July 2005

The perfect “Hot Coffee” analogy

Eureka! I’ve found an analogy that conveys to those (often non-programmers?) who don’t get why I don’t hold Rockstar North/Take-Two responsible.

If I downloaded and applied a patch to San Andreas that caused the game to crash and never work until I uninstalled and re-installed the entire game, does that mean Rockstar/Take-Two put out a shoddy product? Do they owe me a refund? Because I can write such a patch in a heartbeat. Hell, I can do that for any game. If I did, would it be the job of Rockstar North/Take-Two to make sure that such code changes didn’t affect the game? If not, why not? It’s the exact same thing that Patrick Wildenborg did to make the ‘Hot Coffee’ missions playable? If RN/TT is responsible in his case, why not mine?

And if you think that they are responsible for my changing the code to introduce a crashing bug… Wow.

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Someone bitchslap Greg Costikyan

Seriously, after this post… I don’t see the problem why anyone should be angry with Rockstar or Take Two over the Hot Coffee mod. At least not yet. I, like Greg Costikyan, assume that the content (minigame code, animations, and other resource files, are all included on the San Andreas disc. (edit: It is. Here are the Action Replay Max codes to play it on your PS2.) But he (and others) take Rockstar to task for even allowing it on the disc, available to players or not. From his blog:

However, I think it likelier that this is entirely and wholly intentional. It is, in fact, standard industry practice to include game features that are not “public,” and release knowledge of them later semi-surreptitiously, to spur a little more gamer interest and public exposure. That’s why we have cheats.

(…)

So if I’m right–that is, if the material is indeed on the disc, and Rockstar not only knew but approved its inclusion–Rockstar seriously deserves a bitch-slapping.

Here’s what I proposed: The ESRB should refuse to give any Take Two product a rating for the next two years. They can release their games as unrated if they want–and good luck getting them into Wal-Mart.

I think that’s a bit much. It’s no secret that developers leave extra features hidden for later release. But it’s also no secret that developers often leave junk data on discs. Just read up on Halo, where the flame-thrower, gravity gun, and other items were discovered. Fable left traces of items, characters, and even an unfinished level on the gamedisc. Knights of the Old Republic 2 left the majority of the original ending to the game, that was completely scrapped and replaced by a much-lamented “shoddier” ending in time to make their release date, all on the game disc. And players love to look on discs to see what else developers have left behind. So, was it obvious that someone would look around San Andreas? I would say no. Because I’ve never heard of someone looking on the other GTA discs for loose info. Why not? I don’t know. But I haven’t heard of it.

The real question comes in when you ask the question of “how did the patch author find out about this?” If he did it by searching the disc and finding it through old-fashioned ingenuity? Fine. Kudos to him and everyone should get off of Rockstar’s back. A developer having unintentional material unearthed from a disc was going to happen one day, and it’s today. This is a warning to all developers. They now all know. But if Take Two did this on purpose, then I’m for a punishment, but two years of no rated games? How about, instead, we try to think up new ways to educate non-gamers on how games are just as relevant as any other field? No movie would be rated NC-17 for minute-long depictions of sexual scenes. And the number of unnecessary times it can be played, like the number of times a viewer would rewind a movie to watch the scene, is inconsequential. Do we really want to do our best to set the bar so low for AO games?

So, please. Someone bitchslap Greg Costikyan. (I almost apologize for the attention-whoring post title. It was too good to resist! :D Nothing but love, Greg! Nothing but love!)

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I’m Jeffool. Welcome to my blog.

Hi. I’m new to gameblogging. Hell, I’m practically new to blogging. Sure I’ve got four posts, but those are largely posts that were started when I initially got the bug to blog. So, this is what I should’ve started off with but never got around to, the introduction. Hi, I’m Jeffool. Sound silly? I choose Jeffool partly for branding reasons (because my real name, “Jeff Bridges” is impossible to google and get results for me,) and partly because, well, I’ve used it for so long in games and on the internet that I’m sticking with it. It’s worked fine for me so far.

I started blogging because I like to talk (, or write as it is,) and conversation helps me flesh out my ideas and opinions. I have no doubts about no one/few people reading this, and that’s cool. It’s just a place for me to stretch my mental legs as it is. I’m a programmer by habit; I have an Associates of Science from Full Sail. (Which isn’t a bad place, despite the rumors. There’s some good teachers there.) While in school I found Jamie Fristrom’s blog. Before, I was anti-blog, but now, well, I am a blogger. Blame him.

I do hope to one day join the commercial games industry, and to be honest, I want to change the world. Hey, why half-ass it? I have a bit of an ego sometimes. But I think I’m generally an affable guy. I enjoy programming, but that’s not why I chose games. I chose games because I want to make my own games. Programming is a means to do that. Just like if someone wanted to make their own comic, they better learn to draw.

More or less, I’m just a gamer with a blog.

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