"Hot Coffee" - attribute responsibility not blame!

As a follow-up to yesterday’s blog, it now seems that some of the parties involved in either creating or criticising “Hot Coffee” are shifting their focus and trying to attribute the blame to modders. Can everyone say scapegoat?

It seems that the ESRB plans to revise its rating for the game at the centre of this fracas to “Adult”. As a result, the publisher has already revised down their earnings projections due to a potential loss in sales. So what started out as a developer/publisher saying, ‘it wasn’t us’ to avoid responsibility for a controversy, has suddenly become significantly more serious. The publisher is going to lose money and they will want to, firstly, blame someone, and secondly, implement policies and procedures to give their shareholders confidence that it wont happen again, i.e. making the EULA more strict by explicitly prohibiting modification and/or locking down the code and game content. Concerned third-parties – politicians, activists and commentators of various persuasions and degrees of knowledge – will bay for blood, commonly via the media. This will only serve to further inflame the situation without necessarily acting to assist in its clarification or resolution.

Now, I am not denying that the PC version of “Hot Coffee” has apparently been modified, but the fact remains that the core of the mini-game – code, art and animations – had to part of the original game. For the developer/publisher to lay blame for “Hot Coffee” on modders is cowardly.

I firmly believe that the modification of computer games is important and ultimately beneficial to the games industry. In addition to developing new talent and providing a testing ground for new game developers, it also represents a cost-neutral mechanism for testing new game ideas in the market place. Counter-Strike is a prime example of a modification that proved the commercial viability of a specific online, competitive multi-player genre. I dare say that the Battlefield 1942 modification “Desert Combat” proved to DICE, and its publisher, the commercial viability of a Battlefield game set in the modern arena – hence the development and release of Battlefield 2.

I don’t, by the way, deny that some modifications are highly questionable in terms of their mortality and worth as a mechanism for testing game concepts. I hold nothing but contempt for individual who modified “Hot Coffee” to make it even more explicit. In situations such as this, I firmly believe that developers/publishers have the right and responsibility to issue cease and desist orders to those involved. At the same time, the industry needs to proactively protect the role of modders and the mechanisms/tools for modifying their games.

In my opinion, the way forward from the “Hot Coffee’ controversy needs to be considered in a non-reactionary manner. My advice, for what it is worth, is as follows.

• Developers/publishers need to ensure that their games do not include hidden code or mini-games that would affect the rating their game receives.
• Developers/publishers should promote responsible modification of their games and, at the same time, protect their intellectual property and the integrity of their brand.
• Bodies like the ESRB need to look at games more carefully before rating them. To reduce the time this takes, they could randomly play segments of each game they rate.
• Ratings notifications need to be altered, where applicable, to include a clear statement that the game can be modified by downloadable content. This should not affect the rating of the game.
• Parents of young children and adolescents should accept the responsibility of monitoring and being aware of their child’s gaming habits. A game given the ESRB M rating is not intended for 13 year-old children!

Reactionaries to “Hot Coffee” need to be countered and the responsibility for this fiasco needs to be attributed to the parties genuinely at fault – the developer/publisher. The blame game is irrelevant in the long term. Sensible and viable solutions need to be developed. These need to be concerned with the acceptance of responsibility by game developers, publishers, ratings bodies/councils, modders and consumers (and their parents, where applicable).

[Caveat: yes, I am baised in this matter. I am a modder, though I have NEVER created morally-questionable nor illegal content. My career as a professional level designer is a direct result of my work as a modder. I do, however, believe that accountability and responsibility should be central to the actions of both commercial game developers and modders alike.]

One step forward, two steps back

In its struggle to be taken seriously as a form of entertainment, the games industry has weathered many fire storms of controversy. Often criticism of computer games – for example they lead to antisocial, immoral, violent or illegal behaviour – seem to be fuelled by ignorance and fanned by people with irretrievable biases. Members and supporters of the industry have spent considerable time fighting the fires of criticism. Making headway on this issue in the face of well-publicised, media-friendly sensationalism posing as logical criticism has been difficult, but some ground has been made. After a great deal of effort, the general perception of the games industry takes one step forward, then a completely avoidable controversy like “Hot Coffee” strikes and it is time to take two steps back!

I don’t want to elaborate on the nature of “Hot Coffee” except to say that it is a mini-game that is supposedly hidden in a product which has already drawn a lot of criticism for its content. The developer of the game denied they were responsible for “Hot Coffee”, suggesting that unknown parties had hacked and recompiled the code to create the mini-game. Reliable sources have argued that “Hot Coffee” was part of the original code because it can be found in the PS2 version of the game, which is, apparently, not modifiable like the PC version.

Computer games, like movies, are published for specfic segments of a diverse market. Supporters of the industry have emphasised that games are not meant solely for children. It seems to me that a significant proportion of games are developed for adults. Unfortunately, the misconception that games are meant for children has lead to problems of people playing games that are unsuitable. Ratings systems have been implemented to allow consumers to make reasonable judgements about the suitability of games. Therefore, consumers need to be able to trust rating systems.

The presence of “Hot Coffee”, if known by the ESRB (or its equivalent in other countries), may well have resulted in a higher rating. Assuming that the mini-game was part of the original code and the ERSB was not advised, the developer/publisher has acted very irresponsibly, to put it mildly.

Developers/publishers must accept their responsibility to consumers and declare or remove questionable content from their games. If a company wants to include confronting or explicit content in their games, they must be prepared to accept a higher-rating. I suspect that an “adult” rating has a negative impact on off-the-shelf sales, so most developers/publishers would try to avoid that rating. It is, however, highly irresponsible to hide confronting or explicit content in the game where ratings boards can’t find nor access it.

Try as I might, I can’t avoid the mental image of a design meeting where a staff member suggests, like a giggling, hormone-ravaged teenager, the inclusion a hidden mini-game about @*#$*# (insert smutty or immature idea here). This would be followed by equally immature laughter and testosterone-driven calls of agreement. The only problem is, the room is full of mid twenty- to early thirty-something men who should know better!

The games industry needs to stop being its own worst enemy.