More than a year after the events of the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas' Hot Coffee scandal, game developers are still reeling from the effects the scandal's had on games in general. According to an MTV article, one of the long-term effects that have come about as a result has been the killing of creativity.
In addition to fears of getting sued, game developers have also had to endure protests and public demonstrations, as well as a tightening of censorship worldwide. The most prominent example of anti-game sentiment probably lies in the will of Jack Thompson, who has not only sued companies and tried to coerce its shareholders, but also appeared on variety of shows to pursue his agenda.
On the protest side, the Peaceaholics recently protested in front of Take-Two's New York office in preparation for the release of Bully, which some seem to think will be a schoolyard GTA. Lastly, censorship has been somewhat more pronounced, and developers have now begun to go the extra mile in filtering their games to pass scrutiny. As Denis Dyack, head of Silicon Knights, mentions, "We've seen signs that creativity in our industry is being chilled as a result of last year's political and media attention."
On the one hand, games have been watered down somewhat to suit the current trend of censorship. Whereas something like Resident Evil would have had no controversy behind it from ratings boards when the first game came out, Dead Rising has garnered media attention just by being rated. As a developer who wished to remain anonymous put it, "If you're going to the ESRB with a rating and it comes back with an 'oh no, this stuff is bad,' then I've seen cases where the developer is like, 'We'd better cut back these other five things, even though the developer hasn't brought them up, as a good-faith effort to show them we're playing along.' "
There is a good side, however, to all this. Like it or not, the attention does force developers to make titles that will appeal to a broader spectrum. How else would Rockstar even be associated with table tennis, for example? This does increase the general appeal of games and acts as something cohesive rather than divisive pasttime.
In addition to this, the history of video game acceptance is much like the history of movie, television and comic book acceptance in their developing years, as game developers who want certain things to remain in the game, at least in essence, will find other creative ways to make the same emotion or sentiment known. This was the case in the creation of visual metaphors in movies, as well as the art of concealing details in comic books to lessen gore and heighten readers' imagination and ideas of suspense.
Games will continue to thrive, and censors will continue to exist. Hot Coffee showed us that there can be a difference between gaming sense and social sensibility. The task now, if we want games to move in the direction of acceptance that television and movies have earned now, is to find ways to be creative and make a profit without going overboard and losing the respect of the majority.
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