Posted by Jay G. on 04/17/07 03:59

On Tue, 17 Apr 2007 00:54:31 -0000, Doug Jacobs wrote:
>
> I'm all for a rating system on games and all that, but why aren't movies
> held to the same standards? If anything, the ESRB has bent over backwards
> to try to appease the government's requests, while the movie ratings on
> packages still harken back to the 'bad old' pre-ESRB days.

The dichotomy between the two media is fairly staggering. When I used to
work at Target, it was store policy to not sell M rated games to minors,
and when an M rated game was scanned the registers would actually wait for
a birth-date to be entered before you could continue scanning. No such
register locks for movies.

The FTC report also reflects this double standard, as it shows that while
about 70% of minors were able to buy an R rated or "Unrated" DVD, only
about 40% were able to buy an M rated game.
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2007/04/marketingviolence.shtm

I think this double standard arises partially from a lot of people still
thinking of video games as being mostly "for kids," much like how comics
always get a lot a flack for adult-orientated material. Also, a lot of
people fear that since video games are interactive they are more
"influential" on a young person's psyche than movies can be.

Whatever the reasons, I think the current ESRB ratings and notices on boxes
are more than adequate, and the only real place for improvement is possibly
enforcement, although that is steadily getting better according to the
FTC's numbers.

-Jay

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