By Kelmon , 21st July 10:40 pm
Well, we might as well address this subject. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (GTA:SA) has now been handed an “Adults Only” label by the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) following the publication of the Hot Coffee modification that allows player to play a sex-based minigame and pressure from the US Democrat party. While it can be debated as to whether the inclusion of such a minigame should constitute a label that has resulted in it being pulled from the shelves of major retailer, I’d like to focus on the following quote from Rodney Walker, spokesman of Rockstar Games, that was published by The New York Times:
“An artist makes a painting, then doesn’t like the first version and paints over the canvas with a new painting, right? That’s what happened here. Hackers on the Internet made a program that scratches the canvas to reveal an earlier draft of the game.”
What a moron.
» Read all of “Hot Coffee = Hot Water = Muppets“…
By Cyrris , 5:18 pm
The other day I sent a text message to a couple of friends. One being very familiar with the internet - a regular MSN user, and another who frankly is a complete computer illiterate. It wasn’t until I’d finished sending the message to both of them that I realised that I had included a :p emoticon, and I wondered if my second friend would have any idea what it was. It got me thinking about how much I take emoticons for granted, and how often I now use them - I never used to, but nowadays anything I type (be it on a keyboard or a keypad) ends up with at least one in there somewhere.
» Read all of “The Emoticon“…
By Vermouth , 19th July 4:53 am
Recently, the stock of Electronic Arts took a noteworthy dip on the announcement that The Godfather game was delayed into 2006. This to me reiterates something I’ve been screaming at the top of my lungs for a while, the industry, as a whole needs to do a better job of figuring out when games are going to be released. Last year we had a serious reprieve and a lot got done but we’d gone through a couple of huge ultra-high profile games released but many after 2 and three delays. I mean when was the last time you saw any other medium delayed like this? I mean movies i know what some of the movies I want to see for next Summer are going to be and I know if i just start heading down to the theatre sometime late in the spring I won’t miss the big movies. With games, outside of the notable exception of EA Sports, it’s a real guessing game. So this leads me to two curiosities; one a statement and one question that needs to be answered.
» Read all of “Are we there yet? Are We there yet?“…
By Plagiarize , 16th July 1:09 am
Jack Thompson wants the world to think he’s a moral crusader with only the safety of America’s children at heart. His devotion to that cause could surely explain his regularly over the top and exaggerated statements right? So after his latest ‘open letter’ contained more than a few very poorly argued statements, I decided to do the man a genuine favour, and sent him a list of common pitfalls when arguing a point of view, that Carl Sagan once wrote. My e-mail signature mentioned that I write gaming related content for a website, and that seems to be where things started to get interesting.
» Read all of “Jack Thompson… Straw Man“…
By Kelmon , 21st June 6:28 am
Ah, summer. The summer brings many things but one thing happens every summer and which drives the UK mental. I’m, of course, referring to Wimbledon Fortnight and the grand “Henman Hill” (screenshot shamelessly borrowed from someone’s trip). For the next 2 weeks I can look forwards to spending my afternoons watching the IBM scoretracker, wondering the scores across the office are out-of-sync with each other, and watching as each “great” British hopeful gets knocked-out by some other no-hoper from somewhere I’d probably be hard press to find on a map.
» Read all of “The Annual Madness Begins“…
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