As a coder and a gamer, Wildenborg threw himself into the mod scene. He knew exactly what he wanted to create for Vice City. In the game, players could store only four cars in a garage—hardly enough room for the dozens of sweet rides Wildenborg amassed. After a month of caffeine-fueled nights, he created Marina Carpark—a mod that, when downloaded and installed for free—let players store up to forty cars in a sprawling lot. The feat earned Wildenborg the GTA mod community's respect when he released it in January 2004. “People said it was impossible, but I somehow managed,” he explained, with his mixture of modesty and pride.
Wildenborg spent long hours on GTAforums.com, a popular site for mod makers of the game. The visitors were often anonymous, logging on under assumed names and rarely, if ever, meeting in person or talking on the phone. Theirs was a collaborative, obsessive group of fans. One person might come up with an idea for a mod, then another would chime in—working together to reverse-engineer the game and get at the code. “The modding community felt like a bunch of friends trying to solve a mystery,” Wildenborg said.
In October 2004, the players finally got their hands on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Rockstar's hotly anticipated new game. Wildenborg and the others delighted over having “new worlds to explore,” he said. He marveled at the sheer expanse of the game, cruising through the forests in his Banshee sports car, flying in his airplane, and jumping over hills on his motorcycle. He tagged storefronts with graffiti in Los Santos, hit the casinos in Las Venturas. The story of CJ's rise through West Coast gang violence brimmed with the kind of uncanny details and encyclopedic pop culture references that made Rockstar famous. Wildenborg, like the other modders, couldn't wait to play around with the code.
With only the PS2 version of the game released, however, there was only so much they could do. Mods were primarily a computer game phenomenon because consoles were harder to crack. Until the PC version of the game came out, along with the Xbox version, next summer, Wildenborg could do little more than poke around the PS2 code.
Yet poking around was half the fun and created a sublime beauty all its own. When you went deep enough into the code, you felt as if you had left your Mountain Dew–stained desk chair for the abstract world behind the computer screen. After hours of hacking San Andreas, Wildenborg found himself there. It was like standing in an electric forest of trees with long glowing limbs of ones and zeroes. The ground shimmered in peppery static. Wildenborg reached down into the pixilated thicket and picked up a camouflaged package wrapped and buried out of sight. He held it in his hand as it sizzled and sparked.
What, he wondered, was this?
BY THE TIME Sam's thirty-fourth birthday (and Rockstar's annual cheese ball–eating contest) rolled around, he had reason to be elated. San Andreas was a hit. In its first two months, San Andreas sold 5 million copies at $50 a pop. The game was on its way to eventually selling an astonishing 21.5 million copies, making it the most successful PS2 title ever. When the fiscal year ended on October 31, 2004—just days after the launch—San Andreas accounted for 20.9 percent of Take-Two's revenues.
Fans and reviewers hailed it the company's crowning achievement. Game Critics called it “a stunning milestone in every aspect that matters... . a monumental game that has now redefined the standard against which all future games like it will be measured.” Game Informer deemed it “extraordinary—something that I believe will define a generation and will forever change the way that we look at video games.” >IGN considered it “a terrific unending masterpiece of a game.” In New York, an artist friend of Rockstar's created a so-called Delinquency Chamber inspired by the game—a free-standing installation with a built-in bong, a beer-filled fridge, and a wide-screen TV for playing San Andreas.
Yet not everyone dug the new GTA. The New York Times found the game “just as disturbing and annoying” as the others in the franchise. Another swipe came from Dave Jones, the ex-DMA chief who was busy working on his own upcoming action game, Crackdown. A few days after San Andreas's release, Jones dissed the game in a lengthy profile in the Sunday Times. “Some of it does make you grimace,” he said. “It is like watching Goodfellas. There are some scenes when you ask yourself, Did they really have to do that? How far will this go?”
As Lowenstein had feared, others took umbrage over what was perceived as the stereotypical black lead in the game. The Chicago Tribune quoted an academic who said that “even though there's a lead black character, which is in some sense progress, that lead character is in a violent, urban environment ... engaging in gang activity, drug activity, running from police.”
In an article called “The Color of Mayhem,” the New York Times said that “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, underscores what some critics consider a disturbing trend: popular video games that play on racial stereotypes, including images of black youths committing and reveling in violent street crime.” King couldn't believe it when he read comments on online forums from gamers who simply didn't want to play a game with a black lead.
Yet privately, Sam had other matters in mind. Although he was publicly elated over San Andreas's success, he seemed to be still reeling from cutting the sex scenes out of the game. Then came an idea for how to win in the end—by putting a sex scene into the PC version of San Andreas that would be getting published in June 2005. On November 25, 2004, Sam e-mailed Benzies, urging him to “explore any additional content ideas” to determine “how hard we can push the sex stuff ... to make it bonkers.” Benzies promised, “We will get the sex stuff back to the way it was.”
Two weeks later, the Rockstar designer handling the production process e-mailed a colleague about the decision to bring the sexy back to the game. Animators were instructed to dig up the old animations and make sure they were up to par. “And may I say how happy I am that they are going back in,” the colleague replied.
If need be, Sam later explained in another internal e-mail, the company might put out two versions of the game, “we will do AO and M versions (as discussed).” Releasing an AO version of San Andreas would be more of an artistic statement than a way to cash in. Rockstar would be sending a message, as Sam wrote, that “yes we will go to places that you other f*cks wouldn't even consider.”
Over at the ESRB, however, the Xbox and PC versions of San Andreas were no reason for concern. On January 7, 2005, the submission package from Rockstar arrived at the ESRB office without fanfare. Because the game was identical to the PS2 version, Rockstar was not required to send a new disc with the package. The reviewers simply rubber-stamped the Xbox and PC versions of the game with the same M-rating as before.
Back at Rockstar, Donovan told Sam that fear was spreading among the sales force over the sex scene plan. “They are concerned we will get a really intense backlash if we push the pc version too far,” Sam wrote to Benzies on January 18.
In the computer game ecosystem, games sometimes need updates after they're released. This could be for a variety of reasons, maybe to fix a bug or tweak new content. To remedy this, game makers put out small software programs called patches, which gamers can download for free online. As part of a possible new AO-rated version of San Andreas, Rockstar could release the PC version of the game with the sex-scene wrapped away, as in the PS2 game. Then later, they could put out a patch which, when installed, would open the sex scene and, as Sam put it in an email, “unlock the darkness.” There would be nothing illegal or misleading about it.
On February 7, 2005, a Rockstar designer e-mailed a colleague the possibility that “sex is going to be released as a patch, so we can fudge as much as you like.” The next week, another email made sure that the “full on sex works” in the “patched version” in the PC edition of San Andreas.
It was time for the darkness to set in.
“YOU ARE DOING GOD'S work in battling these forces of darkness. Satan is behind them, and God is behind you.” Jack Thompson would never forget these words of encouragement that a fellow culture warrior had once shared with him. He felt more blessed than
ever when he found himself on 60 Minutes taking on what for him was the darkest force of all, GTA.
“Grand Theft Auto is a world governed by the laws of depravity,” correspondent Ed Bradley said by way of introduction. “See a car you like? Steal it. Someone you don't like? Stomp her. A cop in your way? Blow him away. There are police at every turn, and endless opportunities to take them down. It is 360 degrees of murder and mayhem: slickly produced, technologically brilliant, and exceedingly violent.”
It was March 5, 2005, and the world's most notorious video game was in the crosshairs for a shocking series of murders in a small American town. “But for the video-game training,” Thompson, graying hair neatly combed, told Bradley, “he would not have done what he did.”
Thompson was referring to what happened on June 7, 2003, in the small coal-mining town of Fayette, Alabama. At 3 a.m., police officer Arnold Strickland found a young black man, eighteen-year-old Devin Moore, sleeping in a car that came up as stolen. Strickland cuffed Moore and took him back to the station for questioning. While Moore was being booked, he suddenly grabbed the Glock handgun from officer Arnold Strickland's holster and shot him dead.
Moore fled, as another cop came after him, but Moore was fast in his reflexes and unloaded three shots at the cop, killing him, too. As the boy passed the office of an emergency dispatcher, he squeezed off five more rounds, including another head shot. With the three men left bloodied and dead, Moore spotted a set of keys and took them outside, where he sped off in a squad car just before sunrise.
Three and a half hours later, police chased the dark-blue stolen police car just over the Mississippi state line. On Moore's arrest, news of the shooting spree traveled the country, and people wondered what would cause this young guy, with no prior criminal record, to snap as he did. During a court hearing in December 2004, an officer testified that as Moore was being led into the county jail, Moore said, “Life is like a video game. You've got to die sometime.” And the game he liked to play was GTA.
When Thompson heard this news, he snapped into action. While Rockstar had become the biggest player in the game industry, Thompson had become the most notorious player hater around. He felt more confident than ever. In the previous year, he had successfully battled the most controversial radio shock-jock in America: Howard Stern. After badgering the Federal Communications Commission about Stern, Thompson managed to get Stern suspended from air time in Miami and, ultimately, fined nearly $500,000. Even Stern gave him props by calling him the “lunatic lawyer in Miami who got me off the air down there.”
Now he was ready to set his sights back on Rockstar. “What we're saying is that Devin Moore was, in effect, trained to do what he did,” Thompson told Bradley, who listened intently. “He was given a murder simulator. He bought it as a minor. He played it hundreds of hours, which is primarily a cop-killing game. It's our theory, which we think we can prove to a jury in Alabama, that but for the video-game training, he would not have done what he did.” Thompson promised that a lawsuit would follow.
As the players of the game industry watched the segment, they reeled and fumed.
Lowenstein felt more exasperated than ever. Prior to the segment's airing, he tried to interest the producers in other angles—the demographics of games, the health benefits—but for naught. Lowenstein later recalled, “People would apologize and say, ‘Listen, I'm really sorry, but the editors are telling me I have to do this story, I know it's bullshit. I know Jack Thompson is a joke. But we gotta do the story, and we're going to quote Jack.' It became increasingly appalling and irresponsible for supposedly honorable, serious journalists to knowingly feature someone they would privately admit lacked credibility only because he was good on TV.”
Back in New York, Pat Vance, the businesslike president of the ESRB, and her lead publicist, Elliot Mizrahi, watched Thompson on 60 Minutes in awe. “What's incredible is when he's on with Ed Bradley, he's measured and composed,” Mizrahi later said, “but his press releases are like the ranting of a maniac.”
“We don't serve Jack Thompson,” Vance snapped, “we serve the public.” Yet she knew she was helpless to his message. Thompson simply played the media game better than they did. “It's not a great story to say the industry has its act together,” she said. Her strategy: “Stay focused, and try not to listen.”
Still, the guys back in New York couldn't help but watch—and fume. “We were low-hanging fruit for the sensationalists and the extremists,” King recalled. “And there was value in the IP of Grand Theft Auto, to the extent that someone like Jack Thompson could make it his platform. We ultimately thought it would end in tears for someone like Jack Thompson.”
Yet with his phone ringing off the hook from reporters, Thompson felt more powerful than ever. Nothing could stop him, not the people who called him crazy or even the ones who had been calling him at home, threatening to kill him. He was on a mission from God. “I was enjoying this,” he later wrote in his memoir, “all the while trying to remember whose victory it really was.”
His son, Johnny, however, now in the sixth grade, seemed to have doubts. As a younger boy, he had dutifully joined his dad's crusade, even buying GTA: Vice City while his dad videotaped him stealthily outside. Yet now he was in middle school, surrounded by game players who knew he was the son of the biggest player hater around. After his dad had been invited to speak about violent games at his school, he approached his father.
“Dad,” Johnny said, “I think it's great that you're on this national show, but the kids are giving me grief about it. Kids I don't even know are coming up to me and bothering me, saying things like ‘Tell your dad that I'm not going to Columbine.'” He begged his dad not to deliver the speech. Thompson's heart sank as he looked down into his son's eyes. Yet after telling the school he was declining the speech, the school counselor convinced Thompson that the best thing to do for his boy was to share this message with everyone before it was too late. Thompson agreed.
On the day of his lecture, he stood before the kids, Thompson stoked their fears as deftly as he did the viewers of 60 Minutes. He quoted passages from the bible, along with brain-scan studies on players of violent games, and he invoked the palpable horror of school shootings. “The Grand Theft Auto games turn the world on its head,” he preached. “Bad guys are good guys. Cops are the enemy. Women are to be used and discarded... . If you are convinced that violent video games cannot possibly affect you, then how sure are you that they will not affect a classmate?”
Still a stay-at-home dad, Thompson had to pick up his son at the end of school that day. As he waited, he had no idea how his son had reacted to his speech. Would Johnny hate him? Was this crusade really worth it, after all? “Dad,” Johnny told him, “I was proud of you.” Then he drove his boy safely through Vice City, home.
ACROSS THE OCEAN, two weeks after Thompson's appearance on 60 Minutes, Patrick Wildenborg and the GTA modders were feeling proud, too. Since finding the secret code hidden in San Andreas, they were on a mission to see what it revealed. They created a secret forum in an online chat room, where a couple of dozen modders met every day as they pursued their quest.
These weren't any ordinary files, they realized. They referred to animations left out of the game for some reason. The problem was, without the right software, the modders couldn't see what the images contained. One modder with a particularly awesome nickname, Barton Waterduck, got to work on cracking the code. Wildenborg knew as much about Waterduck as anyone else on the forums—pretty much nothing. But Waterduck had skills. He ran the code through a crude program that converted the files into stick figure animations—not the fully realized scenes, alas, but at least a sketch of what possibly was there.
When Wildenborg downloaded the video that Waterduck had posted online, he struggled to make out the abstract images. He saw a white stick figure person. Lines for legs. The body. Arms. A head. The person appeared to be on all fours. Wildenborg lowered his laptop screen in case his kids wandered by. “It was puzzl
ing,” he later recalled. “It was pretty clear the animations were sexual.”
He was right. The hidden files had suggestive names—“SEX,” “KISSING,” “SNM,” and “BLOWJOBZ.” Soon they had more proof. On March 18, 2005, at 5:05 p.m., after two months of tinkering, Waterduck posted a note to the group titled “Real SEX animations—really.” He explained how he had run the animation code through a special program with astonishing results. “There he was, CJ on the pavement,” Waterduck wrote, “fucking like a rabbit.” He punctuated the line with a wide-mouthed, wide-eyed emoticon. “I never EVER thought they actually created real sex animations like that in a ps2 game,” he wrote, “and if they took it out, well, they didn't.”
Waterduck shared his code so that others could achieve the same results. The forums lit up. Finding hidden files was one allure of modding, but finding hidden sex files in the biggest video game around—that was too killer for words. “Wow,” wrote one modder, “I really didn't expect Rockstar to leave that in there.” He joked, “Now they are training children to kill prostitutes as well as teaching them sex moves.”
Still, Waterduck had not unearthed an entire coherent scene, only random, disorganized pieces. By the next day, Waterduck had found more, he wrote, “a video of CJ with afro and a goatie and with a almost naked (?) girlfriend model, suck, fucking, slapping, slapping too hard (!), lying, sitting, standing, on knees... . Only different from a real porn video is that CJ has clothes on.”
Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto Page 20