With the release of Grand Theft Auto IV nearing, I expected the controversy over sex and violence in video games to heat up again, but Ars Technica is reporting that the usual trolls received an unusual assist from gaming site IGN. (IGN is owned by Murch. Coincidence?)

The Ars Technica article describes the IGN video: "The video strips the game of all context and merely shows scenes of sexual content and violence, one after the other. In fact, it can be hard to watch for that reason, and it's a rather numbing experience."

You won't find a link to it on this page.

The ISP issue here: ISPs do not want to be asked or forced to police the usage of video games on their networks. If rogue lawyers want to indict everyone at a video game company for a game they call "worse than polio" then that's fine. They're allowed to present their case, no matter how ridiculous.

I fear, however, that since the Department of Justice ranks pornogoraphy as a higher prioirity threat to America than anything else, including organized crime and terrorism, the response will be fanatical and heavy handed, and may harm ISPs.

Update: Well, after this game appears to have broken records, achieving what may be the best composite review score of all time, I'll buy it when it comes out on the PC, if I can play it on my XP / DirectX 9 computer. The reviews exceeded high expectations and drove up the game maker's share price.