Mornelithe said:
ph0b0s123 said:
Who said I wanted the MPAA to be in control of rating videogames. Not my point at all. My point is that if you are going to restrict video game purchase by Law, you should do exactly the same for movies. And the point that probably confused, is that the ratings should be consistent across both movies and video games. At the moment the proposal is that games with any violence to humans must be +18. Imagine if that same rule was made against movies.
So that was my point, the unfairness of targeting video games with quite draconian restrictions while leaving movies alone. That is why I have no respect for this law or it's proponents.
But wait a minute, a law that only affects video games so minors cannot buy as many any more, but can still go and watch violent movies. Wait a minute is that the movies industry striking first through their puppet (Schwarzenegger), because they are scared that games like Call of Duty and Halo are a threat to Minor's dollar coming to them?
You misunderstood, I was merely providing an example of a body that already does what you're talking about, but for a different medium of entertainment. We have no reason to believe it wouldn't be twisted to suit their own purposes, just as the MPAA has.
The ultimate result is 18+ games wouldn't be carried in stores, just like NC-17 movies aren't carried in stores. As I said, I could agree with this, if it didn't lead to a private organization, not accountable to anyone, being in charge of said ratings. Even moreso, if they kept people who can benefit from their role in such an organization.
What you may not realize is violence is quite ok in America, it's sexuality and the human body that they are afraid of. You can portray violence on any level, but show a little flesh, no matter what the circumstances (I say this because there can be some very powerful scenes that involve partial nudty), it can so easily be lumped into the NC-17 category (and they've done it before).
In order for this to serve the people, the people have to be in charge of how its run, and that just doesn't happen with movies ratings...so I just don't believe games would be any different.
I don't like the goverment being involve in regulating the media at all, and that is the problem with having elected officials deciding these things. No system is perfect, but I feel that having the industry police itself is generally the lesser of two evils.
I think the big problem with ratings in general is that politicians still have too much influance on these kinds of regulatory boards, especially seeing as they seem to have been created as a sort of stopgap measure to prevent the goverment from coming in/people from giving the goverment control.
If anything I do tend to think that ratings boards tend to be less than consistant since they tend to "rate high" when a lot of attention is being paid to them, which is increasingly the case.
Truthfully breast nudity is okay at a PG-13 level, and the only thing that can get something an "X" rating is actually showing sexual penetration. There is no "X" rating for violence, or even sexual content as long as it doesn't show that
The problem of course being that you see a lot of things being rated high because it's better to do that, than risk someone making a complaint that the ratings are not strict enough when it might be taken seriously on a political front. Avoiding the complaints and "turtling" until less attention is being paid is a lot cheaper than the industry going to war... which has happened with the movie industry. Spending hundreds of millions fighting watchdog groups, PACs, and politicians is hundreds of millions these guys could be spending on making movies or pleasuring themselves in whatever way they fancy.
Video games are more vulnerable because they aren't quite the sleeping lion that the MPAA is where even the people after it realize the fight they could be in if they poke it too hard (so they push, but not TOO hard to try and get compromises). None of the big video game companies have really gone head to head with the goverment and spent the money to be taken seriously. Sure, they send representitives and such, but you didn't for example see Bethesda spending millions to launch informational campaigns against Australia over the demands to censor "Fallout 3" for example. Nor have you seen the ESRB domestically fronting any kind of extremely vocal counter-groups to the anti-video game movements.
The ESRB/Video Games ratings systems, tends to rate higher than Hollywood does and more frequently, and for similar reasons. It isn't that the standards are all that differant between movies and video games, it's simply that game producers and the ESRB in general are more likely to simply agree to an "M" rating than go through the song and dance for a "T" rating when something is only worthy of that rating.
Bad ratings are why I think a lot of otherwise well informed parents will buy "M" rated games for their kids. A lot of those "M" rated games are actually on the "T" rating so by reviewing enough games a lot of parents are actually going to come to the conclusion that they don't have to be all *that* careful. Then when you run into a kid with an "M" rated game that is actually an "M" rated game people start screaming. Sometimes even saying games should be "AO" or whatever because of what they believe the "M" rating was supposed to have been standing for.
To some extent pressure to "do their job" and capitulation, has actually lead video game raters to NOT do their job and cause a lot of the problems as I see things.
Some time consider that Breast Nudity, making out, sexual innuendos beyond that, killing, etc... are all perfectly okay at a "T" level. Check out some teen horror movies sometime, and consider jokes make in movies like "Scream" back in the day revolving around it. An "R" or "M" rating requires things like simulated sex (two people playing naked twister under a bedsheet or whatever), and unusually gruesome displays of violence where instead of some guy being shot and falling over, some sadist might say disembowel someone while they are still alive, and rip their intestines out in front of them or whatever.
Now, to put things into perspective, we've all seen games that would fit the "M"/"R" rating, but now think about how many titles you've seen that included nothing that should have warrented that rating. That right there is part of the problem.
I'm rambling, but the bottom line is that I don't want the goverment involved in media regulation any more than it already is. Honestly, I believe in voluntary ratings as a courtasy so people can police themselves. I do not think there should ever be any "teeth" behind it in a legal sense as doing so would ruin freedom of speech. It's not like people are pointing guns at each other, forcing the consumption of media. As others have said it's up to parents to parent. What's more kids are going to get their hands on illicit material (adult magazines, cigarettes, video games too old for them, etc...) no matter what we do. Nobody can expect perfect 100% enforcement, in general we do a good job of keeping it down as it is, and strike a good balance of freedom and protection. When incidents "beyond the pale" occur it's usually more a problem with the people involved than the rules in place.
