Gaming's 10 Biggest Scandals 96
GamePolitics has a list of ten of the most well known gaming scandals to hit the games industry. Starting back in 1993 with the senate hearings on Night Trap (a game that arguably led to today's ESRB), the list catalogs some things that the companies responsible would probably just as soon forget. "Hot Coffee (2005) - needs no introduction. Cheeky Rockstar programmers left hidden sex animations (accidentally or otherwise) buried in the PS2 code of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Modders made sure they didn't stay buried for long. Rockstar's denials only made things worse. And then Hillary got involved ..." At the post's close they call for additional nominations, as it's definitely not an exhaustive list. They left off the ESRB's decision to re-rate Oblivion , for example. What 'scandalous' gaming events can you see rating with this topics?
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Still, HL2 did turn out pretty good even with all the stuff they cut out.
Do I nalbar? (Score:1)
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I'll just use rot13.com
Night Trap (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Night Trap (Score:5, Informative)
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WhereTF is Mortal Kombat? (Score:5, Informative)
e.g.,
http://www.gamespot.com/features/6090892/p-5.html [gamespot.com]
It looks like this "article" was written in about 5 minutes and would probably get a C in your average sixth-grade English class if judged for intellectual content.
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And how is Phantom not on that last? How many millions of dollars spent with nothing to really show?
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Then I noticed the author considers Microsoft extending warranties and making customers with broken systems happy a scandal, too, and he suddenly became someone I don't consider bright enough to give his words much credence.
As for numbers, anyone with a few brain cells understands public companies don't disclose things they don't have to. Then again, he may just be a kid and doesn't know
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Left out Carmageddon too (Score:5, Informative)
Re:WhereTF is Mortal Kombat? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:WhereTF is Mortal Kombat? (Score:5, Informative)
Damn you submitter for portraying one of my favorite sites in a bad light!
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Re:WhereTF is Mortal Kombat? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Digg it" link at the bottom of the article, check.
Welcome to the new age of "publishing".
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Welcome to the blogosphere!
Hit whoring (Score:2, Insightful)
Erm... (Score:1)
Custer's Revenge? (Score:5, Funny)
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quake in the smithsonian (Score:3, Funny)
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Obviously later versions have added native TCP (it is still played today).
Birdo! (Score:1, Funny)
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Jack Thompson (Score:3, Insightful)
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He's not worth mentioning.
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No real impact? He's the best publicity that certain publishers could hope for!
The guy game? (Score:3, Interesting)
What about NARC? (Score:1)
Erm.. (Score:2)
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The Star Wars Galaxies NGE should be there (Score:5, Informative)
The NGE also ruined SOE's reputation basically for good. Not that the rest of Sony wasn't helping.
hello? (Score:1)
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Tagged: Top10 (Score:3, Interesting)
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Of course, one could also just filter out anything posted by Zonk, since he's the major offender in that regard.
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The only reason I read this one was to see what scandals I might not have heard about. I disagree with the inclusion of Columbine; that wasn't a video game industry scandal. That was a "make the parents feel better about what their little monsters did by blaming a video game" scandal trumped up with little basis other than "oh th
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I bet they did... (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, they were busy blaming everything they could get their hands on for Columbine. There was so much blame that even on PBS, there was barely time left to mourn...
Here's my all-time favorite quote, though:
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More relevantly, maybe if enough people tag it as top10 and filter out top10 stories, the Slashdot editors will take the hint -- thus resulting in less top10 stories and more relevant ones.
How about.... (Score:3, Interesting)
DC Sniper (Score:2)
Somehow the PS3 launch is more of a scandal that an actual mass murderer blaming a video game for training him how to kill people.
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Ridiculous? I find your conclusion just as or more so. Neither GTA nor a FPS (none that I'm aware of) really show how to hold, fire, care for, and maintain a firearm. But either can easily point out tactical and strategic positions for shooting from a distance.
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But either can easily point out tactical and strategic positions for shooting from a distance.
Didn't he shoot people from the trunk of a car?
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Nintendo Power (Score:2)
How about something pre-Nintendo? (Score:2)
Pac-Man vs K.C. Munchkin [wikipedia.org]
and the Death Race arcade game [wikipedia.org]
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I think this article is pretty lame, as most of the "10 biggest" scandals all happen to be within the last two years. I find that pretty hard to believe.
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I get the feeling that this list was written by somebody that thinks that Nintendo invented the video game.
Carmageddon. (Score:1)
Sadly later versions of this game removed the running over of pedestrians for points. Though the multiplayer in later versions was entertaining.
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EVE Online (Score:5, Interesting)
The trouble with Rockstar (Score:1, Troll)
Vice City helped set the stage.
Rockstar North, based in Scotland, enraged ethnic communities in Miami.
Rockstar came into the arena with a reputation for pushing the limits of public tolerance for violence in the M-rated game - and touched a raw nerve simply by being so far removed physically from the American inner
Let's not forget some historical controversies (Score:4, Interesting)
Christian Conservative backlash over Pokemon is one of them - summoning demons, doing demonic acts, James the cross-dresser, etc. As well as Jewish backlash against Pokemon because one of the Japanese card had the manji character on it (essentially a swastika), even though it was in use for thousands of years prior to World War II, and African American protests over the character Jynx, which was based upon a reference to picadilly characters in old Japanese comics. Oh, and the epileptic seizures caused by an episode of Pokemon.
Also consider the Gizmondo, which had everything from a trashed 1 million dollar ferrari to the Swedish mafia. Oh yeah, and Phantom.
Then there was that lawsuit Universal Studios threw against Nintendo in the early days over the creative license of Donkey Kong. Nintendo won, by the way. And got Universal to pay off their legal fees.
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but they do report an Islamic one :
http://www.jewishaz.com/jewishnews/010427/pokemon
"Oblivion scandal" shame for ESBR. (Score:5, Interesting)
Oblivion originally used the same skin for both male and female models. Males had normal male chests with normal nipples on them. Female models had an extra unremovable piece of clothing - a bra or a strap of cloth, or some other halter, so the breasts never show. Except a mod removed the piece of clothing and what you got were stretched, misplaced textures of nipples that came from the male body.
Result? "Bethesda tried to sneak adult content into the game!" outrage. And re-rating it.
Incidentially, the male nipples appearing on female models were more offensive (and caused re-rating the game) than a mission to murder all children of a mother, then the mother herself, or performing a live sacrifice (ok, not actually human, but sentient...), or murdering innocent citizens on behalf of a schizophrenic madman... oh well, things that kids shouldn't be allowed to play. But cheating, stealing, murdering innocents in cool blood, that was all OK to ESBR. Piss-poor textures of nipples weren't.
False (Score:3, Interesting)
An
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With 1.1 patch or without?
AFAIK "nipple-free female skin textures" were added in the patch.
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Still, it was hardly the first game to ship with art th
Columbine RPG vs. Postal (Score:3, Interesting)
You basically ran around with the sole purpose of killing a sufficient percentage of "hostiles" in the city. Wounded people would crawl along the ground leaving a trail of blood [mobygames.com], crying in pain saying things like "I can't feel my legs!" or "I can't breathe!"... The audio in this game really completes the disturbing atmosphere. The ambient sound is some of the most creepy stuff I've heard in a game since, especially during some of the loading screens.
Oh, did I mention the infamous marching band scene [mobygames.com]? (A marching band is parading through town playing music - you can guess as to the craziness that ensues when you lob a molotov cocktail in the middle of the group)...
During all of this, whether you're on a senseless killing rampage or simply defending yourself from people trying to kill you is left for you to speculate - the loading screens give a bit of diary-style text written from the perspective of the player character, but that's all you have to go on. While he claims everyone is out to get him, as you progress further into the game you really begin to feel like maybe 'you' are just a psycho killer who is completely delusional, killing innocent people who are only armed because they know there's some rampaging killer on the loose. Gee, sound familiar at all to the "everyone is out to get me" attitude of basically every school shooter in recent history? Not to mention that the player character is wearing a full-length trenchcoat, no less.
So, after hearing all this, and the fact that it was a game avidly played by at least three of the most infamous school shooters, I have trouble believing it wouldn't be a larger influence behind someone's violent actions than a low-tech "fan made" style of game (not to mention that Kimveer very likely just put "Columbine RPG" on his list of favorite games for the sheer purpose of maintaining a certain image of himself).
Of course, I just spent all that time explaining something that any journalist would never even have been aware of - they just jump on the Columbine RPG thing just because of its name and reputation, despite how blatantly more extreme and disturbing Postal is. Regardless, Postal is definitely a key game that has gone largely overlooked despite its significance/value to at least a few notorious school shooters...
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Of course, many people that wouldn't enjoy ending the lives of real people, would also find it interesting
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Actually, I didn't intentionally indicate causation of any kind, JUST the correlation. I did indeed refer to some journalists "blaming" the Kimveer Gill thing on Columbine RPG, but believe me, I don't share the same views. Not to mention, what's this about "admiring" the journalists? I personally think they're fucking retards... heh!
I didn't even bother discussing what you wrote above because it's jus
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