Monthly Archive for July, 2005

I can’t believe all the com­mo­tion which has resulted from the GTA “Hot Cof­fee” mod. It has got­ten way out of hand. Appar­ently the crit­ics are going to go after the Sims 2 next. Here is a essay that might put things into perspective.

Per­haps what is most absurd about the accu­sa­tions against both Rock­star Games and the gam­ing indus­try, is that those mak­ing the alle­ga­tions seem to have no idea how the tech­nol­ogy they’re con­demn­ing works. Had they done even a moment’s worth of research, they would dis­cover that the online mod com­mu­nity for GTA:SA (and many other PC games) is not only capa­ble of recy­cling var­i­ous frag­ments of game code and art to cre­ate new scenes for the game, but we do it all the time. If Sen­a­tor Hillary Clin­ton, Lee­land Yee, Dr. David Walsh, et al, were to give even a cur­sory glance at the web­sites which pub­lished the Hot Cof­fee mod, they would see that it is but one of thou­sands of mod­i­fi­ca­tions made by users which cre­ate new game play sce­nar­ios using the exist­ing assets. Given the very nature of the inter­ac­tive dig­i­tal medium, an indus­tri­ous “mod­der” could within min­utes cre­ate things far “worse” than Hot Cof­fee if they so desired sim­ply by swap­ping a few items and lines of code about. Then, on top of just shift­ing around pre-existing assets, it is also quite easy and com­mon for play­ers to cre­ate entirely new con­tent from scratch.

The Found­ing Fathers roll over in their graves as a new witch-hunt against the First Amend­ment is launched

via Boing Boing: Game-modder rips into anti-modder US politicos

Update: Here is a let­ter along the same lines writ­ten to Hillary Cliton

So any sen­si­ble inves­ti­ga­tion into video games must ask the “com­pared to what” ques­tion. If the alter­na­tive to play­ing “Halo 2″ is read­ing “The Por­trait of a Lady,” then of course “The Por­trait of a Lady” is bet­ter for you. But it’s not as though kids have been read­ing Henry James for 100 years and then sud­denly dropped him for Pokemon.

Hillary vs. the Xbox: Game over via Boing Boing