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Manhunt 2 Ban Fallout, Game Rated AO By ESRB
In the wake of yesterday's announcement of a UK ban on Manhunt 2 , Rockstar has registered its disappointment at the BBFC's decision. The company simply stated that they 'respect those who have different opinions about the horror genre and videogames as a whole, but we hope they will also consider the opinions of the adult gamers for whom this product is intended.' Meanwhile, here in the US, the ESRB has given the game the dreaded AO rating, for adults only. If you're unfamiliar with this seldom-seen designation, it's essentially the 'kiss of death' for a title at retail; a number of popular videogame outlets refuse to carry titles with that rating. MTV's Stephen Totilo has a lengthy and considered discussion of these proceedings. "For 'Manhunt 2,' signs pointed to the title being both less and more extreme than the first. Gone from press previews were mentions of snuff films and Directors. Instead, a more traditionally violent video game premise: one man's struggle to stay alive in an insane asylum gone mad."
Seriously, a game like Manhunt 2 gets an AO rating, while true horror games like "Play with the Teletubbies" get rated EC (Early Childhood)! Where is the justice in that?
I'm definitely going to buy it. Can I order direct from Rockstar?
Is there any reason why Rockstar can't just distribute the game via Steam or something like this?
Rather than selling it at a retail level, utilize the free PR to mention that the game will still be sold but is only available for online download.
They put in a disclaimer, you must be 18 to download this game, jada jada jada, and then sell it.
Your logic is interesting. Rather than assuming the content of the game was the reason for the rating, you imagine the ESRB rated it AO because Britain banned it?
So, you feel that a game where the entire object is to 'realistically' kill people in different fashions should be played by kids?
It's not a one way street for that sort of thing though. We've been dealing with the fallout from stupid US decisions for some time.
Can someone post the MTV article here? Gotta love super duper work filters.
and have an essay contest entitled "Why Microsoft Word is more likely than video games to incite people to commit violent acts"
Having played violent video games and used Word, one has caused me to become violent, and it wasn't video games....
It's a game for PS2, PSP and Wii. These platforms don't do Steam.
I personally don't know many gamers my age (22) that buy in stores. Unless we're stoned, and want to impress people with our Guitar Hero "skills". Lately it has been less expensive to purchase online (usually free shipping). Actually having a job doesn't allow for much playtime during the week, so the delay in shipping usually means i don't get the game til friday (for a tuesday release) which ensures that i have the entire weekend to play it. I think the big money question here is, will gamefly be renting Manhunt 2? And if so, will they allow purchase through themselves? That would help sales immensely.
oh marmalade.
The M rating is made for games like this. I don't understand why they have the need for an M (17+) versus an AO (18+) rating. Are 18 years olds able to handle much more intense violence than 17 year olds?
The only reason I can see for AO (or NC-17 in movies) is to have a separate rating reserved for porn. If you consider games like this porn, you may need to see a psychiatrist.
Secondly as the article pointed out, from everyone I know who has seen it, the game is much more toned down from the original in many ways, which got the M rating here despite being a interactive snuff film.
And third the ratings coming in when they did leads a lot of suspicion as to why, when filed at two different times, the game ended up getting its decisions handed down at almost the exact same time, with the British banning it despite it being submitted to them AFTER the US board got it.
Lastly, its a known fact that a special interest group was putting major pressure on both ratings boards to get it a AO ratings.
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That's because we are warmongering yankee fucks;-)
Living With a Nerd
Apparently it's due to the Wii controller. On the PS2 and other platforms you just hit a button. On the Wii you actually mimic the motions. I guess that's their problem. Still dumb.
Swi
Didn't they say that that the Brits are ignoring the Adult Gamers in their decision? So, since they made it for Adult Gamers, shouldn't they be welcoming the Adults Only mark? Oh it wasn't just made for a niche market then, eh?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
So pretending to graphically murder someone is more suitable for younger people than watching people have sex?
;)
You must be from the US
"On the Wii you actually mimic the motions. I guess that's their problem."
:).
You know, a Wii Zombie Chainsaw Massacre game might actually get me to buy a console
I would rather children play a game involving sex than violence.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Is there any compelling reason why kids SHOULD be allowed to buy this game?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Wait, you actually get to mimic the motions? That just gave the game about three times as much mileage for me. Imagine drinking games involving Manhunt 2 - a drunk serial strangler has untold comic potential.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
What evidence? The company knows ratings boards well. That's great. Obviously, not as well as you think they do. Next. To address your second point, the article claims the game is "both less and more extreme". I don't know that it really gives a lot of weight to your argument. And the review boards have access to far more content than "everyone you know" who has seen it. Your third claim is timing. Timing? That's evidence? The ESRB notifies the publisher 30 days prior to publicly releasing its decision. I'm not aware of the British policies, but regardless, you haven't proven the timing is anything more than coincidental. And further, so what? Do you think every ratings board has the exact same process and should complete their reviews in exactly the same amount of time? Lastly, a special interest group. Shocker! Special interest groups have been puuting pressure on the ratings boards since their inception. That's nothing new, and is at any rate not related to whether or not the British decision had any impact on the ESRB decision or vice versa. I think we should be applauding the ESRB decision. Many of the people so vehemently against violence in video games would like to see them all banned. The ESRB is the industry-supported method for content rating and review, and as such is the gaming community's best defense against those that would rather see this sort of entertainment wiped out entirely. If the ESRB deems content worthy of AO, then so be it. We live in the digital age. Who give's a rat's ass if WalMart won't carry it?
I LIVE in the US and I've never understood this perspective either. I would rather kids see sex than see violence every single day, let alone realistically murder people. While it is true that 99% of people who play video games WONT go psycho, there is always the remainder who are already rather disturbed or whatever reason, who definately don't need help.
Its not banned in the US though, it just wont be carried by any store that wont sell a AO game (despite the rating being a dumb broken rating to begin with, the difference between a M and AO rating is ONE FUCKING YEAR in age)
But the British banned it though they wont admit to it. What they effectively said was "we wont rate this" which in Britain means its banned since you cant sell anything that is not rated. There was some pressure on this as well, by a similar but like minded group to the one in the US, who wanted it banned not because of the content, but because of the controls.
Yep the British banned the game because it uses the Wiimote, and thus "accurately depicts killing someone"
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And this is different than selling kids cap guns, super soakers, plastic swords, paintball guns, water grenades, cork guns, slingshots, bb guns, rubber nunchuks, tonka tanks, GI Joe with Kung-Fu action grip to hold that tiny sub machine gun, plastic light sabers that go Wha-Wha when waved and TCSHK when they collide with something (presumably a limb), bow-n-arrow sets with those rubber plunger tips, lawn darts, chess boards, bibles, those keychains that make exploding noises when you press a button, or those race car tracks that cross in the middle specifically to cause the cars to crash?
Am I the only one to wonder what business it is of Manhunt 2 to ban the upcoming Fallout 3?
The AO rating for games is basically the same thing as R for movies. The problem is that people think that AO = X, and that's a stigma that needs to be changed. If more games were rated AO for their violent content, then retailers would be forced to carry AO games. This would result in more accurate rating for games. Today, any game with even a minor level of violence is rated M, so you can't tell the difference between Halo (which is just a shooter that has almost no foul language) and Gears of War (wear people curse a lot of slaughter aliens with chainsaws). My 12-year-old nephew plays Halo 2, but he's not allowed to play GoW, yet both are rated M.
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M = R
AO = NC-17
T = PG-13
E-10 = PG
E = G
Rockstar, if you're listening, please do us a favor. Keep the game just the way it is. Release it with the AO rating.
You have the capital to take a risk like this (especially with GTA 4 coming soon, and the tidal wave of cash it is sure to generate). Someone has to be the first to put out high quality AO content. The Atari 2600 came out in 1977. There are lots of adults that have been playing games for their entire lives, and want game content that falls in the same noire category as 300, Reservoir Dogs, and Sin City.
Until there is a proven market for this material, the vendors won't take a risk on it. But you have the ability to establish that market, and the cashflow to take the risk.
I don't even think it's that much of a risk; the first game to thumb its nose at the family-values whining minority. Everyone who would have bought the game will want it, 90% of them are old enough to legally buy it, and most of those will be willing and able to make the effort necessary to do so.
So please, give it a shot. You can always rerelease it with duckies and bunnies, and a gun that shoots hearts to make the furry animals love you, later.
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Movie theatres aren't supposed to sell tickets to "R" rated movies to minors, just as video game vendors aren't supposed to sell "AO" rated games to minors. I don't see the inconsistency you imply.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
You feel that there is much difference between a 17 year old and an 18 year old?
I never said that. What I said was that the ratings have traditionally been used that way, which is probably the way the porn industry prefers it.
Was going to post this in the "UK BAN"-thread, but post it here instead.
I have always been a firm believer in films/games not making people more violent. Something happened to me, though, to sort of make me doubt my strong belief.
I bought Manhunt and played it. It was really fun, a great little sneak-and-kill game. But it was very violent and I did not really like being that violent but it was part of the game and making the gruesome kills was fun in a strange way. It was axhilarating to see how long you could sneak behind someone before you had to do the kill.
When I finished the game I played for a particularly long day and that night I had the most bizarre and gruesome dreams. I dreamt that I cleft people with chainsaws and ran over them with my car. Everything felt OK and I didn't have any moral complaints in my dream, which, if you ask anyone in my surrounding, is totally different from my personality. I am not a psychopath as far as I can tell. :)
I haven't had any such dreams since and I hope I won't again (though they weren't nightmares in the true sense since I wasn't scared in them, only by my reaction to them). What I'm saying is that I do believe we are affected by what we see/experience. At least if its done frequently enough.
In cases like very violent films or games, however, having a 18-year restriction on buying the game is enough. Grown up people can decide for themselves what they want to see/play. I felt desturbed by my experience and probably won't buy Manhunt 2 for that reason, but I certainly don't believe in denying the experience from anyone else who is old enough to make a grown up decision about this.
Badgers, we don't need no stinking badgers! - UHF
I really fail to see how an AO rating can hurt a game nowadays. With the publicity it has received, if anything, such a rating would INCREASE sales. Maybe you can't go down to Wal-Mart and buy it, but so friggin' what? Anyone old enough should have the means to order it online. And that's assuming that such a rating is as bad as everyone thinks. Surely their are some stores out there that would carry it simply BECAUSE of such the rating and the publicity.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
But movie theaters show lots of rated-R movies, and it's real easy to get in regardless of your age. When's the last time you saw an AO-rated game in a game store?
No movie would be given an NC-17 rating for just violence, only nudity. Yet games are given an AO rating for violence but not nudity. So it's hard to make the claim that AO = NC-17 because of the different standards.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Next up, Rockstar announces Leisure Suit Larry : San Andreas and the ultra-realistic Wii edition. You figure out what the Wiimote will be used for ;)
I think the "X" rating has a stigma that needs to be changed in itself. I guess they do have the NC-17 stuff nowadays, but X is thought of as nothing but pornography. Of course, the MPAA doesn't even disclose how or why they rate things, which is why you have so much Hollywood trash dramatically cutting their films for theater release (no rating? no theater play!) and then making a big deal about the "totally unrated" DVD edition, as if they now have some integrity.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
While both Europe and the U.S. have a pretty retarded policies when it comes to censorship (neither violence nor sex are appropriate things for the government to censor), the idea that sex in media is worse than violence does make sense. It is very, very, very unlikely that someone is going to commit murder. It is very, very, very likely that someone is going to have sex.
How many people do you know who have killed other people (aside from soldiers or police officers or something like that)? How many people do you know have had sex? The risk of a teenager having risky sex is astronomicly greater than the risk of the teenager commiting murder.
You really shouldn't brag "our censorship is better than your censorship" though. It is like bragging that your diarrhea is better. The truly civilized countries are the ones that trust parents to decide what they want their children to see and don't get involved.
I'm sure I'm in the minority here, but it really seems to me like people have grown soft in the last few years. Maybe it's the lack of a strong father figure in the home, or whatever. But it seems like kids aren't allowed to experience things for fear of getting hurt or "scarring them for life." What's wrong with a normal kid playing a violent video game? They're going to be exposed to it in real life anyway. Not preparing them adequately for it is just going to make them more immature when they "grow up."
Example: Toy guns. You can't find realistic toy guns anymore. When I was younger, we had full-weight, metal replicas of the real things. Now you can only find bright orange ones, usually made of plastic or foam.
Maybe this is why so many kids have no ability to handle reality. Instead of dealing with their own problems, they go crying to a psychiatrist.
In my opinion, keep the rating system to appease the crazy parents, but don't ban sales. That's just encouraging the kids to play these games anyway...
"Generations of men raised by women." --Tyler Durden from "Fight Club"
Quite frankly, I personally think games like Manhunt 2 are decadent garbage. That said, if someone wants to purchase and play these games they should be free to do so.
This sort of excessive regulation, to me, reflects the general decline and weakness of the West. We've got these nanny states run by people who increasingly believe it's their responsibility to control every aspect of our lives. More troubling is how citizens are themselves abdicating all responsibility, expecting their governments to do everything for them. What these people apparently fail to realize is that inevitable the system will eventually come around and start trampling on their freedoms; it's a very slippery slope.
Ultimately, it's the parents who should be responsible for what their children are doing. If a child who plays these ultra-violent games has violent tendencies I'll guarantee those issues stem from poor parenting and not the game. From personal experience this has always been the case. The fact that the child has access to such games is merely a symptom of that problem.
As long as humans have been around there has been violence. I'm not making excuses for that violence, but humanity has in general gotten along fine. Look at the level of violence depicted in a lot of anime that officials in the US feel the need to censor. Yet Japan maintains extremely low crime rates.
Sometimes I think trying to shield children by depicting an unrealistic, utopian fantasy is a big mistake. It renders them poorly equipped to deal with the harshness of the real world. I'm not advocating they participate in violent blood sports, but as always everything in moderation is best.
Okay, assuming a video game store follows ratings for sales (and nothing prohibits them from selling to minors, you remember all those smacked down game laws, also theaters by policy do not sell to minors there is no law preventing them from doing it), WTF is the difference between a 17 year old (M) and an 18 year old (AO)? At some point, we as a society decided to draw this line in the sand and we did a poor damn job at it. A few examples:
You can vote at 18 and die for your country at 18 as well; however, you cannot drink alcohol.
And at what age can you have consensual sex? Well that varies by state, though the minimum appears to be around 16.
Before the 1980s, the drinking age was much of the same and not until threatened with a removal of federal highway funds did states up the age to 21.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to judge an individuals maturity easily. The best thing we apparently have is age, and it is not a good indicator as many people my own age are less mature then some teenagers, and the same goes for people in their 30s or 40s. The other issues around violent games revolve around individuals perceptions of reality and the ability to separate reality and fiction. Some people might not be able to properly separate these well into their later years, while others in their teens easily recognize what is real and what is not. If video games (or movies or music or some other "demonized" media) really caused violence then we would be in far worse shape as a society then we are, but the fact is most studies have failed to show a definitive link between any of those and violence and some of the links they have found were dubious at best.
Like most things before it (movies, rock and roll, comic books, rap music, etc.), video games are being picked on because they are "the new kid". Groups have this narrow-minded view (as they did with the other items), where only kids play video games and this is why they place these pressures on groups like the ESRB and try to pass bad laws written by evangelicals like Jack Thompson. If you think video games and movies are not treated differently in their ratings and content, then you might want to review some of the more recent history on these things.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
"I LIVE in the US and I've never understood this perspective either."
It's actually very easy to understand. Just ask a couple of questions:
How many high school seniors have fathered or mothered a child?
How many high school seniors have killed a person?
The thinking is along the lines of: "I remember what it was like when I was in school, and I don't want my child getting/causing pregnancy and ruining their life." The idea that they're going to go Columbine at a school is a distant thought.
It's not about the act, it's about the probability of it becoming a problem in the household. I don't personally subscribe to that line of thought, but it's not like half the country took a crazy pill or something.
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The ESRB is not the government, it is an industry organization that game companies submit there games to for a rating. The reason they do this is because retail stores require this, but it does not prevent the game company from not getting a rating and selling the game themselves online (for PC games at least). In the case of console games, it is probably a safe bet that Nintendo, MS, and Sony all require that games made for there consoles are all submitted for rating.
This is *vastly* different than an official government organization censuring this game. This game can still be sold in stores, but it must be sold as "AO" with all the restrictions that apply to that. This is a really good thing for the game industry. Elections are coming up, and seeing an 8-year old stab someone with a Wii remote (as in this game) will surely get old people fired up. The AO rating will help reduce liability for Rockstar.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
Nonsense. The summary made it perfectly clear why they don't want the AO mark: a number of cowardly stores refuse to stock AO games. Fewer stores means less visibility and fewer sales, even if they really only want adults purchasing the game. For a game that was expensive to produce, an AO rating can destroy the producers chance of making a profit. A Mature mark would get them into most stores with almost identical effectiveness (AO is 18+, while M is 17+).
Exactly as many people predicted, the ratings system, even a voluntary one, has stifled creativity. The ratings system resulted in incentives for stores to refuse to stock the highest rated games to appease the whiners. Not being carried in stores reduces sales, frequently to the point of ensuring the game will be a commercial failure. Developers and publishers to restrict what they do to avoid the top rating mark. End result: you get almost nothing specifically intended for the adult market. What you do get tends to be low quality and pandering, because shameless crap is the only thing likely to make money. The end result is that the highest rating becomes associated with pandering garbage, which just reenforces the entire cycle. You're pretty much guaranteed that some topics and some styles of gameplay that serious game developers might want to turn into a top quality title will either be watered down or simply never produced.
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Kids play violent games WITH EACH OTHER from early childhood. Cowboys and Indians? Cops and robbers? People aren't naturally pacifist, nor are tendencies towards violence somehow developed after puberty. For children to be interested in violence is FAR more natural than for them to be interested in watching people have sex.
So, yeah, it IS more suitable.
I like basketball!!1!
To buy a rated M game you need to be 17. To buy an AO game you need to be 18. Is that one year gap really that killer that it would ruin the sales of the whole game? I can see why retailers wouldn't want to stock AO games that are basically porn, but games much less violent than something like Hostel or Saw III which they are selling should be able to share the space.
If a private, advisory, non-binding, completely voluntary, self-regulating, loosely affiliated industry association gets your knickers that in a bunch, you've obviously never had your rights inflicted upon in the slightest by anyone.
When I was a child our favorite game was drug dealer... "Dwa cawps are coming, hiwde the stash"
The best way to explain this is the film Midnight Cowboy which got an X rating, won an Oscar anyway, and was later re-rated by the MPAA to be an R.
Ok, this was an embarrassment for the MPAA, especially considering nowadays no one thinks an X rating is going to be for a movie with much actual content. So the NC-17 rating was created to cover cases like this. If you've ever seen an NC-17 rated film, you've probably been disappointed if you were looking for porn. (I've seen a few, like Requiem for a Dream one of my girlfriends favorite movies.)
However, the distribution still treats NC-17 movies as things that it doesn't want to deal with, you won't see them in Blockbuster or many retail stores. The rating has failed to achieve broad distribution for controversial films, and films that are intended to be commercial will either be edited to be R or if the director has enough clout the MPAA will rate them R and turn a blind eye to content that would earn an unknown director an NC-17.
It's far simpler for video games. AO is the rating for porn games, period. There's no such thing as an NC-17 rating for video games, because they are currently considered to be entertainment only with no artistic value by the Establishment. Since no game will be considered art at the present time, there is no reason for an "art" rating. (Note: The views of the Establishment do not reflect the views of the author of this comment.) If your game gets an AO rating, it better fit into that niche (although... in movies porn is pretty huge for a niche, and makes a huge amount of money to show it). If it doesn't, you are basically screwed, you've probably spent to much on development to justify a niche game that will only sell on the Web (even the porn store guys that sell porn games will likely go, "you're kidding, right?" if you try to distribute it through them).
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Rockstar cares, because there are people who shop at walmart:
people that dont follow games that might see the game and buy it on a whim,
people who played the first and notice in the store that number two is out,
people who see a "mature" looking game and decide they need it, people who think it might make a good gift for their moody kid,
people who want to pick it up on their way home after work,
etc...
Just because you and I purchase stuff online doesnt mean that everyone does, or even wants to.
14.
The minimum age, in some states, is 14. But only then with people no more than 2 years your senior.
IE: A 14 year old can fuck a 16 year old, but a 17 year old? Negatory.
At least, that's how it was in PA a few years ago. I rarely pay attention, but that was the last I heard.
Just an FYI.
There is undoubtedly a sizeable audience for this kind of game, but it's understandable that RockStar would not want to release the game with an AO rating, as certain large resellers (Wal-Mart?) will be unwilling to carry the title. Perhaps the solution is to release two different versions of the game. I, for one, would like to play the AO version, but in order to placate overly-protective parents around the globe, RockStar could release a watered-down version for the teenage set. That's not to say that I think that video games are responsible for violence in society any more than movies are, but if the only way to preserve the integrity of the game is to cater to the alarmists then so be it.
It got banned in the UK. What was the other country it got banned in? It will still be fore sale in the USA.
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I agree with that list.
Though, the only difference between R and NC-17 and M and AO (for me) is the "stricter enforcement" of the policies.
Technically, those ratings are the same for me. R = Adult, NC-17 = Adult, M = Adult, AO = Adult.
The whole thing can be thrown out if they just enforced the "R" and "M" ratings, properly.
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
I'd like to see this as well. Unfortunately, the video game industry seems to think more "mature" content means more tits and buckets of gore. I'd like to see more developed characters and plotlines that deal with more adult themes. To use a horror/spooky movie analogy, I'd like to play the video game equivalent of The Sixth Sense where there's tension, eerieness, a few BOO! moments and actual character development. What the publishers deliver, however is more like what Eli Roth has regurgitated on the moviegoing public.
If whales learn how to use weapons we're all screwed!
I read that wrong at first, I thought Fallout had been banned in the UK, which would make me sad.
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You are correct in that NC-17 was an attempt to create a movie rating that meant "This film is for adults but is not porn"
There is no such rating for the ESRB due to the fact that most Americans (and the ESRB itself!) associate "Adults Only" with "porn".
Both the MPAA's R and ESRB's M rating only apply to 17 year olds, really. After that, you're an adult and can see anything you want, younger than that, and you need your parents' permissions. Rather sill, if you ask me.
Although you can argue that NC-17 was a failure because you don't see many NC-17 films in theaters, the DVD industry has found a way to make it work by releasing "Unrated" versions of movies.
A good example I saw recently was Epic Movie. There's a few places in the film where a woman runs across the screen. In the theatrical version, she's wearing a bra and panties. In the Unrated DVD version, she's fully nude (with visible pubic hair). In one of the 'making of' extras, they mentioned they had the woman run across topless for an R version but later decided to go with PG-13.
The real issue here, above and beyond the "do games make people violent?" question, is why are adult gamers demanding such violence? "Please consider the opinion of the adult gamer," sort of disturbs me, somehow. Why is the opinion of the adult gamer, consistantly, "we want more violence!"? 30 years ago, this level of violence was unthinkable. It's not the violence itself that I mind, it's the fascination with violence that really disgusts me.
When the topic first came up, and that pretty much started in the mainstream with Mortal Kombat, the defense was that it added realism and immersion. But to be honest, I never bought it. And that's becoming apparant now that we're going above and beyond realistic violence to DEMANDING that violence be much more prevolent than just an innocent desire to uphold "realism".
I think there's really two reasons for this:
1) We're not talking about adults here, we're talking 13-18 year olds. It's basically the job of teenagers to try to disgust their parents as much as possible, as a form of rebellion.
2) Culturally, males are being taught that they're basically immoral and unintelligent, and that the only way to prove your masculinity is to be the ultimate in those areas. "I want a beer, and I want to see something naked... that's all." When better way of establishing that identity by sitting and playing ultra-violent video games with no emotional tie-in? I've seen it, 15 year olds saying, "check this out, I can cut off his head" and then go up to some guy, and chop off his head while he's screaming in pain. It basically says, "I can do this, and I won't even feel remorseful about it, it doesn't bother me, because I'm a man."
So my theory is that violence is largely used as a means of establishing independance and gender identity. It's not the fault of video games, it's the fault of our culture for not having any possitive rolemodels to look up to. As a friend of mine likes to quote, "where have all the cowboys gone?"
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
And even if the games originally came out before the ESRB came into existence, that Pac-Man collection that you plug directly into your TV is still going to need an ESRB rating before they'll sell it.
Are the age ranges for board games assigned by a review board or do they just say who they are marketed towards?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Why? There is no X rating, and hasn't been for decades. NC-17 replaced X because X wasn't trademarked and became widely used by unrated movies.
"X" is no longer an official MPAA rating. It was abandoned when NC-17 was introduced mainly because it WAS associated with porn. Of course, thanks to the "masterpiece" which was the first widely released NC-17 movie, Showgirls, and the accompanied protests by religious groups, NC-17 movies are closely associated with "pornographic" content and the end result is pretty much the same as before.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I bought the first one at EB Games, having heard nothing about it. I guess the box art grabbed me, so I picked it off the shelf and though I'd give it a whirl.
Well I was absolutely horrified. The set up of the game was so vile and disturbing to me that I could not bring myself to play it.
I brought it back to EB, told them that they shouldn't even be selling a game like this and that I wanted my money back. The manager quickly agreed and gave me a full refund.
Head office must have sent advance warning that any open-box refund requests should be quickly granted on this game. Curious to know if they're going to take a position this go-around and not stock the sequel.
I know in Germany "not rated" means it can't be sold to minors and may later be banned from advertising (there's no full sales ban unless the Constitutional Court decides to introduce one on the basis that the material in question is a hazard to society itself), does Britain have a full ban for unrated material or just selling it in any venue minors can enter?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
It IS limiting adults from purchasing the game. Most major retailers refuse to carry AO rated games. So not only are you limiting sales to minors, you're also limiting sales to adults.
I, too, would rather kids watch sex than violence, but I wonder whether the problem many American parents have with pornography that is not that it teaches kids to have (unprotected?) sex, but that it teaches them to objectify women. I don't have any kids, but I imagine that's a more complicated lesson to teach kids than "killing is wrong".
Most high school kids these days will have sex one way or the other, but most will not try to kill someone. I don't think violent video games will have an impact one way or another on that statement, but if we're going to encourage something, I'd like to encourage them to make love, not war. Only a small number of kids who want to have sex get pregnant, but an unacceptable percentage (any % >0) of those who try to kill someone succeed.
OK, why does this game get "AO" rating (and completely banned from sale in multiple countries) while extremely disturbing games like Silent Hill cause no uproar? Seriously, I've never played games more psychologically disturbing and scary than the Silent Hill series. Along the same lines, movies like Saw are totally popular (and not banned) despite their excessively disturbing scenes (which all involve bloody violence and, again, psychologically disturbing situations). So, what's the deal?
Yet teen pregnancy rates are higher in the US than Europe so reducing the media access isn't doing much there. I read claims that many US areas have problems with parents who believe that cutting sex ed from the school curriculum prevents teen pregnancy and that those parents seem to think kids will wait until they're married just as long as they never see sex ont he TV.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
You must be new here. Welcome to Slashdot!
Dude. Have you SEEN who our President is? Do you remember the election results? It's almost EXACTLY like half the country took a crazy pill or something.
This is the best Democracy money can buy?!?!?
a more traditionally violent video game premise: one man's struggle to stay alive in an insane asylum gone mad."
Translation: You are a peon who works for the federal government...
No wonder the Feds want to regulate these sorts of games!
Kids play violent games WITH EACH OTHER from early childhood. Cowboys and Indians? Cops and robbers? People aren't naturally pacifist, nor are tendencies towards violence somehow developed after puberty.
Except those games aren't really violent in any real sense. They are little more than games of chase and tag. The Indian makes a hit with his tomahawk and your 'leg is off', so now you have to hop. The game focusses on the activity... nobody ever just sits there hacking the other player into pieces visualizing how it would really look or feel. If you take a leg hit, your 'leg is off' and you play on.
They aren't roleplaying the leg hanging by a tendon in an unnatural position while the floor becomes slick with blood as they lie there screaming in agony and then go into shock.
Children's violence doesn't really hurt.
For children to be interested in violence is FAR more natural than for them to be interested in watching people have sex.
Until they're about 11 and their sex drives start switching on.
http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=238959&t hreshold=1&commentsort=1&mode=thread&cid=19584879
When does the video game about raping women and kids, blowing up an elementary school filled with children and committing genocide against various races, cultures, and sexual orientations come out? What differentiates those acts from cold-blooded random killings? The severity of the penalties despite the length of the punishment? Or that those acts draw more concern because they affect us more as a nation rather than a random killing? Can it be that so called "freedom of speech" and "right of censorship" have altered our views of what's right and wrong? I can understand your Harry Potters, Spiderman, or Batman storylines (obvious good vs evil) are easier to comprehend, however random acts of violence like cold-blooded killing glorified in video games are just wrong.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Sorry, that line of thinking is absolutely not why we have these sex vs. violence issues in America.
It has to do with our puritan background, and the religious nutjobs that populate our country and our government, at all levels.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
"...an insane asylum gone mad."
An insane asylum gone mad?
"Dude. Have you SEEN who our President is? Do you remember the election results?"
Yeah. I also remember the shitty list of candidates we had. I wouldn't be so quick to judge. That election just plain sucked.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
While both Europe and the U.S. have a pretty retarded policies when it comes to censorship (neither violence nor sex are appropriate things for the government to censor), the idea that sex in media is worse than violence does make sense. It is very, very, very unlikely that someone is going to commit murder. It is very, very, very likely that someone is going to have sex.
And why does it matter? It's very, very, very likely that someone is going to eat sometime, so we should censure all references to food in movies? Sex is a natural behavior, everybody will engage in it sooner or later (there's still some hope left for you slashdotters!), and educating children about sex is a much better way to go about things than making it a forbidden and hidden dirty secret. Procreation is part of the normal functioning of human race and society. Murder isn't. What's the message you send kids when you're ok showing them somebody's head blown off, but have a conniption at the accidental sight of a nipple?
So major retailers won't carry or sell copies of Manhunt 2 now that it's AO. That doesn't mean that a local video game store won't be ready and willing to get copies of Manhunt 2 to they adult audience that wants to play it. Small, local stores such as Marquette, Michigan's own Ultimate GameZone (www.ultimategamezone.com) can and will sell adult games to the adult audience that their intended for. When GTA: San Andreas was pulled from Wal-Mart, Target and GameStop, we changed the advertized rating and kept it on our shelves. Video Games have an adult audience, and we want to play adult games as much as we want to play other games.
You should watch the movie This Film Is Not Yet Rated . It's about the movie ratings and how NC-17 works. Basically, the ESRB just ripped off that system and are using it in seemingly an identical fashion. NC-17 was basically created so the people who run the ratings can keep their movies in and other movies out. Sure, porn is the largest section, but it's also for all the indie movies that distributors don't want in their theatres, 'cause they don't want the potential blowback from disquieting themes/scenes. I think after GTA IV the game industry is sending R* a little message. You're games are too much; scale back and play nice or you'll never see the inside of a walmart again.
The AO or NC-17 rating has nothing to do with keeping children from games, they have R and M ratings for that, it's about keeping games those industries don't want from consumers. Yes, you can still rent NC-17, but not at blockbuster. The studio movies that have a couple extra titty scenes might still play, but the original NC-17 movies are still chopped up if they're gonna get any shelf space in blockbuster. And even that's b.s. The unrated versions are very often re-edited by blockbuster. They make sanitized unrated versions of movies for sale at walmart as well. They aren't the NC-17 equivalents. It's a 3rd version of the movie; there's theatrical, unrated, and unrated/sanitized. This last category being the most horrendous of them all, 'cause they're basically trying to steal their customers money by preying on their desire for more graphic sex/violence and then not giving it to them, because they deem it morally corrupting. Now, that's the movies way of having their cake and eating it too.
IMO, R* has been trying to show the games industry for years that there are grown-ups who want to play grown-up games. Sure they're happy to make money off teenagers too, but R* could have a sick niche if they were allowed to really make good adult games and there was actually a way to make them buyable only by adults without the straight store ban that AO entails, but the entire game industry (at least the parts where the money comes from) have absolutely no desire to make a single parent start questioning whether their child might get subjected to inappopriate material playing their shiny new ps3/360/wii. Hence, warning shot across the bow for R*. The probably better make their next game a Harry Potter port or something.
"The world is a tragedy to those who feel, and comedy to those who think." -- Shakespeare
That doesn't seem likely. Video game remakes of movies are, much like movie remakes of video games, always inferior to the original.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Children's violence doesn't really hurt
:) I was commenting about how "natural" that tendency is, that's all.
Unless I chuck a Manhunt 2 box at someone's face, it's probably not going to hurt you a whole lot more than chase and tag ~_^
Until they're about 11 and their sex drives start switching on.
Yeah then *both* become natural. Children can get involved in violence as easily as adults, or easier, especially if without adult supervision
I like basketball!!1!
Unless I chuck a Manhunt 2 box at someone's face, it's probably not going to hurt you a whole lot more than chase and tag
Right but these games depict and to an extent glorifies the . When you read a review of these games I've seen them relate with glee how 'when you shoot a guy in the face it will slide off the skull', or that the "head explodes in a satisfying fountain of gore, painting the wall with its spray..."
That stuff just isn't part of the 'violence' young kids enact through play that is depicted in these M/AO games and R movies.
In fact, I would like RockStar to make GTA4 an AO-rated game too. Then the stores would be forced to reevaluate whether they'd rather lose millions of dollars in sales, or stock AO games. GTA4 is pretty much a guaranteed big seller.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
The primary reason for such a strong reaction to this game is that the player is killing humans. Were the player killing zombies it would totally be ok.
The whole thing still smacks of irrational fear. No different than the Osamas in Pajamas hiding under the stairs. God forbid people actually, you know...pay attention to their kids?
However, I think its not so much about the probability of sex vs probability of violence. Lets look at US history for just a brief moment. Who came here first? Oh thats right the uber puritans...you know...scarlet letter and all. The folks that believed it was perfectly natural to burn whiches, stone whores, drown the nonbelievers, cut out tongues, and any other number of horrifically violent things...and these horrific and violent responses were frequently in response to that horribly impure and immoral SEX!. So this stuff has been ingrained into American thought from day 1. Sex is horrible and impure and an affront to God, violence on the other hand is frequently used to glorify God, so the choice of violence vs sex seems pretty easy, how else could you possibly justify stoning the whore?
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Well, enacting such violence is QUITE a step beyond playing a game that features it. That's a very important distinction to make!
As for games being M/AO and movies being R, there's a massive double-standard there. PG-13 movies that would be M games, etc. I see shock horror R-rated films that I imagine are at least as imaginative and more realistically sickening than Manhunt 2 could hope to be, and it's rated AO.
I like basketball!!1!
... is also "Adults Only" but stores still sell it. Go figure.
I think the retailers and society at large hasn't realized yet that the average gamer is 24 years old. They are still stuck in a Nintendo-induced "games are for kids" fantasy world. Even after Nintendo consoles got stuff like Conker's Bad Fur Day, the whole Biohazard/Resident Evil series, Eternal Darkness, that sword-fighter for the Wii etc.
Then again I guess you cannot find movies like Salo or Cannibal Holocaust at Blockbuster either...
Well, enacting such violence is QUITE a step beyond playing a game that features it. That's a very important distinction to make!
The original point was that 'violence' isn't 'mature' in the first place, as young kids roleplay violence in the form of cops and robbers and what not from shortly after they can walk/talk.
My point is that 'violence' a la cops & robbers is a completely different animal from what you see in an R movie or M/AO game. Children don't 'play' that kind of violence. 'Graphic violence' is not 'natural' in the sense that kids always have been playing 'violent games' since before hoop-and-stick.
As for the double standard, of course there are two standards. They are 2 different things.
Reading the screenplay isn't the same as watching the movie.
Passively watching the movie about a guy gruesomely killing people isn't the same as playing a game, taking on the role of the violent character and actively causing him to gruesomely kill people. And of course, playing the game isn't the same as picking up a lead pipe and heading out into the alley.
That we have different ratings standards for each of these actities is perfectly rational.
Well it seems to be much less of a problem in states where "abstinence" isn't the only form of birth control taught it schools. Nothing wrong with sex at all and 100 people having safe sex is much better than 5 having unprotected sex.
It's irrational puritan views plain and simple.
I've had either two or 6 years to judge (depending on how you do the accounting), I wouldn't say that was especially quick. If you think this guy is leading the US in the right direction - I wouldn't say you were especially quick either. I always wondered where some of that 29% approval rating came from - nice to make your acquaintance.
This is the best Democracy money can buy?!?!?
I mostly disagree with the latter portion of your comment. The question of how closely one identifies with a movie character vs. a 'controlled' character in a game isn't that simple to define, nor can it be answered without exceptions.
What if a game only had your character do "Hostel"-level gruesome things to others in cutscenes, when not under your control? Would you expect "film standards" to be applied in that case?
I think it's easier to reason that the levels of violence setting a PG-13 film from an R-rated film should be expected to be about the same as those setting a T game from an M game.
In the end, the ratings are all quite arbitrary. I can find R-rated films with less violence, language, sexual content, etc. than some PG-13 movies, for instance.
I like basketball!!1!
Manhunt 2 probably IS Adult Only. The issue here is that retailers are threating not to sell it, because they're not supposed to sell it to kids? They allready ID check M rated games (even though they don't techincally have to), it seems like they're just being ridiculously uptight by refusing to sell AO games. Thankfully, the game probably sucks, so I don't really care. But I can imagine an AO game being made that was good, and it is kind of messed up that it would never be released.
--The universe will not be altered by forum threads, even those which are very wry. --Tycho Brahe (Penny Arcade)
Interesting to note that Nintendo is not going to allow Manhunt 2 to be released on the Nintendo Wii. Their argument is that they do not allow games rated AO.
a o-manhunt-270741.php
http://kotaku.com/gaming/original/nintendo-nixes-
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
"But wait, there's more! It's not found in any store!"
Imagine the Manhunt 2 infomercials running at three in the morning between Girls Gone Wild and Time Life Music. "It slices! It dices!"
"I wouldn't say you were especially quick either."
... said the guy that wrote a rebuttal to something I didn't say.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Precisely what the differences are might be harder to put your finger on but it should be fairly clear that they are different and while we don't understand what the differences are comparing the ratings between the two isn't really possible, it's probably reasonable enough that the ratings for each make some kind of sense in their own right.
:(
For example movies longer than two hours start being hard to watch. I'm no hardcore gamer but I think it's much easier to play for much longer than that (depending on the game style). I don't know exactly what that tells us, but it certainly tells us that the way we respond to movies is different to the way we respond to games.
An AO rating for a game like Manhunt does not seam unreasonable on the face of it. Here in Australia we don't have and adult rating for games so Manhunt will almost certainly get banned
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
The question of how closely one identifies with a movie character vs. a 'controlled' character in a game isn't that simple to define, nor can it be answered without exceptions.
By and large, in games, you step into the character, and take possession of the action. "I killed him" not "He killed him." I don't think there is a lot of dispute on that.
What if a game only had your character do "Hostel"-level gruesome things to others in cutscenes, when not under your control? Would you expect "film standards" to be applied in that case?
Good question. I don't know. I think it depends. What if the cutscenes are rendered realtime instead of pre-recorded, what if they put your face on the character? (a la some descendant of the Wii Mii's). I think that's sort of the issue -- there is a degree to which you take ownership of a characters actions in a games -- doing them yourself is certainly more direct than watching them in a cutscene. But if the cutscene features your character with your name and face its more powerful than if your is say a "BloodRayne".
Perhaps two games, one where the character is 'you', and the other where the character is 'NOT you' would be rated differently. Perhaps they SHOULD be.
I think it's easier to reason that the levels of violence setting a PG-13 film from an R-rated film should be expected to be about the same as those setting a T game from an M game.
The 'difference' should probably be about the same, but the threshold is moved.
In the end, the ratings are all quite arbitrary. I can find R-rated films with less violence, language, sexual content, etc. than some PG-13 movies, for instance.
Absolutely, and its to be expected. The range of violence to be judged is a continuum - there is no hard line between PG and R. And context, and director intent, etc are all factors. And then the whole thing is subjective too. Ratings are a pretty rough yardstick.
For a title like manhunt to get slapped with an AO, when everyone knows what the retail situation for AO is, tells me that manhunt is going to push a lot of people buttons. It may not be the video game equivalent of Caligula in terms of what is going on on the screen, but that's how people are probably going to react to it.
The reason you had your dream concerning your gaming experience is because what you have been thinking about before you try to sleep, has a significant input to your dreams. In other words, you can control your dreams to a high degree. The first time I had heard of this concept was when I was in high school more than 15 years ago, but the ideas http://www.wikihow.com/Control-Your-Dreams are still valid today.
There is a reason for why you have the initial dreams you do. The stronger your focus before you go to sleep, the more likely you will have a dream concerning that particular subject. It is likely once you finished the game you were not actively thinking about it the following night at the same level of intensity, which is why you did not dream about it much if at all, the following night.
Just because you get modded "insightful" on Slashdot doesn't mean you actually are in real life.
Both Nintendo & Sony have said that AO-rated games will not be allowed to play on their consoles.
So an AO-rating basically means Rockstar HAVE to change the content or trash the game.
* Game Over * High Score: 264,846,927 -- Your Score: 14
Altough the events on Silent Hill games are much more disturbing in a personal level (you guys that know the games know what I'm talking about), the Manhunt games are simply about the gore, the shock and the extreme. At face value, it shocks to see someone use a plastic bag to kill another guy, but it's more "hummanly shocking" the things that some of the characters of Silent Hill do during the games.
"A sysadmin is a cross between a detective, a police officer, a gardener, a doctor and a fireman"
Politicians who think they know better than their people provoke violent revolution and should be censored!
AO Ratings, according to the ESRB website, has been given to quite alot of games, alot of games that I've seen selling rather well, including GTA: San Andreas. What with all this publicity Manhunt 2 has been getting, I'm sure that if it reaches market, any market, it's bound to sell one way or another.
That was an intentional decision by the MPAA to allow movies to skip the panel entirely and rate themselves.
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
No it won't. Neither Sony nor Nintendo will generally license an AO game.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
Uhh, yea, the puritans were really, really assexual. I mean hell, look at bundling. And yes, the puritans did that.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
It is very, very, very unlikely that someone is going to commit murder. It is very, very, very likely that someone is going to have sex.
It trying to make a correlation between likelihood and morality. Cancel or allow?
The Bible should be banned because it is a book of murder and cruelty,
but Manhunt should be allowed to be played because its murder and cruelty is entertainment.
Earth really has a prosperous future...
"Wait, you actually get to mimic the motions?"
Thank God that Nintendo makes the Wii, or could you imagine the kinds of porn games that would be made?
Yikes. "This is indeed a disturbing universe."
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Bundling, sounds like kindling. I bet the girls who got pregnant were burned because the boys claimed they did nothing, so she must have been a witch and forced them into it! (Remember kids, girls = evil according to the bible, stupid twit listening to a talking snake and ruining it for all of us)
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
So you believe a 17 year old can't make a decision about sex, but an 18 year old can? You honestly believe there's some switch that kicks in on someone's 18th birthday? You must, that's the only reason you'd bring up such a law.
If there was such high demand for mindless violence in games, somebody would put shops selling just that.
Maybe, just maybe, many people think it is a sick pursuit and in reality, apart from some individuals with psychological issues, nobody wants to play such crap?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Even if portrayed in a game.
The trivialization and glamorization of violence is something that we expect only fully developed adults to manage appropriately, young people lack the necessary life experience to know better, specially children, that learn by mimicking.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
This ruling of the ESRB is the greatest thing to happen FOR the video game industry in a very long time. It gives the industry the argument now that the ESRB is serious about the ratings and that it doesn't need the government to step in. Further, the worst problem all along has been Take-Two, not the entire industry. Specter and even Lowenstein have been moving to isolate and ostracize Take-Two, and it finally happened. Take-Two, with its chronic scofflaw attitude, has painted a bullseye on the whole industry's back, and now the industry ESRB has struck back and its biggest problem, far bigger than me, Jack Thompson. So, in response to the ESRB's finally getting one right and helping the industry, in part because of my raising the visibility of Take-Two and its illegal antics, you all are very welcome. You in the gaming nation have tried to marginalize and threaten and harm me, and I understand, but you now are starting to figure out what this fight has been about. It has not been about "banning games" or "banning even violent games." It has been about stopping the marketing and sale of mature and adult games to minors. Period. The good guys won this one, and so did the industry. Got get the Hell off my back and tell Take-Two's new Chairman, Strauss Zelnick, what an absolute idiot he is. Jack Thompson, Attorney and Still Standing
Lets look at US history for just a brief moment. Who came here first? Oh thats right the uber puritans.
Last I checked the pilgrims landed on Plymouth rock in 1620. Jamestown was founded in 1607, 13 years earlier. If anything, the US was founded on the basis of good old fashion mercantilism and attempting to make a profit by growing tobacco. The other flaw I'd see in the argument is that were heritage the cause, you'd expect Massachusetts to be ground zero for the religious right; nothing could really be further from the truth.
I think the real cause is isolation. Religious conservatism is much more at home in smaller, more insular towns, where "big city ideas" threaten their "way of life". One of these "big city ideas" was the idea of the sexual revolution in the 60's; while the ideas spread quickly among large cities of cosmopolitan populations (that's where it started after all), such ideas are slower to spread to smaller more homogeneous populations where there's active resistance to cultural change.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
They may be whining, but they are not a minority.
The minority are "adults" that want to be entertained with hyper violent games.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
But he is pointing out, correctly, that they had a psychological impact.
If they did not have an impact they wold not sell, plain and simple, so what should be done is addressing the topic but without reaching for the weasel out exit of "there is no proof" this or that. Enough people seem to have anecdotal evidence that certain kind of people are often involved in very violent fare this should not be dismissed just like that, because we are talking about people's lives being damaged.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Any sane person can see how the premise of tetris is harmless.
That is not the case when you are simulating horrific acts of realistic violence against realistically rendered people. TO come with these rubbish examples is an attempt to insult the intelligence of other people frankly...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
People are as violent as they have always been. Fortunately there is a legal and cultural framework that tries to make sure people are not hurt randomly.
A frame of respect and pacific resolution of conflicts is not being soft, one of the bravest things you can do is to control your violent impulses to give negotiations and accommodation a chance.
The softy-softy namby-pamby approach to conflict resolution is to smack somebody whenever you feel like it. It solves nothing and gets people hurt.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You pseudo libertarian quasi anarchist types decry the nanny state but offer no solutions to achieve pacific coexistence.
I utterly fail to see how rating, not banning, but rating a game is nannyism in any way.
The UK very often is completely out of whack, but banning is nowadays a very rare occurrence to their credit. A game that is obviously viciously and gratuitously violent, if the accounts I have read are to be trusted, rightly should be available only to adults, since only a demented person would agree that such material is readily available to minors (who are not equipped emotionally and intellectually to deal with this type of material. For bunnies sakes, they are struggling to find who they are, in such state they are completely unqualified and unprepared to deal with horrific violence, even in the form of a game).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Play whatever the heck you want.
Questioning the reasons behind gamers demanding, enjoying and consuming such tripe is a legitimate question that is not asked often enough.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Where are all the games from the era trivializing such behavior?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
What you are saying is completely out of context.
All the histories in the bible are said with a clear moral aim. SOme are scare tactics, some others are edifying moral tales, some others are anecdotes, but the moral of the history, so to speak, is always there.
In the ohter hand games are aimless violence whose only aim is to pander to basic savage instincts, which are normally very close of the worst part of our humanity.
Even an atheist like me can understand the difference.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Physically and emotionally, there is little (if any) difference between a 17 and 18 year old. Legally, the difference can be between night and day.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
The MPAA never gave MIDNIGHT COWBOY an "X".
As recounted in Stephen Farber's book THE MOVIE RATINGS GAME, an account of the film critic's stint with the ratings board as an intern, MIDNIGHT COWBOY was going to be given an R rating by the MPAA, but United Artists self-applied an X at the behest of their CEO, who was working with advice given to him by psychiatrist Aaron Stern*. The "X" was the only rating that was not copyrighted by the MPAA and could be self-applied**, and that ended with the copyrighted NC-17 rating and Universal Pictures' HENRY AND JUNE.
*Stern later became a full-fledged ratings board consultant with some really wacky ideas... no "significant challenges to social mores" in unrestricted films and other such creepy shit.
**The MPAA did not want to own a copyright on the "X" rating so as to avoid the appearance of endorsing blatantly pornographic films that would inevitably be given that rating.
Oppressing an entire population is never cheap.
--Jeckler (/. Beta IS GARBAGE!)
Sorry, not everything that invalidates your point is a strawman. I was questioning whether or not such age based laws (or ratings) make sense at all. Obviously you agree there isn't much difference physically or emotionally between a 17 and 18 year old. It follows that the law doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
You agree that there is not much diffence, yet feel that an MA rating is still targeting kids. So when then is someone not considered a child? Legally its 18, but we already established that the law is pretty arbitrary... much like the rating system for movies for video games.
So...books are the least evil, movies the middle evil, and videogames just one step away from cold blooded murder. That's quite the progression. Call me crazy but I've found books to be more disturbing and graphic many of the films I've seen. The imagination is a powerful thing.
Lest we forget that back in the day we didn't have violent cinema for our entertainment, we as a species watched other humans murder and maim one another in the Colisseum where even the spectators would sometimes get the chance to vote for the defeated gladiator to be executed. Seriously, the worst society has to offer right now is Hostel and Manhunt 2? I think we're doing fine.