According to a release by Keep America Beautiful and the National Council to Prevent Delinquency, advance publicity on the Atari Inc. Web site described the game as "a groundbreaking graffiti play system, designed to sharpen your skills as you tag with aerosol, rollers, markers, wheat paste, stickers and stencils." The site goes on to claim that the game will aid in "allowing you to find ideal places to tag," and demonstrate the ability to "infiltrate areas and avoid capture" and "create tags in pressure situations."
"The promotion clearly attempts to make criminal and dangerous behavior enticing to children, and the chat room traffic on the Atari site indicates that current graffiti vandals anticipate a growth in their numbers with the game's release," says Keep America Beautiful President, Ray Empson. "We know from our research and experience the extensive costs of graffiti vandalism -- both societal and in taxpayer dollars spent on cleaning up. We can't stop Atari, but we can warn local governments to what may be coming."
The two groups have also asked the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), the industry group providing parent guidance ratings, to give the game the most restrictive rating possible and requested that the ESRB's Advertising Review Council (ARC) sanction Atari for its advertising practices on the grounds that the game violates the ARC principle that "all advertisements should be created with a sense of responsibility toward the public."
