Candescence
Member
Because 'adults-only' might as well not exist in practical terms.
Since I recently became aware of a certain Japanese game being edited to avoid the AO rating in the States (which shall not be named, because that's really not the point of this topic, and sexualized underaged characters certainly crosses an unambigious line), I've really been thinking about how there's an arbitrary limit to certain kinds of content, both in practice and explicitly, depending on the country and rating system.
The problem with most adults-only ratings for both films and games (the ESRB in particular) is that, generally, retailers/cinemas will not touch works with said ratings with a ten-foot-pole, and console manufacturers won't either (and, if I recall, Steam won't either), and even if you somehow get past that, there's an active stigma, mainly because AO/X ratings are basically associated with porn, and you rarely see such ratings as a result of violence rather than sexual content (which I honestly find completely ridiculous). At this point, the AO rating for the ESRB is effectively a straight-up ban. And don't get me started on actual bans like my own home country's rating system - Australia got an R rating a couple years back and there's still games being refused classification every so often, often for stupid reasons.
And then there's the entirely arbitrary way works can get rated. While looking up the details on the ESRB, I noticed that Ben Kuchera once said that the M rating was far too broad, and to be quite frank, I'd honestly agree. On one end of the scale, there are fairly tame titles such as Halo, which is closer to Star Wars in its violence and general content, but shares the same rating as the GTA series, especially GTAV, which is far more violent (and even has occasional nudity, I swear Trevor's junk is actually visible for a moment in a cutscene), and Mortal Kombat - the latest two games are basically murder porn to excessive degrees. It's bewildering as to why both of these games haven't gotten an AO rating yet. And then there's various regional differences in terms of what is 'acceptable' and what isn't.
It honestly feels like the highest rating in most rating systems is basically, in practice, an entirely arbitrary limit on what content in games are allowed to do. Sure, publishers don't want to be associated with smut (though there are games that are borderline porn anyway, and some games that have outright nudity and are still rated M), but at the same time, as someone who thinks it's somewhat ridiculous that there's an emphasis in society about sex being somehow worse than violence (granted, some regions, such as Europe and Japan, are harder on violence than other countries), if there are desginers who want to push the envelope and actually make a statement about, say, society's aforementioned lopsided priorities, they're virtually incapable of getting exposure on any platform that acutally has an audience, even on PC. While there are standards, such as, say, child porn, which I'm pretty sure everyone agrees on, I feel the AO rating is, in practice, a limitation on what games are allowed to do (unless you're okay with releasing niche games on PC outside of Steam). As long as titles don't cross certain very clear lines, who cares what people watch or play? We already have murder porn in our games, might as well allow actual porn.
So, yeah, why do we even have adults-only ratings when they might as well not exist most of the time, if at all? Rather ridiculous, really.
Since I recently became aware of a certain Japanese game being edited to avoid the AO rating in the States (which shall not be named, because that's really not the point of this topic, and sexualized underaged characters certainly crosses an unambigious line), I've really been thinking about how there's an arbitrary limit to certain kinds of content, both in practice and explicitly, depending on the country and rating system.
The problem with most adults-only ratings for both films and games (the ESRB in particular) is that, generally, retailers/cinemas will not touch works with said ratings with a ten-foot-pole, and console manufacturers won't either (and, if I recall, Steam won't either), and even if you somehow get past that, there's an active stigma, mainly because AO/X ratings are basically associated with porn, and you rarely see such ratings as a result of violence rather than sexual content (which I honestly find completely ridiculous). At this point, the AO rating for the ESRB is effectively a straight-up ban. And don't get me started on actual bans like my own home country's rating system - Australia got an R rating a couple years back and there's still games being refused classification every so often, often for stupid reasons.
And then there's the entirely arbitrary way works can get rated. While looking up the details on the ESRB, I noticed that Ben Kuchera once said that the M rating was far too broad, and to be quite frank, I'd honestly agree. On one end of the scale, there are fairly tame titles such as Halo, which is closer to Star Wars in its violence and general content, but shares the same rating as the GTA series, especially GTAV, which is far more violent (and even has occasional nudity, I swear Trevor's junk is actually visible for a moment in a cutscene), and Mortal Kombat - the latest two games are basically murder porn to excessive degrees. It's bewildering as to why both of these games haven't gotten an AO rating yet. And then there's various regional differences in terms of what is 'acceptable' and what isn't.
It honestly feels like the highest rating in most rating systems is basically, in practice, an entirely arbitrary limit on what content in games are allowed to do. Sure, publishers don't want to be associated with smut (though there are games that are borderline porn anyway, and some games that have outright nudity and are still rated M), but at the same time, as someone who thinks it's somewhat ridiculous that there's an emphasis in society about sex being somehow worse than violence (granted, some regions, such as Europe and Japan, are harder on violence than other countries), if there are desginers who want to push the envelope and actually make a statement about, say, society's aforementioned lopsided priorities, they're virtually incapable of getting exposure on any platform that acutally has an audience, even on PC. While there are standards, such as, say, child porn, which I'm pretty sure everyone agrees on, I feel the AO rating is, in practice, a limitation on what games are allowed to do (unless you're okay with releasing niche games on PC outside of Steam). As long as titles don't cross certain very clear lines, who cares what people watch or play? We already have murder porn in our games, might as well allow actual porn.
So, yeah, why do we even have adults-only ratings when they might as well not exist most of the time, if at all? Rather ridiculous, really.
