Nearing the End of the Summer Session

There is a bit over a week left in the Summer Session at University of Portland, counting that the Philosophy of Religion Paper isn't due until next Saturday morning. Still, though. It's crazy how much time has actually passed. Next week's going to be quite hectic as well.

Monday I get to have lunch with two other De La Salle North Catholic HS Alumni who are also going to UP. It'll be fun. Plus, all three of us are in the same hall come fall. Unfortunately, earlier that day, I have my Philosophy final to contend with. Then Tuesday I get to practice for Church--the Youth Band's playing this Sunday. As if it weren't coming fast enough already, that'll probably be one of the last times that we will play together as a Youth Worship Band...Wednesday, probably, will be Youth Group, and more tying up loose ends in class. Plus a presentation on Islam and its current issues. Thursday's my last day of class. That'll be fun, but I guess it'll a bit odd having to suddenly not see Summer Session people until the fall. It's going to be so much more crowded in the fall. Friday I am going to be working on my Philosophy of Religion Paper--hopefully finishing it up and getting it to my professor that day, as opposed to by 9 AM on Saturday.

Then I have to hang out as much as possible with people who are going far away--places like the Midwest, and California, and pretty much everyone I know well who's not somewhere in or near the Portland-Vancouver area.

And in response to Michael's comment: I haven't read the article about Africa just yet. I should. I did read the article on John Roberts, though. Interesting. Probably somewhat biased, but even if I run it through my bias-filter it comes out making more trouble for the Democrats than they'd like. If I may ask was there anything else that caught your eye in that issue, in a good or bad way?

My First Issue of World Magazine

I got my first new issue of World Magazine in the mail today. Thanks, Aunt Pooh! I also read a decent amount of it. My thoughts so far are that it's a good magazine. Some might question its credibility because of its position, but it's bad to question the credibility of a magazine based merely on its position. World's position, for those who do not know, is the Conservative Christian position, which often means also the politically Conservative position. However, their reporting is refreshing--part of the reason is that I know what their bias is, and so I have an automatic filter for the way that they present things. One other thing that makes me more comfortable with them is my first issue's editorial: Basically, the whole chairman's letter/editorial thing was about how, ideally, readers aren't just reading World--they're also reading other news sources, and comparing them to test their credibilities. I found that quite an honorable thought for their sort of "main dude" to have.

Also, I think I'll be keeping Benedict XVI in my Google Alerts for awhile. While World, in an earlier issue, noted that he might not make the ecumenical mistakes (the type of ecumenical that involves praying in Mosques, apparently) that John Paul II made. I'm a bit concerned however that he might not recognize as a Pope the possibility of ecumenism within Christianity. I'm all for a Pope that rejects Pluralism/Relativism. But I've heard from many reliable sources that he's likely to reject other forms of Christianity besides the Catholic church. There's some pertinent document called "Domine Jesus" which I need to try and get a copy of; one section in particular should be relevant to this issue.

Speaking of Pluralism, I had an interesting conversation with my philosophy professor today about those things. I wanted to check my earlier logic regarding exclusivism and pluralism. It's still formulating, but let's just say he gave me some interesting stuff to think about in terms of my presuppositions about pluralism implying relativism. I think whenever the argument gets reformulated it'll be more along the lines of pluralism's problems, then "can they be solved by relativism" and then "no, because relativism is self-contradictory." Not those exact words, probably, but you might get the idea. So expect (sometime, not necessarily within any given length of time) an improved line of reasoning to come onto this blog. Sometime.

Also, kokosmasher--if you find download-worthy things on music.download.com you could also add them to our handy l'il sidebar for music.download.com picks. You are an admin now after all. Also, tell me what you think of this off-white. I'm not sure if it works.

The Coffee Trilogy is Complete

Okay, it seems that we are finally clear on the responsibilities of the parties involved in the Hot Coffee scandal. Michael Millar noted the fact that things are “eliminated” from games in a fashion similar to the “coffee scene” elimination more often than we think. In another conversation, he had informed me that apparently Rockstar was legally required to release ratings-concerned information to the ESRB. Those of you who know Michael know he knows his stuff when it comes to games; knowing that he was probably right I checked out the ESRB’s web site for myself, and found the following in their FAQs regarding their ratings:

“Every publisher of a game rated by the ESRB is legally bound to disclose all pertinent content when submitting the game for an ESRB rating.”

I believe we can safely presume that the “Coffee” scene is pertinent; in the least, it is now. Now if it was not considered to be “pertinent” at the time that the game received its first rating, then perhaps Rockstar is not guilty of any goof-up. If it is perfectly legit for Rockstar to “remove” the content in this matter, then if you ask me neither Rockstar nor the ESRB actually did anything legally wrong. Morality’s still in the equation, there, though.

However, if whatever is on a disc can be considered pertinent—as seems to be the case here—Rockstar did goof up, in which case they really did have the AO rating coming. But I do have to say I admire their willingness to cooperate and, at least now, to truly eliminate the “hot coffee” from the game. I say that this can be safely considered pertinent, because the actions the ESRB is now taking are, at least in terms of its FAQs, noted as actions to be taken when the publisher fails to reveal certain pieces of information.

The last three posts have been a total learning experience for me. Many valid points have come up with regards to the fairness of the rating system with relation to both Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and God of War. (They haven’t been mentioned here; they are given brief mention in the ESRB interview that Wygal linked to.) For your convenience, since the URL is visually cut off in his comment and I’m not sure why it all copied, the website’s total, I will give you this link to the website. Anyway, for me the issue is pretty much resolved. Rockstar and the ESRB have done what they can. Hilary can back off of the issue; she really shouldn’t be getting in on it now if she wasn’t in on it when GTA first fanned the flames of controversy. kokosmasher proposed to me that perhaps she’s running for election. Anyone scared by that possibility?

Now I go on to happier things, like random comments made by youth pastors. I made a brief mention of a problem regarding predestination in another post, which Matt Prior, my current youth pastor, made a comment on: “Predestination, are you a predestined predestinationist?”

I suppose if you were one who believed in predestination (either a Calvinist or a determinist of some kind) you would have to believe that you were at least in some sense predestined to believe in predestination. I came up with an interesting thought the other day: “I’m trying to decide if I should be a determinist.” Of course I realize now a funnier thought would be: “I’m trying to decide whether I have a choice.”

One last note: Note that kokosmasher and I discussed how we would address this. It involves on of the comments made on the last post. Humorous comments are welcome, and light innuendo should be fine, but innuendo which involves God is something we at The Ongoing Saga would rather not have posted in comments on the blog. Thanks for understanding. As to the morality of those comments outside of the blog...I don't think I really know yet.

("One Last Note" Paragraph updated at 5:06 PM.)

Coming from this issue: Does anyone have an opinion about how the appropriateness of a joke such as mine or in fact Bobby's might change depending upon the situation and the group that one is with?

Anyone have an opinion on the ESRB's respective ratings of GTA and GoW?

More Hot Coffee

Hey! A new commentator! Awesome. In response to the last post about the Hot Coffee issue with Rockstar and the ESRB, high.as.a.kite responded: "It was, in fact, a MOD that needed to be downloaded to open this file in the game. Further more, the ESRB is given the code of the game. For all of the people that will be reading this htat don't know what I mean, the ESRB is given a paper that shows the internal make up of the game. It shows everything including a "sex scene" that is "locked"." (There will be more of high.as.a.kite's responses quoted later. His words will be in italics from here on out.)

This first peice of information has serious ethical implications. The question has now been raised: if the ESRB knows that there is something in a game not currently accessible, but which may later--and on a reasonably wide scale--become accessible, should they rate the game as if the content were readily accessible. I confess I was operating under the assumption that, for whatever reason, the ESRB had no knowledge of the Hot Coffee scene. If I may ask, high.as.a.kite (by the way, he's a friend from De La Salle North Catholic High School whom I will refer to for brevity as Wygal), are you positive that the ESRB was aware? Was the stuff shown to them purely in code form? I guess that perhaps seeing code, if they have someone who can read it, could show them what the scene was. I admit to wanting to protect the ESRB here much more than I want to protect Rockstar; one is a well-intentioned although oft-misguided agency; the other is a money-driven oft-misguided game company. Let us proceed to more of Wygal's commentary:

IN MY OPINION, and the most probable reasoning for this problem is that Rockstar created the scene as part of the original game. Then they realized that if this was part of the content then they would not get the M rating. So they locked the coding that contained the sex scene "Hot Coffee". The reason they would have locked it instead of deleting it is because a game that requires such an intrequite code would need a change that would be so drastic that it would require a whole deletion of a major section of the game' code. This would slow production and cause a later release date. When the ESRB was given the code I am sure that they knew it was there and that it was locked and I am sure that it was locked tightly. Then some pervert, computer nerd, that has no life, opened up the code and saw "Hot Coffee" a sex scene. To him it was gold. This problem is all because of some pervert that wanted to see sex and figured he would find it hidden in the code of a game that has lots of killing and cussing.

Interesting thought. I don't think, however, the responsibility for this is on the nerd. At least, not all of it. One could argue that the nerd was the one who unlocked it, but the question remains:

If we assume that Rockstar (as we have much reason to believe) knew what was on the disc, and that the ESRB (as we have been given some reason to think) knew what was on the disk, then should they be rating every little bit of the disc or simply that portion which is readily accessible? Obviously, if Rockstar believed that it was "locked tightly" enough, and it was enough to convince the ESRB, we might refutre the calls that the ESRB (and possibly even that Rockstar) screwed up here--given a situation like Rockstar's where they might not want something to be part of the game but at the same time not want to totally erase it, is it reasonable to expect it erased, or just tightly locked?

My question is (this is a conceptual question which it is unlikely we will be able to answer): If they can lock the code without compromising other parts of game code, why can't they delete it? How tied is this one scene to the rest of the game? I don't really know; perhaps it is tied together. I find myself thinking of the philosophical/theological implications of one event in our lives being predestined; that will be another topic for another post.

The one thing I am contending at this point: This is a very important ethical issue for game companies and the ESRB alike. We should study it further and come up with a more concrete rule of what, exactly, is fair game for the rating. If this was unlocked by some random nerd, was it locked tightly enough? If it had to be unlocked by some random nerd, should it be considered part of the game?

* Just a note to nerds who read my blog: I don't think you're all perverts. "Random nerd" and "the nerd" are just references to whoever did the unlocking.

-- One last note: Wygal wanted me to plug his blog--the first post has an important message for the DLSNCHS
Class of '05.

EDIT (added at 5:15 PM): Oh yes. On the University of Portland track of things, I got my first philosophy paper back. A red, circled A was on the cover. It felt awesome.

Blog Updates, I'm Up Late

Blog update! The color scheme has changed. Everybody, kokosmasher included (especially kokosmasher), let me know how it looks; if you like it generally but could suggest changing just one thing, tell me that, too.

* Note: If you have children reading over your shoulder who don't need exposure to mature subjects, don't click on the links in this article. This post itself is, however, fairly discrete.

So Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas recently had its rating bumped up from M (17+) to AO (which is basically the NC-17 of video games.) Why, you ask?

Apparently Rockstar put something in there that deserves an AO rating--something that happens onscreen, which had to be blurred when VH1's Best Week Ever ran their commentary on it. Best Week Ever's commentary was actually quite amusing; catch a reshow of that this week if you can, there are some other funny things in it as well.

Well, you might ask how on earth this slipped past the ESRB. It's not often a game this big gets rerated after it's been released. The thing is, this secret "scene" is unlocked with a special code. I have heard rumors that you need to download some patch or other, or whatever. But the fact remains that the scene is ON the GTA: SA disc when it comes. This scene -is- part of the game, just like any other secret code or Easter egg, no matter what you have to do to unlock it. Read the 1up.com story here.

Links leading from a different (but in my opinion related story) lead to one quip by a gaming magazine editor pondering exactly why it is this "Hot Coffee" scandal that pushed things over the edge, as opposed to the violence already rampant in San Andreas.

Of course, given that such a huge game had to be rerated, some critics are saying now that the ESRB is not enough, or isn't doing enough, or whatever else. To that I answer with a big, huge honkin': What on earth? Really, this is not the fault of the ESRB, especially if there was some modding needed to get to this extra scene. How can you blame the ESRB for not rating something that A) wasn't exactly the most readily accessible material in the game B) Rockstar conveniently neglected to mention? You could argue it's their job--but is it their job to track down modding tools to uncover every single bit of a game, to check every little corner of the disc for foul play, whether or not that corner is normally accessible? I'd say that's putting a bit too much of a burden on the ESRB. Even though the ESRB isn't always my favorite organization, I do believe that they are the victim here--well, they and several unsuspecting households.

Rockstar (who, for those of you who don't know, made San Andreas) is cooperating with the new rating. Good for them. They had it coming. At least now that they've been confronted with it, they're deciding to be responsible. I guess it's possible that the higher-up Rockstar officials didn't know, but...Okay, following the line that even if Rockstar officials didn't know, that it was their job to know, one could argue the ESRB DOES have a responsibility to know. The logic would go like this:

If the company making a game is responsible for knowing everything that's
on the discs, then the ESRB is responsible for knowing.

Of course the resoning falls apart on further examination--the difference between the ESRB and the company is simple and vital: the company makes the game and can be expected to know what's going into it. The ESRB only rates the game on the basis of what the company tells them and what their people are able to find in the game--and the company doesn't necessarily tell them everything it knows. Even if we assumed that neither set of officials between the ESRB and Rockstar knew what was up (and may I point out that the only officials we can safely assume were in the dark were those at the ESRB), Rockstar is still more responsible, because they have a chain of information that should, ideally, be flowing to the top. The ESRB on the other hand has no chain of information coming to them from the people who are putting things on the discs, and is at an informational disadvantage.