What Could Have Been

The great news is that Microsoft not only has a plan to allow developers to purchase a devkit directly from them, but a free Prototype Kit to allow anyone to test their XBox code on PC hardware! Read it here! The bad news? It was announced in 2000, before the XBox launched, and to my knowledge a single kit was never shipped by this program.

-- Microsoft embraces indy game devs [Outside Looking In]

While I think the old MS has done some great inroads in getting indies onto the console, it definately sounds like it could have been so much more. Maybe they'll try again with the 360.

The Modders Speak Out

As much as I'm trying to put the ESRB decision behind me, it would seem very unfair for me not to highlight this statement from the GTA mod community about the affair:

At the root of this rather knee-jerk reaction lies the argument that Rockstar Games somehow "hid" pornographic content from the ESRB with the intentions of it being "unlocked" later after avoiding an Adults Only rating. While it may be true that portions of the Hot Coffee mod were created from assets found in the retail version of the game, to say that Rockstar knowingly hid and sold pornography is absurd. For starters, most (if not all) of the allegedly "obscene" animation assets found in the mod can be seen elsewhere in the course of regular game play during less "graphic" sequences. Secondly, the audio assets used in the mod exist in the retail game during the default censored "Coffee" scenes. As such, it would stand to reason that these parts of the game were already seen by the ESRB, and the game was labeled as having "strong sexual content" accordingly.

The primary difference between the retail version of the game and that of the modded version is that the above content has simply been rearranged and intensified by the consumers. By using the logic that this content was illegally "hidden", one could just as easily claim that any R rated movie has covertly crossed the limits of decency because the end-user could very well pause their DVD player on a scene containing nudity, thus exceeding the length of such scenes by which the MPAA decides whether a film is to be classified as R or NC-17. The same could be said of even a PG-13 rated movie which contains brief nudity.

Please, read the whole thing. It goes on to point out more concerning the nature of mods and games than I've read on anything else in this debate, and highlights the very precarious, overreaching and scurrious nature of the ESRB ruling very well.

I know everyone loves to hate Rockstar, but there was so much more to this than one company. I know a lot of people are trying to ignore the aspect of mods in the case, but I think it's about time to stop that behavior - it's what got us here in the first place. The heart of this debate never should have been what Rockstar did or did not leave on the disc - but what is fair use of the contents, what should constitue the ESRB rating and how much responsibility do we expect on the behalf of developers and publishers once their game enters the wild.

Nobody wants to see mods go away, except for maybe the rabid anti-game types who are currently basking in their latest win.

Years have gone by with mods as a fundamental part of PC gaming, and even more recently console gaming as well. To date, the mod community themselves have done more policing on illegal behavior than anyone else ... and that's pretty much the way it should be.

Because the problem with the ESRB's resolution of the Hot Coffee mod was not hidden content, but that they decided to take governance on the Internet itself. The "broad distribution" of the mod was a key factor in their decision ... and that distribution is nothing less than an online community which is large, vibrant, creative, beneficial to the game community and very little danger to parents ... and certainly not the domain of the ESRB.

Ginormous Game Cover Gallery

I had meant to post this eons ago, but I think I got caught up in the Carnival puzzle or something. Anyway, I found this huge library of old video game box art which is big blast from the past for anyone who remembers just how neat those old Psygnosis covers, by Yes artist Roger Dean, could be.

Great Moments in Babel History

A translation worthy of dropping the name ban on Thompson:

Jacket Thompson is a man of extremen and only for this reason already by definition dangerous. In an interview with CBS he even called Doug Lowenstein, head of the organisation which performs the age testing for games, the ' Joseph Goebbels of the gameindustrie '.

--
The Sims 2 next target jacket Thompson (Dutch site translated to English via babel)

More Wifi Piracy

A man in England was arrested and fined for using someone else's wireless connection. However, this bit makes it sound like it might have been a secured network:

Police sources said Straszkiewicz was caught standing outside a building in a residential area holding a wireless-enabled laptop. The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed that Straszkiewicz was 'piggybacking' the wireless network that householders were using. He was reported to have attempted this several times before police arrested him.

Since you don't really have to "attempt" to access a public/unsecured node. You just, you know, click.

Girl Gamers Found Living in Britain

What's getting so odd about people talking about female gamers as if they were some lost tribe cut off from the normal social morays concerning joysticks is just how many there are out there:

But gaming has crossed the sexual divide, with even the Bridget Jones generation now picking up joysticks and control pads. The latest industry figures show that girl power now accounts for almost a quarter of Britain's active game-playing population.

-- Games push all the right buttons (thanks GameDev.net)

For those trying to get their head around the math on that one, that means that for every four British gamers one runs into, you'll have to act shocked and amazed that one of them has breasts.

At Least It's Not About Sex

Atari's upcoming graffiti game Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure is getting some pressure of it's own:

Written by designer Marc Ecko and featuring the voice of hip-hop artist Talib Kweli, Atari describes "Getting Up" as a "groundbreaking graffiti gameplay system."

But Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Queens) sees it as far more sinister.

"You are personally encouraging children to deface neighborhoods, break the law and wind up behind bars," Vallone wrote in a letter to Atari Chairman Bruno Bonnell. "This is an appalling lack of responsibility on your part."

-- Graffiti video game tagged as sinister by councilman

Boeing Goes Wireless

Well, Wifi. Because a wireless plane wouldn't fly so well.

The high-speed Internet service is called Connexion, it lets you communicate wirelessly while in flight. A two-way satellite links with a network of ground-based stations. You can use the service by visiting the Connexion website and creating a user account. Expect to shell out $30 on most international travels, $20 for trips that last less than 6 hours, or $10 for the first 60 minutes of access, then just pay 25 cents for up each minute thereafter.

-- Boeing's Connexion Wi-Fi Service Takes Off

Dev Day Diary: UAC

Well, the iTunes powered Tempest clone is officially on hold until Torque 2D's Mac socket code is fixed and until I get a better grasp of the particle system, since my sprite based visualizing was just not cutting it.

Now I'm working on a bit of a mashup between NetHack, Asteroids and Robotron. Well, mostly those latter two first. It might turn out something like the indie title Flatspace, but not being very Windows empowered right now, I wouldn't know. The emphasis will not be on an Elite style trading system. As much as I love that title, the trading aspect feels played out.

Your Answers, Censored Edition

I really wanted to do another set of answers to queries today, but since Hot Coffee ... they've all been about lawyers, pedophila or naked. Not really as funny.

The Question

So far, nobody seems to have gotten very far on the COGIV Poetry Puzzle. Remember, the answer is the name of a video game.

Here is The Question.

Open Questions

Yeah, I'm pretty much worn out from the hoopla of the Coffee controversy. But I still have a few open questions.

Will the Sims 2 push go anywhere?
I'm really hoping not. If it does, it could be the start of a landslide. Right now the gaming community seems pretty smug in the "there's no real nudity on the discs, so why worry?" theory.

Well, that certain floridian lawyer used the word mod in some context seven times in his fairly short little letter. And about how easy EA had made it to mod, and all that jazz. So I guess now people get to see if they're right on the ESRB cave-in or not.

And if this does push on ... I suspect we'll see modders represented in the debate about as much, if not less, than gamers in the current one.

Are we going to see DRM for games?
It's really not such a crazy idea. The game industry has been looking for an excuse to go as hardcore as possible with copyprotection. But while I've seen this bubble in a few conversations the question is ... will it work? I know Epic does MD5 package checks off of servers and other anti-cheat measures use similar tactics ... with somewhat measured results. Would a company actually end up doing a package sig check for a single player game? I guess they might if it they can say "they had to break the DMCA to publish that porn".

Is porn really worse than violence?
You can almost hear the shifting winds as the anti-gaming crowd starts dropping it's guns and goes after panty raids instead. Is this country really that puritanical?

And what will this do to those people with actual valid theories about what violence does to kids in games today? Is that debate simply doomed to be sidelined if the big concern is sex? I guess we'll have to see which we hear more about in the next six months: 25 to Life or Sims 2.

Why all the Rockstar hate?
Just a general question. When the Demuzio law started to finalize, Tom Chick said "it's about time". When it first appeared that the Coffee content was on the disc, Costik said "bitchslap Rockstar". And now that the ESRB caved, Penny Arcade quips "this is how it should have been rated all along".

And the conspiracy theories that this was all some mad plot of Rockstar's to make more money continue. PA even brushes the Wal-Mart issue aside saying that Best Buy is just down the block.

I mean wow. Politicians and lawyers just succeeded in getting a major video game title pulled from the world's biggest retail giant, and lots of major voices in the industry respond ... "good riddance"? Harsh.

Do you really think mods are DOOMED? OMG that's ignorant!
OK, not my question ... but the kind of thing that was starting to pop up after Tan got linked around forums.

No, I don't think mods are doomed. But I think they very likely might get diminished. Epic, id, Valve and those attached directly to major titles which are attached to the hip with mods are not going to suddenly get a mod-ectemy.

However, I wouldn't be surprised if they have a stricter EULA the next time around with what you can and can't do with their engines. 99.9% of mod teams won't care, because less face it ... many mod groups these days are looking to break into the industry and putting "I made the animations for GimpFight 3000" is probably not the best way. But if that happens, it will be sad to see companies have to become content cops. I could mourn about the problems with that for days, but I won't until it happens.

Finally, I really do doubt as many new titles will be interested in supplying mod tools and support. Which truly sucks. Mods were becoming a near standard in the PC world, breaking out of the shooter and strategy genres and moving into RPGs and more. Now they'll be weighed against the possibility of lawsuits, and may lose more times than not.


Later today, I'll post cheerier stuff. Promise.

Asking the Same Question

Star Wars: Galaxies developer Jeff Freeman is asking the same question I am:

What happens when Congress figures out that all games – for PC and consoles – have to given an AO rating if user-generated-content is factored into the evaluation? I mean, even if the game isn't intended to be mod'd.

-- M v AO [mythical.blogspot.com]

Jeff's take is that this whole thing shows more the futility of the AO rating in general more than anything. Which is a fairly rational take ... I just wonder if the industry will see it that way.

If Jeff sounds familiar, here's why. If you haven't read that interview previously, it's even more interesting now.

PocketBlogging

So in my continuing quest of all things wifi, I got a Zaurus 5500 with a wifi card off of eBay - of which I'm currently using both to blog right now.

For the most part it's geeky goodness ... it was cheap ($150 for both) ... it's got Linux and a ton of apps and is wildly versatile, sporting both an SD and CF slot. More than a PDA, I'm using it as a portable terminal and media browser. Like a poor man's PSP but with shell commands.

The wifi seems tempermental and while the keyboard is slick, it's taken me about 10 minutes to type this so far. It's also not exactly a powerhouse ... hires mpegs skip and stutter a lot.

The battery life is also remarkably PSP like, showing just how prevalent such issues are with multifunction portables.

Still, it's neat to see this kind of tech become cheap and ubiqitous. This guy is far more powerful than any PDA I've had to date (which has been quite a few), and also the least expensive.

Patricia Vance Clarifies ... or does she?

Gamespot got the president of the ESRB on the line:

GS: My read of your statement yesterday suggests that the ESRB is directing its energy toward modders, not publishers, and is, in effect, saying it's worse to unlock adult-rated content than to put it in the game in the first place.

PV: We're not saying that at all. What we're saying is that if you, as publisher, produce content that's pertinent to a rating, and leave it on a disc--risking that it might be accessed by a modder--then it's your responsibility. And if it undermines the accuracy of the rating, it's your responsibility.

It's up to publishers to take action against third-party modders, not ours. Our only obligation is to make sure that the rating is accurate. The publisher is responsible for creating content. If they then leave it on the disc and it undermines the effectiveness of the rating, then we have no choice but to take action. We're actually putting responsibility solely in the publishers' hands.

-- Cooling Hot Coffee

I really want that to make me feel better, but it really kinda doesn't. It's way too vague and the "action against third-party modders" bit ... on one hand she emphasizes content left on the disc, but on the other she is reminding publishers that what happens to their programs is their responsibility.

I'm not sure that wouldn't include someone putting a naked skin on a model and then putting them into interesting situations. Or even just using a game engine to produce a porn machinima. I mean, that's all just hacking content on a disc. The fact that it's varying degrees of it doesn't enter into Patricia's rhetoric.

And of course, now we have a Floridian lawyer attacking Sims 2 for nakedness.. Since that's somewhat old news, hopefully he won't get traction and this will all die down. Then it will probably be truce time until Hot Coffee 2.