By Plagiarize , 7th May 5:18 am
Hot coffee, ah yes, I remember hot coffee. Who doesn’t? I actually wanted to see the ESRB chewing out Take Two on that one, because, you know, it was less of a hit to the industry if the ratings board came away as victims. Take Two and Rockstar HAD violated certain guidelines, and the ESRB can’t be expected to go through every single animation in the game to check there’s nothing hidden in there.
It didn’t take long for politicians, and the mainstream media to convince everyone that somebody needed to take the blame for Hot Coffee. I don’t think most people really cared, but when the press and politicians get together it’s easy to get the impression that America is united in its anger, whether or not it actually is.
So, the ESRB covered its ass, Take Two lost a lot of money, and that was the end of that.
At least it should have been.
While many are quick to defend the ESRB in the ‘Elvish titties’ debacle, as the naked skins are apparently sat right there on the disk, just inaccessible, I’m not cutting them any slack this time, and while I’ll be sad if the rating system is destroyed as a result of this, it’ll be the ESRB’s own stupid fault.
» Read all of “ESRB: What the Hell Were You Thinking?“…
By Plagiarize , 13th April 6:02 am
In the debate on violent video games, there’s one company who’s name doesn’t generally come up.
Nintendo, with their family friendly image, a small percentage of M rated games on their system and an online set up with the DS that’s entirely based around protecting kids, are understandably not in people like Jack Thompson’s targets. Nintendo are probably one of the only major game companies not to have been sued or threatened with a law suit by the SLAPP happy lawyer from Florida.
But all that my friends, is about to change.
The fuse is already lit, and the flame is winding its way across the floor towards the barrel of gunpowder labeled ‘Revolution’.
» Read all of “Powder Keg“…
By Plagiarize , 27th January 4:28 am
A lot of focus is put on how America reacts to anti game crusading (or pro family crusading as I’m sure they’d prefer me to call it). My bizarre debate with Jack Thompson got linked left right and center, but what is angering me today is pretty simple.
Britain has exactly what Jack Thompson et al claim they’re trying to achieve over here. This is something I’ve brought up before I know, but for anyone not familiar with this, I’m going to detail it again.
An independent group of censors rate videogames that are seen to have violent or sexual content in. Those ratings are legally enforced. It is illegal to sell a video game that has been rated for a given age to anyone younger than that age.
Pretty simple. I have no problems with the suggestions of a similar system here in the US (though that suggestion of adding 50% tax to violent video games as at least one state is proposing is abhorrent in so many ways not least because it punishes the people the mature adults that no study has been able to suggest have any adverse reactions to the games) for the reasons that should be plain to see.
» Read all of “What is wrong with Britain?“…
By Kelmon , 12th January 10:47 pm
Hot on the heels of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2006 is the annual Mac gathering that is MacWorld (Jan 9-13 2006). MacWorld is, frankly, just another tradeshow, albeit one for a single computing platform, but is well attended by Apple themselves and typically used to make some big announcements/product releases. The 2006 event was no different with Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs, taking the stage on Tuesday morning and this article takes a look at what was announced and attempts to take a view of the address after having taken a step back. Some of the stuff announced was expected, some stuff was missing, and one announcement came out of left-field and isn’t pleasing some new Mac owners…
» Read all of “MacWorld 2006 Keynote Address Review“…
By Vermouth , 4th January 5:54 pm
Build a better mouse trap, and the world will beat a path to your door, or so the saying goes. At Intel however, having failed to build a better mouse trap, these days they’re changing their image in hopes of fooling people. So this is where we’re at. Intel has stalled, and they really don’t seem to have any magic right now. Making things worse, the company is less and less in the hands of it’s engineers, and to right the ship they’re turning to marketing. Ditching the Intel Inside logo, to me, is a blatant act of unwarranted desperation. They’re actually facing the same problem another tech-giant is battling right now; just like Sony the inmates are running the asylum.
» Read all of “The Inmates are Running the Asylum“…
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