The video gaming industry has received undeniably-high success in recent years, and over the course of the last few decades, video gaming has become a major hobby and, in some cases, career, of many individuals.
However, the portrayal of content in certain video games has come under fire around the time of their release by the common society, raising controversy in many realms. One of the most successful video game series in history has managed to position itself at the forefront of this controversy, and that series is, of course, Grand Theft Auto.
The Grand Theft Auto games are some of the best video games ever created, and personally, they are among my favorite games. The open-world landscapes, diverse array of vehicles, beautifully-crafted characters and missions, and random NPC dialogue never get old to me.
However, in some circles — mostly those of older generation parents — the mere mention of this franchise is enough to turn heads, with the majority of parents wincing at the series’ depictions of violence, torture, sex, prostitution, drugs, and other vices commonly looked down upon by the common society. However, the series arguably entered the forefront of controversy in 2005, following the exposure of the Hot Coffee Mod.
The controversy began with the release of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the fifth main installment in the series, in 2004. Starring Carl “CJ” Johnson, the game follows his story to return redemption to his street gang, in the state of San Andreas. Although the game was a massive success both culturally and economically, eventually becoming the highest-selling PlayStation 2 game of all time, it was, of course, rampant with controversy.
The game was immediately criticized for a variety of aspects, including racial stereotyping and sexual depictions, but this criticism was not unlike any of the other Grand Theft Auto games up to that point, and so the game did not significantly suffer — that is, until the Hot Coffee minigame became public in June 2005, due to the Hot Coffee Mod.
The Hot Coffee Mod was peculiar in that it did not add content that was not already in the base game; it merely exposed content which was already in the game, hidden by Rockstar Games, the developers. Essentially, in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the player, as CJ, can sleep with a multitude of girlfriends the player can acquire over the course of the game. In the base game, the girlfriend invites CJ in for some “hot coffee”, a euphemism for sex, and the camera stays outside, not depicting the sexual events occurring inside the household.
The mod, created by Patrick Wildenborg of the Netherlands, reveals the normally-inaccessible minigame, which portrays the characters having sex and encourages the player to perform maneuvers by hitting certain buttons, increasing the “excitement” meter. Players would even receive rewards for completing the minigame, such as, according to Matthew Wysocki of Flagler College, “benefits like extra vehicles or not losing weapons when hospitalized due to one girlfriend being a nurse.”
Simply put, the effects this mod had on both the gaming industry and general society were exorbitant. Following the Hot Coffee minigame’s exposure, the U.S. Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), the organization responsible for giving age ratings to video games in America, reclassified San Andreas to Adults Only (AO), an extremely rare rating which effectively removed the game from store shelves, resulting in the plummeting of sales.
A level of parental concern rose across society as the “dangers of video games” quickly became a moral panic, with many parents concerned that the vices these games depict would negatively influence the audiences playing said games. According to Dr. Aphra Kerr of the National University of Ireland Maynooth,
“[The game contributed to a] revival of the negative discourse this time focussed on…the ability of the producers to exploit the digital nature of games to effectively hide content from regulators.”
As such, parents felt the game was unsuitable for general audiences. However, the mod also contributed to a huge political rift, becoming the direct catalyst of the passing of the Family Entertainment Protection Act, led by then-senator Hillary Clinton.
The Family Entertainment Protection Act was a bill introduced in the 109th United States Congress, which met from 2005–2007. The bill’s primary function was to prohibit the sale of games with a Mature (M) or Adult Only (AO) rating to minors under the age of 17. According to a letter from Senator Clinton herself, which she wrote to Chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Deborah Platt Majoras,
“…the video game, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, has graphic pornographic content which may be unlocked by following instructions widely available on the Internet…Alarmingly, it seems that no one yet knows the source of this content…But the public has a strong interest in learning the answer quickly. We should all be deeply disturbed that a game which now permits the simulation of lewd sexual acts in an interactive format with highly realistic graphics has fallen into the hands of young people across the country.”
Essentially, Clinton’s letter called for the ESRB to prohibit sales of mature or adult games to those under 17 years, limiting minors’ access to video games which depict such lewd content.
An article published by the major gaming news website GameSpot on July 14, 2005, entitled “Clinton calls for federal game regulation”, reported upon Clinton’s response to the controversial game, as well as the responses to Clinton from opposing parties, mainly the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), the primary representative of the video game industry. As Clinton’s actions were obviously hurting the gaming industry, the article states,
“The efforts by Clinton strike at the heart of what the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has long sought to avoid: federal oversight of game ratings and federal policing of sales to specific age groups based on those ratings. The magnitude of the recent fury surrounding the Hot Coffee mod stands to impact the ESA's agenda, although it is not yet clear exactly how. The ESA's response to Clinton's proposed legislation was to claim the Senator's theories were based on flawed legal theory. "The legislation proposed by Senator Clinton is unconstitutional on its face as it amounts to government enacted restrictions on creative and artistic expression protected by the First Amendment," ESA president Douglas Lowenstein said in a statement”.
The article also implies that Clinton was acting hastily, including a statement from the ESRB; the article reads,
“Also responding to the Senator's comments was ESRB president Patricia Vance who today cautioned all parties against any hasty actions. "We urge all parties not to rush to judgment until all of the relevant facts, some of which are highly technical and complicated, have been established. Any second guessing at this point would be premature and inappropriate as this investigation continues," Vance said.”
Through reading these primary sources of Clinton’s letter and the GameSpot article, the political turmoil caused by the Hot Coffee Mod becomes quite apparent.
Despite the Hot Coffee Mod incident occurring only 15 years ago, which to some, is not very historic, much scholarly research has been done on this topic since. Published in 2006 is a book entitled “The Meaning and Culture of Grand Theft Auto: Critical Essays” by Dr. Nate Garrelts, PhD, an academic philosopher of Michigan State University who specializes in digital games and other media.
The book is essentially a collection of essays and literary reports conducted by various scholars regarding the controversies surrounding the Grand Theft Auto series, and the very first report featured in the book is specifically regarding the Hot Coffee Mod. The report, entitled “Spilling Hot Coffee? Grand Theft Auto as contested cultural product”, was published in 2006 by Dr. Aphra Kerr of the National University of Ireland Maynooth, a visiting scholar at the Annenberg School for Communication and a lecturer and researcher at the National University of Ireland Maynooth.
The negative discourse that occurred as a result of the Hot Coffee Mod’s discovery, and its subsequent reactions across society, is highlighted in Kerr’s report. It details reasoning as to why the Hot Coffee Mod was so ill-received, as opposed to other aspects of the Grand Theft Auto games which, while violent, did not spark outrage and moral panic like the Hot Coffee Mod did.
Kerr reasons that it was mainly due to the fact that the content, which depicts detailed violent sex, was hidden deep inside the game, away from the public eye, and found it revolting that game producers would include this content in the game. She reasons that the game was unsuitable for audiences as it depicts violent sex acts which, according to her,
“resulted in a revival of the negative discourse this time focussed on the effect of interactive sexual content on minors.”
Kerr’s report analyzes in-depth the effects of the mod’s release as well as the potential reasons for the public outcry it caused. Kerr also analyzes Hillary Clinton’s investigation into the game, which has been discussed. She compares the intentional hiding of the minigame to authors attempting to circumvent censorship in countries without freedom of the press, similar to what the hit 2020 Minecraft map ‘The Hidden Library’ accomplishes. Kerr states in her report:
“What is interesting in this story is firstly that the game developers hid such a scene in the game in the first place knowing that it would probably not be found by game ratings boards but suspecting perhaps that game players would unlock it...This approach to third party intervention recalls creative efforts by writers to smuggle contentious ideas into literature in countries with strict censorship regimes in the early twentieth century.”
Ten years following the release of the Hot Coffee Mod, another book was published which contains scholarly research regarding the controversy, and serves as a suitable secondary source. The book, entitled “Rated M for Mature: Sex and Sexuality in Video Games”, was written by Matthew Wysocki of Flagler College and Evan W. Lauteria of the University of California, Davis.
The book, published in 2015, also discusses in-depth the mod itself and its impact, most notably in the chapter “It’s not just the coffee that’s hot: Modding sexual content in video games” where Wysocki analyzes the details of the mod itself and what it composes, similar to the background given earlier in this paper. According to Wysocki,
“The discovery of this code and the mod to access it ended up being a public relations black eye for game developer Rockstar Games.”
It should be noted that mods usually refer to content added to a game by the community and not the developers themselves; however, Wysocki makes it clear here that the mod merely exposes the content which was already in the game — as mentioned earlier — which was obviously put there by Rockstar Games: of this, he states,
“The company initially attempted to claim that the Hot Coffee mod actually was the result of programming the content into the game, but subsequent hacking of the console versions revealed that they too contained the content in question.”
Wysocki states that Rockstar initially claimed the content was programmed into the game by modders, but a hacker examined the files of the console version, and found the files for the Hot Coffee Minigame to exist there, too, proving Rockstar, in fact, implemented it, and third-party modders did not add the content.
The fallout caused by the release of this mod was, as discussed, massive. Following the political turmoil and subsequent restrictions placed upon the video gaming industry by the ESRB, that resulted from this mod, Rockstar was forced to address the problem that they single- handedly created.
According to Wysocki, “Rockstar was forced to remove the content altogether on future versions in order to earn back its Mature rating” which would place it back onto store shelves. Once this occurred,
“The company also released a subsequent patch for the game that blocked access to the minigame even if the Hot Coffee mod was installed on a user’s computer.”
Despite these hardships, however, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas did eventually recover, going on to become the highest-selling PlayStation 2 game of all time, as previously mentioned. Additionally, the game was remastered for seventh-generation consoles (Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3) in 2012, and eventually eighth-generation consoles (Xbox One and PlayStation 4) in 2015, a decade after the Hot Coffee Mod took its toll on society.
It is clear that the primary outcry resulting from the Hot Coffee Mod is the effect that not only violence in video games can have on an audience, but sexualized content as well. The Hot Coffee Mod appears to be a mix between the two, as it depicts arguably violent sex.
Advocates for these games may suggest that the game was already intended for more mature audiences and as such, shouldn’t be played by younger gamers in the first place, effectively eliminating the fear of children being negatively impacted by these violent video games. However, as Hillary Clinton pointed out in her letter, it had become increasingly easy for minors to obtain and play these games, and so change was already required.
Regardless of your stance on this topic, the controversy that the Hot Coffee Mod caused surrounding the influence of video games, which resulted in massive social, economical and political shifts, cannot be underestimated.
Chris is a writer and publisher who travels America, and loves doing it. He also loves pizza, video games, and sports, and can tell you a thing or two about each. Follow him on Medium to be informed of new articles.
Sources utilized:
- Clinton, Hillary Rodham. “Senator Clinton Announces Legislation to Keep Inappropriate Video Games Out of the Hands Of Children.” Received by Deborah Platt Majoras, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairwoman, Washington, D.C., 14 July 2005, Washington, D.C., District of Columbia., https://web.archive.org/web/20050724091254/http:// clinton.senate.gov/news/statements/details.cfm?id=240603
- Feldman, Curt. “Clinton Calls for Federal Game Regulation.” GameSpot, Gamespot, 14 July 2005, www.gamespot.com/articles/clinton-calls-for-federal-game-regulation/ 1100–6129040/.
- Garrelts, Nate. The Meaning and Culture of Grand Theft Auto: Critical Essays. McFarland & Co., 2006.
- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Rockstar Games, 2004. Accessed 7 August 2020.
- Kerr, Dr. Aphra. Spilling Hot Coffee? Grand Theft Auto as Contested Cultural Product. National University of Ireland Maynooth, 2006, pp. 1–17, Spilling Hot Coffee? Grand Theft Auto as Contested Cultural Product.
- United States, Congress, Cong. Senate, United States Congress, and Hillary Rodham Clinton. “Family Entertainment and Protection Act.” Family Entertainment and Protection Act, 2005. 109th Congress, bill S.2126.
- Wysocki, Matthew, and Evan W. Lauteria. Rated M for Mature: Sex and Sexuality in Video Games. Bloomsbury, 2015.
