Thompson, GTA, and the Sims 2: I Hate Being Right

The Video Game Controversy is the Rock & Roll controversy of today. It is the demon of choice. Since Rock & Roll (along with comic books and role-playing games) is now mainstream, and cannot be blamed on corrupting today's youth, the people who would wish to hate something to find an excuse for violence have set their sights squarely on interactive entertainment.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was recently pulled off of store shelves due to content the developers had left on the DVD, but had "locked." A sexually explicit minigame (A poorly rendered one, at that) was placed in at some point, but the developers pulled it from the final cut. Rather than remove the content from the DVD, they did a slightly sloppier method of yanking the content from the game: they changed the access bits so it was no longer used. This would be comparable to having a room in your house that you have walled off to hide what was in it.

Now, an enterprising modder found this content and wrote a fairly simple patch to reenable it. This is equivalent to someone taking a sledgehammer and knocking down the wall to see what is in the room you walled off.

Now, it should be mentioned that a "Mod" (short for "Modification") is a third-party construct, usually by a non-for-profit programmer. It is not, repeat, not written by the creators of the game. Modders are people who play the game, enjoy the game, and create mods to enhance the game and simply for the fun of it. Due to specialized interest, some mods are 'naughty.' There have been nudie mods and the occasional sex mod for just about any game that had any sort of role playing or adventure element since the Nude Patch for "Tomb Raider." (Before that, probably.) Why do modders create such items? Well, frankly, because they can.

Now, GTA has been hated by anti-gaming crowds (such as Jack Thompson, mentioned below, and Hillary Clinton) for quite a while now, and a lot of bullshit has been spread about it. But the "Hot Coffee" mod (the name of the mod that unlocks the sex game) takes the cake. Without really trying to accurately explain what a mod was, this was decried as "corrupting the youth" or some other such garbage. Note to Lemmings: GTA is an M rated game. 17+ is the intended audience. That means your 12 year old is NOT supposed to be playing it!

Because the content was "merely unlocked," it made the Hot Coffee mod somehow "different" from every other mod. Rockstar Games was blamed on "tricking" the public and the ESRB. In the media-driven backlash, the ESRB pulled GTA and re-rated it AO, "Adults Only." And I knew exactly what was going to happen from this point. Today, Jack Thompson, the virulently anti-videogame lawyer who has blamed everything from Columbine to the Beltway Sniper to them (not to mention compared video game programmers to Nazis), has issued a statement saying the "Sims 2" features cheat codes and mods that feature fully detailed nude Sim characters. He called it a "Pedophile training game" or some such.

Now, the problem (for Jack) is that he is wrong. The Stock Sims 2 game features no such nudity. It IS implied. For example, if a Sim takes a shower, there is a blur around the Sim to cover up the "naughty parts." It IS possible to enter lines of code in the command console of the game to remove the blur, but all you find is that the Sims are like Barbie and Ken dolls. They simply have no features from neck to knee. No reproductive organs or mammary glands are visible.

Alas! There ARE nude Sim mods available. Mods called "skins," which change the way items or characters look (and hence, can add nipples and genitalia), are available online. But UNLIKE GTA, these are NOT the creation of Maxis or Electronic Arts.

That doesn't bother Jack, though! By supporting the mod community (because the mod community also creates hundreds, if not thousands, of non-sexual mods for various games per year and generally enhances the game play in ways the creator did not have time to do) these nude-mods are somehow Maxis's "Fault." THEY are at fault for someone else's work, and THEY should be held responsible for such.

This is rubbish. Holding game developers responsible for the modifications of others is simply not right. It wasn't right for Rockstar, and it sure as HELL isn't right for Maxis.

Imagine, if you would, I purchased a book from a bookstore. I wrote a disgraceful sex scene using the characters of the book, stapled my chapter into the book, and then gave the book away. Now, imagine if you would, that when someone finds out about my modification of the book, they boycott the author of the book. Doesn't make much sense, right? Well, it doesn't make much sense to hold Rockstar responsible for Hot Coffee, or EA responsible for naked Sims.

To sum up my points:

- Video games are entertainment, not murder simulators or sex-crime training devices
- Twelve year olds should not be allowed to have M-rated games
- Game developers are not responsible for objectionable content created or unlocked by minors
- Jack Thompson and Hillary Clinton need better hobbies.

But I'm done being frustrated for now. Time for bed. Or maybe some more GTA. :)

(…no, definitely sleep.)

Rock on!