Lets Talk About GTA

[gradualmeltdown]

metaleggman,

So resolution and texture quality are the only measurement of technical advancements in video games? Guess that giant amazing 3D city that absolutely no other game can touch doesn't count for much. Keep playing Crysis if you like, justify that million dollar video card.

[JJJ]

Just played this wicked GTA4 mission... Definitely one of the best so far (I'm 13% in I think).

*very small mission spoilers ahead*




You need to chase down this biker. So you grab another bike, and speed off after him - while shooting your uzi at him. Its alot of fun but pretty hard to fire and bike at the same time. The biking physics are way better than previous GTAs.

Anyway, I chased him, shooting for some time - hit him a few times but not enough apparently. All of a sudden about 6 of his biker buddies appear and start firing *their* uzis at me while screaming obscenities! I actually run out of ammo at that point. Not sure what to do, I speed into a park and crash my bike under an overpass.

The bikers get off their bikes and begin flanking my position. I discover I've got a few rounds of pistol ammo left, and so I hide behind a few pillars of the overpass and pop out, killing most of them. One left, I roll out of cover and pop him with a headshot. Turns out he was the original target biker, and he rolls around, crying for mercy. I finish him off with another headshot on the ground.

Awesome... I'd like to try that mission a few times to see how it plays out differently.

[Niode]

I've just heard the podcast.

Why does Jack Thompson bang on about the game being Pornographic?! There is no sex in the game… at all…

printed or visual material containing the explicit description or display of sexual organs or activity, intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings.

In absolutely no way, at any one time does the game depict pornography.

I do agree with him on some things though. The law needs to change with the regards to the sale of…ahem…'pornography'. Or rather the sale of mature content to children. He's right, in every way about that argument. This game should NOT be sold to kids. The fact that the USA's rating system is completely flawed is glaringly obvious. In the UK a child is considered an adult at 18. They can drink alcohol and view pornographic content if they so wish. However they must wear proper shoes to go in a strip club . Pornographic content is automatically slapped with an over 18's rating. It is completely illegal to sell or rent any media with the BBFC 18 rating to anyone under that age, they have the right to ask for ID to confirm their age. Anybody has the right to report an offense, anybody who witnesses the sale of an 18 rated game can report them to the police and the police can arrest the offender in an extreme case. What usually happens is the manager sacks the offender. It means that people won't risk their job to sell a game to someone, it makes no difference to them. In this country nobody would risk their job to sell a game to a kid. They'd just tell them to go away. When they come back with their parents, they tell the kids parents to go away as this game is not suitable for their child.

I completely agree with Jack. Sellers should stop selling this game to kids. Full stop. Anybody who disagrees with this guy is an idiot. This content is not suitable for kids. It wouldn't have an (in our country) an adults only rating if it was suitable for kids. Yes you can argue 'til the cows come home that children are subjected to violence in the form of cartoons from a young age, the key difference is cartoon violence is not photo-realistic depictions of murder.

I think that the US should adopt the same rating that the rest of the world uses. The system you use is completely stupid and backwards. If it was made illegal to sell a game to a child that is rated adults only, the only blame would be on the seller. Nobody else. If the shop had done it's job and stopped the sale of this game the kid wouldn't have played it and wouldn't theoretically gone out, dialed '999' and shot the cop in the head and stole his car in real life.

It boils down to the sale of the game to minors. A lot of people give Jack Thompson a bad rap because they think that he's trying to kill the game industry. In that podcast he stated several times that he would be happy when the US stops the sale of adult material to minors. SIMPLE AS. Some of his ideas on how the video game industry works is a little skewed and the basis of his ideas are somewhat far fetched. But, the evidence is there, kids playing this type of thing have been negatively impacted by it. There's scientific proof. Can't argue with that if it stands up as evidence in court.

Bottom line, stop selling this shit to kids. Why isn't it illegal to do so?

[Mozgus]

Bottom line, stop selling this shit to kids. Why isn't it illegal to do so?

I just want M-rated games to be treated exactly like R-rated movies. No more. No less. That's all. Everyone should be able to get behind that belief. Kids shouldn't be buying either one, and retailers shouldn't be selling them to the kids. Bust the fucking retailers. If I worked retail, I'd never sell GTA4 to a child. If my boss fired me because I lost a sale there, I'd take him to court and win.

You can't go after the developers and publishers of M-rated games, just like you can't go after the directors and publishers of R-rated movies. They're doing nothing wrong.

[gradualmeltdown]

Exactly Mozgus.


There is no federal law that says a kid cannot buy an R rated movie or M game. I am fine with that considering the current systems in place, if they fixed the ratings boards and made it fair maybe the government should be given some power. If they were to be able to enforce the MPAA's ratings it would be a direct route to state supported censorship.

There needs to be ONE rating system for all media. At this point the current rating systems are voluntary. MPAA will NEVER let that happen and its all because the current system allows them to be moral police. It is a secretive process and any other industry (music,games) would end their monopoly on what is and isn'k ok for the American people to watch in movies.

In a REAL system all media would be reviewed and rated in a transparent environment by a randomly picked group of people. They hand pick a small group and have to answer to no one. If your movie doesn't achieve the rating you want they owe you nothing. No explanation, no list of changes that could be made. Straight up if a group of 12 hand picked people don't like your movie it will be NC-17 and you WILL NOT get distribution. This will happen as long as religious freaks (religion is great, just not them) hold onto the current movie rating systems.


Once the games are rated I agree it is all on the retailer to not sell the products to kids. If a market sells kids beer whose fault is it? Budweiser's? Hell no.

[Mozgus]

Oh I want to clear up a few things.

1) I was under the impression that there were some kind of rules or local laws where minors couldn't go see or buy R-rated movies. Maybe I'm wrong. I didn't try to acquire them very often as a kid. Although, I do remember riding my bicycle up to Blockbuster and buying Pulp Fiction when I was 11 or 12, as a gift for my mom. It was one of her favorite movies. I didn't really get into it until a few years later.

2) If a child has an adult with them during the viewing or purchasing of R-rated/M-rated media, I'm totally ok with that. Parents should always have ultimate say in what their kids can experience, but I expect them to know what the fuck the product actually contains, and to experience it with their children. Not once in my life would my mom play a video game with me, no matter how many times I asked her to. That always frustrated me.

3) Personally, I don't understand why so many kids feel the need to play GTA4 and other M-rated games. I myself actually didn't like the mature games very much as a kid. I didn't really care for Doom until around 1998, and then I started to appreciate it's atmosphere and design. I also didn't care much for Mortal Kombat. My friends were all about it, but often I was trying to convince them to put in Megaman X or Super Mario World. We were all the same age, by the way. There does seem to be some kind of mentality with kids and the need to partake of adult things, but I can't say I know much about that.

[peace4myheart]

3) Personally, I don't understand why so many kids feel the need to play GTA4 and other M-rated games.

Haven't you ever done something or want to do something your parents tell you not to do. It's just like smoking weed. In Amsterdam, marijuana is legal and many people who live there don't actually smoke it or give a rat's ass about it. The ones that you see smoking at the bar, they are usually tourists.

[Mozgus]

Haven't you ever done something or want to do something your parents tell you not to do.

My parents didn't really bar me from doing anything. They just didn't care what I did. Miraculously, this led to me being a good boy by society's standards, and never getting into any real trouble, except for about a dozen brawls in school, none of which I started, and all of which I ended.

I think it's more about kids just wanting to be "cool" and not "gay". GTA makes you cool, Mario makes you gay. I was never cool, nor did I ever want to be cool, because I didn't think the cool people seemed very cool. Does that make sense?

[peace4myheart]

Haven't you ever done something or want to do something your parents tell you not to do.

My parents didn't really bar me from doing anything. They just didn't care what I did. Miraculously, this led to me being a good boy by society's standards, and never getting into any real trouble, except for about a dozen brawls in school, none of which I started, and all of which I ended.

I think it's more about kids just wanting to be "cool" and not "gay". GTA makes you cool, Mario makes you gay. I was never cool, nor did I ever want to be cool, because I didn't think the cool people seemed very cool. Does that make sense?

Yeah, I agree with you on that Moz. Kids are very impressionable. They want to follow the cool crowd, like doing things that grown up do. Sex, drugs, you name it. Stupid kids. Ruin everything for the rest of us.

Not trying to pry into your personal affair, but I think you are one of the lucky ones. Kids that don't have boundaries set for them usually ends up being the bane of society. They think they can do whatever the hell they want until they suffer the consequences. By that time it's too late. Glad you didn't end up in jail or abusing drugs man. Well, some might argue that your love for retrogaming is a drug in and of itself. Who's to say. HE HEEHE I think you must be on some now cuz you SO CRAZY MAN!!! If I am accusing some people here of being a fanboy, then you must be an anti-GTA fanboy cuz you seem to hate it with a passion.

[Niode]

Haven't you ever done something or want to do something your parents tell you not to do.

My parents didn't really bar me from doing anything. They just didn't care what I did. Miraculously, this led to me being a good boy by society's standards, and never getting into any real trouble, except for about a dozen brawls in school, none of which I started, and all of which I ended.

I think it's more about kids just wanting to be "cool" and not "gay". GTA makes you cool, Mario makes you gay. I was never cool, nor did I ever want to be cool, because I didn't think the cool people seemed very cool. Does that make sense?

My parents were the same with me. They didn't care what I did as long as I weren't hurting others.

My parents always moderated what I watched or played. My mum was and still is an avid video gamer. I guess i'm privileged living in that situation. I was introduced to gaming when I was 3. I had no idea what was going on but it kept me quiet and happy so my mum just let me get on with it. I guess playing games when they were much simpler helped. I couldn't imagine what is essentially a toddler picking up a modern game and having any fun with it at all. They just wouldn't be interested in it. I think i may give my child (if i ever have kids) an atari 2600 and see how they got on with it. Then move them onto more and more advance stuff if they enjoy it. but anyway.

The US is in bad need of a universal rating system. The way the MPAA rates films today is absolutely disgusting. It needs to be transparent and completely unbiased. None of this bullshit about turning round to a film maker and saying "change this, change this, change this or we're going to give you an x-rating." That's censorship. It should be the other way round. It should be you make a film and it gets rated. If it's violent/explicit it gets the maximum rating of 18 only. None of this bullshit about Ao rating not being able to be displayed in stores and only available under the counter shit. WTF it's only an 18? It's not like you're buying porno! I guess pornography is viewed differently in america. Porn in the UK is still seen slightly taboo. The places that sell it are very discreet and most of them you have to go round the back to get in. Nobody wants to be seen buying porn. Very few Newsagents stock it openly. Most you have to ask at the counter for it. Well thats for where I live anyway. Never been to London so it may be very different there…

I just don't understand why games can't be rated Ao and that be that. Ao only means 18+ if it's adult content, it's adults only, simple as. Why is it such a problem in the US? Why do places like Walmart refuse to stock that kind of thing? Is it because there's no law governing what people should buy?

Maybe it is time for a law to be put in place to stop kids from accessing this stuff. Obviously kids will still be able to get their hands on it through older kids or through parents. At least then it takes the blame off the child and onto where it belongs. The parent or guardian. I'm sick of hearing all these parents crying out that games are bad for kids.

It's not the games that are bad, it's the parents. Why aren't you parenting your child? Why aren't you stopping them playing these games? Not all games are Halo/GTA whatever. Quite a considerable amount of games aren't violent in the slightest. So banning games is an idiotic move and one that is arguably impossible. Banning violent games is tantamount to censorship.

I think that having an enforceable law against selling mature content to minors is absolutely necessary.

I hate to agree with JT but he's right. The only thing that worries me is if he wins and forces the industry to rethink how it rates games and how it chooses to enforce the sale of mature content, he'll move on to the obesity in children by banning games altogether as they are seen to be the reason kids are sat on their arse all do doing nothing.

Again they key word is parenting...

Stop passing the buck America and get off your lazy ass and do something about it!