
Now we all know that parents and politicians keep complaining about GTA:San Andreas,
but these people discovered one thing that the ESRB missed while rating the game, sexually graphic images
hidden inside the game that can ONLY be exposed using code downloaded from the Internet.
With this information in hand, the ESRB had no choice but to slap on an AO rating to the game.
This move really hurt the gaming industry like a nuke. This is what Wes Nihei (editor of the Oakland-based GamePro magazine) had to say about this:
"This is the first time a game has ever been retroactively rated. To have this kind of sexually explicit material show up in a game as popular as
'Grand Theft Auto' is pretty big news in the gaming world, and it's pretty embarrasing."
Even without the AO rating, the GTA was already one of the most controversial games for its
extremely violent content along with many other things (example: use of drugs and strong language). Now because of this AO
rating, many big time retailers, including Wal-Mart, Target Corp., Best Buy,
and perhaps Game Stop, are taking the game off shelves as quick as possible because not a lot of stores are willing to carry
adult-only rated games. Dennis McCauley (editor of gamepolitics.com) says that "There are essentially no adult-only rated games. It's the retail kiss of death."
The producer of GTA:San Andreas, Rockstar Games, says that it'll stop making the current cover of the game and
will give AO labels to stores that are still willing to keep the game on shelves (which won't be that many of course). Rockstar is making
a patch that can be downloaded to remove the sexually explicit content in the PC version of the game making the game technically go back to being an M rated game (though the AO label will still be on the front).
Also because of the fact that not many retailers will be carrying the product, sales of the game will plunge.
Take Two Interactive (Rockstar's parent company, who knew?) embarrassingly admitted also that the sex scenes had also been built into the retail versions of the game, not only the PC version,
but also the Xbox and PS2 ones as well. Officials of the company previously said that the dirty scenes were created by outsiders, that we now know is not very true.
A Dutch programmer (don't know the name, sorry!) created the modification or "mod" to get to the hidden content. It's called "hot coffee" 'cause the "mod"
allows players to serve up steamy acts when the game's main male character gets invited to a girlfriend's house in the game for coffee. "Mods" are incredibly popular with
many gamers and developers because they lengthen the interets and retail life of the game. When the critics, parents, and other people discovered that the powerful ESRB
had absolutly NO clue whatsoever about the sexuall content, critics charged because this shows that this undermines the game industry's ability to
police itself, which is very bad news for all gamers and companies in the gaming industry.
California Assemblyman Leland Yee (you know, that guy who's pushed legislation to curb the sale of violent video games to children) says this: "This is the rating board that
professes to be the champion of kids and parents. They have to explain how they missed this material. What other games out there are rated 'M' but deserve an adults-only rating?"
This just goes to show that game companies have to do a better job of policing their products. Marc Sherrod, director of game art and design at the Art Institute of California in
San Fransisco says that "This gives the industry a black eye. If people aren't going to play by the rules, sooner or later the government will step in and it won't be pretty."
Patricia Vance, president of the ESRB, in a written statement, said that the industry took a big hit with this. McCauley had
this to say: "I'm a parent, a gamer, and a journalist. The industry has to have the trust of parents. ... They took a big step today
and that is to their credit. But they can't sweep this under the rug." I couldn't agree more with him, actually I can.
It seems that the ESRB is going to have to be a lot stricter about rating games than ever before because who knows how many other games have this stuff in it that the ESRB
doesn't know about?! At least now the ESRB knows to look everywhere at least twice now for of fear of this happening again. And to the kids who got the game before this happened,
consider yourselves lucky, make sure your parents NEVER see any article like this, and if they do, hide the game somewhere safe, and good luck! You'll need it.
-Arnie Hermes, July 22
(P.S., a lot of credit goes to the Contra Costa Times and reporter Jessica Guynn for providing a lot of the information in this article.)
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