Well. A lot of games say mature but just have some humor you would see in middle school like Conker's Bad Fur Day. There are tons of games that don't need an M rating on it.
Playstation 3 to Wii Story
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BanjoPickles1
- Posts: 1321
- Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm
Playstation 3 to Wii Story
Agreed. One of my favorite games is Final Fantasy VI. It always had the fantasy element, sure, but it also had strong characters and a powerful(for the time) plot and pacing. It didn't need some four-hundred pound guy with a gun that doubled as a chainsaw saying "s**t" alot(I've heard the game is amazing and I want to try it but it doesn't strike me as mature). Personally, as far as movies go, I would consider the movie "The Iron Giant" a much more mature movie than anything Michael Bay has done! I'm sorry but I don't think a). blood, b). swearing, c). nudity, or d). raunchy humor are going to make your game "mature." Granted, the 360 and PS3 will be the home to many "hardcore" gamers(what the he** is a hardcore gamer anyway...somebody that sits in his parents' basement at 29, still playing True Crime: Streets of LA?) who are only willing to play the "Mature" titles(as the moron from Harold and Kumar would say.....EXTREEEEEEEEEEME!!!) Don't get me wrong, some of those games are cool, but I'm not going to limit myself to only playing games that are a certain rating because I feel like I should only play those games...I'm sorry, I'm not interested in that level of "cool."
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Adamant1
- Posts: 2088
- Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm
Playstation 3 to Wii Story
[QUOTE=BanjoPickles]Agreed. One of my favorite games is Final Fantasy VI. It always had the fantasy element, sure, but it also had strong characters and a powerful(for the time) plot and pacing. It didn't need some four-hundred pound guy with a gun that doubled as a chainsaw saying "s**t" alot(I've heard the game is amazing and I want to try it but it doesn't strike me as mature). Personally, as far as movies go, I would consider the movie "The Iron Giant" a much more mature movie than anything Michael Bay has done! I'm sorry but I don't think a). blood, b). swearing, c). nudity, or d). raunchy humor are going to make your game "mature." Granted, the 360 and PS3 will be the home to many "hardcore" gamers(what the he** is a hardcore gamer anyway...somebody that sits in his parents' basement at 29, still playing True Crime: Streets of LA?) who are only willing to play the "Mature" titles(as the moron from Harold and Kumar would say.....EXTREEEEEEEEEEME!!!) Don't get me wrong, some of those games are cool, but I'm not going to limit myself to only playing games that are a certain rating because I feel like I should only play those games...I'm sorry, I'm not interested in that level of "cool."
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Heh, ironically enough, my current favourite game, as mentioned in the "best game of 2006" thread, Tsukihime, has both blood and nudity by the buckets (fairly mild on the swearing - only instance I can remember is the hero screaming "you f***ing bastard!" at one of the villains after said villain had committed some particulary gruesome actions, including eating an innocent passer-by alive) and certainly deserves it's rating, but it's the powerful story that drives the game and keeps you playing (and takes up most of the time anyway - the stuff responsible for the rating is a fairly small part of the game, it's just pretty extreme [I]when[/I] it's there), and that story is mature in the good way - a truly touching and sad tale of people who have lived through a greater hell than you'd wish upon your worst enemy, and their meeting with people who genuinely loves them... it's a beautiful game, and the story wouldn't work nearly as well without elements that push the rating to the top of the scale - as an example, the gruesome murder described above is what finally convinces the hero that he hates this guy so much he's willing to murder him with his own hands. It's not just some random act of violence thrown in for no reason, and this is not a story about some cold, emotionless soldier who guns down an entire army without batting an eyelid.
[/QUOTE]
Heh, ironically enough, my current favourite game, as mentioned in the "best game of 2006" thread, Tsukihime, has both blood and nudity by the buckets (fairly mild on the swearing - only instance I can remember is the hero screaming "you f***ing bastard!" at one of the villains after said villain had committed some particulary gruesome actions, including eating an innocent passer-by alive) and certainly deserves it's rating, but it's the powerful story that drives the game and keeps you playing (and takes up most of the time anyway - the stuff responsible for the rating is a fairly small part of the game, it's just pretty extreme [I]when[/I] it's there), and that story is mature in the good way - a truly touching and sad tale of people who have lived through a greater hell than you'd wish upon your worst enemy, and their meeting with people who genuinely loves them... it's a beautiful game, and the story wouldn't work nearly as well without elements that push the rating to the top of the scale - as an example, the gruesome murder described above is what finally convinces the hero that he hates this guy so much he's willing to murder him with his own hands. It's not just some random act of violence thrown in for no reason, and this is not a story about some cold, emotionless soldier who guns down an entire army without batting an eyelid.
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MrCHUPON
Playstation 3 to Wii Story
I personally perceive the problem as the insistence that "mature" is the appropriate euphemism for "not suitable for the young or squeamish." Someone cited the example of Conker as having "mature" humor that was really "immature" - bathroom humor. That the ESRB uses "M for Mature" doesn't help the misconception, though changing it now may be counter-productive.
I also think that while Sony isn't necessarily targeting the younger market entirely well in this generation, I'm not entirely sure it has to... yet. I know that's not the root of the debate, but it's interesting to think about how much it's succeeded with the Playstation 2. There was a great article on gamesindustry.biz a while ago - I think it was last year - that supported Kutaragi's outrageous claims of, "We want you to work extra hours to pay for the Playstation 3" with a two-pronged attack: the Playstation 2 continuing to scoop up the mainstream and the Playstation 3 paving the way for the new generation.
This may be a poor parallel, but sometimes I like to think about how it compares to video cards for the PC. Granted, PC hardware refreshes at an astounding rate (quite often it's merely every six months before a new revision bumps up the clock speed, memory size, or pipeline count in a card), but think about how ATi and nVidia attack the market with their flagship, high-end cards. Then think about the fact that their biggest sellers are the mid-range, $200-and-under cards.
Of course, all PCs play PC games, whereas the Playstation 2 and Playstation 3 play different games... until you factor in the fact that Playstation 3 is backwards compatible with Playstation 2, and PCs with midrange cards have a much tougher time playing the "new, next-gen" PC games (let's leave Vista and DirectX10 out of the equation for now). Unfortunately for Sony, people have decided to move onto Wii, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 development - leaving the Playstation 2 with great titles like God of War 2 and little else. Otherwise, it would have been nothing short of a great business move to support itself with its proven Playstation 2 market while telling the world, "Yeah, we've got the biggest balls in the industry right here" with the perceived powerhouse that is the Playstation 3. I suspect the company is still trying to do that, but I don't know that I see any new titles for the Playstation 2 to support my suspicions.
Ok, sorry for going off topic ...
I also think that while Sony isn't necessarily targeting the younger market entirely well in this generation, I'm not entirely sure it has to... yet. I know that's not the root of the debate, but it's interesting to think about how much it's succeeded with the Playstation 2. There was a great article on gamesindustry.biz a while ago - I think it was last year - that supported Kutaragi's outrageous claims of, "We want you to work extra hours to pay for the Playstation 3" with a two-pronged attack: the Playstation 2 continuing to scoop up the mainstream and the Playstation 3 paving the way for the new generation.
This may be a poor parallel, but sometimes I like to think about how it compares to video cards for the PC. Granted, PC hardware refreshes at an astounding rate (quite often it's merely every six months before a new revision bumps up the clock speed, memory size, or pipeline count in a card), but think about how ATi and nVidia attack the market with their flagship, high-end cards. Then think about the fact that their biggest sellers are the mid-range, $200-and-under cards.
Of course, all PCs play PC games, whereas the Playstation 2 and Playstation 3 play different games... until you factor in the fact that Playstation 3 is backwards compatible with Playstation 2, and PCs with midrange cards have a much tougher time playing the "new, next-gen" PC games (let's leave Vista and DirectX10 out of the equation for now). Unfortunately for Sony, people have decided to move onto Wii, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 development - leaving the Playstation 2 with great titles like God of War 2 and little else. Otherwise, it would have been nothing short of a great business move to support itself with its proven Playstation 2 market while telling the world, "Yeah, we've got the biggest balls in the industry right here" with the perceived powerhouse that is the Playstation 3. I suspect the company is still trying to do that, but I don't know that I see any new titles for the Playstation 2 to support my suspicions.
Ok, sorry for going off topic ...
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