With the next Grand Theft Auto game, GTA IV, coming next month, Electronic Gaming Monthly has a big feature story on the franchise. Included in the piece is an interesting interview with Patrick Wildenborg, the gamer who first discovered the notorious secret sex scene nicknamed "Hot Coffee." Hot Coffee would spark outcries from Hilary Clinton to Arnold Schwarzenegger and become emblematic of the ongoing battles over gore and porn in gaming.
The meta-challenge for GTA IV is whether it can transcend the sociopolitical baggage, and raise the bar of the sandbox style freeform gaming that the franchise pioneered. Long before GTA was reduced to a poster-game for kids gone wild, it was a wildly innovative epic that redefined the experience of interactive play. Let's hope it does this again.
