brainwagon

I’ve been tracking Wil Wheaton’s amusing anecdotes about competing in the 2005 WSOP, but today the poker muse must have temporarily vacated him only to be replaced by the political muse. Today he’s writing a brief letter to Senator Hillary Clinton, indicating that her valuable time might be better spent chasing after Karl Rove rather than Carl Johnson, creator of Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto, San Andreas.

For those of you not immersed in the world of video games, Grand Theft Auto is a popular series of video games where the principal activities required are essentially all violent crimes. The gamer is expected to steal cars, drive around, shoot police officers, rough up prostitutes, and generally just cause all sorts of mayhem.

These games have been controversial since they were first released, but they are also insanely popular, due no doubt in some small measure to the controversy itself. The game is rated M, indicating strong violence and sexual themes, so it is not like parents are not warned.

But the controversy has been kicked up a notch in the last couple of months by a modification which is going around the Internet called “Hot Coffee”. Apparently one of the subplots for the game involves trying to get your girlfriend to invite you back to her place for coffee. This particular mod changes an innocent coffee break into, well, sex. No, I’m not going to give you screendumps, I don’t have any, don’t ask. Search around for yourself if you want to see what it’s all about.

So, here we have a game which consists of

1. Stealing cars
2. Drive by shootings
3. Killing police
4. Smashing hookers with tire irons

and yet the thing which requires a congressional investigation is the notion that someone has managed to create a modification to the game which allows you to see a bunch of flesh colored triangles do the horizontal mambo. Are there a whole bunch of parents somewhere who felt like GTASA was appropriate for their children until they learned of this mod, and are now irate?

I’m confused. I respect the idea that it’s a vile video game without any redeeming value and is completely inappropriate for children, but presumably you knew that before, didn’t you? If you are a resident of New York, do you think that it’s a worthwhile use of your representatives time to tell you what you and everyone else knows?