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Halo In Church Points Out ESRB Flaws
The recent controversy over church groups making use of Halo 3 to attract young men to their services continues to be a subject of debate outside of the fan press. GamePolitics notes that the debate is indicative of flaws in the ESRB's system, and in mainstream culture's understanding of those ratings. "When you look at it like that, it's hard to blame those who criticize bringing Halo into sacred space. For the most part the critics are not gamers and have no concept of the vast difference between Halo and GTA. All they know is that the games share a common M rating, a designation assigned by the game industry itself, theoretically for the protection of impressionable youth. For the uninitiated it's only logical to assume the content must be of a similar character as well. As someone who has played both, I'd argue that there is a world of difference between Halo and GTA."
While I would agree that Halo and GTA are worlds apart, and hope that this controversy catalyzes much-needed revamping of the ESRB's functionality, I still find it out of place that churches are using Halo to bring young men to services. "Thou shalt not kill" does not mesh well with "Thou shalt kill aliens in copious numbers". Also, it just strikes me of bribery - they should be there because they're interested in the religion, not because they wanna get a mad sic deathmatch in after church lets out. But maybe that's just me.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Nah, it only gets a T rating.
"Oh boy! Are we going to try something dangerous?"
That's always struck me a bit odd... Halo's a fairly clean game. There's very minimal swearing (I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I'm pretty sure there's a at least one "shit" uttered at dispariaging moments...), and the violence is really on the cartoony side... It's not realistic at all, there's very little blood, absolutely no gore, and when people die they just fall over, as opposed to being ripped apart or dismembered.
Heck, most of the things you're killing are aliens or, online, Spartans who are encased in full-body armor with no skin visible.
Personally, I would have rated Halo 3 as a T, not an M. And personally I think it's even on the tamer side of T.
The ESRB rating system should be used by parents to review the content of games for what they believe to be acceptable for their children. And yes, different games may get the same rating for completely different reasons. IIRC, SWAT 3 got an M rating as well. However, anyone could look at the 2 or 3 lines of text underneath the rating to find out exactly why the game was rated what it was. Using the example of Halo 3 in a church outreach or fellowship activity to say that the ESRB rating is flawed is exactly wrong.
The ESRB rating tells you what is there. Some parents and church leaders will decide to not allow M rated games. Others will look at the descriptors and prohibit certain games based on that. But this shows that the system, properly understood as a tool that informs parents and responsible adults, is not flawed. What is flawed is the idea that some regulatory body, whether mandated by government or not, is responsible for what children and teenagers see and experience in video games today. That responsibility should always rest on the parents.
Meh, a real sig would take too long, and I have an MMORPG to play with....
New ratings:
...etc.
S-ex (S1 no naughties/S2 rear naughties/S3 front naughties/S4 You betcha, it's porn)
D-rugs (D1 OTC(tobacco?)/D2 Prescrip/D3 "intro drugs" MJ/D4 Anyone order a meth-lab? Cocaine?)
G-un Violence (G1 War, History, no blood/G2 Blood, no impact shots/G3 body parts/G4 chunks)
C-omedy (C1 Mickey Mouse/C2 someone actually funny/C3 mild language/C4 Bob Saget)
I know. It looks a bit complicated. But think of the store shelves. Start high rated at the top and work down to the kid stuff.
Of course the ratings panel would be "S2-D4-G2-C2-..." but they could get stylish with it.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.