Ok, stupid ass, I love how you came into the thread and used your selective reading powers to only look at the last line I typed on my second post. Intelligent, aren't you?

If you had read ALL of that post, you might have understood the fact that, although I was angry over the issue, the comments in my first post were meant more to prove a point. My point being, as stated before, is that there seems to be more bitching than there does action going on here over something that seems to be a hot button issue with most gamers. I was hoping to provoke someone into agreeing with me and starting a movement of some sort, since we're all so upset over this, but the effort was wasted since either no one cares or we're all too lazy to try.
The way I worded my call to arms shouldn't have mattered, as most of the others here upset over this have made their opinions just as...colorful...as I did.
I, as well as many other, just happen to cuss when I'm angry.
Get over it.

MakoAoyama

...I don't know. I feel like we're missing a step here. It's like over at the execrable Ain't It Cool, when they got their panties in a knot over Die Hard 4 being rated PG-13, saying, this is all because we have a hard-ass Conservative's Conservative in the Oval Office, that's why movies are all being de-balled.

When, of course, as testosterone-fueled straight white males aged 18-35, what they SHOULD have been saying is, "why isn't this staunchly Conservative climate catering to our xenophobic bloodlust and repressed homoerotic tendencies? Y'know, like the Reagan era did?"

Homage

RonJeremy4Pres

RonJeremy4Pres

the esrb is starting something that is going to end up hurting more than helping. i just hope its not too late to fix this mess.

remember this everyone, its alot easier to loose your rights than to get them back.

jerrt

MURDERFACE

MURDERFACE

MURDERFACE

MURDERFACE

MURDERFACE

That's not really true. There are plenty of PG-rated movies from the 70's and 80's that contain enough swearing and nudity (albeit generally brief) to easily earn an R rating these days.

Some would be dumped into the relatively newer PG-13 rating of course, but there are still plenty that would end up as a modern R. Similarly, plenty of R-rated movies from that era would likely be NC-17 now. Why do you think so many R-rated movies in the theaters now come out with "unrated" DVDs?

Anyway, I disagree that ratings systems tend to become more lenient. They occasionally need a total overhaul, but between overhauls they tend to be relatively static.

Over time, the content produced just tends to increasingly fall into the higher ratings. The rating system itself evolves far more slowly than the stuff it's rating, which itself evolves more slowly than the actual tolerance of the consumers.

At some point they all need to recalibrate or be destroyed and replaced with something that more accurately reflects what the public wants. It seems as if the ESRB has hit this point already.

mewol

Myst3r1o

Go check out the ESRB website. They can regulate how a game gets marketed and impose fines if they feel their guidelines have been violated.

I'm amazed.

RPGEmperor

minister.of.rhetoric

Looking over the comments here I can see why videogames have a bad rep, after all it seems our community's only reply to bad news is the word 'FUCK'. Gamers act like 13 year olds and wonder why legislation seems to treat them like it.

tellute

Quasimodo X

Yes.
Yes it fuckin' was.
(It was late at night and I was grumpy already!)

Actually, I really just wanted to see what people would say to a call to arms. You know, I think it's funny that nearly everyone here has a problem with the ESRB, but won't actually DO SOMETHING about it instead of just bitching on a message board.

Did you notice that you were the only one to comment on what I said?

MakoAoyama

and failing at it lol

Irenicus

Irenicus

Murrytmds

What has happened? Usually ratings get more and more lenient over time, but the opposite is happening to videogames. If this keeps up, soon the only video games that will be legal to sell will be Nintendo franchises like Mario and Donkey Kong (but not Zelda, because swords are too violent). I'm not some blood-lusting psychopath. But I'm an adult, and I should be allowed to play adult-oriented games if I damn well want to.

Meanwhile any Joe Sixpack can walk into any video store and pick up Freaky German Fetish volume 3 while he returns his copy of SAW 2.

dowingba

I do not understand the singling out of the video game industry, yet again. Congress is going to shit a brick when GTA4 comes out.

Jhub23

Cause that'd be pretty fuckin' clever.

Homage

Like what was being shown, someone cutting the head off a young girl, pulling her heart out - eating said heart then shitting down the neck?
...

COME ON!!! >=[ Why should I be protected from any imagery which has done no harm to anyone in reality or in my fantasies??? =o This is getting out of hand - and it goes to show why PUBLISHERS are at fault for ALLOWING the ESRB to have this kind of POWER over them to begin with. >=[ Makes me mad!

BTW: If you think the example I gave in the beginning would never be in a game - you are right... although Duke Nukem... has been known to do this kind of thing to fat assed aliens who try to steal our wimmen. I played and saw that and I turned out normal...
Oo i just like giving my money to strippers now, thats all - whats wrong with helping a young lady out? (of her pants!) oO GAMES WARPING PEOPLE'S MINDS??? I THINK NOT! =D

Consolcwby

Sloopydrew

@Xilibrius:
"If this keeps up i think a protest group or something needs to be started against the insane lengths the ESRB is going to lately."

Well? Let's fuckin' do it then.
Seriously.
Almost everyone in this thread agrees that this fuckin' wrong and that the ESRB needs to die or be changed drastically. So let's do this fuckin' thing.
Find us somebody that can make a damn website. We'll call our organization GFER(Gamers for Equal Rights) or some such bullshit and let take the fucking fight to them and shove it down their damn throats that we aren't going to take this shit anymore. Get on the fuckin' horn to Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony and tell them we need their full support on this and that this is what gamers want.
Gimme a sign, a megaphone and a place to stand and scream about it and I'll fuckin' do it.
I'm tired of this bullshit!

MakoAoyama

Lot Krotan

Tisteldun

To continue the original analogy, gaming could be said to have reached a milestone when we get our Watchmen or Dark Knight Returns (or, say, our Singin' In The Rain): a masterful, confident work that harshly questions the conventions and culture of the medium, while at the same time succeeding within the medium on all the requisite levels. (It's all well and good to do something wry and pomo and self-referential, but if you haven't made a good game as well, who cares?)

I'm holding cautious hopes that Haze might be a game of this sort, but I guess we'll see. My old drama teacher used to say of storytelling, "first you try to make 'em laugh, then you try to scare 'em, then you get to the good stuff". Well, we've had Monkey Island, and we've had Project Zero, so maybe the good stuff's not so far off.

Homage

explodingman

[www.gametrailers.com]

Spartan1308™

Ah, pointless bureaucracy. You soothe me.

Z-Word

Capt133T

[www.ifilm.com]

Spartan1308™

* "Mature" as in "worthy of being treated as a grown-up"

So when is gaming going to grow up? I mean all the studios do is produce realistic this and realistic that... why not make stories that are worthy of a real message to adults?

Runna

The industry needs to be proactive. You don't wait for your ratings people to use the ban stick... you step things up so they can't use the ban stick. Simply don't rate these games and if the big N, S, or MS are fine with it let it fly. Hell I wonder if it got banned in japan.... I mean you got SNK touching "witches"...LOL

LOL Crime went down because of games... all these violent people in a violent environment are not being saved by not playing these games. Hold up just HOLD up... THEY are afraid of some thing else here... Gaming has a lot of influence in cultures.

Maybe it time we all made games about what really is messed up in our world... scape goat laws and use this stuff in our plots for these so called adult games. Man this is only going to make people make even darker games....

Runna

Draconian over-restriction isn't good for anyone, but neither is the total free reign many of you seem to think your games somehow deserve.

* "Mature" as in "worthy of being treated as a grown-up", as opposed to "contains images of people being shot in the head and mildly risque innuendo". Which is what people often mean when they call their comic books "mature", and pretty much always mean when they use the word as relates to videogames.

Homage

Please ESRB needs to grow some balls or either fier some people. They will lead to your adult gaming being just a past time for kids... Hell now you can see the BS nintendo had to deal with and gaming wasn't even as popular then.

Hell I know what... Some one email D3 and tell them to use the worst most horrific scenes from hostel and saw and then just put hey we would show you the game yet these videos are all we can show because we scared the establishment.

I'm telling you ESRB could ruin the HD systems all by them selves... I mean damn is this all a plot to bring games back to the PC? I mean thats what it looks like to me. No one is going to stop you from playing or buying this game or manhunt on the PC and if they do some one will just make a mod of it...LOL

Runna

How about this:

Allow adults to register their consoles online and provide proof of age (credit card, etc) to unlock the capability to play AO games for their password protected profile.

Then allow AO games to be published on the PS3 or 360 platform, and sold by publishers online through their websites and perhaps at select retail outlets. They could be downloadable via PSN and Xbox Live as well, but only browsable and purchaseable through an Adults Only section of the store, and only visible to users logged in with registered adult profiles.

We don't need to be able to buy this stuff at Best Buy, but we do need to be able to buy it. I'm okay with this stuff not being on the shelves at Best Buy ("think of the children!!") but it must be available somwhere. If it's online only or at adult stores only (like pornography), that's fine.

crackp1pe

1984 much?

elevenoverzero

There's a lot of us true gamers out there who are against all this censorship bull, and a lot of us read this great site.

Why don't we all submit what we think about all of this, and get our friends do the same, and overload their inbox, and continue to do this for a period of time, whether we are just copying and pasting the same arguments or discussing new ideas.

Of course everyone should be tactful and civil, and make solid points. It would be against the whole point if we acted like boorish beasts. While it might not do anything, if we get enough momentum, it at least gets their notice, just like when a mosquito bites you.

Copy and paste what you write to news companies too, and the gaming companies, letting them know how you feel about them telling you what is or isn't good for you.

The website for the ESRB is: [www.esrb.org]

Censorship is good for no one. Doing absolutely nothing is acquiescence.

EnderLanik

Cartman86

thendoftheline

They're really going too far. Starting to get a little too involved.

Zilor

Today's kids are going alone unsupervised to store to make these purchases and due to the lack of other people's parental responsibility, you have to suffer for it. Here is an idea instead of blaming everyone else, start with the parents.

Kudos to the first console manufacture to allow AO titles.

Devenish

Yeah, I blame them. I'm Australian. Die Howard, die.

Sabre_Justice: Okay, no more long name.

i_9

aka Bitter

Microsoft is already trying to side step the ESRB, but not for the right reasons. Just another way to tack on more publisher fees, yay!

Mongoosekun

The difficult part here is getting that "new" system to fly at retail, and with the gub'ment. I mean, if we're having frivolous law-making with ESRB stuff, you think it will be that much better with console maker-made ratings? It's possible that you'd see even more censorship that way since in that case, the console makers would be the ones "responsible" for "bad/improper ratings". With the new focus on casual gamers, this would start to cut off the mature end of titles in all likelihood.

Chef

Gamemaster

why not call the mature video games "interactive graphic novels" and start selling them at Barnes & Nobles

hmmm

BigChiefSmokem

But yet video games are still beat to death like a red headed step child.

ED209

the sick part is its not even a game..

its a trailer.

...on the internet.

joelface

Xilibrius

ClosedAccountDueToErrorsAshCouldn'tFix

There is always the PC they can release it on still.

Chikebo

Gamemaster

Darkest Daze

J. Kyle

TheJordanator

JunjiHiroma2k7

Mike918

Taz

WHAT THE FUCK.

WHAT

THEEE

FFFUUUCCKKK.

someone needs to stand up to these bastards, and tell them to shut the fuck up.

i mean seriously.

..FUCK OFF.

joelface

HappyWulf

It's not so much they can ban a game in the US. They basically can't. Pretty much every other country has "safeguards" (if you can call it that) to ban games like manhunt 2, which actually didn't seem so bad once I saw it... Anyways, you would have to ban Reservoir Dogs and half the movies on the IFC channel. When you do it with movies put stuff like that in movies, it's for the sake of "art". When you do it in games, it's apparently because you're evil and hate children.

Last_Raven

Sure, they might be littered with explosions and heroes firing at unseen opponents, but how often do you see said enemy receiving the damage?

Honestly, something like this was bound to happen. The Age Gates are a joke (any child with half a brain can circumvent them) and I won't miss the old trailers anyway.

Wuth

jive238

Nexus6

jive238

Darkest Daze

Xilibrius

mudflap

well i think it's a fact that we really can't rely on the parents to regulate movies, music, and games for their kids - not much we can do about that

but the ESRB was put in place to do pretty much what the movie industry does, to have them buckle under government and media pressure over something as absurd like game trailers is only the first sign of problems to come

what i want to know is where are OUR lobbyist and special interests groups?

dammit Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft need to start spending some of that cash we give them and stary lobbying and bribing (yes i said it!) these ignorant politicos because that's the only way it seems to "work" in today's U.S. gov't it seems

BigChiefSmokem

Atom Ant

Gamemaster

Yes... It's "for the children" as Nancy Pelozzi (sp?) said.... It's like saying the DVD in your house is used by kids, therefore no NC-17 movies can be put on DVD. Media is seen by EVERYONE not just kiddies. Video games and movies are seen by EVERYONE.

Oh, and there is that small portion that can't handle the blood so expect Dark Sector to get an AO rating too...

Does anyone actually put their age on these "age gates" either if they are under 18?

Last_Raven

What next? A Videogamer Registration Act?

Klappstuhl

KicktheCAN

Shouldn't this work just as easily as the movie industry's system? The MPAA rates a film, and that's that. It can be resubmitted after editing for a new rating, but I don't think the MPAA has ever tried to block downloads of violent film trailers. In fact, traditionally, the internet has been the place where uncensored exclusive trailers have been made available.

RevDenton

RonJeremy4Pres

i_9

Kantwon

BodyOfTheMany

ninjapirate

Make it stupid proof to those that can't be bothered to look at the box and see what the rating is (Adults Only, anyone?) That way, when some "THINK OF THE CHILDREN" group wants to claim they had no way of knowing what their kids were playing, you have only to point to the game case.

PapaBear434

Or does this ban only reflect the trailers released over XBL and PSN?

Atheist Jew

TheNatural

games are under attack by their own ratings board!

WTF!!!

BigChiefSmokem

Games aren't for little kids anymore.

Last_Raven

Most likely, some politico's were starting to breathe down their necks about not being strict enough or something.

Government has been threatening oversight for years now, claiming that the ESRB hasn't been doing enough, though I don't know what they really expect of them above what the movie industry does.

PapaBear434

OniMirage

What the hell is wrong with the ESRB? They've gone batshit insane over rating games and censorship of gaming.

I honestly want them out of the picture after all this.

Indy_aka_Rex

Neon