Hot Coffee

This article originally appeared in Pieces of Eight last July. It has been edited and placed here on Reset . . . in its proper place in the universe. Enjoy. Again.

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For those of you not in the know, you should read up on IGN and Gamespot about the infamous "Hot Coffee" mod in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Here's a quick snippet from the Gamespot article in case you're too lazy to clickie clickie.

"After a few seconds, the minigame proceeds to semi-explicit simulated copulation. Although players can change the camera angle with the circle button, as well as cycle though three sexual positions with the square button, no genitalia are ever seen. To win, players must maintain a steady rhythm with the left analog stick to build up an "excitement meter" on the right of the screen. Fill the meter and Denise becomes very excited, telling CJ he is "the man" before the game congratulates you with the words "Nice guys finish last!" Let the meter drop to empty and the game admonishes you with "Failure to satisfy a woman is a CRIME!"
Given that the minigame is about as raunchy as an episode of Sex and the City, cannot be accessed without entering a long string of cheat codes, and takes several hours of effort to access, charges that San Andreas is "pornographic" may seem extreme to some. However, its existence does appear to contradict Rockstar Games' carefully worded statement blaming hacker mischief for the existence of the Hot Coffee mod."

So let me get this straight . . . no genitals are exposed (not even a nipple!). I've seen more hardcore writing in Maxim Magazine, and hotter on screen action during prime time TV (how many times can Charlie Sheen talk about his dork at 9pm before locusts erupt from the skies anyway?) and this game is now considered Adults Only? I gotta tell ya, I got more of a semi-chub watching Katie "I am not a spaz" Holmes' erect nipples in the penultimate scene of Batman Begins than I got from playing San Andreas. And that movie was rated PG.

Just so we can all be clear. The GTA series has always enjoyed a "Mature" rating which is the ESRB equivalent of an R rated movie. It receives that rating based on violent content, and the assumed presence of sexuality. There's no nudity. I think that's a fair rating, as you have to be 17 years old to purchase an M rated game. AO, however is the Adults Only rating given to games with sexually explicit content (mainly for Japanese Dating Sims, and Hentai games) akin to the MPAA's X rating. You have to be 18 years old to buy an AO rated game. One year difference.

I suppose that by aging someone 12 months, you make it okay for them to witness fully clothed simulated sex acts. What's more offending to me is that legislators seem to be missing the point. Actually three points.

1. Hot Coffee is not available right out of the box. You have to modify your game by either downloading a patch, or using a series of code inputs to watch CJ dry-hump his girlfriends. The code was written and then Rockstar North decided to not use that mode in the game, so they made it inaccessible during regular gameplay. The code was left in (albeit hidden) so as to not cause system bugs . . . so they buried the mode. People don't realize that once a portion of a game has been written, it is tested for bugs (glitches, freeze-ups, parts of the game that don't interact well with other parts of the game). It's like taking a paragraph where each sentence built on, and relied upon, the sentence before it. If you were to remove a sentence from the paragraph, it might have catastrophic consequences to the paragraph as a whole. That is why the Hot Coffee coding was left on the disk. Once Rockstar realized that they weren't going to use that mode, they didn't have time to delete the code, and retest all of those affected portions of the game. Had they wanted people to unlock it, R*N would have leaked the codes themselves after the game was released in October 2004. They kept quiet.
2. I think that people should be more alarmed by the fact that during regular gameplay you can wreck your car into a Police car, haul the cop out, and beat him to death with a 20 inch double headed pink rubber dildo. I could see that as being worse than watching a pretend fellatio scene. Pick your battles. By blasting the sex rather than the violence you come off as uptight Puritanical prudes who were both confused and angered by your first pubic hair.
3. Are we really that concerned about warping a 17-year old's mind by letting him/her watch a fully clothed sex act? That's the same 17-year old that saw the movie Saw last year and saw a character saw off his own foot on screen. That's the same 17-year old that watches BET after dark. How many high school juniors do you think have had sex? The R rating, the "Explicit Lyrics" sticker, and the M rating have set their cutoffs all at 17. How is GTA worse than the others?

Videogames have historically taken the brunt of blame for society's ills: vandalism, theft, teenage pregnancy, and school shootings. But here's a secret . . . that stuff was already going on before the NES came out. And it'll keep happening whether or not Wal-Mart decides to sell GTA: San Andreas. The 17-year old limit is well-defined, clear, and cuts across all media. Don't mess with it. I was one of the few in favor of the video game rating system introduced by SEGA in 1993, and I still think it's a good idea. I just don't think the content in GTA:SA is equal to that seen in an X Rated movie. Changing M to AO is like changing R to X - - it starts a slippery slope.