Game and movie ratings are a tricky thing. After seeing "The Dark Knight," having not checked the rating, i assumed it was R.

It wasn't. Only after really thinking about it did i realize that there is NO BLOOD. . . like at all, which i guess is the only thing ratings are based on. The Dark Knight was far more intense, mature, and disturbing in nature than, say, "WANTED," but receives the weaker rating. "Wanted" is violent, but when age is brought into it, which would you rather a 13 y/o see first?

This guy has a nice article on the topic, applying the question to game-ratings as well;

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080724-opinion-what-the-dark-knight-teaches-us-about-game-ratings.html

Personally i never thought Halo should have a mature rating, but it does, right up there with Manhunt and GTA. Methinks the entire rating system needs a makeover.

Thoughts?

I thought that was an interesting read, i pretty much agree with you and the article.

I just found out/remembered today that Fable is rated M. It made me lol.

I don't even think blood should be a factor after you hit PG for a movie and T for a game.

Doing more than that is like a movie being rated R because it shows feet and so many people have foot fetishes.

yourkie1921:
I don't even think blood should be a factor after you hit PG for a movie and T for a game.

Doing more than that is like a movie being rated R because it shows feet and so many people have foot fetishes.

Blood isn't a factor for games over teen. Quite a few games come to mind that have LOTS of blood and still receive a T. I've thought the rating system was terrible for a while and wondered how long till it gets changed. Star Wars like violence gets an M but Xenosaga 1 got a T despite having a scene where a man stands in the middle of a pile of children's corpses and rips his own head off. Call me crazy but I find something like that more mature then brightly colored laser beams.

Let's not forget the "Soylent Green" scene in Xenogears. T rating? You serious?

Wow, completely right on.

Halo's M rating did always seem out of place for me. And it didn't stop countless 9 year olds from playing it anyway.

I found it strange that while LOTR: The Two Towers has plenty of blood (including an in-game cutscene where Gimli drives his axe into an orc's neck and blood sprays towards the camera), "Blood" isn't rated on it on the back of the case. Whereas LOTR: The Return of the King has comparatively little blood (pretty much only from spiders), but "Blood and Gore" is listed on the back. Both are rated T. However, the thing that really did it for me was seeing the rerelease of Diablo II (The battle chest version, I believe. The one in the smaller box) has "Animated blood and gore" listed, presumably because it looks less realistic than in modern games. Diablo II has more blood in it than a cardiac hospital, and unlike Halo, almost all of it is of the red, noticeably human variety. The violence is also listed as "Animated", which is just plain laughable. I realize that the ESRB has a tough job, but they really dropped the ball on that one.

It also shows how that recent law NY put out would affect the ESRB fully and that scares me somewhat.

The article points to a good distinction between debatable levels of "violence" and scenes that can actually be scarring to kids (or frankly even to adults). There are some things I see that I describe as "mind pollution" because certain scenes or images can leave me feeling thoroughly disturbed and wishing I hadn't seen them in the first place.
They make me feel like I need to rinse my brain!...
Movies in particular could use some rating improvement, before we desensitize the next generation too much.

DEFCON- A game about nuclear war where each decision can save or doom ten million souls.
OBLIVION- A game about a fantasy adventure.
One game was rated T, the other M. Guess which.
BTW I'm going on content meant for the consumer by the creator, so no mods.

Yeah, but by that logic, Advance Wars shouldn't be E10+ because it advocates genocide...

I can understand why Halo has a high rating. Shooting someone and having blood splatter everywhere is what it is. Even if that someone is an alien, it's still violence.

I think games like Advance Wars are rated low because they aren't realistic. Imagine what Super Mario Bro's would be like if it were realistic. Turtle guts everywhere, crushed goomba skulls and instead of Mario jumping off the screen he rolls on the ground screaming 'mama mia!' when he gets his face bitten off each time you are defeated by Bowser...instant R rating.

Same with movies, the earlier Starwars movies were PG because the violence got as realistic as a red beam hitting the outside of a stormtrooper's armour whereas Revenge of the Sith was rated M because it had charred hacked off limbs and the such.

So yeah my main point is that i think the ratings are based on the realism of the violence.

Oh and i agree that Dark Knight should have been rated higher.

Halo:Combat evolved was rated "T" until they got word of the Legendary dialogue.

The rating system doesn't make any sense to me. Blood and gore are ok but swearing and nudity are absolutely intolerable.
Is it some American thing that I just can't understand?
I think violence is going to give kids more nightmares than a few bad words.

Meh, I tend to ignore the ratings anyways. They aren't very good, and like the article suggested, make sure you understand what's in the game/movie, either by watching it first or something, then buy it for the younger person. That's my opinion, and well, it really hasn't let me down (except for Hitman when I was about 10... let's not go there).

HEH I'm from the UK, and the foot fetish thing reminded me of the insanity of the ratings system, some guy was knocking out foot fetish movies, and he sent em in to get rated, and they came back PG 'suitable for all ages', so he had to go and add a voice over with lots of swearing so he could label it as adult, lol.

I seem to remember it was in 'Bizarre' Magazine, which I used to read and was just like the fortean times meets loaded.

I thoroughly recommend the movie ' this film is not yet rated' which looks into the ratings system in the US and the huge secrecy behind it. It seems you can murder a hundred people and get a 13 rating, but if a fully clothed woman appears to enjoy sex its a 17. Its a strange idea that you can show men enjoying sex but not women, and that violence is worse than sex.

I guess I can partly agree with that because every day I meet people and think 'damn, there's too many people around, we need to stop reproducing if that's the result'.

I'm suprised The Dark Knight didn't get 14a in Canada, it fits the context for it certainly, it's actually why we have that rating, it's for movies that are darker and scarier than PG-13.

But I agree that Halo really shouldn't be rated Mature, it's a fairy tame Sci-Fi shooter with bursts of colored blood (Spiderwick Chronicles was rated PG, and it had loads of green blood!)

shatnershaman:
Halo:Combat evolved was rated "T" until they got word of the Legendary dialogue.

What dialog is that? The only dialog that seemed out of the ordinary to me was the "I Would Have Been Your Daddy" line.

The problem is that rating art for it's content can somewhat be rather subjective. What's offensive to one person, might not be that bad for another. Other times, you get extremely mature games that feature content that is extremely intensive and atmospheric, but doesn't actually have any objectively offensive material such as blood or curse words.

This is why the government should never be allowed to say what is and is not appropriate for children to see. The government should give information and knowledge to the parents in order to make an informed decision, but it should always be the parent who has the final say on what is and is not appropriate for their children.

Thankfully, the United States does a pretty decent job at this compared to a majority of other first-world countries.

I don't think that the ratings system should be based as something that a robot could do. The content of a game should be more about the general atmospehre, and more on rule of thumb than an exact thing.

I'm thinking of a Eight step system

Infant+
Child+
Child-Tween+
Teen+ (Halo would be here or)
Teen-Mature+ (here)
Mature+
Mature-Adult+
Adult Only

I saw the Dark Knight for the second time yesterday, and yeah, I'd have to agree with you, my little cousin was almost quivering at the Joker.

A 15 rating would sort all the problems out.

Also, a spoiler warning would have been nice.

some random guy:
A 15 rating would sort all the problems out.

Also, a spoiler warning would have been nice.

You mean like MA-15+ like we have in aus?

I am pretty sure the dark night was rated that here but possibly just M which is recommended over 15 but anyone can get in.

I think our movie rating system is great we only have restricted movies occasionally like Kill Bill which are undeniably R rating because of simply gratuitous violence.

I think that it is strange Final Fantasy X got a M rating when Kingdom Hearts with the same level of violence got PG just because it had Disney characters. No game i have played has been rated low for it's violence level in fact i think games are rated to harshly. Even GTA seems a M only to me but i guess the drugs and crime pull it up.

I was referring to the ESRB ratings. A 15 rating would sort out a lot of problems and be the perfect rating for games like Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4.

I agree. The whole ratings system is out of proportion, and no one looks at context anymore.