As an outsider, the video game rating system of the USA is a strange and obtuse beast. I'm curious to find out how the Adults Only rating is perceived by the people it directly applies to.

When someone says "Adults Only" to you in a video game context, what do you think of?

....games that only Adults should play.

Is this a trick question?

- J

No children where killed during the making of this game.

I think graphic nudity is the only thing that would push a mature rated game into the realm of adult only, if that's what you mean. Is there really even such a thing as adult only games? Besides cheap internet games?

Also extreme cruelty would probably do the trick. Like graphic decapitations and such. With that said, I'd love to see a game with decapitations and graphic nudity! =p

tiredinnuendo:
....games that only Adults should play.

Is this a trick question?

- J

Not at all, that's a great answer. What I want is people's genuine views on the adults only rating. I'm from the UK so I find all the noise made about AO games to be genuinely perplexing.

ask an' ye shall receive http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.jsp,
M is equivalent to an R rating in the us ,and equivalent to a mythical 17 rating in the British rating system. (no one under 17 admitted)

AO which tired mistakes for M is the equivalent to (NC-17 , or X) in the us and 18 in the British system. M mostly exists because 18 is the age of legal adulthood in the us, and there are some games that mature children probably can play but are not appropriate for everyone. AO exists because at 18 in the government's eyes if you can vote you can think for yourself.

I chose the British movie rating system as my benchmark just because it was the first one I thought of that uses age numbers as ratings for the appropriate band.

I don't know what the movie ratings are there, but here, the game ratings and movie ratings match up well. AO is the same as NC-17, or No Children under 17. Ever. This is unlike the rating lower, M (mature) for games and R (Restricted: No childrenunder 17 unless they are with a parent). AO games often, in my book, are just porn games/games that have excessive nudity without a real purpose. Seeing as there are just under 30 AO games (if I remember correctly), obviously, they aren't to proftiable. What do I think of them? Useless wastes that not many are going to know of anyway.

The problem is that there are no Adult Only games that I know of that aren't sexually pornographic. I know Manhunt 2 was threatened with an AO rating for pornographic violence, but then they toned it down so it would get a mature rating.

The reason there is such hoopla over AO games is that the ever ignorant moral guardians of America presume that the medium of video games is meant for children, therefore "Adult Only" video games are marketed towards children. Yes, it is odd to think that a game that is clearly meant for an adult audience is meant for children, but some people seem to think that. It's like with the whole "Hot Coffee" thing from San Andreas. The game was already rated "Mature," so young children shouldn't have been seeing it anyway. Despite this, when it turned out there was a way to break the game to get sex, everyone acted like it was somehow meant for 8 year olds instead of 18 year olds. Somehow, over the years, Mature rated games haven't suffered from this. For the most part (a few loons aside) everyone understands that a Mature rated game is meant for an older audience. But the moment it's rated Adults Only, then it's trying to corrupt our children.

00exmachina:
AO which tired mistakes for M is the equivalent to (NC-17 , or X) in the us and 18 in the British system.

Tell me how I mistook anything.

I see "Adults Only" and I think "This is a game that only adults should play." Since I've long since crossed into adulthood, I don't think too much more about it.

Ratings only really mean anything to people who might be limited by them.

- J

tiredinnuendo:

Ratings only really mean anything to people who might be limited by them.

- J

That's quite poignant really. I would argue that even those past the age of majority are limited by the ratings though.

Maybe so. I guess I'll have to start thinking about what games I'd be willing to buy for my kid as she gets older. Odds are, though, if the game has questionable content, I'll have played it already and will have composed my own review, which will be much more exact than the ESRB, tailored for her, as it were.

As to content "left out" to satisfy ratings boards, I've never found my fun enhanced by having extra blood or more tits on-screen. I just don't care. Some of the most "fun" in gaming I've had in recent years was playing New Super Mario Bros on the DS. If the rating system ever forces them to cut back on the actual fun of a game, I will immediately commence caring. I will be like a creature on whom is fixed the most powerful of Care Bear Stares. I will care with the fury of a thousand suns.

Until then, meh...

- J

AO is the marketing kiss of death though. It most certainly affects older gamers because an AO rating pretty much eliminates it from being a choice. A game that recieves an AO wont be carried by Gamestop, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, or any other major retailer. They worry about that one customer that would never play a game anyway screaming to corporate and the media about how the game's very existance offends her delicate sensibilities. Seriously, I had customers yesterday come into the store to bitch at me for carrying GTA4.

I've never really understood the need for a distinction between an M and an AO though...I remember being 17 and it doesn't impress me as a year of profound enlightenment before I turned 18...

OK, here comes a train wreck of knowledge for everyone outside the US (and in).

Now, I'm American, born and bred. BUT I think that the vast majority of this country is inhabited by brainless sheep that sway to the lightest whim of our overblown "media experts". The problem with AO isn't a problem with AO at all, it's a problem with this countries perception of video games. Every year it seems that some dumb ass kid decides that the world is too much to bear and instead of back in the good old days when the twat would just off himself, he turns a gun on his entire school killing innocents then finally doing the world a favor in the form of a shotgun blast to his own cerebrum. Now instead of blaming the REAL causes like bad parenting and poor society and the kid just being a Grade "A" nutjob, media big wigs will sit there and point the finger at VIDEO GAMES and how they "are murder simulators created to teach our children the acts of violence" (To quote video gamings biggest threat in the US, Jack Thompson)

Now here is where AO fits in: IGNORANCE. Too many American parents will buy their kids video games that are WELL out of their age group. They are ignorant of what the video games consist of. They treat games as some magical thing they could never possibly understand. Unlike movies, many parents don't sit down with their kids and watch what they are playing untill it's too late. (I remember often going to pick up a game for myself and steering parent after parent away from "Conker's Bad Fur Day" because they didn't understand that "M" meant mature, not "You're free to disobey the law, cuntbag") IGNORANCE leads parents to not think that buying a video game for a minor is in NO WAY different than buying them porn or cigarettes. In this way, whenever a game comes along that would even MERIT a rating of Adult Only, the media goes CRAZY. The media will blame the VIDEO GAME for BEING violent. That's like blaming JACK DANIELS for BEING alcoholic.

So to bring this rant full circle I will come back to the point of this thread, the Adult Only rating. American's react to it so violently because most of them seem to think that children are going to be able to pick these games up off the street and play them magically. When I think of the Adult Only rating i think of EDUCATION. We need proper EDUCATION to teach parents to look at ratings, to interact with their own children, and to control what they play just as they would control movies they watch. Given the system is still flawed because we all know kids will usually end up drinking before they are 21 (legal age in US) or see porn before 18 (legal adulthood in US) but it's up to parents to explain and teach morals and they can't do that without having any explanations themselves.

Video games are this ages rock and roll and the media will keep blowing AO and M rated games out of proportion just as they blew up Elvis Presley waggling his hips. I think it's a shame but until people get their heads out of their bums we will have to deal with it here in America and fight for our right to game.

Dragonclaw:
AO is the marketing kiss of death though. It most certainly affects older gamers because an AO rating pretty much eliminates it from being a choice. A game that recieves an AO wont be carried by Gamestop, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, or any other major retailer.

Thank you someone who isn't just throwing pure conjecture around.
This is exactly the case why companies here (well, I'm Canadian... but we're still governed by the ESRB) don't want AO games, they just won't sell. It's not because of moralistic qualms, or some kind of "everyone will hate me if I release an AO game", it's because of money.

I find the whole thing ridiculous. Here are the ESRB descriptions

MATURE
Titles rated M (Mature) have content that may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older. Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language.

ADULTS ONLY
Titles rated AO (Adults Only) have content that should only be played by persons 18 years and older. Titles in this category may include prolonged scenes of intense violence and/or graphic sexual content and nudity.

Basically, one you have to be 17, the other you have to be 18...
If you wonder WHY it exists, it's because both here and in America it's illegal to solicit sex to a minor, AKA a person under 18. So, if a game has too much sexual content it will be dubbed AO. Games will even release edited versions here that contain less nudity to maintain an M. Bioshock, as some people may or may not know, was edited in North America to contain less nudity.

My whole problem with this is WHY won't the big retailers stock AO games???

Adult rated games... To me, it means some company had the balls to try something new. People say sex and violence, but Conker's Bad Fur Day was AO, and the most objectionable thing in that game was the ability to piss on rock people after getting drunk.

And could someone please find the members of the ERSB and murder them in their sleep? Not just them, but their whole family tree. There are plenty of sick fucks out there killing for no reason, why don't they ever go for the people who deserve to die? The ESRB and MPAA are made up of old-school conservative housewives who still believe it is sinful to wear clothing that shows the slightest hint of leg. Stone-age relics that force THEIR moral beliefs on the world to the exclusion of anyone else's belief, and they should die for it.
/rant

With that outta my system, anyone know of any game that lets you Falcon Punch to cure teen pregnancy?

tiredinnuendo:

00exmachina:
AO which tired mistakes for M is the equivalent to (NC-17 , or X) in the us and 18 in the British system.

Tell me how I mistook anything.

I see "Adults Only" and I think "This is a game that only adults should play." Since I've long since crossed into adulthood, I don't think too much more about it.

Ratings only really mean anything to people who might be limited by them.

- J

You didn't miss it I did. Guess I failed reading comprehension for today. Sorry.

I fail to see why Wall-mart can stock submachineguns and weapons that are purpose-built to kill, maim and generally terrfiy, but object to violence and sex in a digital form. Such hypocrites should be tied to a large rock next to the edge of the sea at low tide.

Show a tit in a movie/game and it will be rated X / Adult Only, cut it off with a butcher knife and presto! PG-13!

Fondant:
I fail to see why Wall-mart can stock submachineguns and weapons that are purpose-built to kill, maim and generally terrfiy, but object to violence and sex in a digital form. Such hypocrites should be tied to a large rock next to the edge of the sea at low tide.

It's because they are family friendly of course.

(I nearly managed to type that with a straight face)

Necro82:
I think graphic nudity is the only thing that would push a mature rated game into the realm of adult only, if that's what you mean. Is there really even such a thing as adult only games? Besides cheap internet games?

Also extreme cruelty would probably do the trick. Like graphic decapitations and such. With that said, I'd love to see a game with decapitations and graphic nudity! =p

holy shit, that game would be awesome!

Fondant:
I fail to see why Wall-mart can stock submachineguns and weapons that are purpose-built to kill, maim and generally terrfiy, but object to violence and sex in a digital form. Such hypocrites should be tied to a large rock next to the edge of the sea at low tide.

Cause America is a terrifying place.
(this written by a Canadian)

Ok... There's this thing called the Internet. There is no age restrictions on it (and if anyone tries to change that fact I'll shave their fucking balls of with a rusty cheese grater), and there are things on this "Internet" that is more damaging than the worst video game content imaginable. Well since the Internet didn't end society, I don't see why games need ratings anymore? After all, how can you compare the violence in manhunt to the shit on 4Chan? Manhunt becomes a saturday morning cartoon by comparison.

nilcypher:
When someone says "Adults Only" to you in a video game context, what do you think of?

A Wii game for women that makes use of the Wii's phallic-shaped controller and assures that my girlfriend will wear out the rumble feature, and scream "Link!" during intimate moments from then on, forcing me to consider a name change to save face.

I don't see too many A.O. rated games around here, but if the adjusted rating Grand Theft Auto San Andreas received is any indication, any game that features some type of sex scene (interactive or otherwise) is going to get an Adult's Only rating. The rating doesn't make much sense to me, it's as though the ESRB is secretly acknowledging their useless rating system. It's like they're saying "M rated games are for ages seventeen and up (wink wink), and A.O. games are eighteen and up only. Seriously, we mean it this time."

I don't get why sex is somehow worse than brutal dismemberment, but I'm not a ratings board executive or a lawyer, so maybe I'm not qualified to know.

Well in Quebec we have a similar rating system, except a R rated movie in the US is most often rated pg13 here, so imagine, Manhunt here can be rented by a 10 year-old no one cares really...

You tell me something Adults Only, in relation to a game, and I'll instantly think sexual content. I've only heard of the AO rating being tossed around when there's sex involved.

Personally, I don't really think on it.
I have been an adult longer than the rating system has been around, so it's not somthing I deal with. I am a parent but since I control what my daughter sees/plays so far as movies or games, I don't really follow it. I know my kid and what I feel she should be exposed to or can handle. She can watch a monster movie that is considered too scary/violent/etc for kids rated R, and she is just fine. No nightmares or any other problems. She knows its all make believe. Some other kids may not be the same. I think the rating system is just there for parents to no longer have to take an interest in what their kids are exposed to. If they just read the box, they would already know if it's something their kids should be playing.

I don't think Ive ever seen a game rated AO for sale. The only time it is ever brought up is when the ESRB uses it force a company to change the content in some political move (like the manhunt 2 fiasco)

Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft refuses to liscense AO rated games in the states, and all the big name stores refuse to sell AO rated PC games. So with the few games that would warrant an AO rating (mostly porn games) don't even bother to get ESRB rated and only sell online and adult stores

Really to me AO means sex
and honestly I think designers have to be a serious effort together to get their game AO
They have to get it by their management which is probably a nightmare, and quite honestly if the sex is the big selling point for the game there is something wrong with the customer (*hint* If u hav to rely on video games to get ur sex u need to turn the game off and do something about it)

Personally it seems as though companies would be able to sell the game to more people if they took the sex out and made it M.

(Not quite sure if this was on topic but watev)

I have to say that, as a gamer, I've always associated AO with graphic sex and sexual themes. It's the reason that Rockstar was threatened with an AO rating after the "Hot Coffee" scandal. This is really too bad, as I think they should get rid of AO and change the name of the "Mature" rating to Adult-Only. I think this would help get rid of the perception that Grand Theft Auto and Gears of War are meant to be children's games.

I really wish they'd be more restrictive when renting/selling games to minors. That way, the media would have a lot less ammo to use in their fight for censorship. (Isn't it odd that the media is fighting for CENSORSHIP? It seems pretty counter-intuitive)

I was actually really happy when I was asked for ID at Futureshop when purchasing GTA IV. (I am 24, but probably look at least 3 years younger than that)

since they are so rare and harder to get than lung cancer without asbestos or smoking i imagine a sort of winged pink rhinoceros. You can probably find one if you look hard enough but in the end it'll probably be a bit of a disapointment. I mean so few people publish them and no reatailer that i can find stocks them that its more about where to find one when i think about them rather than the actual tit filled, gore ridden content that undoubtedly earned them that rating.

Fondant:
I fail to see why Wall-mart can stock submachineguns and weapons that are purpose-built to kill, maim and generally terrfiy, but object to violence and sex in a digital form. Such hypocrites should be tied to a large rock next to the edge of the sea at low tide.

it's called the bible belt and america in general. the country was founded by a bunch of puritan prudes who frankly make some sects of islam look overly liberal and risquee

i mean the horror of teaching your kid about proper and healthy sexual practices is unimaginable because they might possibly have sex. so don't tell them how to practice safe sex and you get lots of teen pregnancy and rampant sti infections

look at sweeden that has a sex education program that starts at a very young age, around 11 years old or so i think. but they have a very low teen pregnancy rate and even lower sti infection rate among teens but come on abstinence works

as for the ao rating, what others have said it's the kiss of death for a game, much like the nc-17 rating is, the x rating is no longer used by the mpaa due to a lack of copyright on it. they can't advertise the game and most stores won't carry it, some will even say "it's the law", when i'm told that i ask for their manager and inform them that giving out false legal info is itself illegal and that the "ao can't be sold" rule isn't a law, it's a corporate policy as much as corps like to think they are the law and can re-write it

it's a total double standard for both movies and games, violence is ok but sexuality is bad, female sexuality is even worse to have in a game/film. the documentary "this film is not yet rated" has funny part showing how much of a double standard it is

most ao games are just crappy hentai games anyways.

AO games are generally porn, so they wouldn't be sold at a general store anyways. So this whole "kiss of death" thing is irrelevant. Also, whoever got that idea in there head that "there are only 30 AO games" needs to do some research (I can't link anything, 'cause the porn).

Fondant:
I fail to see why Wall-mart can stock submachineguns and weapons that are purpose-built to kill, maim and generally terrfiy, but object to violence and sex in a digital form. Such hypocrites should be tied to a large rock next to the edge of the sea at low tide.

Automatic weapons are illegal for civilian use (I know you were being facetious, just pointing this out). The only "weapons" a Walmart will carry are hunting rifles.

I'd also like to point out that NONE of the Walmarts (or indeed any general store) around here carry handguns or rifles anymore. You can get hunting weapons at sporting good stores, and I think there are some gun shops that sell handguns a little farther south, but certainly not in my town. And I live in Alabama, right near the border of Tennessee.

It's a pretty moot question because mainstream games are never AO in the US. The only AO games are pretty much just small time porn game developers. If a mainstream game gets an AO rating it is a kiss of death because no mainstream retailer will carry it, so the developer quickly fixes up the game so that it can get in under the AO rating. My understanding is that other countries, like England and Australia, are more aggressive with their equivalent AO ratings and so a game that can be just Mature rated in the US may end up with an Adults Only type rating in another country and even be banned.

To be honest I think video game ratings are pointless.

The list of the type of things is fine, and parents should not depend on a letter to dictate to them the appropriateness of a game.

When I have kids, I'll encourage them to partake in what I found enjoyable as a youth, and hopefully get them to play some of the old classics and not the mediocre "it prints money" shit that has been flooding my local game store for the past half decade. But thats beside the point.

I think that parents should take a more active role in what their children do for fun and if the media would pull their heads out of their arces and take an informed stand on whats going on there would be less need for ratings. If Jimmy the impressionable 7 year old farts for brains wants to get Bloody Manslaughter: Return of the Hatchet Killer thats fine by me, chances are he'll just have a few nightmares and that'll be his lesson learned. And if his idiot parents didn't check the content of the game thats their own stupid fault.

If more parents took the same approach to raising their kids as mine raised me, as in letting me do whatever the fuck I wanted as long as I didn't permanently injure myself or hurt/harm anyone else or other peoples stuff, the world would be a generally better place.

I grew up playing most of the violent games during my child hood, I was playing Duke Nukem when I was 5 and I was adicted to Quake at 10, and I'm quite a caring and passionate person who hates to see people hurt or get hurt.

So long story short, I think the ratings are doing bugger all to stop stupid people being stupid. If someone was born an idiot they'll probably end up being an idiot. Appropriateness depends on the person and how they perceive things. The original Terminator movie used to be rated X... and now its PG-13 or whatever. And if everyone thinks that Timmy the "I take everything literally" 7 year old Gropecunt stabbed his schoolmate because he played Gears of War and not because the kid he stabbed was a dick and deserved it, thats fine by me.
So don't let Timmy play those games, doesn't mean that I can't play Blood, Tits and Gore 2: The Revenge of Bloody Knives.

</rant>