gta: san andreas has been pulled from store shelves. apparently, anyways. i saw it at target today, not more than five hours ago, but i guess ‘late wednesday’ means they didn’t get the memo yet.
apparently rockstar had a dirty minigame built into the game that got cut, but was still on the disc and could be accessed via hacks on the pc. then someone found out you could access it on the ps2 and xbox. hillary clinton got involved, and now the game has been re-rated adults only, meaning most retailers have stopped selling it pending release of an edited version.
rockstar is putting that version out asap, but at the same time they’re denying responsibility, never mind the fact that the ‘hackers’ only found a way to access the content, it was already there. wierd legal issue for you. i wonder how ea feels about the sims 2 nude patch that simply removes the censor bars rendered when your sims are in the shower. team ninja just won a major lawsuit against some japanese guys who put out a nude doa mod…
i was thinking about trying to track down a copy tomorrow in case this was serious, but i don’t think i’ll have much luck. fortunately, i found a copy of project snowblind(the game that would be deus ex 3 if de:invisible war had done better), brand new, for $15. it just came out, the guy at the store didn’t know why it was so cheap. i’m not complaining.
i think i’ll pick up vice city next check, play through that finally while i’m waiting for san andreas to be reissued. or for rockstar to put out a gta3/vice city collection for pc, since i can’t find a copy of gta3 anywhere, and i’ve never actually played through that one either. mostly i just liked tooling around on scott’s computer, blowing stuff up and flying tanks.
(damn, i am ahead of the game here: that article wasn’t on the frontpage of gamespot not ten minutes ago, now it is…)
[addendum 7.21.05.10:38pm]
electronics boutique had and was still selling copies of san andreas, but they weren’t out on shelves, i had to ask, and the guy had to go through the spiel that it’s got naughty content, confirm i was over 18, etc. i hadn’t intended to buy it at first, but then i decided i didn’t really want to wait two months or however long it takes to reissue the game. i think i know what my weekend plans are.
finishing up organizing my stuff before scott shows up.
then playing gta.
Who cares about the ‘naughty’ content? It’s incredibly easy for kids to get their hands on porn, so why bother raising such a stink? It’s a big frickin’ game that the politicians play to pretend that they care about kids, since that’s what the voters want to think. In reality, they’re having them pulled off the shelves so they can get gratis copies.
July 29th, 2005 at 8:54 pm
more to the point, why would anyone with any sense be letting their kids play the game already, never-mind the hidden sexual content? i mean, it’s not okay to have sex with a girl, but it is okay to rampage around the city with a rocket launcher?
frankly, i’d rather see a bunch of 14 year olds having sex than killing people, if we’re really worried about kids emulating the game. which isn’t a significant fear anyhow, but it’s easier to ban a game than tell parents to do their damn job.
July 31st, 2005 at 11:22 am
It’s funny to me, because my sister was upset about her then-19-year-old son playing gta. She has always kind of sheltered her kids. And I know people at the extreme opposite end of the spectrum, damn near rolling joints for their pre-teens, because “They’re going to do it anyway” is their rationale.
And every kid I know who has gotten hold of porn has nabbed it from his dad’s stash. If you want to protect your kids, get dad to toss his out! Not that any man I know is all that upset about his kids seeing porn. Hell, saw my dad’s porn as a kid, and I wasn’t looking for it!
July 31st, 2005 at 8:26 pm
Oops, I left out the “I” in that last sentence above.
July 31st, 2005 at 8:27 pm
my buddy ryan back in middle school had several playboys that his dad gave him at like 12 to make sure he didn’t turn gay.
naturally we all knew about them and would, whenever we were over at his house, find an excuse to go up and look at them. he had a huge sleepover one time freshman year and people were fighting to get to sleep on the floor near his room.
i ended up in a recliner in the living room and woke up the next morning un-reclined. some other kid who wanted to sleep and not look at porn had beaten me to the couch.
i remember plenty of times over at my buddy pete’s house searching out porn, back in the early days of the internet. understand, of course, this was back in dial-up when loading a single image was an arduous process. we were happy with like 400×600 grainy jpeg scans of playmates, back before playboy put up their own site and cracked down HARD on anybody hosting playboy images.
hell, that was before a pornsite consisted of new content, and not just a bunch of playboy scans, grainy screencaps from nude scenes, and fake celebrity nude pictures.
ah, the glory days.
anyways. as far as kids looking at porn, there’s a difference between looking at it and being completely obsessed with it. same as there’s a difference between playing gta and actually going out and killing cops.
i’ll take the approach my buddy cheyne said his mom took: playboy is ok, but hardcore isn’t. if my eventual kids want to have a playboy stashed under their mattress i’m largely okay with that. if i find out they’re downloading gigabytes and gigabytes of streaming hardcore video, that’s another matter.
depends on the age of the kid, i suppose. hard issue to call without being a parent.
July 31st, 2005 at 9:58 pm
Yes, it is. My brother & his friends found a Hustler when we were on a school field trip in elementary school. He was 7. Of course, my dad used porn in his ‘birds & bees’ lecture for my brother, so I may not have the best example to base this on.
I just figure guys like to look at girls WAY more than girls like to look at guys, and allowing the more innocuous forms of porn is probably better than trying to stifle everything. My parents always de-mystified sex–since it was not a taboo subject, we never felt like we had to sneak around to find anything out, and we were much less likely to get into inappropriate situations at a young age. My one sister had sex at about 17–the other three of us were all over 18, so we didn’t act out on our knowledge. I think it’s safer to be informed, and to not feel like you have to keep secrets.
August 2nd, 2005 at 4:30 pm
agreed. withholding information from your kids in the hopes that somehow they’ll never discover it through any other means is at best wishful thinking and at worst akin to lying to them. when they DO inevitably find out about it they won’t be able to talk to you about it because they’ll assume (rightly so) that you’d rather not. i’d rather tell them my opinion on the subject so they at least know they can trust me to be honest. my parents never lied about their experiences with drugs or alcohol, and were always open and honest about where babies came from. it worked out, i’m guilty of clean living.
August 2nd, 2005 at 10:10 pm