Slashdot Mirror
The ESRB Gets An 'F'
GamePolitics reports on a failing grade given to the ESRB by the National Institute on Media and the Family. The report card did not look good for the ratings board, which almost immediately fired back at the organization. From that article: "The reality is that publishers understand that retailers largely choose not to stock AO-rated games, and so in the interests of producing marketable games, publishers will oftentimes revise and resubmit a game that was initially assigned an AO by raters in an effort to produce an M-rated game. When this happens, the process starts again from the beginning, and each new version of a game is reviewed independently. The call to issue more AO ratings has little to do with rating accuracy, and more to do with NIMF's real agenda, which is to destroy the commercial viability of games it deems objectionable. Unlike NIMF, ESRB's job is to be a neutral rater, not a censor."
NIMF: You suck!
ESRB: You suck more!
NIMF: Your mother wears army boots!
ESRB: Your sister swims after troop ships!
Does any adult really give a flying fig? Oh wait, the Slashdot demographic is... never mind.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
[open rant]
These ratings are no replacement for parenting. Instead of wasting time complaining, work a few more hours a week and donate the money to your church marketing fund.
Stop trying to make non-Christians become like you by using the force of government or nanny groups. Instead, work within your group of Christians to help keep those kids moral and loved and ethical. Christian kids are the worst because their parents are blind to reality.
I hate my label as I'd never tell a non-Christian to stop swearing or stop drinking or stop screwing around or stop watching porn. I'd never use government or a nanny group to further a Christian agenda.
My job as the Bible mandates is to enforce responsibility in my brothers and sisters in Christ, and be a model for non-believers. I can not control a non-believer and using Caesar to do so is wrong.
Your job as a parent is to be involved 100% in your child's life. If you want a good Christian child, be a good Christian parent. Try to live sin free, and stop forcing your child to be perfect if you are not perfect yourself.
Parents should have the right to determine for themselves whether or not a game is appropriate for their child rather than worrying that the little tyke is at the store buying an M-rated title behind their backs.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Just install one of those kiddie mosquito noise generators http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/3 0/0021211&tid=126&tid=14> around the couters that sell AO only games.
Is it just me, or does that name just SCREAM "fundamentalist, religious, biased prudes"?
I thought ESRB has introduced a "F'king" rating so that stuff like hot coffee can fall into it.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
This is good in a way though, this battle is mostly being fought in the court of public opinion rather than being imposed by governmental fiat.
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I just gotta say, Mediawise's slogan ain't so bad:
"There's only one way to really know what video games your kids are playing
Be MediaWise®.
Watch what your kids watch. "
I don't understand... common sense?
Also, Mediawise's parent organiztion is the one that took extra pains to distance themselves from Jack, for the tactics he uses.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
cEnSuRaBle
What are the odds?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
That there is so much debate about these ratings and the pros and cons, and yet there is little or no application by parents... My kids swap games all the time with friends...
What is needed i think, is more focus on applications which allow parents to restrict the games on the computer or console. Next generation consoles already have built in parental controls and controls for PC games such as Game Controls http://www.childcontrols.com/ and ENUFF http://www.akrontech.com/ are not fully mature.
Why do they just have to have generic rating. These companies should be obligated to print exactly what kind of material is in the game and let parents decide. I work in a video/game rental store, and I've seen mothers pick up M rated games for their 10 year old kids (I'm not joking) and I have to explain to them exactly why M doesn't just mean "blood". I have shocked more parents than I'd like to believe I have. An M game can have a hundred different things in it. I'd rather have a new system with more explanations.
The call to issue more AO ratings has little to do with rating accuracy, and more to do with NIMF's real agenda, which is to destroy the commercial viability of games it deems objectionable.
Sounds likely to me.
While it seems to me that an objective rating system could be a useful tool to parents, I am wary that it is probably the first step in restricting the sale of "violent" games to minors.
It just doesn't make sense to me to try to regulate the sale of video games. I am fine with legal age limits on movies, cigarettes and alcohol, which people often try to compare it to, but there are a few key differences:
1.) Movies, cigarettes and alcohol are relatively cheap. The ten or twenty dollars a teenager might have can go a long way. But what teenager has the $300 for a game console plus $50 per game without getting the money from his parents, which I would interpret as implict approval of their use? (And if a kid does earn that kind of money on his own, he is probably already sufficiently independent of his parents to make it a moot point.)
2.) Cigarettes and alcohol are relatively easy to consume on the sly, and short of never letting a kid out of the house, parents can't directly control what movies they see in theatres with friends. Games, on the other hand, pretty much require a setup that is going to be used at home, where presumably there is usually someone around to supervise. It's not like kids can sneak out after school and hang out in the woods playing GTA with their friends.
Anyway, my point is that the "protect the family" groups fundamentally misrepresent the danger posed to kids by violent games. And it seems especially hypocritical to claim to be "protecting the family" by undermining a parent's authority to have the final say in what is acceptable for their children... The regulation of games serves no purpose except to create the perception that these games are bad and thereby push one people's set of values on another.
I know if I was a kid, the most coveted games for me would be rated "AO" or "M", just because I technically couldn't buy them. As a kid, even if my parents were religious freaks, I would have just gone down the street to my friend's house, whose parents choose to expose their kids to everything instead of locking them up in a bubble.
I think the game manufacturers are probably quite happy with the ESRN simply because it adds an extra incentive to buy that title for kids who "can't". It's kind of like slapping those "explicit lyrics" stickers on CDs...doesn't do a thing.
you mean that *gasp* the video game industry does the EXACT same thing the movie industry has done for years?? I really wonder about the mentality of these censorship groups.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Why pay them any attention? It's just advertising for them. Better to ignore such people, rather than feeding the trolls.
... and then they built the supercollider.
I agree. I see no problem with retailers being required to card for every M+ rated purchase. I used to manage a movie theater and it was simply company policy to card for R+ rated films. There are no laws forcing movie theaters to enforce MPAA ratings, it's just something they do out of a sense of social responsibility. If an employee fails to enforce the company policy, they get punished. If a pattern is evident at a certain theater location, the management gets punished. It's not rocket science. I agree with the majority that parents should be ultimately responsible for their children, but a little social responsibility from game retailers sure wouldn't hurt.
I have no problems with replacing all the monsters in Doom 3 with that purple-loving freak named Barney. Pokemons will work just as well. That should changed the M rating into a T rating. :P
Ratings Education: C+
Retailers' Policies: B
Retailers' Enforcement: D-
Ratings Accuracy: F
Arcade Survey: B-
Industry's 10-year cumulative grade: D+
To begin, most parents I know don't enforce video game ratings in the same manner they do movie ratings. Most of us grew up with games unrated and turned out fine. The fact that retailers don't heavily enforce the policies goes to show how many people think the game rating system is silly in the first place.
As for the rating accuracy getting a failing grade, I whole heartedly agree that given the organization handing out these grades is politically motivated, they just want to push violet games out of the market by making as many as possible Adult Only. If this were a real issue, we'd have droves of pissed off parents with 16 year olds they thought were playing a different game. In reality, AO has the stigma of being equivalent to hard core porn. These games aren't the equivalent, and this really is more a political group crying they aren't getting their way. Uh oh, we've got a baby down. I repeat, baby down! Someone call the wah-bulance!!
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
...I'd rather promote my beliefs by my actions instead of telling other people how to live their lives. The entire meaning of religion goes straight over the head of these people and they don't even see it. Sad.
I'm part of the generation that grew up playing video games, and we're cruisin through the 30's now. It's natural that we'd want to see more adult-themed games. The wild success of GTA absolutely guarantees they will be there in the future, no matter WHAT the "moral majority" says. Money talks.
That said, call a spade a spade, kids can't buy porn either. But don't rate differently because it's a game, the same rules should apply to all media. As an adult, -I- pick what I want. Rate it how you want.
..don't panic
But isint the only difference between an M and an AO rating is thatyou have to be 17 to buy a M rated game and 18+ to buy an AO rated game? Why is that year difference such a big deal? We all know there is not a whole hell of a lot of difference in a year. Especially when its between 17 and 18.
Reality is a big nasty dragon. Fortunately I don't believe in dragons.
We are just not as vocal as the Ralph Reed variety.
I am a Christian. I believe in God. I also read fantasy novels, play D&D, and even play some violent video games. I am also an adult.
I do not press my views on other people, yet I do not hide what I believe when asked.
I can't scare people into heaven, but I can tell them that I have a close relationship with God. Nor do I claim to know everything, or have a perfect understanding of God and religion.
My beliefs are personal, between myself and God. I will let other people develop (or not) the same relationship. I just know it works for me.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Because it's not a retail store's responsibility to raise your kids. And such stores could face lawsuits, for either denying someone a purchase, or for accidentally selling a game to an underage kid. Once the retailer takes action on this, they are also responsible for any outcomes. If they don't do anything, they are not liable. And it costs money to enforce rules and check IDs.
This is not like alcohol and tobacco, where there are actual laws that stores have to check ID, and underage smoking and drinking is actually illegal. It's not illegal for underage kids to buy a game that has been rated for older children. So, the stores should not do anything until the government changes the law.
... and then they built the supercollider.
NIMF is just downright stupid. They are calling for more and more AO games, but similar material gets into R-rated movies (remember by the ratings that is 16 and older, M is 17+, AO is 18+) and you do not see them attacking the ratings issued out for them. Like most any organization, NIMF has an agenda and it just so happens their agenda is to "protect the children". While this might be valorous in the eyes of some, it is downright attrocious the odds to which they will go to meet their goals.
Here is a group, with some degree of political clout, who enjoys screaming foul and overacting to what they consider indecency. To remedy the problems with the media, they have decided to enlist the politicians of the US to pass laws making these foul games illegal to sell to minors and to make as many games AO as possible. As a matter of fact, the only good thing NIMF has done lately is put space between themselves and Jack 'The Hack' Thompson.
In the end, NIMF (and many parents) forget that it is not the responsibility of the government, or for that matter the game industry or retailers, to control the content of games that make their way into the hands of children. The responsibility for that falls squarely on the shoulders of parents, and it is tiring to see people who would rather hand off that responsibility to someone else, because they do not think they should be responsible for what their child watches, plays, or hears.
Our society is in a downward spiral. Within my own relatively short lifetime (born circa 1982), we have seen the PG-13 Rating (1984, not too big a deal I think), Parental Advisory sticker (1985), NC-17 Rating (1990, Though really a replacement for the X-Rating), Birth of the ESRB (1994), the TV Parental Guidelines (1997), and the V-Chip (required on 13+ inch TV post-2000).
I am sure I might have missed some things, but really it does paint a bad picture that slowly parents have begun to throw away responsibility to a computer chip and ratings boards, instead of actually watching to see what it is their children are doing with their time. I am just glad my parents looked past ratings and as such I got to enjoy a good many R-rated movies years ahead of time.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Am I the only one that thinks this silly organization's name is essentially Nymph? As in short for sex crazed maniac... doesn't seem like much of a family organization to me.. but i'd like to see thier brochure :)
It's only censorship when the government does it.
When
- the municipal government's zoning board denies the right to use land for a video game store that sells AO games,
- the government denies the right to advertise that a publisher publishes or that a store sells AO games (as happens widely in Europe), or
- the government's patent office denies the right to make a console specifically for AO games,
then "the government does it". Now what point are you going to make in order to avoid the term "censorship"?I am amused that they cite the jump in the "violent content" of M rated games.
How many R-rated movies contain the EXACT SAME CONTENT that they are decrying video games for?
sounds like someone has a political agenda. Has anyone even heard of the NIMF?
I mean you very well can't rate content that's inaccessible except via a third party hack until you know about the hack.
True, normal Christians are done a great disservice by these extremists who pretend to speak for them. We should all applaud the ESRB for calling them out on their socio-political agenda.
Actually, I feel a little bad for lumping the NIMF in with a lot of right-wingers, many of whom are really *fiscal* conservatives but would prefer *less* government involvement in our lives, not more... the NIMF wants a nanny state that polices the morals of grown adults and children alike... and when they can't force the government to step in ( usually due to these annoying "rights" people insist on ), they lobby business to do it for them.
Really, culture and social values should be taugh by PARENTS, and the NIMF should find something more useful to do than trying to censor entertainment and media. Maybe feeding the hungry, if they're such good Christians.
I don't really see anything the original post doesn't cover.
A more or less neutral rater(ESRB), pretty much the gaming version of the MPAA, gives games ratings. Just like the 'NC-17' or the old X ratings, Movies intending to have a presence on the mass market theaters will work with the board to get a better rating. They'll edit the movie to get down to an R or PG-13. A PG-13 movie has a much wider viewing audience than a R, so there's pressures to make films even milder if it's a marginal R. And, just like the MPAA, there are going to be oddities on how they rate certain marginal films. The rating is being decided upon by a board of humans, on what can be called a piece of art. You can't necessarily make up a metric based on number of deaths, that'd sink movies like the titanic, war movies having battlegrounds. Neither can you measure by 'punches thrown'(what if it's a documentary about a boxer?), amount of curse words, etc. It's all relative.
NIMF appears to be an organization of fear mongers, trying to control society through the cry of 'it's for the children!'.
If they want more games to be assigned an 'AO' rating, well, then they should actually work on convincing stores to stock them. Otherwise you'll get a number of 'borderline' games, where, just like in films, they edit and tweak to get the lower rating so they can actually have a physical presence in stores like Best Buy, Walmart, Target. Heck, even places like Gamestop and such don't stock AO games.
I was allowed to rent and watch R rated movies, with my younger brother, from when I was 12. My parents had to submit a signed letter with the rental place for me to be able to, but they did it. Why? They felt that I was able to handle the difference between fiction and reality. Of course, ratings were tougher back then, to the point that today, people today would scratch their heads and go 'They gave THAT an R?'.
If NIMF has it's way, it'd end up having to call for legal enforcement of the ratings systems, because adults would be ignoring them even more, like my parents did for the R ratings. Their only restriction was a verbal 'no horror films'. Of course, they usually watched with us.
I don't read AC A human right
How on earth did the parent get modded Interesting? That trash is just about as useful as those stupid numbers games where you take a numeric representation of Microsoft and the result is 666 a.k.a. the sign of the beast.
I have just created a World Wide orgnziation called World-wide Institute on Media and People (WIMP for short). We give ESRB an "A+" Why? Just Because! and the NIMF, they get an "F" and a "U" from the WIMP.
An 'F'? They could have given the worst grade ever... an 'A minus minus'.
deja vu, I think we have done this before.
I'm not just a gamer, I'm a killographer!
The first argument given to justify that their premise "The ratings system is broken" is talking about the hidden porn in Grand Theft Auto. Given that the porn was hidden, it says nothing about the rating system accuracy.
It is funny how they go after some games, and not others.. like the violence and language in GTA for example, and not against the explciit songs in games like Dance Dance Revolution, like "Blow my Whistle, Bitch!" which anybody with a brain can be lead to believe that the song circulates around a guy asking a girl for a blowjob. C'mon, if you are going to go all superiority blowhard, at least do it evenly.... I give this group an F anyways for lack of consistency, Alack of logical and rational thinking and logic, and political motive cover-up.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
If they put an AO rating on the game, why is this a bad thing? This is just telling the buyer that it is for "Adults Only"... Is that a bad thing to notify the consumer? I really don't see an argument here. I think the people that hate this the most are the teens that feel they have a right to buy whatever type of game they want... sorry kiddies, you don't! :P
An idea for the game companies: Make games more fun instead of having to resort to sex, filth, and immorality! Be more creative instead of trying to use adult material as a selling crutch!
"To err is human, doing it again is downright stupidity!"
The ESRB gets a 'Family' rating? That's good, because if they had an AO rating, I'd have to boycott any game with that smutty logo on the box.
...what the movie studios do? A movie is made and goes before the MPAA for rating. MPAA rates it R, but the studios were hoping for a PG-13. The MPAA tells them what they would need to cut for a PG-13 rating, so the studios comply and get the rating they need to sell their movie the way they want. The ESRB also includes some description on the box of the game that says why the game was rated the way it was...i.e. "intense blood and gore" or "drug use", etc. In a way they are doing better jobs than the MPAA. All music CDs say on the front of their packaging is "Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics", no mention of how explicit or the subject matter of the explicit areas. So they must suck worse than the MPAA. I don't understand how anyone can be upset with the ESRB rating process other than those who simply do not want the rest of society to have a choice as to how people go about entertaining themselves.
On another note, if the ESRB tightened their ratings, couldn't game vendors get around it by releasing expansion packs that make the game more graphic or explicit, much like "The Sims" has been doing? Rockstar could earn their weight in gold by offering expansions to GTA that make the game "AO" while selling the base game under an "M" rating. Would the expansion pack have to have an "AO" rating even if the expansion pack can not be played on its own, so if a kid bought it they would not be exposed to its content since a kid should not be able to buy an "M" rated game anyway?
I told you no text, dang it! Why'd you click anyways?
Children see worse things on TV every day, REAL things, and don't get screwed up for life. Get your priorities straight, people!
Blog -
I don't see how this really changes anything. It seems to me that the only people likely to pay any attention to this "report card" are the people who already agree with them and the people who already strongly disagree with them (and who promptly get mad over it). Considering that I've never seen the NIMF mentioned in any kind of major news outlet, they're hardly convincing the apathetic middle that it would take to build any kind of pressure.
Movie theaters card kids for R-rated movies, why is this so hard?
They do? They sure didn't when I was a kid. When I was a child I didn't carry any kind of ID and I got into whatever R movies I wanted.
If the threater asks for ID for a PG-13 movie, what "card" does the child show them to prove they are 13? (I.e. most 13 year olds do not have a driver's license.)
Also, when I was a kid I was only occasionally carded for cigarettes, but 9 times out of 10 I left the store with cigarettes.
I didn't start trying to buy alcohol until I was about 19 or so. I was usually able to drink in bars at age 19. Sometimes not. I never bothered trying to buy from the liquor store until I was actually 21 because I knew so many people who were over 21 who would buy for me before then.
I recall the age rules being very easy to get around. Have things changed much?
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Parents, here's a tip for getting your kids to stop playing a game you disapprove of: learn how to beat them at it. Once you can smoke your kid in a deathmatch, chances are he's gonna quit playing that "lame" game of his own free will.
"You want a toe? I can get you a toe by three o'clock... with nail polish."
Hmm they rate games, IMO they rate them rather fairly with AO and M17 used quite regularly and appropriately.
The fact that most mature games contain violence and sexual content is irrelevant, they contain the specified content, they end up in that category.
Note the warning list is M (with 1 T) while the recommended list is all E or E 10+.
I don't see how the behaviour of retailers has anything to do with the ESRB, but a generic misdirected smear campaign is a typical way to push ones agenda.
This group is simply using the ESRB as a named target in their attack against violent games.
I am wondering with the current mainsteam attitude toward video games in particular the first person shooter, if we are about to see the so called Sylvester Stallone effect for certain types of games regardless of how warm a and fuzzy they may be made. (for many years every Sylvester Stallone movie that was made was rated R, many would be re-edited and still be given R rating when any objective viewer would rate them PG or PG-13 in their original form)
I am picturing an M or AO rated game of "Cupid" full of warm and fuzzy angels, and floating hearts shooting arrows at would be lovers.
...complete lack of surprise.
Don't ya hate it when the correct spelling of your favorite screen name is taken?
It looks that more and more Taliban-esqe lobbygroups and associations are getting momentum in the US, all these groups do the same thing, that is trying to pull as many rights as can from under the people. All this with cheap excuses as if kids* are in danger.
*Fill in any other group that you can hyjack for your political purposes.
The Taliban moved exactly the same way in Afganistan, slowly poisening society followed by a sudden coup, they also used exactly the same arguments as these right wing socalled christian groups in the US.
More and more I feel for the sane half of the US population.
The bottom line is painfully apparent. Ever since games like Custer's Revenge and Duke Nukem, the main focus and revulsion of parents groups et al is sex in video games. The same is generally true of television and movies as well. It's not as if people don't have a problem with violence, but it is not something the average person ends up participating. Not everyone flips out and shoots a place up, but a lot of people have sex before marriage.
The fear is for the objectification and trivialization of sexual activity. Sex in any media, like games, is purported to broadcast a message that it is not a big deal. Our country is dangerously tight-lipped about discussing contexts of sex, which I think can be damaging; even dangerous if people have not been taught to be responsible.
This group doesn't care about violence, they want games with any trace of sex to stop telling kids that it's ok to do it.
Bury me in mashed potatoes.
It always irks me when some NGO feels it's appropriate to issue a 'report card' on any other organization, and even more so when it gets any attention.
The entire concept implies that that writer of the report card has superior knowledge about the issue at hand, like a teacher, and is dispensing wisdom to those lesser informed 'students.'
More often than not, the organization criticized has all the experience there is to be had in that particular field, while the issuers of the 'report card' are just assholes with a questionable, ill-founded agenda.
Moreover, the issuance of a report card is symbolic of a complete lack of humility, something I think most people could use more of. They don't consider themselves adults having a disagreement, they consider themselves unquestionably superior to the ESRB. I'm not particularly religous, but the right amount of humility causes you to seriously reflect on yourself, your motivations and your knowledge before you take decisive action. It also allows you to take criticism constructively instead of ignoring it or lashing out defensively.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
My mother was in the Army for a short time and really did wear army boots, so where does that put me?
not to grouse about my previously rejected story, or run this discussioin off-topic, buuut: I was amused b the fact that two of the "worst" games reviewed were put on the "avoid" list because they contain cannibalism. This makes me wonder; ifone of the characters is a zombie, does that still count as cannibalism?
"Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony!"
I wouldn't be surprised at all if some christian, american parents decided to sue the game-store, just because their precious, protected child stole money to buy the game he wanted but didn't get for christmas.
People have really lost sight of what's important. Sure, rating games is a good way to quickly estimate if the game COULD be harmful to a minor child. But that doesn't mean the parents get to skip actually finding out HOW harmful, if at all, the game REALLY is. In the end, it's always the parents that should do the parenting.
Blog -
GP post apparently has no clue about what's written on the game boxes he claims to sell every day.
Penn (from Penn & Teller) said it best, "You do not have the right not to be offended." I'm an adult and as an adult, I expect that there will be things that are available to me that are not available to children. We have a whole host of them that we as a society have deemed unsuitable. The include things like booze, porn, and cigarettes just to name the three most notable examples.
While I'm not a big proponent of any of these three, I think that they should be available for the adults who wish to indulge. Are they suitable for kids? No. Would I give any of the above to an eight year old? No. Frankly, I'm sick of the parents who complain about the sex/violence/drugs/etc in video games but then run right out and buy whatever M rated thing happens to be topping the charts this week for their eight year old kid.
I have only one thing to say to those parents "DUH! It's rated M for a reason." It's really very simple. If you don't want Johnny playing them, DON'T BUY THEM!!! He's eight so I'm pretty sure he doesn't have a job, which means he has no income. Since he has no income, that means you bought him the game in the first place. Bad parents! No biscuit!!
If you want to be really sure what he's playing, don't put the PC and/or the gaming console in his room. First off, the PC in the room is set up for on-line child predators, so you get another -10 on Parenting Skills just for that. The same goes for the gaming consoles, now that the newer ones have chat functions built in. You get another -10 on the Parenting skills for that as well. Add that to the fact that you just bought your kid GTA and he's gotten ahold of the hot coffee mod, that's a -20 on the Parenting Skills. I fail to see how this could possibly be ESRB's fault.
2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
Sorry, didn't have time to RTFA. I was to busy killing a homeless person and feasting on his flesh, cause, you know, I saw it in a video game and thought I might give it a try...
I agree here and I think a few screenshots of the more extreme parts of the game are all that's needed - a picture is worth a thousand words.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
Not another article about, "Damn, we, parent, aren't inteligent enough to catch that a game named "We are the gang here!" with a street gang on the case cover is full of violence and sex. So we need someone to do it for us, but every one that try this isn't enough good to do it. So let's whine about it.
I'm just sick of these thing. It's not difficult to see that a game that have guns and Swords in it. If you don't want your child to play games like this, JUST DON'T BUY IT. And if you are not sure about if it's too violent for your child, just check the Back of the cover, that usually have a couple of screenshot and read the summary of the game. Just stop relying on everyone else and just think by yourself.
I had a ball on Action Quake a few years ago. I so loved the sawed-off double-barrel...
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
National Institute on Media and the family : ESRB :: Focus on the Family : Congress
Disclaimer, neither am I, however, I have not forgotten what it is like to be a teen.
A lot of people are talking about 15-16 year olds having money, well let me tell you that they aren't spending it all on video games, and video games should be the least concern for parents. Think about it.
When it comes to younger kids, then yes video games should be a concern, and then it falls back on the parents because it is they who are giving/buying them a $300 console & $50 per game.
Personally I despise all laws and regulations that try and take the responsibility out of parenting. Yes my parents controlled what I watched, played, listened to, until I reached 16-17. Did it suck? Yes. Am I probably better off because of it? Yes.
Why should retailers be responsible for parenting kids? They are retailers, their job is to sell product and make money.
If more parents took more interest in their children's lives I don't think that we would be having this discussion.
Also how come everyone has forgetten the allure of a restricted product/act? The bigger deal that society makes about something, the more alluring it is to those who are restricted.
Even as adults, I know lots of people who have the mentality that "the more someone tells me I can't do something, the more I am going to do it"
The bigger deal that people make about games like GTA: Vice City and such, the more they are going to drive kids to play it and see what all the fuss is about.
Not sure who is the originator but the quote "There is no such thing as bad publicity" holds true in this case.
And game developers like Rockstar, publicy decry negative reports and ratings, but you know that in the board room, they are loving them, because they see higher sales results from negative reports than from positive reviews.
So why the NIMF likes to think they are protecting kids and decreasing sales, they really aren't doing anything but feed the fire.
Kind Herb
Based on the breakdown of the board, maybe renaming it the National Institute on Media and My Family would be more accurate.
[UID-HeinzIntel]
Coming from a community where Tux Racer is best of breed, I'm not sure this movement will prosper. On the other hand, maybe someone could just slap together some lewd Quake3 textures and maps and put it under the Creative Commons license.
How about the wonderful rating for movies?
...
I got a catalog with a zillion DVDs for sale. No hardcore porn.
Guess how many show the rating???
Less than half, all the rest are NR because of additional content i assume. Stuff like Prime time TV, black and white movies, 30-year-old TV, most everything is listed as NR with no references to anything. How is this helpful?
At least most of the games tell you SOMETHING. It isn't a bell curve rating nor should it be. The silly report is explained by a bunch of others here so i'll skip that.
I hate to say it but movies, music, and games should give you some clue. Should i have to purchase and play every game and movie before i buy one for my neice? And why do i want to give her an opened and used game/movie then?
Does anyone else find it odd that the National Institute on Media and the Family's acronym (NIMF) is pronounced the same as nymph? Maybe they should give themselves an "F" for not thinking their name through properly.
Children are society's greatest resource, and I think you just don't want to lift a finger to help parents to a good job of raising their own children.
No, I'm not asking you to help raise other people's children. I'm just asking you to make it possible for parents to choose what material is best for their children to have without going to absurd lengths like depriving the children of the opportunity to learn to manage money.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Do you have children by the other two women? You may not but plenty do - and that is a harm to the rest of us as we have to support young parents that cannot help themselves. The harm you claim is caused by not having sex (which is just completely pulled out of your ass, but let's pretend you have a point for the sake of argument) is a potential harm only to two people while the harm caused by people having sex before they are in a deeply comitted relationship has repercussioons to potentially at least three (including the child here) and really more (the public supporting children resulting) if you think about it.
How is your brand of morality intruding on my life any better than Christains telling me what I can and cannot buy? I fail to see the difference, by insisiting that premarital sex is fine and damn the consequences, you are being just as much of a prick.
So there you go, NIMH isn't the only one who thinks the rating system is a joke.
Can we get them banned?
They're using false logic in saying there should always be a certain percentage of games rated AO. That means no matter how bland and boring the games are, there's still some rated AO. Then games are forced to be blander and blander.
This reminds me of the legal battle over guns in America. The Brady organization for gun violence annualy grades states governments based on the type of gun laws in effect in the state on not on gun violence. This usually resorts in states like California and New York and Washington D.C getting A's while many other states get D's and F's.
So for me, getting an F in this case is alot better then being the person who gets an A.
How is this different from the movie industry that awards a rating, the producers don't like it, reedit the film, get the rating they want and move on? Oh wait there's an entire other industry dedicated to getting XXX ratings when it comes to movies. Guess we just needs more games like GTA SA that way the ratings will fit a nice bell curve and everyone can be happy
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
"Hot Coffee" aside*, where are the innacurate ratings? I've bought tons of games and seen even more played by friends and I've never seen a game that had too low of a rating for its content. Maybe I'm just blind, but I've never seen graphic sex or gore in a "T" game. Their methodology is also flawed. They're comparing "M" games from 10 years ago to "M" games now, but they're still games that should be out of the hands of children (generally speaking). If they really wanted to do a true test, they'd compare "T" games now to "M" games 10 years ago and see if they compare. If the "T" games now are more explicit/violent/etc than "M" games 10 years ago, then at least they could say that ratings are more lax and there is a general decline in the "morality" (I use that word loosely) of the gaming industry.
The fact remains that the ESRB does a pretty good job of rating games relative to societal standards. I've not seen things in a "T" game that would warrant an "R" rating in a movie or a "TV-MA" rating on TV, so it seems that even compared to other media the ESRB is doing a pretty good job. I guess I just don't understand how this group that legitimately (I think that's the key word) justify giving the ESRB an "F". Perhaps the retailers deserve a poor grade for not carding kids, and perhaps parents deserve an "F" for not supervising their children, but surely not the ESRB.
*As far as the whole Hot Coffee debacle, I find that sort of explicit sex in a game to be crude and unnecessary (for me personally), but I still don't blame the ESRB. There's no way for the ESRB to know what is in every single game in its entirety. Unless the game studios give the ESRB every line of code and all the artwork, the ESRB can't possibly see EVERYTHING. Unlike a movie, where raters can watch the entire thing from beginning to end and quantify everything in the movie, it's impossible for the ESRB to do so. If anyone is at fault (and I'm surely not leveling blame) then it's the producers of the game.
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
I haven't seen any single game go BEYOND what your typical R rated film does. Look how gory and disturbing The Devil's Rejects was (that is a good thing, btw)! That received an R.
Besides, M and AO aren't that different. M is 17+ and AO is *gasp* 18+. One year doesn't make a bit of difference.
Every game has a movie equivalent. So what game you wanna pick on? GTA? Then let's go after Goodfellas, Casino, or The Godfather.
You don't like Doom or Quake? Let's go after Aliens.
So in reality, the rating system is just fine. The problem here is that we put people in charge who think it's perfectly acceptable to push their bullshit moral agenda onto everyone else. Another problem is that those in charge are naive and ignorant, and dismiss video games as something "only children play".
If there's really that big of a problem with mature games falling into the hands of younger players, perhaps people should use their head and point the fingers at the parents. When they get the complaint about the game (otherwise, why do they care?), the person filing the complaint should ask the parents, "Where were you and what were you doing to let this happen? Sounds like a family communication issue."
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Yeah, a lot of these groups are fundimentalist christian, but what political group is the one trying to push actual laws thought????
4 A-421E-9AB0-EC6834A64B4A.htm
http://www.gameinformer.com/NR/exeres/B0AF0743-83
*cough* Hillary Clinton *cough*
*cough* Tipper Gore *cough*
*cough* Joe Liebberan *cough*
Just like to give credit where credit is due.
So what does the movie ratings board get? What about the TV show ratings board? Why is it that the ratings board for video games is the one to get picked on when everyone knows kids see R-rated movies, and watch shows that are rated above their age. Simple. Video games are the popular villain right now. Nothing more. Video games are a scapegoat for society's ills. Blame everything on video games, demonise them....and then you don't have to look at your own faults as parents.
I don't see the problem with the ESRB rating system, and starting over if you don't like the rating you get. This is EXACTLY how the MPAA rates movies. There are numerous cases of a movie getting an X/NC-17 or an R and the producers re-editing the movie to get an R or a PG-13.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
If you think that's acceptable, I've got some great products to sell you. They won't explode and kill you, I promise.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
"If life is bad, you didn't prepare properly."
WTF? I should have prepared in the womb for being born with severe physical disabilities and to a mother that's mentally ill? Or perhaps, as a little kid, I should have tried harder to not develop PTSD from my experiences in the hospital? Maybe my grandmother should have 'prepared' better so she didn't die of cancer at a scarily young age?
Sometimes things do happen that change life in a really bad way that you can't prepare for. You've lived a very lucky life compared to most if you seriously think that it's always the victim's fault for not being ready, because some of us (like me) knew better even as little kids.
Incidentally, your kind of attitude is part of why I dumped religion. I'm not angry with your deity, but I did lose belief in it after rationally thinking over some of the things its followers claimed.
I'm a sexually active adult who doesn't consider himself a prude, and also supports family values. I also would not be at all surprised if many of the members of this organization (NIMF) have no religious affiliation whatsoever and would take exception to your remark.
My boy is 5 years old.
Here is a list of the things I don't want him exposed to,
1) TV news, especially local news. Seriously, watch the news tonight, count how many random murders, rapings, child abductions and deadly car accidents they describe in gruesome detail. I counted 13 reports of people dying on a local Tuesday night news report. Talk about scarring the SHIT out of children. Show a picture of a cute little blond haired blue eyed girl and then show a picture of this grisly looking bald drunk that kidnapped and rapped her home while her mother watched. Show the mom on the news crying. You want to fuck up your kids, let them watch the nightly news. The news glorifies and lingers on REAL horror and violence. Not appropriate for children or adults. Should be rated XXXX.
2) Really scary movies, I would never let him watch the excorcist because I don't need him waking me up at 3:00 in the morning telling me he hears a scratching sound on his wall, because that would scare the hell out of me. Movies that scare the shit out of young children should be rated XXX.
3) McDonalds, Must be 18 or older to enter. I can't count the number of parents who shove that processed food stuff in front of little children because their to lazy to make them something healthy to eat. Your kid weighs 300 pounds in 3rd grade and seeing a set of tits is his problem. Fat kids should be allowed to see porn, it might be enough motivation for them to lose weight once they realize they are never going to get laid being that fat.
4) pop and candy, my little boys best friends, both 4, eat a shitload of candy. Their parents are always giving us shit because we won't give our kid candy or pop, with the exception of cake at birthday parties. Both those 4 year olds have had multiple cavities. Once again, multiple times they have been to the dentist to get teeth drilled. We took our son in a few weeks ago for the first time. The dentist says it was quite rare to see a kid his age with such perfect teeth. If all that candy and shit is rotting our kids teeth out, what the hell is it doing to their insides, but why focus on that when we can focus on complete bullshit like kids shooting a virtual gun.
5) Dumb kids, everybody has met stupid adults, well guess what, those stupid adults were once stupid kids. Those people didn't become stupid when they grew up, they have always been stupid. I know their are some kids stupid enough to believe that video games are real. Ain't shit you can do to help these kids. They are STUPID. It wouldn't matter if it was a video or movie, some jackasses will mimic anything they see. My solution, create bullshit rating systems... oh wait, a better idea, teach my kid to pick out stupid kids and learn to avoid their presense at all cost, just like the rest of us do with stupid adults. I don't walk up and start a conversion with a drunk walking down the street with shit stains on his ass. Same thing goes for my kid, if he sees a kid sitting in the corner of his classroom eating his own snot, I tell my kid he should stay the fuck away from that kid because he will one day be that shit-stained drunk.
Here is a list of things I could care less if he sees,
1) GTA or any violent video game, he knows its no more real than pretending to have a gun in his hand and his friend having a pretend arrow. GTA, is just cowboys and indians 2000 version. My choices are, sitting down and playing these terrible games with my kid and explaining their all just make believe and showing him how offended I am at some parts of the game which helps him understand what is and isn't acceptable in real life, or letting him end up playing it anyway at some other kids house with his only influence being the other kid, the same kid who's parents would allow him to have a game like GTA and have his friend come over to play it without first asking the other parent if this is ok.
2) Nudity, seriously,
I for one am a parent. The organization NIMF does not speak for me. That said, I am *gasp* quite conservative. I won't let my kids watch rated R movies or play most* M/AO games. However, I think that the distinction between M/AO (or R/NC-17) is kinda silly. The lighter ratings help me decide what is appropriate at what age, but once something reaches M/R it is no longer appropriate for [my] kids. I could care less if it is M/AO/XXX/SHCYWBI (So HardCore You Won't Believe It - obv. made up). It is irrelevant. Ratings help me decide what is appropriate for my children (and in fact me, my choice is to not watch/play what I won't let them - my choice & I respect people that make the other).
;)) IMHO should not be M, but T
Short version: A conservative family defensive group should not care if games get M as opposed to AO rating, as neither is appropriate for children (according to the ESRB - please don't flame me). This is only a ploy for an illegitimate uber-conservative group to try to gain some spotlight, and through it legitimacy.
My 3 cents (adjusted for inflation)
-JazzLad
*Perfect Dark for the N64 (yes some of us poor folks still play N64
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
Dude. Nobody is asking you to watch your kids every waking moment.
Parenting != Supervision.
Parenting means that you go about teaching your kids whatever values you think are agreeable with you and society and then let THEM make the day to day decisions themselves.
Kids are people dude, not robots to be remotely controlled.
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
I honestly fail to see what the big deal is over this. Can someone explain to me why people are getting worked up? I could understand if everyone here was under 17 and was afraid they wouldn't be able to buy their M rated games, but I am under the impression the audience here is somewhat older.
To me, the ESRB has done a fairly good job of rating games. I would, however, like to see some more distinction made between a game like Half Life 2 and a game like F.E.A.R., both of which I _believe_ are rated M, but are vastly different in the amount of 'adult' content they contain. Heck, I'm an adult and F.E.A.R. disturbed _me_. Maybe ESRB needs an additional rating letter? Like mild adult and extreme adult? hehe...
But as far as this 'grade' by this family group.. I don't see what people are afraid of. So a family group gives the ESRB a failing grade. Why do people seem to feel so thretened by this? I mean, we're all adults here, right? It's not like they are trying to make it impossible for us to buy games... they're just trying to protect their children. And are we their children? I don't think so.
It's a funny society we live in. Violence is perfectly acceptable in America, yet nudity is a majoy no-no. The 'X' rating for movies, and the AO rating for games, exist solely for sexual content. That way, consumers know they aren't getting any of that awful hanky-panky in their media. Unfortunately, this system has the unfortunate side effect of painting a giant stigma over things that are X or AO-rated, so of course you won't find those games in stores (When's the last time you went to Walmart for a porno?) It's perfectly reasonable that game makers will tinker with their game to get that magic M rating -- the threshold of what society tolerates. If we were a little more open about nudity then perhaps the AO rating could serve a better purpose, but as it is, wanton violence = M, a bare titty = AO.
Sandy Sue: Give me an 'H'. Give me a 'U'. Give me a - giant pussy-licking, ass-fucker cock shit.
[the other cheerleaders are disturbed]
Sandy Sue: I'm sorry. That was my Tourette's.
Not Another Teen Movie
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
There is a fairly simple solution to this ridiculousness. Simply err on the side of caution and start rating as many games as possible AO. Heck, re-rate the existing games AO. All of them. Retailers say they won't stock it, but when 90% or more of the titles are suddenly rated AO, I'd bet they would have a change of heart.
This has the side effect of course that it effecitvely eliminates any value the ratings system might have ever had, but hey if everything is rated AO the responsibility is back on the parents again and neither the stores nor the ESRB have trouble defending themselves against the lawsuits when some fool commits infantcide after playing Muppet Babies Rape and Pillage III. After all, it was rated AO in the first place!
I actually watched the report card and some of what was stated deeply disturbed me. First of all this coverage of this stories is subpar. The article makes no mention of the fact that Joseph Liberman attended the meeting. Second of all these articles do mention the fact that this orgainization was talking about how the lull between the generation of games is the perfect time to pass legislation. Also, there were disturbing comments about how they Liberman has to act now or else the people who play games today will be debating him soon.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
When everything I can buy or watch is not censored because "some" people are offended by them. I am an adult and I should not be treated like a child because other people don't agree or don't like some things... Unfortunately this probably means I will have to move out of the US.
Now i'm off to go play some Far Cry multiplayer with my 9 and 10 year old (seeing who can do the best ramp jumps in the drivable boats) woot!
Great point. In fact for me as a parent (albeit of younger kids right now) the ratings system has helped me quite a bit. Not in determining what to by though, I think if you see some mangled corpse with a chainsaw wielding maniac lurched over him on a game cover, you should know "hey this isn't appropriate for the young 'uns". For me, it provided a great way of making my oldest son (7 years old now) understand why and what games are off limits to him. He had the hardest time understanding why some of my games weren't allowed to him to play (or watch) until I explained to him what the T and M on the cases meant. i.e. He's not that age yet, so he needs to wait for it. The box says so.
Simple logic, but ya know it actually worked...
I do not press my views on other people...
The reason 'Cristians' come off so bad these days, is because of the vocal portion that trys to foster their values on others via laws, constitutional ammendments, and social pressure.
I have a theory about this: people who are zealously religious are insecure about their faith, and got to extreems to prove to themselves and others of their 'devotion'. The goal of getting others to believe what you believe seems to be some form desire to have their faith validated via others. E.G., 'If everybody in the world believes in God, then I must be correct in my belief.'
Why does it matter one way or another of someone else validates your belief system by agreeing with you? The people who are behind censorship manuvers are trying to manipulate the world, in order to get it to conform more to their idea of what it should be. I would suspect that they feel threatened by things that challenge their views, and by implication, cause them to question their faith.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I have had many gripes with how ESRB rates games, not including the Grand Theft Auto incident, which made this get so much media attention. I don't understand how the ESRB can give the same rating of 'T' to Super Smash Bros. Melee as for some first person shooter games where you're killing people unlike the 'comic mischief' in Super Smash Bros. Also, the ESRB rated Dance Dance Revolution Extreme for the PlayStation 2 an 'E', but I don't think that songs in which the 'F' word is used and other songs with sexual content are appropriate for younger kids. That's all I can think of right now. It just seems like the ESRB doesn't even look at the content of the game before rating it.
Let's boycott the ESRB!
(and sony)
If you have a bit too much time on your hands (as I did at 3am last night when this aired) you can check out
the video from C-SPAN.
my 2 cents: I would really like to see the methodology of the "experiments" they conducted to determine good and bad retailers. Be curious to see what sort of sampling bias and bioethical considerations (human subjects, after all) went into that.
-a
I'm sorry sir, your post contains an instance of chaos!!
God and logic can not appear in the same post for it will confuse all who read it, and those who submit that 1 trumps the other.
From now on, please preview your posts and clarify your posts to an audience with an IQ less than 80.
Thank your for adhering to our new guidelines for thread-post management!!
Sincerely,
Agnostic, Diest Inc.
/sarcasm detector off
To get retailers to start carding everybody for games?
I don't think retailers being responsible would help much. Kids could just as easily jump on (insert preferred P2P service here) and download the game and it's keygen/reghack/ect.
ESRB's job is to be a neutral rater, not a censor.
Naturally, it's the parents job to censor games for their own children. Unfortunately, a lot of them do not do so. The ESRB rating system is the closest the average parent is ever going to get in researching the content of the game, and I say the ESRB does a pretty good job at what they do.
I don't disagree with your points, but I do wonder about the issue of fundamentalist vs. non-fundamentalist divorce rates.
Fundamentalism is negatively correlated with socioeconomic status. Divorce is negatively correlated with SES. It makes me wonder if we're really just looking at the same phenomenon (poor people splitting up more often.)
As for Rush Limbaugh, if I had to guess I'd say there's a dropoff, with VERY high-income people getting divorced more. Of course there's also a strong correlation between being a loud-mouthed shitbag and divorce.
They gave the ESRB an F for ratings accuracy because M games have gotten racier. Well duh! Games have actually gotten a lot more graphic in the last 10 years. And I suspect the success of the GTA franchise has made a large contribution to this trend.
But the conclusion they are drawing is incorrect. M rated games aren't supposed to be sold to young children anyway. So the fact that these games are even more inappropriate is moot. It's like that old expression, "the food is bad and the portions are small."
I read the TFA and there's actually some good research and statistics in there. What's disappointing, however, is that while they give "grades" on the ESRB, ratings education, and retailers, they completely failed to grade parental involvement.
From their own statistics:
- Less than half (47%) of children say their parents understand
all of the ESRB ratings.
- Only 26% say that a parent has ever stopped them from getting a
video game because of its rating (28% boys, 23% girls).
- Only 55% of children said a parent was present the last time they
bought an M-rated game (down from 65% in 2003).
Seems to me that if ESRB is getting an F, then Parents should be getting a W (Withdrawal), because they clearly dropped out of the class.
-David
Perhaps you might find time to study the parable of the seven tasers, the sacred hymn to the red states, or even the famous sermon on Keynesianism, so that you might sharpen your critique of Christian thought and then truly once and for all lay bare the folly of religion.
And that's a failure of our society, in my opinion; the state makes for a lousy father. Whenever children are not well supervised, they are liable to do much worse than get drunk and watch porn.
"Parents should be aware that there are some minor sexual elements, and they may wish to address the quasi-religious philosophy of "the force" in regards to their personal beliefs."-MediaWise's Review of "Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic", emphasis added.
Xfce: Lighter than some, heavier than others. Just right.
Anybody else notice that their recommendations were all rated E and that almost all of the games they want parents to avoid are rated M (one was T).
So, what's wrong with the rating system?
http://www.mediafamily.org/
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
Wonder which cherry-picked six games from "the late 90s" they used...considering their AVOID list for 2004 reads like a catalog of best-sellers:
1. Far Cry
2. F.E.A.R.
3. The Warriors
4. Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse
5. True Crime: New York City
6. Blitz: The League
7. Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
8. God of War
9. Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil
10. Urban Reign
11. Conker: Live and Reloaded
12. Resident Evil 4
while their RECOMMENDED top 5 consist of 4 movie licenses (Goblet of Fire, The Incredibles, King Kong, Narnia) plus Zelda.
I think their rigorous statistical sieve musta filtered out such family-friendly classics as Mortal Kombat and Thrill Kill. Far be it from me to weigh one-on-one fights to-the-death/decapitation/disembowelment against survival horror, tactical espionage, and a foul-mouthed squirrel.
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
Did they even attempt to quantify how the industry has ballooned in this time period? Fark no. What manner of pedantic idiocy ignores the landscape, grabs the "worst" market segment, says it's worse, and draws a conclusion about the landscape?
Record sales of Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Shenmue, or Nintendogs screw the NIMF's pooch. Sure the "mature" market segment has grown, but so have all the others. Can we stop [Leisure Suit Larry PC] pretending [Night Trap SegaCD] we've never had [Voyeur 3DO] the sex discussion, much less the violence one?
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
OK, really, what does this have to do with anything? "National Institute of Media and the Family." This sounds to me like one of the (many) organizations euphamistically promoting "family values" through overliteralization of the Bible and the attempt to control. Any organization like this which says that a ratings body gets a grade is just full of it. Of course ESRB inflates ratings: no one holds them accountable for the ratings. No one asks ESRB, "uh, don't ya think that the 6 titties that were flashed at once deserves an adults-only rating?" No one does this. Also, why don't some parents take some initiative instead of relying on some marketing rubberstamp. Maybe this National Institute of Mother Figs should look at, er, the FAMILY. Last time I looked, parents were supposed to censor things for their children. Perhaps that is the only valid method of censorship available. I can't really disagree with ESRB's statement. "Reform" groups like this NIMF claim to be "conservative" except that they want government to legislate what is "morally" right and "morally" wrong (in other words, what they interpret Christianity says about morality). Last time I looked, a conservative favored less government intervention in the lives of citizens. Perhaps registering as a libertarian is a good idea...
Summary:
ESRB: Hate ya but agree with your statement
NIMF: Really hate your attempt to impose Christianity on everyone (thus making the rest of the Christian people have a bad name), really hate your attempt to censor, really hate your utterly stupid comments. How do you know all that stuff about these obscene games, anyway?
I hadn't thought of this before.
Hell, I just went and saw History of Violence the other day, which presumably was R rated, and I recall one scene with quite explicit 69'ing and another scene involving violent sex in a stairway. Now, I like a good porno just as much as my wife does, so I didn't think much of it at the time, but now I can't think of any game I've ever heard of that has anything of the sort.
It does seem like there's some skew in way that games and movies are rated.
but I'm sure a lot of adults would be pissed if the next installment was watered down ("sweat" replacing blood a la Mortal Kombat, for example) because the standards became more strict.
The entire concept of the color of a liquid changing the rating of a game is just stupid.
Gah, the whole concept of censorship drives me up a wall.
I really, really, really loathe conservative pro-censorship organizations.
There are only three reasons someone should censor something:
1) The content is so incredibly potentially damaging that the possibility of someone seeing it at all is unacceptable. Finding out that dialing "000-0001" on any telephone causes US nuclear missiles to be launched at Russia would be a good example. There aren't many of these. People can't learn to avoid this content themselves because even a single exposure is unacceptable.
2) The content is actually addictive and will override the rational mind, so there's a feedback loop going on that causes peeople to seek out the content more and more. Thus, people can't learn to avoid this content themselves because any exposure might cause them to potentially lose the ability to choose not to seek out the content. I can't really think of any informational version of this off the top of my head, but it's the rationale used for banning addictive drugs.
3) The assumption is made that people are not capable of functioning on their own and need to be herded and controlled by some group that is somehow more enlightened. I don't really buy into this.
#3 is the rationale that conservative Christian groups seem to buy into. ("Surely, if those poor sad sops were just as intelligent/morally strong as us, they'd understand the right thing to do. Heck, they wouldn't argue with us, because they'd join us in advocating censorship! Instead, we need to expose them only to certain memes and keep any other memes that might outcompete those memes away from them!")
My take is that the more competing ideas and debate going on, the better, and that the pro-censorship folks out there aren't somehow more enlightened than the rest of us. Personally, I think that if an idea is bad, people will tend to shrug it off in favor of new, better ideas.
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
The National Institute for Media and Family certainly sounds like a religiously-motivated "video games are bad, mmkay?" group with an axe to grind. Anyone reading their report with a critical eye can see that all the studies they cite are honest about how little you can conclude from their evidence. "The kids who play violent video games are more violent than those who don't" could mean "games make kids violent" OR "kids who are already violent tend to play violent games." There's no way to know from the evidence. NIMF's analysis of each study concedes this, but they proceed with their conclusions anyway.
Here's part 2: The rating system does suck. It's incredibly broken. The M rating encompasses a ridiculously large range. Games like the now-infamous GTA: San Andreas, which encourages shooting cops, roughing up prostitutes, selling drugs, and whatever else gets an M. So does the original Halo, which had no profanity, no human on human violence (although plenty of human on alien, I admit), and no rewards for antisocial behavior. But if humans killing aliens gets you an M, would Space Invaders on the Atari 2600 rate an M? How about Combat, which came with the system? It seems that any amount of violence nets you an M rating, but nobody had a problem with 14 year olds playing Combat. Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire are very similar (made by the same guys) and have basically identical amounts of violence and moral issues. JE gets an M, but KOTOR gets a T. Blade II and LOTR: Return of the King are the same deal: The only difference I can see is orcs vs vampires, and lighting; but Blade gets and M, LOTR gets a T. I let my son rent Punisher a while back, which is rated T, but it was full of profanity and violence comparable to Chronicles of Riddick, which gets a well-earned M.
Unfortunately, the "play what they play" argument doesn't work very well either. I try to be an "informed parent", but it's hard. I can't preview the game without cracking the seal on it and making it unreturnable. I can research it on the Net, but the review sites don't tell me how graphic things are, or how much profanity there is, or anything else useful for this purpose. They just tell you how good the game is. I wish I had a solution here, but I don't. How about 10 point scales for Profanity, Violence, and Sex in a scale that's consistent?
This is the best quoting of the bible I've ever seen on slashdot.