Insanely Awe-dical

but come on!

Yorkshire Post has an article where the local law enforcement voiced their disdain at the new Reservoir Dogs game where characters are players can willingly torture and kill police officers.

Quote: "It is disappointing to find violent video games on the market that may cause psychological harm to those who play them"

- The idea of ESRB rating is to only allow those of a sufficient maturity level to play games of its nature. Don't let kids play this game -- don't let kids play GTA. It's not about video game violence just as it isn't about MOVIE violence. When you watch a rated R movie, the idea is that you are mature enough to take it and absorb it.

If you allow your 12 year old to go watch Reservoir Dogs, then you are the one at fault, allowing someone relatively more impressionable to watch something gruesome. Same logic applies here - don't let your 12 year old play a game like this if you feel that it is too gruesome.

Quote: "It sends out the message that the police and authority figures are there to be targeted and dispatched, desensitizes people to the idea of killing and undermines normal moral values."

Hello GTA? I remember playing GTA and targeting and dispatching authority figures. That shit has been said left and right already. Get over it. While this game involves relatively more gruesome depictions of torture, the Punisher does similarly gruesome things, all in the name of personal self-pursuit.

To be honest, there was a recent brutal killing of several local police officers in the Yorkshire area, and this article may stem from the traumatic effect of that. Everyone wants to protect their own, and when one's own is damaged, they feel a need to fight against that. If there was a game where Filipinos were mercilessly slaughtered, I might feel a twinge.

Gamespot's Best of 2005 awards "Biggest News" to the Hot Coffee scandal:

When the "Hot Coffee" sex mini-game was first found inside the PC version of San Andreas, released in June, Rockstar Games' parent company Take-Two dismissed it modders' unauthorized tinkering of code. However when the offending minigames were found inside an unalterable, first edition of the original PlayStation 2 game, the Entertainment Software Ratings Board found itself backed into a corner. Unable to dodge the oncoming avalanche of media invective and public outrage, it slapped San Andreas with a retroactive AO for Adults only rating, the kiss of death at retail.

While Take-Two paid a hefty price in the form of the top-selling San Andreas being pulled from most store shelves, the scandal had serious implications for the industry as a whole. It made games a convenient political whipping boy, as evidenced by a series of state laws restricting game sales. It also prompted federal action in the form of the Family Entertainment Protection Act, co-sponsored by Democratic U.S. Senators Hillary Clinton and Joe Liebermann.

If passed, the Family Entertainment Protection will make it a federal crime to sell M-rated titles to minors, regulating game sales along the same lines as cigarettes, alcohol, and pornography. If that comes to pass, the effects of Hot Coffee will be felt not just in 2005 and 2006, but five, 10, or 20 years down the road.

- To be honest -- I don't want my kid playing GTA no matter if it's rated AO or M. To be honest, the M versus AO difference is just between 17+ and 18+, but the stigma of AO takes them off big store shelves, like Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Target. Regardless of sales, yes - punish people who sell kids cigs, alkie, porn and those games. It hurts me to agree with Hilary - initially I thought her stance was just banning those games. Do not simply ban games. We don't ban porn. We have a rating board for a reason - let’s play by those rules and not get all fucking caught up in it.