Topic: Videogame ratings can be out-of-whack

[scottws]

My 9 year old stepson wanted to buy Halo: Reach with money he got from his birthday.  I had played the original Halo and Halo 3: ODST and I thought the games were pretty tame for M-rated games.  The aliens are borderline cartoons and there isn't very much visceral, bloody violence or swearing at all.  So I let him get the game.  Jennie wasn't thrilled, but I assured her that the game wasn't that bad and she agreed based on the parts she saw us playing.

Fast forward to last week.  We had gone to Miami for the week of Thanksgiving, and my father-in-law had given my stepson a $50 gift card to Best Buy and my mother-in-law had given him $20.  He wanted to use them as soon as possible, so I took him last week.  I spotted Batman: Arkham Asylum for Xbox 360 and saw that it was a "Player's Choice" game or whatever they call that on 360, where older games that sold a lot of copies are given a special designation and sold at a lower price.  We started letting him get T-rated games this year, so I didn't have an issue with it.  He had watched me play a bit of the demo on PC and liked it.  When I told him if he bought that he would be able to get another game too he was sold and picked it up.

So he wants me to watch him play and I do so.  WTF?!  How is this game only rated T?  It is much darker themed than any of the Halo stuff I've experienced, with Batman and the villains killing the shit out of people left and right and curse words being thrown around like crazy.  I mean, sure, the words I heard were only "bitch" and "ass", but come on when they are in tons of lines it becomes a little much.  I did end up letting him continue to play but I was amazed and constantly found myself wondering how this got a T while all the Halo games got M.

I can't think of any other games where I was surprised by the ESRB designation, but in this case the ESRB seems totally wrong.

[Pugnate]

I have noticed that most of us at OW are like minded in our somewhat conservative form of thinking on certain issues.

I agree with you Scott. Arkham Asylum given a T is pretty surprising.

[Quemaqua]

Yeah, agreed here as well.  The problem is that standards are just sets of rules that don't really get down to the spirit of something.  Arkham Asylum is indeed a very dark game, but "dark" is such a general term and rather subjective.  They just base the ratings on the more concrete elements without really taking themes and presentations much into account.  "Oh look, no gore, no sex, no hard-core swear words," they say, and plop a rating on it, when the game is much darker in context than even a lot of games with more swearing and more gore.

It's good that you're at least paying attention.  A lot of parents don't ever even get to the point where they notice, let alone do anything about it.

[scottws]

Yeah, that's what I figured.  Basically there is a checklist of things that earn a M rating and Eidos and Rocksteady avoided those with Arkham Asylum.

[Pugnate]

I remember being frightened by the two Tim Burton Batman movies as a kid.

There was nothing specifically horrific, but the themes were just really freaky for me to handle.

[sirean_syan]

I think the thing that kept Batman as T, say compared to Halo, is that you're not actually killing anyone. Death occurs, but you don't actively stab/shot/crush anyone. That's a Batman thing, but I imagine that goes a long way for whatever checklist the ESRB uses.

[MysterD]

I'm still trying to figure out how Planescape: Torment got a T-rating, despite all of its emphasis on death; ability to lie your ass off and perform very evil things; commit suicide in the final battle (if you have a specific item and specific skill at a high-level); and other very mature subjects and things.

I think it got a T-rating b/c there's not much cussing at all; no sex; no nudity; and there's barely any blood. Probably the same reasons are why Batman: AA is T-rated.

[Pugnate]

I think the thing that kept Batman as T, say compared to Halo, is that you're not actually killing anyone. Death occurs, but you don't actively stab/shot/crush anyone. That's a Batman thing, but I imagine that goes a long way for whatever checklist the ESRB uses.

Yea I guess that's the thing. When you are creating a set of rules for the purpose of classification, it is difficult to define something as being "dark", when there is no blood or murder, without leaving some room for interpretation.