ShadowPaladin V1.0

The second one is wrong. Playing certain games heighten violent responses in certain people tested. This isnt so much about the games as it is about the developer trying to slip things by the ratings boards. This is a deliberate effort to avoid the rules set in place and thus supply the game to people who should not have it by law. Now personally I think the rules are so much bollocks, especially the sex ones where you can be rutting like rabbits at the age of 16. But you cant watch the same in a film till your 18. But being able to switch on hidden content by flipping a switch or adding a small file, is something no responsible parent is going to be comfortable with.

The most logical thing I can see coming from this is games being rated for content on the disk, and the ratings boards being much more pushy about just what is on the disk that they are not being shown. This already happens on DvD's with "extra content". Anything with the potential to raise the certification out of the box should be taken into a account and the game certified accordingly. So even if NwN II for example shipped with very U friendly campaign (wont happen , its just an example) but has very R rated stuff in the toolset, then it needs to be rated R.

Then why deny it ? This is a company who's response to someone saying you can suffocate people with a plastic bag (manhunt) was so ****ing what.

Well thats one of the things this may lead to. A much stricter control on unused content for "easy modding" to get around the ratings rules. As I recall when Carmageddon went on sale there was a code on the official website to turn the green blood red. Really couldnt see that happening these days without some serious wrist slapping. It's probably not too difficult to prove a case that certain content makes these questionable mods easier to make. For example without the content on the KOTORII disk, the restoration project would be a total non starter. As such it's probably not beyond some legal eagle to argue that the inclusion of that content contributed to whatever mod comes out. It's interesting in that the restoration project is equally likely to up the rating that KOTOR II got, only in this case it's not a game likely to get noticed (since Obsidian isnt under the same sort of scrutiny RockStar is). Lucas Arts on the other hand is a different matter.

Unlikely otherwise RockStar would not be going out of their way to deny it.

They are simply going to say if you never intended it to be seen why was it left on the disk? Besides they have already denied they were responsible so if it turns out they are , they are basically screwed when it comes to any sort of defence. It could have implications for things like the restoration project. Or even games like NwN which are intended to be mod friendly. It's just a case of seeing how this gets dealt with. I'm sure they know the term now.. But politicians dont like the idea of things free of responsibilty, they need to blame someone.

That isnt the point. The point is if they broke the rules they get punished and there are a lot of people lining up to have a go at RockStar for whatever reason.

No your still a festering corpse go back to sleep. Maybe you will make it as an NWNII expansion one day.

I'd say that depends very much on whether it was made by third parties, or simply an unlocked part of the game. Have to wait and see what the investigation turns up.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}> This is from the PEGI certification form. This assessment form should only be completed after a full viewing of the game concerned by a person who is authorised to commit the company to the answers given. Incorrect answers can damage the credibility of the age-rating system, could put your company at risk of legal action and lead to complaints from the public. Always check your answers. The ISFE administrator reserves the right to view any game given a 16+ or 18+ voluntary rating and a random sample of games given a lower voluntary rating before confirming the voluntary rating being applied for. An ISFE voluntary age-rating label cannot be used without the confirmation of ISFE administrator. The porn file was never part of the game which is probably why they got away with it (bet someone got fired though) This is a totally different thing.

I think thats true as long as you have made every attempt to safeguard against it. If you have been lax , for example selling something that you shouldnt have to someone you will get slammed for it. I would imagine at the very least you are going to have to be more careful about the "unused" files you leave on a disk. It's also worth noting your not dealing with rational people here, but people with an agenda.

Since always depending on your age. It matters a lot to the people who do the ratings. Because if it was left on the disk , then the only conclusion is they wanted it to be seen. In which case they breached the contract they made when the submitted the game. It may sound trivial but everyone seems rather serious about it. Rockstar have vehemently denied anything to do with it where as normally they revel in the "bad press".

Well Hot Coffee violates the agreement that rockstar signed when they submitted the game for certification. This may even lead to it being pulled in Australia (they have weird ratings). And being reclassified in other countries(if it turns out to be hidden content). It's the first time anything like this has gotten this sort of media attention and thats thrown up all sorts of questions now on just what sort of mods are being distributed, and how they can hold someone responsible for them. Favourite target right now seems to be whoever made the game. What no one seems to know is if this was a mod that was created or it was simply something to unlock hidden content Rockstar slipped in. Rockstar are denying everything since the whole thing exploded.

Makes not a jot of difference if it's illegal. ESBR are pretty upset to put it mildly.

Theres a mini game called "hot coffee" which may or may not have been part of GTA. Rockstar is denying they have anything to do with it. The inplication is that because you can use a video game to do something illegal that the developers may be responsible for the illegal content. Since they provided what made the illegal act possible(the game).

We were in a hotel room with Rockstar yesterday. "Hot Coffee" was neither served nor offered. Rubbish intro out of the way - we were sitting here earlier thinking about all this excitement surrounding unlockable sex mini-games in GTA: San Andreas, which have been dubbed Hot Coffee for reasons we can't be bothered to look up, and something crossed our minds. A bad thing. A thing that, were it to play out, would be bad news for gamers, mod makers, developers and publishers, who are probably already exchanging nervous glances over the ubiquitous water cooler regardless. And yet, at the same time, a thing that's not completely unimaginable. Advertisement While we'd imagine that vocal proponents of modding, like Half-Life developer Valve and the Doom scribes at id Software, are unlikely to change any of their plans in light of this latest storm-in-a-coffee-mug media explosion, the screaming politicians might make an impression on smaller publishers and developers. Because right now there's little distinction between whether Hot Coffee was in the game already, or created by someone else. And those publishing folks could be troubled by the idea of being lambasted by the international press, or denied certification by ratings boards that parents are increasingly being instructed to consider when buying games for those under the age of 18, or perhaps even worse. Politicians - particularly American ones, oddly enough - regularly use videogames as a tool to find some moral high ground and win some votes. Rockstar has made these sorts of headlines before with Vice City's notorious "Kill all the Haitians" line and Manhunt's moral-compass-on-spin-cycle antics. Most recently Eidos was in the news after a US senator hurled mud at its forthcoming cops-and-robbers title 25 to Life for its cop-killing aspects. Never mind the fact the game wasn't finished. In the most extreme cases these campaigns have led to games being withdrawn and remastered with offending material cut, or denied certification, and this can be an expensive business for those involved. Litigation is rare, but as the Manhunt case arguably proved, a lot of the concepts involved baffle and divide in equal measure, and the potential for conflict - whether legal or in public relations terms - is often there even if most gamers could highlight the gaps in logic within seconds. Politicians are good at making the average Joe see this stuff in the worst possible light, and a lot of the mainstream media will race to sensationalise it too. There's obviously a temptation to dismiss the Hot Coffee hullabaloo because the content was likely already hidden on the disc (Rockstar currently disputes this), reasoning that that's a situation we're unlikely to see too often. But the thing that strikes this writer is that nobody on the shouty side of the debate is all that interested in whether it was there to begin with or not. Even assuming Rockstar's completely blameless on this front, our worry is that the media and mud-slinging politicians who are seizing upon this won't accept that as a defence, and will start to hold publishers responsible for what people do with their games whether they add components themselves or not. How long before mods in general bear the brunt of this? People can do a lot with games these days. We've been playing with Garry's Mod for Half-Life 2 a lot lately. It lets you deposit virtually any object from the game in an enclosed play area and then manipulate it using things like balloons, nail guns and the game's weapons. Virtually anything is possible - you could theoretically build a cross, drop Half-Life 2's female lead Alyx into the play area, and then nail her to it and do goodness only knows what else. The wrong people will spot this sooner or later, particularly if this lack of distinction between user-made content and hidden developer-made content continues. This could be a massive problem for mod makers. If people outside the games industry start holding publishers accountable for the things people can do with their software, they may want to avoid that problem entirely by restricting access to their source code. Rockstar's already planning to do that, it said this week. Given the way the above example would sit with the majority of Christians, you'd be able to appreciate their concern. One solution you might consider is obviously moderation. Microsoft is bound to be thinking about that this week, as one of the key components of its Xbox 360 online offering is a "mod market" affair that lets players resell their own user-made content to one another, and that could become a focus for excitable media outlets in the coming days. The assumption must be that there's a degree of moderation involved in Microsoft's offering anyway, but how many other companies can afford to do that? And what if the American ERSB sets a precedent with San Andreas of re-rating the game because of mod content? There'd be problems left, right and centre. With PC games, which traditionally sell poorly compared to their console cousins, the returns probably wouldn't justify the costs in most cases. And if you think this all sounds quite far-fetched, consider one worrying parallel - between Rockstar's current position and that of Grokster, the company the Recording Industry Association of America recently finished dragging through the courts because its peer-to-peer software can be used to distribute things illegally without any restriction. Videogames can be used to do horrendous, even illegal things without any restriction, even if the majority of mods aspire to do nothing more than provide harmless entertainment to people who've exhausted the stuff that came out of the box. Okay, that was a different situation involving copyright and the infamous DMCA, but it does show that American courts are willing to listen to these kinds of arguments. With any luck, our silly little fears will never amount to anything. We hope, for the sake of the thousands of amateur game designers whose creative outlet could come under the spotlight through all of this, that someone cries pot, kettle, black on those sensationalising Hot Coffee. Because if mods were to be wiped away or severely restricted, the ramifications for game development in general would be extreme. Source:Eurogamer.

It's still all very been there done that.

Except everything has moved on while they have been making the game.

He's kind of outdated these days. He's a very 80's character.

Thats got to be at least another year off.

Already one down in the gaming forum.

Stuff happens. It's been several years since I used them anyway. It's just that I put the old drive into a new PC last time. I've probably got a hardcopy up in the attic along with all the other stuff.

How can they be on the Rim when they are unknown? Besides, who says they are on the rim? Kreia's comments clearly seems to suggest they're not. But otherwise I'd agree - a thousand years is a long time, and true Sith shouldn't just be carbon copies of Ludo Kressh and Naga Sadow (though Sadow was more human than most Sith at the time). I do want to see Khar Delba and Ziost, but I don't want to see them as they were in comic books that were set a thousand years into the past. The Sith should have evolved and rebuilt their forces by now - they have new ships, new weapons, and new technology. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> If I see a single golden barge or space lobster I'm returning the game.

I had a great D20 version of FO till my old PC blew up

No it's nothing like that It only carries a 12 rating. In case certain images were going through your mind this is the Dirty Pair. Kei Of the two, Kei is the more feisty and boisterous. Kei is the firebrand of the group. Of the two, she is more quick to anger, and much harder to reason with once she gets angry. More than one incident has been precipitated by Kei's violent temper. And the easiest way to get on her bad side is to refer to her and Yuri as the Dirty Pair. Kei has a love of weapons