[quote name='mykevermin']Clinton became involved after Leland Yee (CA state assembly) began questioning how legit the rating system was. In short, he argued that the ESRB is under undustry pressure to avoid "AO" ratings due to the very arguments many of you are bringing up (fewer stores distributing, which leads to fewer sales, which sucks for a traded company). Did Yee have any evidence of the ESRB's complicity? Of course not, he's a politician.
Is it an important issue? Well, of course it is. Rockstar *still* refuses to admit that it's their code, even if the game is playable on all versions of the game. Others have brought up a South Park cartoon (perhaps an uncensored one?) on a disc of Tiger Woods 1999 for Playstation. In both cases, the data was not meant to be accessed by legitimate means. Since the data exists on your property, the software you bought, should it be considered when evaluating the software for a rating? OR, should only the content that is *supposed* to be accessed be considered for a rating? If you can get over the very basic fact that this is legally very ambiguous, you'd be more understanding of government's interest in this. Is the puritanical approach to sex, combined with ambivalence to violence, silly or backwards? Of course, but that's our society and that's our government.
Every time I read about Clinton and see the words "intern," "blowjob," or something similar I can't help but understand what Dave Chappelle goes through when some sack of shit approaches him and yells "I'M RICK JAMES, BITCH!!! HAW HAW HAW!!!" Really, if you want to bring something of value to the conversation, do it. Some of you bring up that there are far more important things for our government to look at. I won't disagree with that, but I will argue that the legal ambiguity of this scenario is not something to be trivialized. Politicians may not know shit about games, but many of you can't seem to get over your biased stance as a gamer to recognize that this is a rather peculiar case that deserves looking into.
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Exactly. We can argue all we want about the fact that the immediately accessible content in GTA is much worse than the content accessed via the Hot Coffee mod; but the fact remains that the ESRB has standards that it must grade games on. If GTA: SA has content that is only suitable for an AO game based on ESRB standards, well then that is the rating it must get. I for one think those standards are backwards, but whatever, if standards are not enforced there is no point to a ratings board.
I for one don't buy for one second lack of knowledge of the code still being there. Anyone who has ever worked in a software testing environment should know the EXTENSIVE testing that goes on. Also even if they weren't aware that the content was still in the game, they are still responsible for whatever is on that disc. It would not be acceptable to allow them to stand behind the "the game has to be modified to access this portion of the game"; because then what is to stop companies from intentionally putting AO content in an M or T game knowing full well that word will spread on how to access the content using an Action Replay, etc. This would render the ESRB useless (not that they are of much use anyway), and would draw even more scrutiny to the gaming community.
[quote name='mykevermin']
I'm concerned that stores refuse to sell "AO" games. It's a peculiar standard, when it's common practice for shitty movies to add a few bad words, 17 seconds of breasts, and call it the "unrated" version for a DVD rerelease. It's interesting that we can handle "unrated," but "NC-17" or "AO" are partnered with the devil socially. They're just symbols, for
's sake. They are powerful symbols, but why be bothered that the government is looking into this, when one of the major causal factors behind this is that major retail outlets are more than happy to sell you guns and bibles, and maybe a little titty, but not a lotta titty.
ing pansies, the lot of them.
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I've wondered this too, why stores are willing to sell unrated movies that would get an NC-17 but not movies actually rated NC-17. If places are willing to sell unrated items doesn't this kind of remove the importance of the movie rating board.
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Way to review the rating on it, grandma.
