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San Andreas recalled? If hardcore pornography was submitted for approval by the MPAA do you know what it would receive? An NC-17. Why? That’s the strictest rating that the MPAA has. How about in the case of music albums? Oh, wait, they don’t have age-limits. They only have one sticker that is absent if the album is completely wholesome (in a mind-numbingly pointless way.) What in San Andreas would require someone be 18 years or older to purchase that they could not get at the age of 17 from a film? Anyone? So why is 17 years old inappropriate for people to buy this game at? I’ve seen posts calling this decision ‘saddening’ and ‘out of hand’, but it’s more than that. It’s complete bullshit. And the worst part of it? It’s all voluntary.

And I know it’s easy for someone (namely me) to talk trash when they have nothing on the line, but at what point is it the job of Rockstar to coddle every child that may possibly play their game? Obviously even they shied away from releasing the actual content for people to play. Think about that. Rockstar said “okay, this is too much.” This is the Rockstar that said killing people in GTA3 is equivalent to Pac-Man eating dots! (And they were right.) Come to think of it, I’m not disappointed about all of this uproar about the content. I’m disappointed that Rockstar was so quick to buckle. And I’m downright pissed that Rockstar didn’t include it from day one. I’m pro-“entertainment with sick and twisted shit.” Requiem For A Dream was an amazing movie. Go ahead, give it the AO rating. People will still buy it. It’s Grand Theft Auto for Christ’s sake.

In an interview over at Cathode Tan, Jeff Freeman (a designer with Star Wars Galaxies, and more impressively a parent,) best summed up the the problem by talking about the attitude of most parents. “I can’t stop my little children from playing 37 hours a week of Baby-Killer 3, because I don’t understand this little letter on the box it came in!”

In fact, Mr. Freeman even goes on to make another great point in his blog about abolishing either the M or the AO rating. Why differentiate between 17 and 18 at all? Y’know, I like that Freeman guy. Hell, I’m tempted to go buy Star Wars: Galaxies in support of such a common sense attitude. Wonder how much I can trade in my copy of San Andreas for…

This whole post is more or less a look at another post, this post. David Jaffe, designer of the fantastical PS2 game God of War, made a post a few weeks ago regarding a Deconstruction Group he sat in on. The Deconstruction Group, in David’s words:

It was started by the head of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences along with two other key industry folks (one is a game writer, the other heads up the USC game department). Every 3-6 weeks the group takes over a game company’s conference room in So Cal (this week it was Naugty Dog), invites a bunch game industry folks, and has a few USC grad students play the key parts of interesting and popular games. As they play, the indsutry types network and chat and discuss the game, while the grad students deconstruct the game, explaining what worked for them, what did not, etc….It’s a really cool idea and helps those of us that are sometimes too busy making our own games to explore the newer titles. It’s also a nice time to meet up with people in the biz, say hey to old buddies, and make new ones!

Sounds like a great concept to me. He goes on to say “God of War was lots of fun to see being played, chat about,etc….BUT it was when Psychonauts came up that sparks started to fly.” And a discussion about developer’s rights ensued. He goes on to say “those publisher execs are right in that consumers purchase brands, not games made by specific teams or by specific designers….but they are only right FOR THE TIME BEING….” My God this guy needs to spend more time with Dave Perry, Jason Rubin, and Scott Miller. The time is now! Seize the day! Etc!

Of course the “knock-out punch” in my book is Jason Booth saying “It allways cracks me up when publishers say that branding the developer dilutes the brand of the title. If that were the case, then they wouldn’t put “EA” on the box at all. Try pitching that to them.”

The moral of this post? Just a bunch of questions. The Deconstruction Group is a great idea, and I have to wonder how common such things are. And seriously, what are some developers thinking? “It’s okay if I don’t get credit. One day people will recognize our genius on their own?!”

I mean, most casual gamers I know think that EA makes all of the games with ‘EA’ on them. Good job developers. Since Atari you’ve done little but give yourself over as indentured servants to publishers for the glorious opportunity to work in games. As a result, when Atari crashed publishers came around and bought everything for pennies on the dollar and they continue to do it today as a course of normal business that it’s quickly forgotten. EA bought Criterion for $48 million. You don’t think Burnout, the upcoming Black, and Renderware are worth that much? It’s like someone wanted to get rid of Criterion.

And how scary is it when developers are okay with EA saying “having your game associated with you will hurt the game,” but I and others like me, folks who wants to get jobs desperately, have huge issues with applying at EA?

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.