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Blog entry by Herman Marion

'The Interview' Controversy Sheds Troubling Light on Video Game Acceptance

'The Interview' Controversy Sheds Troubling Light on Video Game Acceptance

"After many months of designing, testing, rewriting and re-testing, we settled on the four-player structure that you will experience in the game. It took a ton of work from our programmers and mission designers to make it work at the level we were happy wi

At launch, there will be five separate heists, comprised of at least 20 missions. Heists will, of course, be replayable, allowing players to try out the different roles and maybe, just maybe, understand what it's like to be the getaway dri

The video game industry has been embroiled in this sort of controversy for the past few weeks leading up to the news about The Interview. In two separate events, the gaming community (and even some outside the gaming community) have shown a willingness to accept and often times support acts comparable to Sony's just as often as it condemns them. The first happened when Target and Kmart stores in Australia decided they would not carry Grand Theft Auto V due to its depictions of violence against women . Then days ago, Hatred, the game that may yet actually morph into a scolding-hot button, was pulled from Steam Greenlight .

Hatred saw the effects of this much more than GTA 5 updates|Https://gta5Play.com/ V. Being pulled from Steam Greenlight can be a death sentence to indie game developers, as Steam is essentially the only game in town for newcomers. Fortunately for them, Gabe Newell decided that this wasn't a good decision . Without extrapolating his reasoning, it's nice to see someone in the gaming industry care about whether a developer has an honest shot and releasing their creation, regardless of how tasteless the content may be.

It's been more than a year since Grand Theft Auto V and GTA Online released, yet the highly requested implementation of online heists are still missing from the game. Over the year we've gone from hearing next to nothing about it; being told it's coming soon, then learning it'll come in an update after the current-gen versions release. Contrary to the hopes of a late December release due to a rumor of the content's date , however, eager GTA Online players will have to wait until 2015 for the online heists. Specifically, 'early 2015.' The teasing (and lengthy waiting) contin

To help put that figure into another perspective, after just one day on shelves, the money that Grand Theft Auto V has generated would put it as the 40th highest grossing movie release ever, making more money than Inception and Spider-Man in their entire worldwide runs in cinemas. Of course, the price of a game is more expensive than a movie ticket, and there is some room for inflation differences, but that it serves as a stark comparison especially when you consider the time frames being compa

For example, CVG reports that the game smashed retail records in the UK, quickly becoming the biggest video game launch ever seen. The game sold 1.57 million units for a total of around $104 million in Britain, plowing through the previous record set by Call of Duty: Black Ops which sold around 1.41 million units on its launch day. To put that in perspective, the UK has a population of around 63 million, meaning that more then 1 in 60 people in the entire country own a copy. That is a lot after just one day on the mar

The content of these games shouldn't matter. The greater principle at stake here is the idea that people should be free to express their ideas, a value clearly held dearly by movie-goers but not so much by the gaming community. Society has spoken about movies: we want any film, regardless of how controversial the subject matter, to be available to the public in an exercise of our right to free speech and ideal of free expression. The question remains when, if ever, will society feel the same way about video games?

Fortunately, as seen above, Rockstar Games has introduced a brand new trailer for the multiplayer feature that may or may not hold people over until next year. Also, as it turns out, the heists are a four-player co-op mode, with one person as the leader and the other playing simple crew members. The player in the leader role is tasked with recruiting other players, assigning roles, picking appropriate heisting outfits and the like, while the other members just have to show up, do their job correctly, and make it to "each Heist’s epic fina

While some forum users have objected to SuperGamer's listing on the grounds that it displays the unofficially defunct 'Games For Windows Live' tag, it's important to remember that many retailers employ mock-ups when advertising similar pre-ord

Tweets about Hatred are much more skewed, and conversation about GTA V, much discussed in the video game press, seems to paint a two-sided issues. Defense of Target's decision as not censorship and a positive step toward equality were just as rampant, if not more so, than concerns over the kind of precedent their move set. Consider this, if it's not censorship for Target to pull the game, what if all retailers pulled the game? It's well within their rights, but it would achieve the exact same effect as a blatant censorship did. Thus, a de facto censorship - a universal lack of availability that's not necessarily enforced by law.

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