When every game is an Adults Only game

Kotaku had a post about problems with ESRB game ratings. In it, the author is dumbfounded how one game where you shoot people from a distance can be rated more mature than one where you break necks in close combat. Part of it, the author assumes, is context.

But that brings up a very interesting point that the game industry will eventually hit. We’ve already seen it in titles where the game environment is so flexible that almost anything seems to happen (even though it is clearly optimized for death and destruction). In a game whose story context is limited but whose interaction is almost limitless, how can you rate it?

The thing that bugs the most that comes with every release of Grand Theft Auto is that the media immediately focuses on things that the game lets you do by virtue of the mechanics not being “on rails”—sure, if these news reports ever showed shots of what the game script asked or required you to do, I wouldn’t mind. After all, there is a reason why it’s rated M for Mature (tho’ there are plenty who think it should have been AO). But these reports always come with some video or screenshot of a player repeatedly bashing someone on the ground with a baseball bat for minutes on end. In terms of gameplay, it’s only something that’s possible, given the game mechanics.

Same with the Sims—as long as a game system allows you to have characters get hungry and starve, and create rooms with no requirements for doors, then there are always people who will torture their Sims to death. This is a digital equivalent of burning ants with a magnifying glass—but obviously no one blames the ants or the magnifying glass industry. If parents are that concerned, then what should be happening is parenting.

If we’re lucky, these issues will straighten themselves out as more and more people who grow up with video games are the ones who move into politics, but I do worry about the medium when it seems like games get blasted for simply making something remotely possible.