Slashdot Mirror
ESRB Ratings Across the Consoles Charted
Gamasutra has up an analysis by Matt Matthews looking at the distribution of ESRB ratings across several generations of consoles. He makes particular note of Nintendo's efforts with the GameCube and Wii: "On the GameCube over 51% of the games were rated E and 6.1% were rated E10+. This makes the GameCube appear to be more friendly for younger gamers ... From the beginning Nintendo has wanted to attract non-traditional gamers with its Wii hardware and software. Perhaps as a result of the manufacturer's strategy, many Wii games have been designed to appeal to -- and therefore are rated for -- a general audience. Over 82% of the Wii catalog is either rated E or E10+. Only 3.2% are rated M, less than half the rate on Nintendo's previous console, GameCube. Still, that 3.2% is significantly higher than the rates on either the Nintendo DS or the Game Boy Advance." Matthews makes a few offhand comments about the analysis on the Curmudgeon Gamer site, as well.
You know what? Baloney.
Society gets to decide what is outrageous. We don't have to follow black and white rules and be logically consistent.
Society is outraged by shotgunning of people. Society is not outraged by two people agreeing to box each other for sport. A few extreme pacifists do say that this is akin to other violence sine you are physically harming another person, and they're right. It's violence, but society isn't outraged by it.
That's why boxing can be an innocent game for kids, because society isn't worried that kids will grown up thinking it's ok to box people who agree to participate for sport. They do frown on kids growing up thinking shooting other peopleis ok, and thus restrict very violent games to parents, so parents can be involved enough to tell kids.. hey, that's a game and this stuff isn't ok in real life.
Frankly, the system seems to work. I think society reinforces the message that boxing is ok and murder isn't. Some parents buy GTA for their kids and don't involved themselves enough to tell the kids that its topics are things that are not OK in real life... and sometimes these kids are sufficiently insulated from society that they don't get that same message... but kids with such awful childhoods aer probably going to be bad guys anyway.
I don't think it's fair to conflate all violence by simplistic definitions. They have to be cultural and based on societal outrage, because that's not informative of the true nature of the activity than rote logic application.