Poll: The Escapist Votes: Classifictions

[Alpha Pat]

Why do games have a hard time with classification's in gaming i have seen alot worse in movies and in life. why do games have it hard, sure you are in cotrol but movies look alot more realistic than games.

In Australia we have had Left 4 dead 2 striped of all it gore. For what so a kid can't be exposed to it. Shouldn't the parents take control of what thier kid watch's/ plays/ listen's to. developers should't worry about children when they work hard to see there work in front of them and enjoyed by other's.

Sure games are just for fun but so are movies and art. So why do gamers who are of age suffer for the sake of others.

How come goverments get away with this to games. if they ripped the mona lisa in half there would be an uproar. games are for people to enjoy.

 

[Jaranja]

I want to rip the Mona Lisa in half now! Fun fun fun.

 

[Nils]

I think that we should think of the children. And ways we can destroy them.

 

[Alpha Pat]

I think that we should think of the children. And ways we can destroy them.

i like this guy

 

[Insanum]

The thing is, placing the responsibility.

Parents HATE to accept it, Especially when their 7 year old little shit is playing GTA, they scream "OH MY GOD, WHAT IS THIS FILTH! BLAME THE DEVELOPERS![/I]". Well....Its an 18 for a reason, y'now. Would you expose little Timmy to say, SAW1-5? or The Exorcist? No, Because they are highly aged movies, But games, WEll, When parents think of games, they think of mario, not GTA.

I think that we should think of the children. And ways we can destroy them.

Although i like this mans thinking.

 

[Illusio]

I feel that games are a form of art in their own way, and they should not be doctored in any way, shape, or form. In the end it's on the parents' shoulders to decide what their children are exposed to and if they are exposed to it that they know how to deal with it.

 

[Ciarang]

despite the fact that the average age of gamers in the UK and US is 34.

Wow, really? That makes me feel even younger...

OT: I've been playing 18 rated games since I was 12 and I turned out ok.

 

[brunothepig]

One of the worst things about Australia is when it goes unedited, stays without a rating, and it won't even be released!!
Anyway, back on topic, don't mess with the games. EVER!

 

[Radelaide]

I don't think that games should be edited, but they should be vigorously classified. Games with high violence shouldn't be shown to a 15 year old. I'm for a better, stricter rating system, not for censorship of games.

 

[MazzaTheFirst]

I think that we should think of the children. And ways we can destroy them.

Then boil 'em, mash 'em, stick 'em in a stew.

You just won... FOREVER!
OT: We shouldn't edit games at all from what the developers intend. It always makes me think of: Everyone is allowed to express their own thoughts and ideas freely... Except when we don't agree with them.

 

[Sethzard]

Games shouldn't be shaped, they should be as he developer wishes them.

 

[Low Key]

I think video games get a bad rap because they are exactly that: games. Since games are seen as for children, maybe if we called them something more sophisticated, people would start to realize more than children play them.

Obviously renaming an entire entertainment genre won't happen, but I believe music and especially movies have similar classifications for a reason. An album has some cuss words on it, and there is a nice sticker on the bottom warning of explicit conted. A movie has one or more lines with the word "fuck" and it gets an R rating. But even so, movies still get away with a lot too. Harry Potter tons of fantasy violence and it still gets a PG rating. Before the PG-13 rating came around in 1984, movies like Jaws were rated PG and never got reclassified. An 8 year old could rent and watch it today, at least in America.

 

[Inco]

I find it funny how Left 4 dead 2 has been butchered for 'the children' yet it is still being sold as a MA15+ game. Sharing the same space as the likes of Gears, God of War, Dead Rising and so forth. All of which has the same amount of gore as the uncensored version.

Really? They picked on that one game for god knows what reasons.

 

[bigolbear]

no need for editing - just classification and control.

One of the biggest problems is that many kids can buy games that are rated 18. they would have a harder time buying movies with the same rating.

In addition to this many parents simply dont realise that games their kids are playing are intended for adults or that they will be mixing with people of all ages - not just other kids.

personaly as an older gamer i would like to see some adult only servers on mmo's. Im sick to the back teeth of having to watch my language and behaviour and frankly some times i feel like some ones unpaid babysitter. Dont get me wrong many under 18's are fine to 'group with' in these games, but some arent and as a responsible person I dont want to be a bad influence on kids - and by the nature of most mmo's it is imposible to tell someones age (only their lvl of maturity).

Back when i used to play everquest2 our guild had a 13 year old guild officer, I dont have any personal issues with the kid other than the fact that they acted their age..

On the flip side to that argument I also had a freind (and guildy)there who was around the same age - and for over a year i simply assumed i was talking to an adult based on how they acted and spoke. I only found out different cos the guy's mom also played and bothered to make an effort to meet me as she was checking out the online freinds her son had made. After that I always made a point of watching what i said around him.

Its not that im a foul mouthed sod or a perv or anything like that, but i am a heavy roleplayer and it annoys me that i have to curb what my character might realisticaly say in a given situation based on the fact that there could be a child on the other end of a computer watching what i say and do, more over being influenced by those actions.

Let me give you some form of example - Im a smoker ok.. and I would not smoke infront of a kid given the choice. I would try to avoid swearing. I most certainly would not suggest doing horible things to some one with a blunt instrument a box of matches and a pair of pliers in explicit detail. I would not discuss the effects of drugs (unless asked). I would not discuss my personal hangups, neurosees and fantasies. Any of these things are intirely viable points of discussion between two roleplayed characters in an mmo.

Oh yeh.. and kids these days got no respect... rant rant rant..

 

[Zombie_Fish]

if they ripped the mona lisa in half there would be an uproar. games are for people to enjoy.

Bad analogy. The Mona Lisa isn't as gory as Left 4 Dead 2 if gory at all, so they would have no reasoning to change anything in it. A better one would've been saying if they ripped apart Damien Hirst's Adam and Eve Under the Table there would be uproar.

Spoiler: You can see why in this spoiler

And yes, those are real skeletons.

On topic, having an age rating included and an age rating followed on games should make editing violent stuff out of games redundant, as only people who are old enough to buy the games would then be buying them. However, the problem here is that people don't do that; even users on this thread have openly admitted to playing 18 games since they were twelve, even I have been playing them since I was about 13. This means that the companies have to try and get around this with other means to keep the censorship companies and the government happy, regardless of whether or not the violence actually affects the people playing the games.

Please note that I do not approve of this editing of games, I can just understand where the developers are coming from here.

Also, you may want to take note that the same thing has happened to movies a loooong time before it happened to games. Look up The Magnificent Ambersons [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magnificent_Ambersons_(film)] for an idea of it. The company decided that after the depressing ending of Orson Welles' previous film Citizen Kane, which flopped in the cinemas (both of these films were made and released during the Great Depression) that they wouldn't tolerate another depressing ending from a film by him. Because of this, they changed the whole of the last ten minutes and destroyed the original ending to the film.

 

[Captain Pancake]

First off, grammar is your friend.

Secondly, although I disagree with making extreme changes to a game to the point of ruining gameplay (as I've heard is the case with the German and Australian releases of L4D2), they do have a genuine grievance over this point, some kids are impressionable, and would turn out worse for wear after playing a game like this. Not all kids, but some, like the council-housed, uneducated children of the day.