is the esrb doing a good job

Re: is the esrb doing a good job

I've never heard of that song, but it's pretty much based on the words used in it. The ESRB is more lenient with songs than with actual language being spoken by the characters or whatever, though.

I don't think I've run into a rating yet which I thought wasn't strict enough.

Re: is the esrb doing a good job

an actually in midnight club 3 dub edition remix, it says the n word about 5-10 times through songs, me and my buddy first found them in 1 of the songs, dont remember though

Re: is the esrb doing a good job

Your claim would make more sense to me if you had more than one game as a fault of the ESRB.

Re: is the esrb doing a good job

The way society is going currently, games like GTA are gonna be rated "E" before we know it.

Re: is the esrb doing a good job

I was eight when I first heard every cuss word in English, spoken by my classmates. By the end of that school year, not a single one of them fazed me anymore. Using language to rate something anything higher than E6+ is completely and totally laughable, in my opinion. There's the rare case in which horribly grotesque language is used, however, and I can see that resulting in a higher rating.

But if you're 10 and you haven't grown accustomed to most standard profanity, then I'd say you're running a bit late.

Personally, I believe the ESRB is too strict with their ratings. Halo and Halo 2 getting rated M? My brothers and I have been playing since age 13 and never had a problem with it. Nothing in those games came anywhere close to offending me, shocking me, etc. In fact, in another thread I posted a suggested revision to the rating system, in which ratings are divided into 3-year age groups: Early Childhood, 6+, 9+, 12+, 15+, 18+. This makes a lot more sense to me than the big gap between T and M, since a massive amount of growth (both physically and mentally) occurs between 13 and 17.

Or even better, have the ESRB determine the minimum age for the game and just use that as the rating. All numbers from 0 to 21. The more ratings there are, the less the ESRB has to overestimate to be safe. As I said before, Halo/2 were rated M when they shouldn't have been. However, some 13-year olds may find the game disturbing, so the ESRB had to choose the lowest rating where they felt almost all people of that age group could handle the game. If they use a system where they can select any age instead of a select set of ratings, they have more options.

Re: is the esrb doing a good job

Halo deserves an M rating. Simple. Using guns to kill things (other than for sport in games like Deer Hunter) = M rating. Even if your subjective experience says you're OK to play it at 13, the objective view is that it's not OK for most 16- children.

I applaud the ESRB for putting up with all the idiocy in this country and still maintaining a level of professionalism in their ratings.

Re: is the esrb doing a good job

Our good friend Jack Thompson threatened to sue Microsoft if stores (which have nothing to do with Microsoft for those of you following along at home) violated the ESRB rating on Halo 3 and sold it to underaged customers.

I think the only way for the ESRB to be particularly effective is through education of parents. Stores have been (so far as I've seen) doing a pretty good job enforcing the age limits on M and AO games when underagers come in to buy them, but it is too easy to just get mom and dad to stop at the mall on the way home from work to buy the game, and generally they either don't know about the ESRB, or don't know how the ratings work.

Re: is the esrb doing a good job

Most WWII games are rated T, and the whole point of those is to kill other humans using guns. At least in Halo there's a "fantasy" sense to it: you're taking down an opponent's shields with laser beams.

By what you're saying, all FPS games should be rated M.

While we're at it, let's get the flight simulators. You're using guns to kill pilots in airplanes after all; we'll give them an M rating too. Oh, and don't forget platformers. Ratchet and Clank and the Jak series? You use guns to kill things so let's slap you with an M rating, too.

Wait, we can even get Sonic. Shadow the Hedgehog revolved around shooting things, so you get an M rating too! And don't forget Final Fantasy, the gunner class is meant to kill things with guns after all!

Honestly, just because a game involves killing things with guns doesn't mean only those 17 and up can handle it. It's ludicrous to think so.

A number-based system would help resolve that. Instead of parents seeing a random letter on video game boxes, instead they have a number followed by a plus sign. Should be pretty obvious that's the age group the game is meant for.

Re: is the esrb doing a good job

They learned G, PG, PG-13 and R (G, PG, AA, R in canada, different elsewhere I know)

The problem isn't an inability to learn how the system works. The problem is an inability to get it into their heads that "Video Games" != "For Kids"

Why do you think so many parents have a dim view of anime? Cartoons are for children. So when they see their kids watching "cartoons" and they are full of violence and sex, it is somehow the fault of the creators of anime because, after all, cartoons are for kids, so this is entirely inappropriate.

Parents need to understand more fully that video games, and animated television scale to the age of the viewer in exactly the same way movies do.

They understand that some movies are for kids, some are for teens and some are for adults, but have this great blindspot when it comes to forms of media that they weren't exposed to themselves at that age.

Re: is the esrb doing a good job

Cartoon violence != realistic violence with blood and gore.

Historical games without massive blood and gore deserve a "T" rating because they're intended to be a historical representation of actual events in human history.

Flight Simulators aren't just about killing things. Halo is ONLY about killing things. Also, destroying a piece of machinery != killing a living being.

Re: is the esrb doing a good job

So it's not the killing, it's the blood and gore that you're talking about.

If you think Halo has "massive" blood and gore...well, I just plain disagree. Also, it's alright to kill in human history but not alright to kill in a fictional setting?

Flight simulators aren't just about killing things, yes. They're about destroying. Take Ace Combat, where you have a large number of missions where you have to destroy factories, oil rigs, ships, tanks, headquarter buildings, and countless other things containing humans. Either way, you're still killing them.

And Halo isn't any different from a WWII game in its goals. It's still generally get from Point A to Point B, kill anything you have to, perform a task at Point B, and get out.

I don't understand why you think Halo, a futuristic war game, and something like Battlefield 1942, an historical war game, deserve different ratings.

Re: is the esrb doing a good job

No, it's the killing.

First of all, Sonic, Ratchet and Clank, etc. The monsters are robots. Robots aren't people. And in other games like Mario or whatever, you don't really kill monsters. You jump on their heads. They faint. That's not killing. That's removing the threat.

Here's the thing about human history. It's real. It happened. Students learn about World War II's violent side in high school. High schoolers are teenagers. Therefore, they're obviously seen as mature enough to play a recreation of what they're learning.

Kids aren't playing these games going YEAH YEAH DIE YOU STUPID GERMANS ROFL NOOB. The games are very serious and it's quite obvious the entire time you're fighting for the defense of America.

Do you even know what you're defending in Halo, or is it just about blowing up aliens? Do you even know the name of the planet you're defending? Not unless you've read the books or the instruction manual.

Just so you know, it's Reach. And most of the time when you're playing Halo's single player (who does that, seriously) the entire time it's all about having fun blowing up aliens.

Re: is the esrb doing a good job

You seem to forget about the organic enemies in each of those games as well. In fact, in Ratchet and Clank you get rewarded for shooting and killing birds repeatedly with a sniper rifle. Don't forget the Protopets and the Tyhrranoids (probably spelled wrong) too. Hey look, the main antagonists from two games were both organic. Well actually, protopets may not have been, but the Tyhrranoids were.

As for Sonic, I'm not talking about the 2D games. I'm referring to Sonic Adventure and onwards, which do in fact have you killing organic creatures.

Oh, and in the original Mario games, Bowser fell into a pit of lava when you beat him. That's not fainting, that's killing.

I still don't understand why a -real- setting of violence is somehow more appropriate for younger teens than a fantasy setting.

And kids aren't playing Halo going "YEAH YEAH DIE YOU STUPID COVENANT ROFL NOOB." The games make it quite obvious that the entire time you're fighting for the defense of the human race.

In fact, I did know the name of the planet. Oh, and about your last point, it's about blowing up ALIENS. That's the keyword. You're not going around killing other humans in the single-player mode (at least you're not supposed to). It's FANTASY (well, science fiction technically...). I still fail to understand why killing other humans is somehow "better" than killing fantasy creatures.

And you don't even have to look at WWII games to find T-rated FPS's. Battlefield 2 is a modern day FPS that takes place during a fictional war. In the same vein, Battlefield 2142 takes place during a fictional war in the future. If you compare BF2142 and Halo, you get the following:

1) Both take place in the future, during a fictional war.
2) Both have you killing things with futuristic weaponry.
3) BF2142 has you killing humans, whereas Halo has you killing fictional aliens. Halo does have you killing humans in competitive multiplayer, however.

As you can see, the two games are very similar.

Just answer me this question: why on Earth is killing aliens somehow more dangerous for young people to be exposed to than killing other humans?

Re: is the esrb doing a good job

Well, since I don't care to quote war anymore, I found the answer.

Call of Duty Activision T Blood, Violence Online, Windows PC
Medal of Honor Frontline Electronic Arts T Violence Gamecube, Playstation 2, Xbox
Halo Microsoft M Blood and Gore, Violence Xbox

The difference between an M and a T is just as I told you. Gore. Halo goes just a step further than the WWII games according to the ESRB. A few sources from Bungie even go on to say they pretty much knew Halo was going to get an "M" rating even though the first time through, it was passed as a "T".