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Feature Articles > Features > MomGamer & Hot Coffee
Last week a reporter from the Dallas Morning News contacted me about Grand Theft Auto and Hot Coffee. I had our own MomGamer (no relation) tackle her questions too. We know what a dad of two small children thinks, how about single mom with four teens? Read the GamerDad's take on this issue for background My name is Colleen Hannon, and I'm and editor/columnist/reviewer at GamerDad. Andrew Bub forwarded me your questions. I'm 36 years old, and I'm a single mom with four children. My son Johnathan is 17, my son Stephen is 16, and my twin daughters Danica and Miranda are 14. I'm a software developer by day, and the Momgamer by night. I've been a game reviewer since 2000 for various sites but I've settled at Gamerdad due to its focus on kids, and the lack of moralizing. This issue is an important one to me, and one that I've covered several times in my own columns. Last April I wrote an article that describes the ESRB's rating system and what I believe to be serious flaws that make it useless in cases like Grand Theft Auto. It's far from the only game with these issues. I've also spoken out on several other occasions about the industry's varied responses and parental involvement, which I consider to be a key point to resolving this problem.
 How do you feel about this as a parent? As a parent and as a gamer myself, I'm outraged at a lot of people. Yes, Rockstar has the right to make this game under our current system, but that doesn't make it a good idea. This isn't their only game to include topics like this - Manhunt and the Max Payne series are both dripping with mature themes. There are a lot of adults out there playing games, and they have voted with their pocketbook that this is the kind of thing they want to see. I don't agree with it, but that is their right, too. My problem is when kids get ahold of it, and I don't believe Rockstar has done enough to address this. The ESRB should have been on the case, too. I would have given this one an AO rating from the get-go. The reason Rockstar and other publishers/developers have gotten away with this as long as they have is the ESRB descriptors don't address illegal activity except in the most cursory terms. This game is nothing but that. In general their criteria are vague and unevenly enforced and their age categories are completely out of touch with real life. They don't play the game themselves - they go off a film from the publisher, who isn't exactly an unbiased party here. Politicians who are pounding their various pulpits are culpable here, too. They are using this situation for their own ends. They have to be shown to have an opinion about this, but they also a vested interested in making sure that it is not actually solved. People get elected by "raising issues" and blaming someone else, rather than telling their voters that their problem might have something to do with what they let their children see and play and buy. That goes for this mod, and that boy in Alabama whose defense attorneys are blaming this game for him killing three police officers, and any other more festive variations that are bound to show up. Industry pundits and watchdog groups aren't much more help in this whole thing. They make their bread and butter off this sort of controversy, too. And that leads me to the real landmine for me. Its parents that let things into their homes without paying any attention to what is going on. With all the kerfuffle over this game and the last version you'd have to be actively trying to avoid knowing that that even just the openly available parts of this game are rated M. And even if you are that firmly under a rock, there's a little black square on the front of every box that says it. That M means no one under seventeen should be playing the game. Not just that they shouldn't buy it - that means they shouldn't be playing it. But they buy the thing because little Billy wants it so badly and they just don't pay attention until they walk into their kid's room and see him slappin' a hooker. A lot of them just don't care even then. Time and again I run into parents who take five-year-olds to see rated R films, and give 8-year-olds rated M games for their birthday without blinking an eye. And it's their money swelling Rockstar's coffers and financing the next generation of these games. Have your feelings changed with the new rating? No, because it won't actually fix anything. Putting a different white letter in the middle of that black box that they didn't look at anyways doesn't change anything. Even if they do pay any attention, it only raises that already ignored cut-off date a year. And just because WalMart won't carry it now doesn't mean there aren't still several million copies of this game with that code in it rolling around and they will be passing from hand to hand and in and out of used game stores and Ebay as long as someone maintains a system that runs this game. That's reality, and all that grandstanding that's been going on does nothing to address any of that. As I point out in my article entitled Mediawise - Isn't" I believe that an AO game mistakenly listed as M isn't nearly as damaging as a game that should be rated M receiving a T rating: "... An M instead of an AO would get it in the kid's hands a year early - they get it at 17 instead of 18. A T will get it in a kid's hands five years early at 13. Five very very important formative years. Since we have this issue with about half of parents not enforcing the ratings, it often gets it into the kid's hands earlier than that. Yes, my kids shouldn't see 'Rumble Roses' (not even the 17 year old, IMHO). I also don't think a 13-year-old needs to see 'Def Jam Vendetta', but the ESRB disagrees. And so do the parents of the eight-year-old my kids borrowed it from." They're all having a cow about a very minor feature of a game the kids aren't supposed to have anyways while 13-year-olds are hanging off rafters and snapping necks in Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and committing a whole rap sheet of crimes in Tony Hawk Underground, both of which are rated T. I have a list of other games that I believe could benefit with a modified rating. Maybe I should send it along to Senator Clinton. Are you considering returning or exchanging your game for one without the code? We don't own the game, so that one really doesn't hit me. But lets pretend that we find something like this in another M-rated game I do own. In that case, yes, I would. I have teenage kids in the house who love puzzles and would consider this a necessary challenge to be surmounted. But I would also realize that little Billy down the block whose big brother bought the game probably won't have done so. Not only that, since his parents don't filter his internet access either he has the instructions on how to unlock this code readily available. (Editor's Note: The "obscene footage" is on the Internet and one Television news channel actually walked parents through how to unlock it using a third party system. So at this point, who needs the game? οΎ– GamerDad) How easily could this issue come up with other games? This could come up very easily. As Andrew mentioned to you, any PC game is easily modded. This has been around as long as there have been games. There is a whole cottage industry based around Unreal, Doom, and Quake mods and there are many many more. Usually they're not crude. They're some sort of "house rule" for the game, or ways to get you more ammo and better weapons when you shouldn't have them. There have been rumors of a nudity cheat for the Tomb Raider series for years, but that one's just wishful thinking as far as I know of. Rockstar maintains they didn't code this, that someone else did this. I can't see how that can be true. If they're right and it really was added after the fact then Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft have a huge can open and those worms are everywhere. One example off the top of my head is the very very M-rated "God of War" by SCEA. There is a mini-game in it that is rather similar to the one that is taken advantage of in Hot Coffee. Is there test code like the stuff in GTA underneath that? There are probably hackers wondering this same thing. What's the best way parents can make sure they're not inadvertently buying something inappropriate for their kids?
 I have a rule in my house that I play through every game that's not E rated before the kids do, and I enforce it even on my 17-year-old. I've been bitten too many times the other way. To save yourself some money, you can rent the thing and try it out yourself before buying it and handing it to the kid. If that's not practical for you, here's a few ideas. First, check the ratings and apply them. It's right there on the front of the box. It means saying "No" a lot and meaning it, but it will winnow out a huge amount of the questionable content, and at least give you some idea. Thinking a bit about the general type of game can help. If the game is based on fighting off an alien invasion, military or covert operations, or about two rival gangs out for each other's blood, that's a big sign you need to get more information. Squirrels dressed in camo-gear and loaded with guns just scream "Mayday!" Cute aliens trying to solve a puzzle so they can assemble their ship, probably not so much. From there, you have two options: play the thing yourself or get some information from someone who has. Don't bother with those splashy magazines the kids love. The print magazines don't review finished content - they are looking at it before it's complete due to the lead times required in paper publishing. Their articles aren't really aimed at the information you need. Those magazines and most of the game sites are written by hardcore gamers, and for hardcore gamers. You can get stuff out of them but it's often well-buried in geek-speak and hype and they focus on the technical and artistic virtuosity of the game. They very rarely address the needs of kids and parents directly. This is why Gamerdad exists. We include information about the game's fitness for kids in every review. We are not only gamers and reviewers, we are concerned parents ourselves. Oh, and activate the parental control system on your game console. The Xbox has a system that will prevent the machine from playing a game or DVD above a rating that you set, and the PS2 will let you control access to DVD's. It's another line of defense. How big an issue is this anyway? Honestly, I feel that it is a tiny tip of an iceberg and no one is looking for the parts that are under the water. There's a whole lot of obfuscating going on here. The issue isn't the specific content. In this country this sort of content is protected speech, and this has been tested in court. Unless someone manages to get that changed, the real issue is accurate ratings and their application in people's homes. That one the politicians and pundits and game makers aren't going to touch without a hot-suit and a Geiger counter. There's no way I know of to create and maintain a foolproof system of ratings. People are going to have to start looking out. People need to start paying attention to what their kids see and hear. I'm not just talking about videogames - I'm talking TV, radio, and the Internet too. They need to take responsibility for what goes on in their own homes. They need to interact with their children and talk to them about what they are seeing. I know you're busy and I know it's hard. I'm a single mom with four kids and a job myself. But it's reality in this day and age.
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