How Important Are Mature Videogames To The Industry?

Posted by simoniker on Friday March 19, 2004 @12:05AM from the triple-x-it-up dept.

Thanks to GamesIndustry.biz for its editorial discussing whether the market for 'Mature'-rated videogames is really that significant, following "EA CFO Warren Jenson's announcement last week that the company is working on a videogame based on Francis Ford Coppola's classic mafia movie The Godfather. The resulting game is expected to be EA's first foray into publishing M-rated... titles for several years." But the editorial argues: "Mature games, although certainly a popular theme with the stock market, are still basically a hot topic because of one franchise - namely Rockstar North's Grand Theft Auto titles." It goes on to point out: "M-rated games accounted for only 11.9 per cent of videogame sales in the USA last year in total... despite this, publishers are rushing headlong into making mature games, believing that emulating the success of Grand Theft Auto is just a splash of blood and a bucketful of swearwords away."

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How Important are Entertaining Videogames? by robbway · 2004-03-19 04:47 · Score: 4, Informative

As an adult with no children, I don't even use the rating system. I buy games I either know or think will be fun to play. Since theoretically only adults should be buying M-Games, the rating system doesn't really apply to them.

Therefore, the Mature label is really an enticement for younger age groups. It's very obvious to me. Old gamers stay old gamers until the games aren't appealing anymore. But young gamers get drawn in "for the first time." Therefore, the "M" is attempting to keep it's customer base.

This unfortunately means we're in for a lot of artificially rated "M" games which could really be "E" if you removed the cursing or gratuitous violence. This has already taken over the movie industry where I see a PG-13 movie artificially rated R with gratuitous swearing.