GTA and the ESRB

[Geoffrey S]

It's not just a matter of whether it encourages violence or not. Games, more than any other medium, draw people into their world. In this light I find it absurd that so few games actually have age restrictions, more so the fact that shops rarely enforce these restrictions. Just as young children shouldn't really be allowed to watch various horror films they shouldn't be allowed to play a game like GTA San Andreas. Games have grown up, yet many parents and apparently politicians don't seem to recognize that games need similar rules to movies. It would also help if game developers realised this.

Bah, that didn't come out too clearly. Basically the point I want to make is that games need to be taken seriously as an entertainment medium, along with the fact that games with adult themes should be for adults only.

[Blodrast]

The idea of labeling and giving ratings, I agree with. The way it is implemented in reality, I don't. I'm not gonna go into detail exactly why, because it would be a very long post probably. Therefore, I am against labeling and ratings.
I'll give two illustrative (I think) examples below. People can draw their own conclusions from this...

I remember having seen "Commando" (it's like 15 years old, with the gov'nor of California); if you haven't seen it, Arnie takes on an entire army by himself, and, not surprisingly, wins. Well, as you may imagine, the movie is entirely about fighting.
As a kid, I'd watched the movie a few dozen times, so I knew it pretty well. There is a scene where Arnie goes into a tool shed, closes the door (!), the enemy soldiers surround the shed and fire half a million rounds all over the place. Then they go inside to see the body, and, surprise, Arnie is alive and well and kills them all with tools from the shed (hatchet, knife, saw, etc). Not really gory or anything, imho of course. In the censored version, you get to see the soldiers surrounding the shed, you get to see them start shooting, you get to see one of them go to open the door after they stop shooting, and then you see Arnie walking away from the shed with a dozen corpses on the ground. WTF ? What's the point in showing the movie at all if you simply cut out a bunch of fight scenes ?! What are we supposed to watch it for, witty dialogue and great landscapes ??

I can also recall NYTimes' comment about "The Day After Tomorrow", and the fact that it has got a very lenient rating (G or something). It was something along the lines of "well, it's the end of the world, half the world is destroyed, billions of people die, but there's no nudity or drugs so it's okay" (cynical, obviously).

I'm afraid my personal opinion (and, as usual, nobody else has to agree with it), is that all this rating business is just hypocrisy. "Oh, we rate the movies/games, so it's out of our hands, our conscience is clean if the kids grow up into criminals, I mean, we rated the damn things, how can we be guilty of it ?! We're good parents, we're taking care of our country's youth !". Puhleeze.
I grew up watching probably more than your average kid's share of movies with violence, drugs and especially horror (no sex, admittedly :P) and such, and I haven't grown up into a criminal, I don't do drugs, I don't have a criminal record, etc, etc.
So that is not the problem, nor are the ratings a solution.

edit: oh well, it looks like this is kinda moving away from games...I guess it might be moved I suppose. Sorry if I caused that.

[Colovion]

I think the whole thing is ridiculous.

Hitting someone over the head with a golf club until they die and then repeatedly running over them with an automobile is much worse than a penis in a vagina.

I hate how paranoid the western world is of sex. Think about this absurd situation that the West (largely the US media and affialiates): Ads, Movies and Games are sold with largely two prime features: Sex and Violence. Suddenly people are upset, distressed and clueless how things go terribly or why children are no longer as innocent as they expect them to be or how such corrupting influences could possibly be out there.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube
However, the Unites States is, IMO, very backwards when compared to the rest of the world in regards to censorship in games. Alot of companies tone down the American versions of their games to get a lower rating. Imperial Glory, for example, has blood in it in foreign versions--but that had to be removed for the sake of ratings in the US Version. Same for blood in RTW, but that was removed entirely.

Why do companies (allegedly) tone down game content to get lower ratings? Probably because it makes money. There are (hopefully) enough parents out there who care about the media their children consume to make ratings a big deal. This is all off the top of my head, since I don't know any figures or statistics, but I bet Teen games (I guess 12+ in the UK, but I don't know) sell better than Mature games. And of course Mature games sell better than Adults Only. I don't know about "E for everyone" games - I doubt it. My guess is based on the number of Teen games out there - I have to believe they are the majority. So if companies are toning down their games, its because the consumer base (and, presumably, the majority of the nation) wants toned-down games. Of course, I could be 100% wrong on this.

My point: companies only "tune down" games because it gets them more $$$. It is not censorship and its not backwards.

As a side note, CA has more than one reason to keep blood out of their games:

Firstly, we don’t put blood into TW games. We’ve been criticized for this because it’s not realistic, but it has no impact on playability. It’s still quite easy to tell who is dead on the battlefield without great gouts of blood. It was argued - and quite convincingly - that blood would actually reduce playability because graphics cards would have to do something that is, essentially, ‘eye candy’. Incidentally, it would also have affected the game’s certification (the T or 12 rating) to put in blood too.

Originally Posted by Colovion
I think the whole thing is ridiculous.

Hitting someone over the head with a golf club until they die and then repeatedly running over them with an automobile is much worse than a penis in a vagina.

I hate how paranoid the western world is of sex. Think about this absurd situation that the West (largely the US media and affialiates): Ads, Movies and Games are sold with largely two prime features: Sex and Violence. Suddenly people are upset, distressed and clueless how things go terribly or why children are no longer as innocent as they expect them to be or how such corrupting influences could possibly be out there.

Well, yes it is ridiculous. The game should be rated AO even without this mod available. And I think (though I don't know for sure) that there was plenty of sexual content (prostitution at the very least) anyway.