damned vulpine: Coffee Stirrer (AGD talk Wednesday)

August 13, 2005

Coffee Stirrer (AGD talk Wednesday)

The thing about game developers is that outside of their circles on the Internet and those that they work with, they rarely get to talk to one another as colleagues. So before the time comes, usually at conventions like GDC or AGC, or the odd speaking engagement such as the one about Hot Coffee on Wednesday, everything's bottled up. Opinions run deep, and egos run deeper. Even if they agree, one's always got to top the other.

Damion Schubert, Eric Kinkead, Kent Hudson and Paul Sage, left to right.

But when they disagree, well, there's a reason why there's a warning label on bottle rockets. The lead instigator of the evening was Eric Kinkead, owner of Austin-based Game Titan, and while Kent Hudson (formerly of the now-defunct Ion Storm, now creative director for Midway Austin, formerly Inevitable Entertainment) and Paul Sage (lead designer for Tabula Rasa at NCSoft Austin) were no slouches, they were in general agreement regarding the hidden interactive sex scenes in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and the moral and industrial implications thereof.

Eric was not. And after the initial "Who the hell is THIS guy?" shock wore off, I realized why moderator Damion Schubert brought him on the panel. It almost wouldn't have been worth watching, or writing about. As of this writing, he's still gloating a bit about his performance.

Apologies in advance for the crappy formatting of this report. Edit: First-time readers will want to note my update.

If you squint, you could read it, but from a distance it just looked like nine sheets of paper taped to the wall.

First was the matter of getting there. The event was on the lot for Austin Studios, a section of the now-defunct Austin Airport that's still owned by the city, but the Austin Film Society turned a few of the big hangars into digital film recording studios. Supposedly Troublemaker Studios is in the neighborhood, but I didn't know where, and it was behind a barbed-wire fence from a Texas National Guard post. More to the point, as Damion put it when I asked him where the hell we were, "aka space they could get, cheap."

Opening slide.

The panel was set up in a screening room. Damion opened the talk with slides giving a brief overview of what the "Hot Coffee" mod for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was (but left out one part, which I'll explain later.)

Timeline of Hot Coffee.

Damion then presented a timeline of events related to the Hot Coffee mod. It took eight months in between the initial PS2 release and the PC release, but Hot Coffee v1.0 came two days after the PC release. Six weeks later, Hillary Clinton called for a FTC investigation, Rockstar blamed the modders for creating the content, and another two days passed (!) before it was discovered that the PS2 version of San Andreas had the same content hidden away and could be played using hardware add-ons like the GameShark or Action Replay Max. Most of the timeline thereafter involved political and legal fallout and "ripples" to other aspects of society and the game industry as a whole. It ended with "No More Hot Coffee", a patch released, ironically, the day of the panel.

Damion said that near as he could tell, v1.0 of Hot Coffee was more or less just a change to game data (.ini) files presented with the game, which unlocked the hidden content. He also pointed out that following the re-rating of San Andreas to the "Ao" or "Adults Only" rating, several large retail chains pulled it from shelves and Rockstar Games told its investors to expect a $50 million loss. Also, the House of Representatives vote to call for an FTC investigation into Hot Coffee was 355-21, which to Damion spoke of how easily both parties were willing to rally against it.

What followed was six questions presented to the panel. Damion already listed them here, but it seems best to first list what he, the three panelists, and most of the audience seemed to agree upon.

Rockstar Games, GTA:SA's publisher, employs a bunch of bastards that were bound to get smacked at one point or another, whether they deserved it or not, simply by pushing the envelope of propriety.
The game industry as a whole is fragile enough that it the controversy surrounding Hot Coffee could lead directly to a fall-off in job opportunities for game developers.
The ESRB is a useful tool, at least for what it was originally intended to be -- a ratings system supported internally by the game industry itself.
At least something was intentional about the hidden content that Hot Coffee represents -- certainly it was developed by Rockstar North, and perhaps it was also they who "leaked" the way to unlock that content.
Causal links between objectionable entertainment and objectionable human behavior are hard to track.

Paul Sage was first to speak on the "What went wrong?" question, pointing the finger at Rockstar for not taking out every line of code associated with the sex scenes, if indeed they didn't want it released. If it was hidden by mistake or by improper procedure, he said, Rockstar should have come clean right away. Kent Hudson chimed in on that, saying that not coming clean was an opening for "the media" to blow the issue out of proportion.

Then it was Eric Kinkead's turn. Admitting he'd never played any of the GTA games ("Killing cops doesn't sound like it'd appeal to me,") he quickly made it clear that not only should the game industry as a whole feel ashamed of itself for allowing games like GTA to be produced, it also deserves whatever penalties get put in place by world governments as a result. He blasted Rockstar's next game, "Bully", which is apparently about private-school children beating each other up (at least inasmuch as GTA is about shooting police officers in the head,) as another example of game developers' lack of "social responsibility" and insensitivity to people who have been real victims of violence.

At this point there was an obvious hush in the room.

Kinkead distanced himself as he would throughout the rest of the talk, ("I produce games for children, this is actually good for my business") but gave several dire warnings ("There's a subculture of NORMAL people out there, that don't think Buffy the Vampire Slayer is good entertainment") and made several comments that I had trouble capturing in context because I was so flabbergasted ("When I think of stuff meant for 'adults,' I think Alan Alda, cheese and Seinfeld.")

He said he wasn't proposing to do away with all violent video games ("I grew up on Ultima 3") but he suggested that violence has become a focus rather than an enhancement for creative and abstract game design. The ESRB was created "so we could watch ourselves," he said, but it shouldn't be a convenient excuse, and neither should the First Amendment. "'Freedom of speech' is going to have to be regulated somehow. ... We make toys for a living, people. We are a privileged few ... I'm not scared at all. Let the government regulate me."

Sage's initial retort is that there should be no such thing as social responsibility when it comes to a designer making a game -- the only thing that a designer should be true to is his or her own sense of what should be in the game. He put the onus of protection on parents, himself included for the sake of his own children. His suggestion that U.S. government action against video games was a waste of money got a spatter of applause from the audience.

Damion pointed out that the generally-accepted average age of video gamers is 29, which Eric disputed, suggesting that 60 percent of them were age 16 or younger, and ran the ball even further saying that gaming was "a greedy-ass industry that needed to get kicked in the ass" and that Rockstar and its parent Take 2 Games in particular had "showed its ass and people have been waiting to spank it for a long time."

It went on like that until the discussion about whether the issue was really about sex in gaming. Kent Hudson suggested that sex in any sort of entertainment is a hot-button issue, at least in America. "I wish this country could be more like France," Eric retorted, referring to France's aversion to violence instead of sex. Sage criticized Clinton for (supposedly) not talking to any game developers before she brought up the FTC investigation, and Eric shot back that maybe game developers should have talked to her first, or to anyone else with political clout outside of the game industry itself. "I talk to family groups. It boggles my mind that we don't do this. ... Why can't we appeal to a larger 'normal' audience? You wanna know why? Money."

Discussing the ESRB itself, Kent admitted that the system is set up such that no one in the position of rating games could possibly have time to play through hours and hours of game content. Rather, ratings are often based on a non-interactive movie of what happens in game. "They have to take what the developers give them," he said. That discussion dovetailed into the question about modding games, which Sage pointed out throws out all concept of developer responsibility, as customers could change whatever they wanted, with little recourse. "I dare anyone to modify my games," Eric replied. "[My lawyer] will put the smack down on thee."

Graphs on violence and causal relationships thereof.

Damion then presented a slide with examples of studies trying to find causal relationships between violence and games. The first two suggested that throughout the 1990s, since the Sony PlayStation was introduced, violent crime could have gone down in America. The third, comparing arrest rates for crimes and the reporting thereof by victims and perpetrators (the last being flat while the other three have dipped) suggests that maybe violent crime is occurring at the same rate, but some victims are less willing to report it.

"Correlation doesn't imply causality," Kent said, dismissing the first two graphs entirely. Paul added that economic status could be a far better indicator of violence. "I'm not sure that the dangers of violent video games are understated," he added, "but I'm pretty sure the danger of showing images of war on TV is understated."

What does this mean for player-created content in games? Kent expressed his love of projects like "A Few Good G-Men" early on in the talk, and questioned whether there was any practical way to control what or how players chose to modify a game. Damion suggested that at least in the first-person shooter, the last three great innovations -- Capture The Flag, Team Fortress and Counter-Strike -- all originated from mods. Kent said pro developers ought to facilitate mod projects more often, but Damion pointed out that at least id Software have suggested that they would try and make their games less modifyable in part because of the Hot Coffee controversy.

Notes:

The part about Hot Coffee that Damion's presentation neglected to mention (it might have been assumed that everyone knew what was involved, but at least one panel member -- Eric -- admitted he'd never played GTA: SA because it didn't appeal to him) was what normally happens in game without the mod installed. None of the following four paragraphs was covered at the talk.

CJ, the main character, can have up to six "girlfriends" scattered throughout the game. Each represents an optional "mission," which like most in the game, are unnecessary to "complete" the game story. CJ can go on "dates" where he either takes the girlfriend out for a drive, takes her out to eat, or dancing, then takes her home. Going on enough successful dates increases a "progress" meter with each girlfriend, and maxing out the meter gains access to special clothing outfits for CJ (listed here.)

If the progress is high enough, upon taking the girlfriend home after a successful date she will ask CJ if he wants to come in for "coffee," which is meant as a euphemism for sex. If CJ says yes, the game screen fades to black, then fades up on the exterior of the girlfriend's house, with the camera view bouncing up and down, with muffled groans in the background. In the unmodified game, the progress meter will go up regardless of whether CJ says yes or no to "coffee."

With "Hot Coffee" installed, CJ still has the option to refuse sex, and progress will go up if he does (!) If he says yes, however, the scene cuts to the inside of the girlfriend's house, and the interactive sex scene begins. The "game" consists of pushing up and down on the keys or joystick (if you're playing the PS2 version) in "rhythm" to the character's undulations on the bed, and there are three "positions" (standard missionary, "furniture" with her legs up and her ankles over CJ's shoulders, and doggy-style, but never mind) that seem to have no bearing on success. The only directions are to follow the "rhythm" and cause the "excitement" thermometer-bar to reach maximum. Failure to do so within a time frame will produce the message "Failure to please a woman is a CRIME!" and CJ will find himself outside the house, with his "progress with girlfriend" meter down one notch.

My personal experience with Hot Coffee installed was ... unfulfilling. It's harder than it looks (it's hard to tell just by watching the characters move what the "rhythm" is, and if you don't get the rhythm right away, it slows down and is even harder to read.) Watching these poorly-rendered characters bump and grind was fun for novelty's sake once, but not especially fun for the sake of the overall game. This is why I agree with the premise that this could have been obscured by Rockstar just because it wasn't fun enough -- but if that were the case, they should have taken out half the boring, useless side missions that were not fun and cluttered up the game.
Everett Lee asked a clarification to Damion's suggestion that Hot Coffee originated with a simple .ini file change. He told me later when I asked about it, "If the line was present and just set to false, I believe it was Rockstar's intent to later leak the mod. As you know, it is common practice to include cheat codes in games and then later release them to boost sales or buzz about the game later on. If they were really looking to remove the feature from the game, they would have made a code change and data change, instead of just a data change. Granted, the easiest and safest thing is to just make a data change from true to false. But you should question, why the line in the .ini file wasn't just removed altogether."
Mike McShaffry and Bob McGoldrick.
A lot of people I knew showed up at the event. Besides Damion, there were Sara Jensen and Sean Dahlberg from Wolfpack Studios, and ex-Wolfpack people in attendance included Everett Lee (now at Digital Anvil), Tre Zieman (Breakaway Games) and Brian Urbanek (Ninjaneering). Also got to shake hands with Mike McShaffry (studio boss at Breakaway, featured in an earlier report) and Bob McGoldrick, interim director of ACC's High Technology Institute and coordinator of its new game development program.
Quoc Tran at the sign-in table. They moved it inside after it started to rain a little.
Quoc Tran, director of AGD, is quite a guy. The group is starting to re-tool its monthly meeting structure of late, varying the programming to keep things fresh and announcing a standing rule for all meetings, which goes something like, "If thou desirest a job in yon game industry, thou shalt not pester those who already have jobs, lest they stop coming to the events." Sensible, really. Last thing I want to look like is a guy with his hand out, anyway.
Following the talk, I pointed out to Damion that he'd left out the description of "Hot Coffee" that explained its name, and offered another explanation for Rockstar's behavior, which I admitted sounded implausible: What if they were going for social commentary? They'd managed to make a killing off Grand Theft Auto 3 and the Vice City and San Andreas sequels, which were all extremely violent to the point of being sociopathic (in addition to being fun.) What if throwing in some weak interactive sex into the third game and hiding it was a way to thumb their noses at the American sense of propriety about sex as opposed to violence?

Damion's answer: "I don't think they're that smart."

He's probably right.