20th July 2005, 5:09 PM
(This post was last modified: 20th July 2005, 5:40 PM by Dark Jaguar.)
One thing to keep in mind is it actually IS their content, right on the disk.
However, it can't be accessed by any means without a mod. No secret codes or anything, so you have to modify the game.
It's easy to conclude from this that the mod DID add the content then.
From what I can tell, this was not malicious placing of hidden content for modders to find to get by a rating. I suspect it's a lot more likely this is just the common "leftover code" for features they chose from the start not to include. I believe the code was simply something that would have been too messy to take out altogether, so they just made it impossible to access it, which effectively does remove it from the game. They may have even decided to scrap it because they knew how big a controversy it would be (or maybe just because the minigame wasn't even that fun, but that's never stopped Rockstar before so...).
Anyway, this is not something new. The only real new thing here is that someone who has it out for gaming anyway managed to find a site revealing this stuff this time.
Remember Goldeneye and Perfect Dark? "HAX+ORS" have found a LOT of hidden content scrapped from the final game, but could only get to the data left in it by using Gamesharks and such. Basically, modding. Perfect Dark originally planned on including a "perfect head" feature using the Gameboy Camera and the Transfer Pack that would allow a player to take a fuzzy black and white snapshot of their own head, crop it out, color it, and apply it to one of the head models in the game. It was scrapped. They had stated it was due to complications, but modders discovered the code was nearly done as it was. Pretty much everything was in there, they just took out the feature (but left the code in to prevent any unforseen glitches). A lot of people suspect it was due to school shootings that they removed it, lest the news find out there is a game that lets you shoot at your family and friends.... pictures (don't dart boards have the same capacity?). Even older games have hidden content of this sort as well. This really isn't anything new.
Plus, I've SEEN this hidden content. (The news has a habbit of being shocked at lewd content and then SHOWING it to everyone over and over again.) It's poorly rendered models that resemble nude women in the sense that the brain has the amazing capacity to recognize forms even when they aren't there. It's as largely inoffensive as a naked cartoon character (though Ren and Stimpy did get pretty disturbing at times...).
Here's the thing. There are hidden moves I can only access with a Game Shark in Final Fantasy 8. Modding is needed to get to it, so it's effectivelly added content. I say "added" because in no way do I consider those things to be features of the game, a part of the experience, in any normal situation.
The potential for a stone to be a sharpened blade is always there. The blade can easily be seen as already IN the stone, it's just that there's a lot more stone in the way and attached all over that needs to be removed. However, in no way would I arrest someone in post-feudal Japan who happens to be carrying a large stone around just because it is, in a sense, conceiling a sword.
There are obvious differences here, but the point is that when the game is played using the right liscensed equipment, nothing the player can ever do will unlock this hidden content. It takes going to unauthorized measures to effectively "add" it in. I just can't find a way to put the blame on the game makers for not actively trying to prevent it from even being modded to allow such content to exist. Surely in this case the mod was made a LOT easier because the makers weren't completely thorough in removing the scrapped content, but the ease to me is a moot point. To a much greater extent, a game's graphics engine being able to be taken out of the original game and put to work on a new "nudes on ice" game can in no way be blamed on the original makers of the engine.
So at any rate, yes the designers COULD have been more thorough in their deletion of scrapped data, but it's a standard industry procedure to merely remove all CALLS to something without actually removing it because it prevents needing to make sure nothing really did make some calls to it and thus, while on the user end it no longer exists, it may still be needed internally for something. It just takes out a lot of testing, which saves time and money. Anyone who's seen documentaries on the making of today's games, or better yet anyone who's been on a project like that themselves, can vouch that cutting corners is really needed, and if something will be invisible to the user anyway, then it effectively doesn't matter HOW they do it. That's why I say REbirth really is a great looking game and still one of the best looking. Sure they did it with FMV, but since the end result is going to look the same as any game where the camera won't be moving around, only better, why wouldn't they do that if the results would be better? The only reason not to would be, if as they did later, they wanted the camera to be dynamically moving around the scene.
So, don't blame the designers for the content they really did effectively remove. Go back to just blaming them for the stuff that's still in the game.
Now onto another matter. Apparently the solution is, what, giving it an A rating? Adults Only? Um... ABF makes a great point. This is NOT a first in gaming. What about Leisure Suit Larry's... entire series? Penny Arcade made an interesting point on this too. They say that, after reading the descriptions of M and A, the only discernable difference is the length of time the adult content is experienced. To what degree they ask? As they pointed out, many M games involve contant violence for hours on end. How many more hours constitutes an A rating exactly? Leisure Suit Larry involves constant minigames with the end goal being "having sex with the hot foxies, we wear tight pants to show our bulges!", and this can last for hours on end as well.
From what I can tell, changing M to A is NOT going to solve jack. It's just a stunt really to make it look like the ESRB is actually doing something. Well, they are, they are doing what they always do. They slap on a rating with no sense of objective thought. A game that got an E rating on the SNES suddenly has a T rating on the PS (that game being Chrono Trigger). Because they rated FF7 with a T rating, now ALL FF games apparently have a T rating slapped on them despite content (FF1 does NOT have anything a game like Mario doesn't have, which is to say monsters instantly fading away when beaten). OOT managed an E rating, so now no matter what the content all Zelda games are getting an E rating. I suspect the new one will as well. Kingdom Hearts has Disney. Hey no need to play it and see that, according to their own odd standards, it has content on the same level as a Final Fantasy game and would otherwise earn a T (which it really shouldn't, but where's the consistancy?). Here's another. Apparently GE earned a T while Perfect Dark gets an M. The violence level is the same, that is, blood stains on their clothes for the most part. The only difference, the one that apparently "did it" was that the bodies in Perfect Dark took a lot longer to fade away than the ones in GE. Both lasted long enough to tell even the dullest kid "they are dead, not blown clear". Seems a little arbitrary...
So, once again I have to say it would do well if the ESRB first started adopting a policy of deciding some standards for consistancy (perhaps a very thick tome dictating exactly WHAT methods of pleasuring a goat earn a stricter rating). I submit the least arbitrary rating system is still a simple 3 rating one. Anything more can be summed up with notes under the letter. G for "everyone", PG for "think about this" and R for "no seriously, this is NOT for little Billy, letting him in anyway? Okay... whatever...". If they switch to that, with NO stylizing at all mind you, it should be dull as hell to indicate it's serious and not some advertisement to show how cool the game is (that slanted letter design they have now, slanting like it's so cool, it SICKENS me, but at least they took out the staticky background). At least this way the rating system would make some frickin' sense.
But that's only a very small part of this. Once again, the people who actually are BUYING the games (and if they aren't, why exactly do these kids have all this money, and why are you letting them go to the STORE by THEMSELVES at that age?) just don't like to think about having to do any MORE work in raising their kids. Now I get it, raising kids really is very hard and there's a lot of work involved. Parents, as a general rule, aren't lazy good for nothings and do actually take care of their kids, feeding them and everything. But, if they are going to allow them to enjoy today's entertainment at all, they have to take a gestappo approach to it. It's not that today's entertainment is so bad or anything, but if they feel their kids shouldn't be exposed to certain things, they need to take actions themselves to prevent it. Be harsh sometimes in this, as it will be needed. Don't let your kid pick whatever movie or game or music they want without checking it out yourself. Now, a lot of parents don't "play games" and don't want to have to actually sit down and play some video game themselves, feeling like a fool, to make sure it's okay for their kids. But, use some common sense. Don't judge a book entirely on the cover, but the cover IS a bit of a rough guide to what you might find on the inside. IF the cover shows a man inside a futuristic soldier suit holding a gun and aliens are flying around shooting at each other, think to yourself, "might this be a violent game?". Ask around. Generally the people working where they sell games tend to know a little something about games themselves. If you still aren't sure, don't let your kid get it.
That's really all it boils down to. Do your homework. You check to make sure the medicine you take is legimimate and what side effects it has, correct? (I hope so, I hope you don't just take whatever pills your friends gave you from an "all natural" doctor, sheesh, they are PILLS, in what way is THAT collection of chemicals more natural than the ones you get from LEGITIMATE medicine?) Do the same here. It's really not hard to get a rough guide to what to expect in a game with only 5-10 minutes of looking around online. That's not that much time. I mean, as a kid I was lucky to get a new game every few months. If you are getting so many games for your kids so often that a 10 minute search online for each one gets in the way, you really have to reconsider exactly how much stuff you should be getting your kid. Your kid shouldn't feel like they are OWED free stuff. I submit you should hold out JUST enough that they feel LUCKY to get gifts. For me, it was just on the holidays.
However, it can't be accessed by any means without a mod. No secret codes or anything, so you have to modify the game.
It's easy to conclude from this that the mod DID add the content then.
From what I can tell, this was not malicious placing of hidden content for modders to find to get by a rating. I suspect it's a lot more likely this is just the common "leftover code" for features they chose from the start not to include. I believe the code was simply something that would have been too messy to take out altogether, so they just made it impossible to access it, which effectively does remove it from the game. They may have even decided to scrap it because they knew how big a controversy it would be (or maybe just because the minigame wasn't even that fun, but that's never stopped Rockstar before so...).
Anyway, this is not something new. The only real new thing here is that someone who has it out for gaming anyway managed to find a site revealing this stuff this time.
Remember Goldeneye and Perfect Dark? "HAX+ORS" have found a LOT of hidden content scrapped from the final game, but could only get to the data left in it by using Gamesharks and such. Basically, modding. Perfect Dark originally planned on including a "perfect head" feature using the Gameboy Camera and the Transfer Pack that would allow a player to take a fuzzy black and white snapshot of their own head, crop it out, color it, and apply it to one of the head models in the game. It was scrapped. They had stated it was due to complications, but modders discovered the code was nearly done as it was. Pretty much everything was in there, they just took out the feature (but left the code in to prevent any unforseen glitches). A lot of people suspect it was due to school shootings that they removed it, lest the news find out there is a game that lets you shoot at your family and friends.... pictures (don't dart boards have the same capacity?). Even older games have hidden content of this sort as well. This really isn't anything new.
Plus, I've SEEN this hidden content. (The news has a habbit of being shocked at lewd content and then SHOWING it to everyone over and over again.) It's poorly rendered models that resemble nude women in the sense that the brain has the amazing capacity to recognize forms even when they aren't there. It's as largely inoffensive as a naked cartoon character (though Ren and Stimpy did get pretty disturbing at times...).
Here's the thing. There are hidden moves I can only access with a Game Shark in Final Fantasy 8. Modding is needed to get to it, so it's effectivelly added content. I say "added" because in no way do I consider those things to be features of the game, a part of the experience, in any normal situation.
The potential for a stone to be a sharpened blade is always there. The blade can easily be seen as already IN the stone, it's just that there's a lot more stone in the way and attached all over that needs to be removed. However, in no way would I arrest someone in post-feudal Japan who happens to be carrying a large stone around just because it is, in a sense, conceiling a sword.
There are obvious differences here, but the point is that when the game is played using the right liscensed equipment, nothing the player can ever do will unlock this hidden content. It takes going to unauthorized measures to effectively "add" it in. I just can't find a way to put the blame on the game makers for not actively trying to prevent it from even being modded to allow such content to exist. Surely in this case the mod was made a LOT easier because the makers weren't completely thorough in removing the scrapped content, but the ease to me is a moot point. To a much greater extent, a game's graphics engine being able to be taken out of the original game and put to work on a new "nudes on ice" game can in no way be blamed on the original makers of the engine.
So at any rate, yes the designers COULD have been more thorough in their deletion of scrapped data, but it's a standard industry procedure to merely remove all CALLS to something without actually removing it because it prevents needing to make sure nothing really did make some calls to it and thus, while on the user end it no longer exists, it may still be needed internally for something. It just takes out a lot of testing, which saves time and money. Anyone who's seen documentaries on the making of today's games, or better yet anyone who's been on a project like that themselves, can vouch that cutting corners is really needed, and if something will be invisible to the user anyway, then it effectively doesn't matter HOW they do it. That's why I say REbirth really is a great looking game and still one of the best looking. Sure they did it with FMV, but since the end result is going to look the same as any game where the camera won't be moving around, only better, why wouldn't they do that if the results would be better? The only reason not to would be, if as they did later, they wanted the camera to be dynamically moving around the scene.
So, don't blame the designers for the content they really did effectively remove. Go back to just blaming them for the stuff that's still in the game.
Now onto another matter. Apparently the solution is, what, giving it an A rating? Adults Only? Um... ABF makes a great point. This is NOT a first in gaming. What about Leisure Suit Larry's... entire series? Penny Arcade made an interesting point on this too. They say that, after reading the descriptions of M and A, the only discernable difference is the length of time the adult content is experienced. To what degree they ask? As they pointed out, many M games involve contant violence for hours on end. How many more hours constitutes an A rating exactly? Leisure Suit Larry involves constant minigames with the end goal being "having sex with the hot foxies, we wear tight pants to show our bulges!", and this can last for hours on end as well.
From what I can tell, changing M to A is NOT going to solve jack. It's just a stunt really to make it look like the ESRB is actually doing something. Well, they are, they are doing what they always do. They slap on a rating with no sense of objective thought. A game that got an E rating on the SNES suddenly has a T rating on the PS (that game being Chrono Trigger). Because they rated FF7 with a T rating, now ALL FF games apparently have a T rating slapped on them despite content (FF1 does NOT have anything a game like Mario doesn't have, which is to say monsters instantly fading away when beaten). OOT managed an E rating, so now no matter what the content all Zelda games are getting an E rating. I suspect the new one will as well. Kingdom Hearts has Disney. Hey no need to play it and see that, according to their own odd standards, it has content on the same level as a Final Fantasy game and would otherwise earn a T (which it really shouldn't, but where's the consistancy?). Here's another. Apparently GE earned a T while Perfect Dark gets an M. The violence level is the same, that is, blood stains on their clothes for the most part. The only difference, the one that apparently "did it" was that the bodies in Perfect Dark took a lot longer to fade away than the ones in GE. Both lasted long enough to tell even the dullest kid "they are dead, not blown clear". Seems a little arbitrary...
So, once again I have to say it would do well if the ESRB first started adopting a policy of deciding some standards for consistancy (perhaps a very thick tome dictating exactly WHAT methods of pleasuring a goat earn a stricter rating). I submit the least arbitrary rating system is still a simple 3 rating one. Anything more can be summed up with notes under the letter. G for "everyone", PG for "think about this" and R for "no seriously, this is NOT for little Billy, letting him in anyway? Okay... whatever...". If they switch to that, with NO stylizing at all mind you, it should be dull as hell to indicate it's serious and not some advertisement to show how cool the game is (that slanted letter design they have now, slanting like it's so cool, it SICKENS me, but at least they took out the staticky background). At least this way the rating system would make some frickin' sense.
But that's only a very small part of this. Once again, the people who actually are BUYING the games (and if they aren't, why exactly do these kids have all this money, and why are you letting them go to the STORE by THEMSELVES at that age?) just don't like to think about having to do any MORE work in raising their kids. Now I get it, raising kids really is very hard and there's a lot of work involved. Parents, as a general rule, aren't lazy good for nothings and do actually take care of their kids, feeding them and everything. But, if they are going to allow them to enjoy today's entertainment at all, they have to take a gestappo approach to it. It's not that today's entertainment is so bad or anything, but if they feel their kids shouldn't be exposed to certain things, they need to take actions themselves to prevent it. Be harsh sometimes in this, as it will be needed. Don't let your kid pick whatever movie or game or music they want without checking it out yourself. Now, a lot of parents don't "play games" and don't want to have to actually sit down and play some video game themselves, feeling like a fool, to make sure it's okay for their kids. But, use some common sense. Don't judge a book entirely on the cover, but the cover IS a bit of a rough guide to what you might find on the inside. IF the cover shows a man inside a futuristic soldier suit holding a gun and aliens are flying around shooting at each other, think to yourself, "might this be a violent game?". Ask around. Generally the people working where they sell games tend to know a little something about games themselves. If you still aren't sure, don't let your kid get it.
That's really all it boils down to. Do your homework. You check to make sure the medicine you take is legimimate and what side effects it has, correct? (I hope so, I hope you don't just take whatever pills your friends gave you from an "all natural" doctor, sheesh, they are PILLS, in what way is THAT collection of chemicals more natural than the ones you get from LEGITIMATE medicine?) Do the same here. It's really not hard to get a rough guide to what to expect in a game with only 5-10 minutes of looking around online. That's not that much time. I mean, as a kid I was lucky to get a new game every few months. If you are getting so many games for your kids so often that a 10 minute search online for each one gets in the way, you really have to reconsider exactly how much stuff you should be getting your kid. Your kid shouldn't feel like they are OWED free stuff. I submit you should hold out JUST enough that they feel LUCKY to get gifts. For me, it was just on the holidays.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)