Hot Coffee Splashes Over

The GTA “Hot Coffee” modification, which allows players to view sexual content built into San Andreas, has brought about an undeserved level of scrutiny on the video game industry. As much as I think Rockstar Games deserves to freeze in the chill of our disdain for lying to the ESRB when applying for rating, I equate them to children that got a little over-zealous during an adolescent prank; they deserve to be sent to detention for a few days, and instead find themselves at the brunt of a firestorm. Rockstar screwed up, and I think the entire industry has a right to kick them in the shins once or twice, but I’m not concerned with them specifically. I am worried about the landslide that occurs after a precedent is set that games can be punished more harshly for their content than other forms of art. There are a number of real-world pitfalls that reach beyond the philosophical implications of free speech laws, and could very possibly impact what features you see in games down the road.

Federal regulation:

When Hot Coffee came into the cross-hairs of the politically ambitious, they used it to unleash a barrage of firepower, culminating in Senator Clinton calling for federal regulations that make it a crime, punishable by jail time or fine, to sell or rent Mature rated video games to people under the age of 18. This is a level of federal regulation that far exceeds the voluntary movie rating system that has become so well known at the theater; there are no federal punishments for renting a child an R or NC-17 rated movie. Anyone that’s picked up the “Unrated version” of a movie at the rental store can tell you that not all movies even make it through the rating system. Some publishers simply don’t submit their product for review, an option that’s less viable in the home console market because of the way Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft regulate their systems. The traditional argument for treating video games as more dangerous than movies is that they are interactive. The counter-argument is that they are cartoons, and that the sexual content in an R-rated movie, with real people, make them at least an equal source of questionable content. Compare the no-nudity sexual mini-game in GTA to a wide number of R-rated movies, and I think the validity of a $5000 dollar fine for one and not the other comes into question.

Setting Precedent:

Rockstar did the game industry a disfavor by bringing this issue to the public eye on a battlefield we’re not equipped to fight on. It’s one thing to defend The Sims 2; it’s another entirely to stand up for GTA. Because of the timing and the game, the majority of the non-gaming population believes that the mini-game in Hot Coffee is far worse than it actually is. Nobody is double-checking. The ESRB didn’t help matters when they caved in to pressure and pulled Grand Theft Auto’s original Mature rating and replaced it with Adults Only. The correct answer, though not necessarily the politically viable one, was to respond that upon evaluation the content in GTA is not substantially different than what would be expected in a R-rated film, and that the Mature rating stands. Such a thing would not have been a pacifying statement to the political powers that be. It may have resulted in more long-term harm than good; that does not make it untrue.

The problem with changing the rating is that people now believe that the ESRB rating system didn’t work; a precedent has been set. Anti-game lawyers like Jack Thompson have already begun pushing on the dominos of the game industry, hoping to carry over the public scorn of GTA to previously untouchable games like The Sims 2. Thompson has suggested that he’ll be pursuing legal action against EA, publisher of The Sims 2, because a cheat code allows players to remove the blur that covers any unclothed characters in the game, revealing a Barbie-style anatomy. Make no mistake; The Sims 2 is not the primary target of Thompson’s attack, nor is EA. The Sims 2 is under attack because it’ll make headlines, has a large modding community that produces content outside the control of EA, and would have been virtually untouchable had the accusations not been proceeded by Hot Coffee. This is an opportunistic attack, designed to damage the industry-in-total. Legislation against The Sims 2 is going to fail – the game is too well accepted, and too many of the claims Thompson makes are too obviously inaccurate; it'll will make headlines, though. The true target is the ESRB, and public trust in the system. After the disaster that is Hot Coffee, any accusation, no matter how silly, will have its place in the limelight of the public eye, and the shot has been taken at the object with the largest ramifications possible.