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By the way, the "technical" definition of an R is, no one under 17 admitted without parental accompaniment. On the other hand, NC-17 means no one 17 or under admitted whatsoever.

As the link to that Berardinelli article shows, many people would probably wish that R ratings would disallow young children, too, whether or not they'd have parental accompaniment.

The "technical" difference between an M and an AO is that M is 17 and up, while AO is 18 and up. Isn't the huge controversy caused by that one year age difference rather silly?

On the other hand, the need to not only have E and T, but also E10+ is also silly.

I'm of mixed mind about this whole rating system.

For the most part, I think it's stupid and overprotective. Like Halo being an "M". If that game were a movie, there'd be nothing in it to keep it from getting a PG!! Maybe -- MAYBE -- a PG13.

But remember that Raiders of the Lost Ark once got a PG and had a face melt, which is far more graphic than anything in Halo.

Or what about Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas getting an AO for Hot Coffee? Supposedly, the characters were fully clothed! That wouldn't even get an R for a movie.

I can barely think of any videogame that would even get an R. I guess one example would be God of War, because it actually does have explicitly topless (though computer-generated) women.

Aside from all that, I also think ratings really should be more minor suggestions than actual hard and fast rules. Part of growing up is, to be frank, getting experiences you aren't "supposed to". Which includes seeing R movies (and now, playing M games) when you're young. I've said before that I saw Conan the Barbarian in theaters when I was about 5 (I think I was a polite and quiet audience member, too), and Terminator on VHS. And A Nightmare on Elm Street can be scary for a child, but not so much for an adult. But getting a little scared can be fun for a kid.


The reason why I have a mixed mind about this stuff, though, is that, frankly, any "mature" content in videogames, as far as I can see, is juvenile. I just recently, for example, saw Once Upon a Time in America, which was rated R, and there's plenty of violence and explicit content. But, whether or not it works, that explicit content was at least INTENDED for an artistic purpose. Another example would be A Clockwork Orange, which was actually rated X on its first release (though it'd be an R now). And, yeah, that's a movie that I don't think an 8 year old should see. Unlike Conan, it's not just an adventure movie that happens to be livened up with some gore, it's actually disturbing and demands a mature, thoughtful response. But is there actually anything artistic like that for games? I'm gonna say no. At a person level, the games I like are the ones that stand on the strength of their gameplay, not any shocking content.

Well, okay, that can be an example of something that might "deserve" an R rating for content, which addresses my first point. But for my second point, I still don't think that scene has artistic maturity. That first scene, while potentially "disturbing" in terms of content, is actually kind of ... um ... funny. The way it is acted just seems silly.

And, in general, not just for "disturbing" things, I find that when art tries too hard for an effect, instead of emotionally feeling that effect, I just picture the writer thinking, "Okay, how can I get this effect?"

And that was in long shot.

I thought I heard there was some technical rule, like one use of "fuck" gets you a PG13, while two is an automatic R.

The older system for movies was probably more appropriate. I mean, if a movie has one or two profanities, and a kid in the audience doesn't know what they mean anyway, then they're just gonna be another vocabulary word they don't know the definition of. And so it just goes over their heads.

When I recently rewatched Back to the Future, I was surprised that Doc said, "When this sucker hits 88 miles per hour, we're gonna see some serious shit." And I saw that movie when I was a kid. But I probably didn't even know what "shit" was back then.

Nowadays, you can see seven year olds yelling "You got my fucking burger wrong!" at McDonalds, so I'm not sure what we're "protecting" them from anyway.

I'm just apathetic about the whole thing. I'm not shocked by Rockstar, I'm not interested in playing a videogame just because it's "shocking", I'm not interested in debating this issue in terms of free speech, I don't care what effect this controversy has on Rockstar's business. It's just boring to me.