There's a fascinating piece on Develop today.

Writer Owain Bennallack speculates whether Rockstar founders and Sam and Dan Houser might someday be knighted.

While the Housers are pariahs to some for the GTA series' edgy content, their cultural and economic impact is undeniable. It certainly wouldn't be the first time that the passing of the years transformed British bad boys into royal honorees.

Here's Bennallack:

They’ve fought the law, Jack Thompson, and the British tabloids. With their comrades at Edinburgh’s Rockstar North they’ve upped the ante with each successive GTA, creating landmark games with ever more wit, élan, action and emotion...

 

...the establishment eventually co-opts any superstar bad boys who haven’t died in their own vomit, overdosed on narcotics, outlived their legends or crashed a light aircraft into some Caribbean outcrop.
I mean the inevitable coming of Sir Sam Houser, or Dan Houser OBE..

 

Grand Theft Auto IV caps a body of work that is culturally and commercially significant enough to warrant official recognition... The playful nature of GTA IV is also why today’s rote moral outrage will eventually be no impediment to the Housers getting their high society dues. It’s hard to appreciate now that rock music once shook society, but it did, and decades later Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney picked up their knighthoods regardless...

 

Connecticut State Senator Gayle Slossberg (D) is eager to do something about the rape scene in Grand Theft Auto IV, she told the New Haven Advocate.

But she faces a major hurdle: There is no rape scene in the controversial game.

From the newspaper story:

[Sen. Slossberg] wants confirmation of the rumored rape scene in Grand Theft Auto IV—but she can't reach that level of the game. The Milford state senator's never played GTA, but she fears it's corrupting the youth and thinks a law requiring better warning labels might be the fix. She told the Nose as much at a Capitol press conference last week...

 

Slossberg hints she'll... introduce legislation next session calling for clearer labeling of depraved video games like Grand Theft Auto...  Slossberg's a bit unsure of how the warning labels might read: "I mean what would it say? 'This game will make you a sociopath'?"

The New York Times takes a look at the controversy surrounding legal fees sought by attorneys in the Hot Coffee class-action suit.

Seth Lesser, lead counsel for the plaintiffs, told the NYT he was disappointed that only 2,676 buyers of GTA San Andreas filed claims:

Am I disappointed? Sure. We can’t guess as to why now, several years later, people care or don’t care. The merits of the case were clear... The game was sold as something that it wasn’t.

As previously reported by GamePolitics (see: Did Lawyers Inflate Fees in Hot Coffee Class-action Suit?), Lesser and his legal colleagues are seeking $1.3 in fees. Meanwhile, defense attorneys for GTA publisher Take-Two say it only cost them $30,000 to defend the case.

University of Kentucky law prof Mary Davis told the Times:

It doesn’t typically go that way. [To have legal fees far exceed what plaintiffs receive] is sort of backwards.

Ted Frank, an attorney who also writes for the Overlawyered blog, commented:

There are two possibilities. Possibility one is they have a meritorious lawsuit and they’re selling out the class for attorneys’ fees. The other possibility is that, and frankly I think this is the more likely possibility, they brought a meritless lawsuit that had no business being brought to court at all.

The Times also ponders why GTA's non-stop violence is seemingly more acceptable than the Hot Coffee sex animations. Here the newspaper turns to Craig Anderson, an Iowa State prof whose research on game violence and aggression is accepted in some quarters, disputed in others:

For some reason sex is seen as more harmful to kids than violence. The irony is that in terms of the research literature on harmful effects of various forms of media, television, movies, video games, the research is very, very clear. There are significant short-term and long-term effects of violent content.

A hearing on the proposed settlement is scheduled in U.S. District Court in Manhattan today.

UPDATE: Overlawyered's Ted Frank posts his impressions of the June 25th hearing...

In addition to heaps of criticism, the recently released Grand Theft Auto IV has received its fair share of kudos. Game critics across the board have lauded the controversial title for everything from its impressive graphics and entertaining gameplay to the dramatic depth of its large cast and its cinema-quality story. 

With such high accolades, not to mention record-breaking sales, a movie based on the game seems like a forgone conclusion, no?

Well, no.

You see, back in ’77, Roger Corman produced a little flick called Grand Theft Auto.  The film (written, directed by, and starring Ron Howard) involves a rich girl stealing her dad’s car and running off to Vegas with her boyfriend to get married.  A $25,000 reward is offered for her safe return and suddenly everyone from the cops to the daughter's ex-boyfriend is after them.

According to LA Weekly blogger Nikki Finke, Fox Atomic currently owns the rights to the movie title Grand Theft Auto. By agreement between the parties, Take-Two can’t make a film called Grand Theft Auto and Fox can’t make a game called Grand Theft Auto.

For now, the best we can hope for is a remake or sequel to the 30-year-old, PG-rated chase film but even that’s looking unlikely.  As an insider revealed to Finke:

Yes, Fox owns the Corman movie. Yes, it has been one of 400 development projects for several years. But they are nowhere on the script. It has certainly not been a front-burner project.

Via: GameDaily

-Reporting from San Diego, GP Correspondent Andrew Eisen is still waiting for a film version of Chibi Robo

The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has become the latest group to call out Grand Theft Auto IV over the game's edgy content.

As reported by The Telegraph, the NSPCC charges that the game trivializes pedophilia via an in-game spoof of an underage site.

While playing GTA IV, players can enter Internet cafes and access parody websites. One of these, www.littlelacysurprisepageant.com triggers a message from the Liberty City Police Department and automatically elevates theplayer's "wanted level" to five stars. The high wanted level triggers a massive police search for the player's character (see video). In real life the URL forwards to Rockstar Game's official GTA IV site.

The NSPCC's Zoe Hilton told The Telegraph:

It is disturbing that it is meant to be funny and that it is glamorising something that is actually really shocking and upsetting. I just think it is in very poor taste and they should withdraw it.

GP: While we commend the many good works of the NSPCC, this seems like a non-issue. The spoof website is part of GTA IV's parody of the online environment, which also includes such faux elements search engines, scams and dating services. Moreover, there's no underage content to be accessed and the high-level police alert triggered by visiting the site makes it an annoyance more than anything else.

Around the offices of Take Two Interactive, they're likely calling this "Black Tuesday."

In the wake of this morning's word detailing Britain's ban on Manhunt 2 comes more bad news for publisher Take Two and developer Rockstar.

Citing concerns over the Nintendo Wii's popular motion control system, the Center for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) has demanded that Manhunt 2 be rated AO (adults only) by the ESRB. The game is scheduled for release in North America on July 9th. 

Although Manhunt 2's rating has not been made public to date, the ESRB says that it has already informed Take Two and Rockstar of the game's rating.

The watchdog group's demand was made this morning via letter to ESRB president Patricia Vance. In a press release, CCFC also says that it will launch a letter-writing campaign "so that parents and advocates for children could share their concerns."

AO ratings for commercial video games are virtually unheard of and are considered the kiss of death at retail, since many stores won't carry AO-rated titles. The only commercial game to receive an AO in recent memory was Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas following the 2005 discovery of the notorious Hot Coffee animations and the game's subsequent recall.

From the CCFC press release:

In Manhunt 2, players can saw their enemies’ skulls in half; mutilate them with an axe; castrate them with a pair of pliers; and kill them by bashing their heads into an electrical box, where it is blown apart by a power surge.  On Wii, players will not merely punch buttons or wield a joy stick, but will actually act out this violence...

Said CCFC co-founder, Dr. Susan Linn of Harvard:

If ever there was a time for the ESRB’s strongest and most unambiguous rating, it is now. An Adults Only rating is the only way to limit children’s exposure to this unique combination of horrific violence and interactivity...

An “M” rating is more like a wink and a nod than an effective safeguard. The industry appears to be going through its paces, but as the FTC’s most recent data show, these games are still being marketed to children.

Also quoted in the CCFC press release is Dr. Michael Rich, Director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Children’s Hospital Boston:

Video games are among the most powerful educational tools yet developed... players experience and learn the game’s skills, whether they be based in strategy, logic, or violence. The content of Manhunt 2 and the unique physical interaction with the Wii control combine to take this simulation a level closer to reality - we can expect that the effects of this experience will be even greater. 

On June 6th GamePolitics broke the news that, prompted by Miami activist Jack Thompson, Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum was looking into Manhunt 2 on the Wii. It is unknown what role, if any, Thompson may have played in the CCFC's action, but it's clear that he knew it was coming.

The original Manhunt, controversial in its own right, was rated M (17 and older) at the time of its release in 2003. In addition to the Wii version, Manhunt 2 is scheduled for release on PlayStation 2 and PSP.

A statement received by GamePolitics from ESRB president Patricia Vance said:

We have received the letter from CCFC and, while we might take issue with some of the statements made within, we sincerely appreciate their expressed concerns.  Our ratings are intended to provide guidance that allows parents to choose games they deem suitable for their children, and that is a responsibility we take extremely seriously.   

It should be noted that ESRB has already assigned a rating for the Wii, PS2 and PSP versions of Manhunt 2, and that rating has in fact already been communicated to the publisher.  However, we are unable to publicly release the rating at this time as it is our policy that ratings be posted to our website 30 days following assignment, unless the game is released prior to the end of that period. This is done to give publishers the opportunity to consider modifying and resubmitting their games for rating or appealing the rating assigned to our Appeals Board should they wish to do so.  We have not yet been notified by Rockstar as to what they intend to do with respect to our rating assignment.

GamePolitics Poll: Should Manhunt 2 be rated AO or M? We now have a poll running in the right sidebar. Be sure to vote.

Bully is not the first game with guy kissing built in.

It's just the first one in which the smooching was company-authorized. But some GamePolitics readers may remember a similar scandal that rocked the gaming world a decade ago.

On November 20th, 1996 Maxis released SimCopter for the PC. Within a short time, famed designer Will Wright himself discovered that one of the Maxis programmers, a gay man named Jacques Servin, had secretly coded in hunky men who would kiss on certain occasions. 78,000 copies of the game were shipped before Servin's unauthorized easter egg was discovered.

Based on comments made to the Associated Press and other media at the time, Servin seemed to be making a sort of gay rights statement:
 

My job was to make the little people with a body and animation editor. The artist who used my editor to make the bodies ... was aggressively heterosexual, and made several 'bimbos,' which was my boss's term. At a certain point I wondered, 'Bimbos -- why not studs?...'

Having failed to convince a Florida judge that Bully is a public nuisance, controversial attorney Jack Thompson has a new tactic in what seems to be a never-ending crusade against the game.

Thompson's latest approach is that the game's boy-kissing scenes are essentially porn, thus making Bully illegal to sell to minors. Although Thompson does not use the P-word, the statute he cites would generally relate to such material.

In a letter sent yesterday to several major retailers, Thompson writes:
 

"It turns out that the school violence simulation game Bully also contains homosexual activity between the game’s hero, Jimmy Hopkins, and other male students."

"It is my legal opinion that the sale of this game to minors, which is presently occurring at your stores in Florida, violates Florida’s 'Sexual Material Harmful to Minors Statute,' Florida Statute 847.102.  Each such sale to a minor constitutes a separate felony." 

"Such sales are occurring to children of all ages because of the game’s wholly inappropriate “Teen” rating, as opposed to the 'Mature' rating it deserves..."

GP offers a couple of points here:

First, the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once said that pornography is hard to define, "but I know it when I see it." We agree, and we're definitely not seeing it with Bully's silly boy-kissing scenes.

It's not like Take-Two Interactive can't afford to hire lawyers.

But First Amendment attorney Larry Walters is willing to do legal combat with those who would bully the company's upcoming game Bully - for free.

Over at the IGDA's Sex in Games SIG, Brenda Brathwaite reports that Walters, who operates the GameCensorship.com website, didn't take kindly to one of Florida attorney Jack Thompson's recent threats to block the October 17 release of the controversial game, which Thompson has described as a "Columbine simulator".

In a message posted to the Sex in Games SIG's mailing list, Walters wrote:

"Thompson is at it again. His letter to Take Two, below. If he files suit, we hereby offer to assist Take-Two and defend their Free Express rights on a pro bono basis. This is absurd."

Absurd, indeed.

Brenda Brathwaite, by the way, is the author of the recently-published Sex in Video Games.