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AO Rating Basically Bans Manhunt 2 From Release
Yesterday we discussed Manhunt 2's AO rating, and what it meant for the game's retail outlook. Gamespot points out that effectively an AO rating means that the game will never be released in the first place. "Both [Nintendo and Sony] forbid licensed third-party publishers from releasing games rated AO for Adults Only on their various hardware platforms. Though Manhunt 2 isn't slated for any of Microsoft's systems, the company has also confirmed that it does not allow AO-rated titles on the Xbox or Xbox 360. The sole exception to this rule was in 2005 when the already released Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was retroactively rated AO, at which point retailers pulled it from shelves and Take-Two suspended production of the game."
With PC games, since you don't need Microsoft's, Apple's, NVidia's, ATI/AMD's, or Intel's blessing (dev kits and graphics hardware) to release games, ratings can actually be relevant (or irrelevant) since there are far more methods of distribution for the games (e.g., Steam, selling it online in general whether it be a downloadable or from a site like Amazon). With PC games, you don't need to self-censor yourself in order to publish the game (e.g., JFK Reloaded, all H-Anime games). Hell, you don't even need to get it rated by the ESRB! Just look at all the mods for games (e.g., Half-Life/2, Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein, Unreal Tournament, The Sims) and games themselves (mainly indie games) that people play or buy that aren't rated.
As an argument against the ESRB's practises, however, look at other art and entertainment. Books aren't rated, yet they can be as grotesque (if not more) than Manhunt. Movies more grotesque and violent than Manhunt get away with an R rating (MPAA != ESRB, though). Not only that, but movies can be released as "unrated and uncut" (i.e., all extras haven't been MPAA-rated), yet the stores will still sell them. Hell, the news can be more grotesque on a regular basis than Manhunt, yet that doesn't get rated as TV-MA or anything like that!
If anyone has examples of other arts that have been effectively self-censored due to its rating system (e.g., a movie that was originally rated as NC-17 that had to tone it down to get R for a theatre release), please provide them. This is quite a hypocritical situation going on in the videogame world, but perhaps it used to be like this in another art and I'm just too young to have experienced that.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
Rockstar can chalk up the loss of a Wii sale.
The real problem here is will this set a standard for the future of ratings on the Wii. If a game like Manhunt can't appear on the Wii because of the way that you swing the controller to kill your pray is AO, then why wasn't Zelda? Because you're not killing humans? Okay, fine. Why not Medal of Honor? Red Steel? Personally I have no interest in playing any of the Manhunt series of games, but I believe the ESRB knows what they're doing.... I just hope this isn't the new precedence for rating Wii games. I don't want to play Manhunt, but I would love a Tenchu game or similar.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
You say that now, and it's simple enough it seems. However, what if in the future, AO ratings start getting handed out more and more easily, due to people being paranoid over "the influence on children?" I mean, AO *does* stand for Adult-only, right? So maybe things might get to a point where any game that seems inappropriate for children will start getting AO ratings. For example, I could easily see God of War 2 having earned an AO rating, under a little more harsh of a comity. Now, so far, that right hasnt been abused. But people like Jack Thompson are pushing awfully hard to see that it IS abused. For example, the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas being retroactively tagged "AO".
And I say your movie-theatre comparison is flawed. It's more like if someone made said snuff film, and then were told they werent allowed to put it on VHS, DVD, HD-DVD, or Blu-ray, because they all had proprietary licensing schemes to them. Once you've eliminated someone from using any accepted form of distribution for a product... it's simply a lockdown. Censorship always start out small. It's the future implications of it that I think people are so concerned over. Maybe it's time to put some limits on the outdated notion that once someone makes a console, they have control rights over all the media that comes out for that console (maybe not, Im not saying Im on that side, just playing devil's advocate). Also, this is exactly why people here are/were so against blu-ray for so long, because of the proprietary licensing control Sony has over blu-ray. If proprietarily licensed mediums become all of the prominent ones, then we could very realistically reach a case where movies were declared "Too inappropriate", and werent allowed to be distributed at all.
An inch at a time, my friend. An inch at a time.
"You apparently don't remember the time back in the early '90s when Nintendo wouldn't allow the release of Mortal Kombat on the SNES. And then it was finally released without blood or the gruesome fatalities. Back then, no one played Mortal Kombat for the fighting aspect: we wanted to see Sub-Zero rip someone's head off with the spine still attached!"
Interesting that you bring that up. MK caused such an uproar that Nintendo reversed that policy for MKII. The SNES ended up with the best version of it.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Believe it or not, this is a huge improvement over the way things were back in the day of the NES. It used to be far worse. Nintendo wouldn't even publish NES games containing the word "Kill".
More here:
http://www.crockford.com/wrrrld/maniac.html
The DMCA has nothing to do with why there were plenty of unlicensed games on the NES but only one on the SNES. This is the answer that the GP is looking for. Lock-out chips basically have gotten a lot better since the 10NES; now-a-days the big reason why no one will commercially release an unlicensed game for an active console is because the methods required to get around the DRM (usually involving a modchip) aren't practical for most consumers. Obviously the DMCA makes circumventing a lock-out illegal to begin with, but that's not even necessary to keep unlicensed games off of the shelves anymore.
Rob
They are catering to the demographic with the money to buy the console- from what I've seen, far more adults buy game systems for their children than buy the system to play themselves.
I'm 28, and I own a PS2, Wii and a 360. I have no children. It's just myself and the fiancee. We have a lot more expendable income on average than our friends with children, and we buy a lot more games because of it. Out of all the people I know buying games, most are buying for themselves and not children (including our friends with little ones.) Most of the kids old enough to play games just have some form of GameBoy, while the consoles are for the adults.
On a side note, the new Paper Mario for the Wii is great. It's not quite as hard as I'd like platform wise, but it's still been grabbing most of my game attention lately. A lot of the humor in the game children wouldn't get, and for a Mario game the story is pretty grim and complex.
rm -rf
Sure it is, and I'm glad. If you haven't noticed, Nintendo has been very candid about how they feel videogames should play a role in our lives. Miyamoto, whose philosophical ideals make him about the equivalent, for video games, as Frank Zappa was for music, is basically at the heart of their message. They don't send him out to talk about his philosophy for nothing.
I have to dissagree. Maybe Sony and Microsoft have little ethical mission, but you can bet your ass Nintendo does. I happen to agree with them 100%, so I'm just going to cheer them on (I'm glad to see a company really have an overall "vision" the way they do), but I can understand that others might be pissed.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.