GTA? Logic and reason, MIA

So the GTA saga is at an end. Oh no! The dreaded Adults Only label. Stores pulling the game from

shelves. Politicians foaming at the mouth. Even Hilary Rodham-Clinton stepped up, realizing there was a bandwagon to hop on to fame and fortune. (Apparently being linked to a President doesn't work well enough anymore. After all, where's Lewinsky these days?)

This entire debacle has made me sick to my stomach. Just when you think you've seen it all, the fates like to go "Oh no you haven't!" and pull something like this. You couldn't make this crap up! The dumbest, most asinine nonsense you could think of, and the real world goes and tops it.

Some modders with too much time on their hands find a way to activate some of the most horrendously awful sex ever seen in a game, and release their little hack for bragging rights. The media got hold of it, politicians start feeling a moistening in their pants at the possibility of riding the fame train, and start blowing their bloated little horns to anyone who?ll listen. Now we?ve seen the game taken from M rating to an AO rating, and all the other nonsense that?s surrounded this entire, sorry situation.

What?s hugely ironic is for all the condemnation GTA has received over the years, it?s ultimately sex that got it pulled from the shelves. Not violence.

If the game had shipped with the pathetic sex scene intact, then fair enough, though it?s probably PG13 at best, and about as stimulating as a dead badger. The fact that you have to download a mod to access it is ridiculous.

By this logic, every game that has a nude patch floating around the net should be put under the microscope by the fame whores of Washington. After all, it?s a mod that activates sexual content, right? Okay, so it?s a slightly different circumstance with GTA, but where is the line drawn? Are developers going to have to start encrypting their textures so people can?t sex their game up?

The fact is, this small victory for the bad guys could be the in they need so they can get their greasy little paws on games and achieve their holy grail of censoring them how they see fit. ?The ESRB has failed our children,? we hear. Now they not only have violence to wave at people, they have pornography! Heaven forbid anyone should see the sex act! Next they?ll be shoving breasts in my face! ... Erm? Sorry, kinda drifted off there? ?Won?t someone think of the children!? I am, thanks, and I don?t want my kids growing up in a world where every entertainment medium is controlled by whores like yourselves, whose interests are sold to the highest bidders.

All parties involved in this debacle should hang their heads in shame. Rockstar, the politicians, and the ESRB. If this were a sport, all parties would be had up by the governing body for bringing it into disrepute. This is the gaming equivalent of what Formula One did at Indianapolis last month. (To quote a recent sporting example.) Idiots. All of them.

NetJak also have a great editorial up on the entire issue, which raises the point I made the other day, about how other games, ones with far worse content, are ignored. For now, though, I?m going to get a very stiff drink, and begin contemplating how this entire fiasco could very well be exactly what the weasels in Washington have been waiting for to ruin gaming.

Cheers?