Freedom of speech? Isn’t that how the country is justifying the invasion of Iraq and other places? We must expose such flagrant hypocrisy.
“We have to have retail tell us what games to make?,” Sam Houser wrote in an e-mail. This excerpt from Jacked details how Rockstar had to remove much of its content – but it didn't remove it well enough, leading to the so-called "Hot Coffee" scandal. Including content that went beyond each country's line in the sand meant that the game could be banned by the government or, in the case of the United States, legal to sell but not carried by major retailers. But the outlaw developer had a problem: The videogame ratings boards around the world all had vastly different standards for what was and was not acceptable. Having already pushed the envelope with violent content in previous Grand Theft Auto games, Rockstar wanted to bump up the sex in its anticipated San Andreas.
Wired contributor David Kushner tells the riveting history of the series in a new book, available this week from Wiley, titled Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto. The Grand Theft Auto series redefined gaming, pioneering the go-anywhere, do-anything "sandbox" genre and touching off worldwide debates about sex and violence in videogames.