It's almost hard to believe, but it's been roughly two years since the infamous "Hot Coffee" scandal surrounding Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas broke. While initially written off with a snicker by most of the gaming community, it quickly reached the ears of the mainstream media and California Assemblyman Leland Yee called out both the ESRB and Rockstar to label the game "AO." Despite evidence to the contrary, Rockstar denied any complicit action in the affair. Eventually, the game was reassigned an "AO" rating and pulled from the shelves of all major retailers.

Having to re-release the game was only one of Take-Two's worries, as legal action was taken against the company in the following months. While there were some who argued that "any publicity is good publicity," the bottom line was that the Hot Coffee incident cost Take-Two millions of dollars in sales with the recall, severely weakened investor confidence, gave a black eye to the industry and drained away whatever good faith the company had with the ESRB. They probably wish, in retrospect, that they could call a mulligan on the whole incident.

But how specifically could things have been handled better? And what lesson can the industry as a whole take from the Hot Coffee incident? We talked with Bill Linn, Partner at Sandbox Strategies and PR veteran, about all this and more.

To say Linn is experienced with public relations and controversial video games would be an understatement. In fact, practically the only thing missing from his resume is working on Mortal Kombat and Night Trap. And yes, he worked on PR for the Grand Theft Auto series, including San Andreas (though not during the Hot Coffee incident).

"I've worked on a lot of 'M' rated games, many of which were great games that received a mature rating based on something obvious, such as blood or the like," detailed Linn. "I always make sure to show the distinction between titles like that and games that generated a large amount of media and activist scrutiny. Most great games with mature content never fall into that latter category. Unfortunately, in the last 17 years pitching games, I have seen my share come under the public microscope. Early on, I had to battle the mainstream media when they thought Leisure Suit Larry on a CD from Sierra was interactive porn. More recently, I was involved in State of Emergency, Manhunt and three Grand Theft Autos. All in all, I spent six years working with Rockstar and three of those almost exclusively helping manage the controversy around certain titles. Somewhere in the middle of that, I consulted on the media management surrounding the controversial presidential assassination game, JFK Reloaded. Even today, our agency, Sandbox Strategies, continues to handle a number of M-rated titles."

Now, using controversial content for the PR efforts of a game seems to be much like having the tiger by the tail. Some have tried and most have failed, like the old Acclaim running a contest to have people name their baby "Turok" or buy advertising space on real people's tombstones for Shadowman. Ultimately, as has been proven with games like BMX XXX, games perform better based upon the quality, not the controversy, of their content.

"I don't think most marketing and PR people sit around and think 'how can I exploit this to sell more.' As we learned with many titles, too much controversy causes your product to get pulled from shelves and make retailers nervous," explained Linn. "That's not good for anyone, so most people tend to responsibly acknowledge the controversy but sell the game based on its merits. Good games don't need controversy to sell."

"That said," he continued. "I've seen my share of cheap publicity stunts by many publishers (none of which I have been involved in) over the years where they thought manufactured controversy would cover-up a crappy game. More often than not, the controversy is unfairly thrust upon them by the mainstream media, family groups or an unforeseen event (i.e. school shooting). It's unfortunate that groups often jump to conclusions that video games are the root of all evils."

While a little notoriety has helped the word to get out about certain games (Postal 2, for example, has experienced it since release, whether that was Running With Scissors' intent or not) it's ultimately a prickly thing to handle. While some unwanted attention is perhaps inevitable, it has forced the industry as a whole to mature and acknowledge that it is no longer a medium "just for kids." Hopefully, controversy over games will become less of a hot button issue, as today's gamers grow up and become tomorrow's politicians and mainstream news writers.

"For many games, PR folks know where the pressure points could come from," said Linn. "Whether it was Jack Thompson or Center for Media and Family or politicians like Hillary Clinton, we could pretty much predict who would come at us. When and how were always the unknown. Sometimes I would wake up and a story would hit overnight and then we would take away time from doing positive PR to manage the media calls as they arose.

"I think the politicians and activist groups always see a fire simmering around certain game brands, especially the Rockstar titles. The opposition constantly looks for a reason to drop gas on the fire and flame up the issue to further their cause. As an industry, we have learned to manage those people much better, whether that will be through direct contact (i.e. Take-Two/Jack Thompson settlement) or talks between the activist groups and the ESA."