Interview with Patrick Wildenborg
The following interview was originally published in “Sex in Video Games” book by Brenda Brathwaite.
Patrick Wildenborg is, arguably, the most famous modder in the world and the creator of the Hot Coffee mod for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. For weeks in the summer of 2005, he was at the center of the controversy. Patrick is a software engineer and system designer of embedded real-time systems.
Can you take me through the process of “day one”—you get the game home, look at it, and then what?
Well, at the time I got the game home, all of the work for the initial version of the mod was already done. Since the game was released in the States three days earlier, one of the guys had already sent me the SCMfile (binary script-file) of the PC version. I modified that one based on the knowledge I had from studying the PS2 version (which was very similar to the PC version of that file). After that, I sent it back for the guys in the USA to test. A short while after that, they posted the first movies of the Hot Coffee mod in action. This was on a private forum, between the release in the USA and the release in Europe. I released the mod to the public on the day of the release of the game in Europe (June 10). At that point, I still didn’t have the game myself, and I had only seen the action of the mod in some movie clips.
To answer your question, when I got home with the game, I first started it up to see if it would run on my system. After that, I installed the mod that I had already released at that time, and checked out the Hot Coffee scenes myself.
“Barton Waterduck” had discovered some unused code in the PS2 version. When the PC version came out, was finding/hooking up that code one of the things you wanted to do?
Barton did discover the animation files and found some references to them in the script-file. After analyzing the parts of the code surrounding those references, I found out that they contained what looked like working code of a mini-game that was not in the game. This process took several weeks, as they used a lot of new opcodes in the San Andreas SCM file of which the meaning was still to be figured out. After spitting through the code for some weeks, I had a pretty good idea of what the code was suppose to do, and what had to be done to activate it. However, we were not able to make those changes on the PS2 version. So yeah, we have waited anxiously for a couple of months between these discoveries and the release of San Andreas for the PC.
When you had it working and realized that there was in fact a functional mini-game in there, what did you think? Were you surprised? Did you have any idea what you’d find in the code?
Just from analyzing the code, and that was the only thing that we could do at that time, we had a pretty good idea what that code would do. And, of course, we were surprised. Even people who knew about the discovery didn’t believe that it would be actually working code. And yes, we all were surprised when it turned out to be working (although the code/models are clearly not fully developed).
When Rockstar finally spoke on the matter, they effectively challenged you, saying that the mod was the work of a “determined group of hackers,” and noting that it involved “significant technical modifications” and “reconstituting the source code.” What was your reaction knowing that it was a single flag?
My personal opinion was that a couple of lawyers without proper technical knowledge at Take-Two had made up that statement. In my eyes, it was just their way of damage control, and I was personally very proud of being called a “hacker.” As you should know, in the software engineering scene, “hacker” is a term for a very talented programmer. Sadly, the general public has a much more negative image with the word “hacker.”
Why did it take so long for someone to verify that you were, in fact, telling the truth and that Hot Coffee was on the disc? On June 22, 2005, you tell GamePolitics.com that it’s on the disc, but it wasn’t confirmed in the eyes of many until Gamespot.com confirmed its existence on the PS2 on July 15, 2005.
Your guess is as good as mine. It would have been very easy to prove just by having a look at the original SCM-file and the modified SCM-file with a hex file compare tool. The minimal changes would have been obvious.
Do you think Hot Coffee will change the way games are developed?
I assume that developers will double check what excess code they’ve left in the game before shipping it.
Do you think Hot Coffee will affect the ability of the mod community to mod games?
Concerning GTA:SA, it already did. The second edition of SA (with Hot Coffee stuff removed) has a lot of extra checks to prevent certain types of modding, but even beyond that, the ESRB discourages developers to make games easy moddable. I think that would be a very negative thing for gaming on the PC. In my opinion, mod-ability is one of the key selling points of PC games (months after the release of the same games on consoles). Modding also keeps fans interested in the games between the releases of different versions.
Many developers purposely leave their code modder-friendly. It can lead to a longer sales curve and more popularity for the game. Was the same thing true of GTA:SA?
Sure, although only up to a certain degree. They have a lot of settings for the game in plain ASCII files. Some of them even have extensive comments about the meaning of all the fields. But, on the other side, they are using a lot of proprietary formats for models, scripting, textures, and animations, and they don’t supply any info or tools for those formats. The GTA-modding scene has analyzed all those file-formats themselves and made their own tools to edit them.
Did you have any idea of how big this story was going to be? Of course not. This was far beyond our wildest dreams.
At its peak, what was it like?
Some days, I had over 50 emails a day about Hot Coffee, and those were mainly journalists requesting interviews and stuff. In addition to that, Dutch journalists even called on the phone. At a certain point, we had the phone disconnected for a couple of days to get some rest.
Do you feel that GTA:SA deserved the AO rating?
No, the AO rating was absurd. Even if the Hot Coffee scenes had been part of the actual gameplay, it didn’t justify an AO rating. “Dry humping” with your clothes on? Another game that you might have heard of comes to mind: Playboy: The Mansion. I think the action was at about the same level, based on reviews I’ve seen. Sadly, I have no copy of the game to check it myself. But besides that, I think it is absurd to give a game a rating based on stuff that isn’t playable in any way, without making alterations to the game.
When did you finally feel vindicated, knowing that the rest of the world knew you were telling the truth?
I guess that point came after Gamespot made those cheat codes for the PS2 version public. From that point on, the general media finally accepted that the content was made by Rockstar.
If there is a lasting lesson to be learned from Hot Coffee, what is it?
The biggest eye opener for me personally with my European background was the twisted morals in the USA towards anything that has to do with SEX. It’s okay if, in a game, you can beat your girlfriend with a baseball bat or shoot her. But when you share some intimate moments with her after having dated her for quite a while? Oh no. . . .
I hope that the lasting lesson learned by the general public will be that computer games are no longer just aimed at children. A large part of the gaming community consists of adults, and this ever-growing group demands adult themes in games.
On June 21, 2006, MTV named PatrickW one of the top 10 most influential gamers of all time.
REFERENCE: Wildenborg, Patrick. Interview with Brenda Brathwaite, February 22, 2006.