I'm aware this is what you meant, but here's a question. Do you honestly think that the kids who go on a shooting spree because they played Doom were mentally balanced to begin with? Charles Manson heard apocalyptic messages in Beatles music. The Son of Sam got his messages from a dog. Insane people are insane people. Violent crimes weren't invented with video games any more than sexual content on the internet suddenly created sexual feelings in teenagers, when previous generations never got horny until 35.TGK wrote:Ah, about the first statement, I think in terms of the benefit of the rest 99.9% of the society who are sane. For their safety specifically. I don't give a damn if they sentence the kids who shoot teachers and other kids in highschool to death. But I do give a damn for those innocents who got killed and injured.
Additionally, this comes down to a philosophical argument as well. Would the world be better off perfectly safe, with no art or personal expression? If the only personal expression allowed is "safe" expression, who gets to make that judgement? And like I just said, would it really curb anything anyway?
But that's not going to be changed until adult content becomes accepted and acknowledged by the general populace, which will never happen if the industry is contantly censoring itself and apologizing when it doesn't.About the second, I would revise it, since you made a good point and my statement was really too broad a stroke. The main difference between games and movies or books is that the society's norm still consider it "kid's entertainment". So the target market of GTA, whether deliberately or accidentally, contained "kids" as well.
I have no doubt many of the people who play GTA are kids. But as I said, I don't think that's the fault of Rockstar, the ESRB, or the store. They all did their part to warn parents, who were too apathetic to listen.I admit that I didn't make a good debate point, since there is no analytical proof for this statement, just personal observations from people who worked the counter about the people who bought GTA.
Why should it get an AO rating? It's rated M, which means 17+. Most stores don't sell M-rated games to kids, just like they don't sell R-rated movies to them. The game doesn't have graphic violence (there's violence, but no more graphic than a standard action movie) or nudity, and the language is about par for an R-rated movie. Why does it deserve the same rating as Anal Cum Sluts 24? Ratings aren't a value judgement, they're a content judgement, and GTA is M all the way.But to sum up my point, it comes down to good parenting and a more strict & clear rating system then. My qualm with GTA is not that it exists, but that it did not get an AO ratings to show clearly that it is aimed for adults.
And once again, look at the rating. It says Mature. It says 17+. It says exactly what content the game contains. If you're in a game store, there's a poster that explains this. If you're buying it for a kid, the VAST majority of the time the clerk will explain the rating again, and explain why he's not allowed to sell the game to the kid directly.
What more do people want done? How could this be made any more clear? At some point, if you're a parent who gives a shit, you've got to say "okay, I'm going to take the twenty seconds it takes to learn the ESRB ratings that are plastered all over the place, and if my kid wants an M rated game, I'm going to put my foot down." And if you're a parent who doesn't give a shit, no amount of clarification will matter anyway. And some parents just don't give a shit. But that doesn't mean you can raise their children for them.
What I wouldn't give to see a little kid's reaction to 120 Days of Sodom.Acid King wrote:Interesting that you mention books because books do not have a ratings system. Any little kid can walk into Borders and pick up a copy of Naked Lunch or Crash and be exposed things far more lurid and depraved than antyhing in any video game and in all likelihood, not have the clerk bat an eye.
This is why you'll often see parents buying the games for their kids... because the stores refuse to sell the games to the kids directly.
