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[Paul Eres]

What guidelines are you going by here? All the guidelines I'm aware of place M and R at the same level, as well as AO and NC-17 (Basic Instinct originally received an NC-17 rating, by the way).

Also check out this quote from Wikipedia:

The AO (Adults Only) rating is seldom awarded; in the fifteen year history of the organization and thousands of products rated, only twenty-one titles have officially earned and kept the rating.

So are you really saying that only 21 of the thousands of games rated by the ESRB in the span of 15 years have had content similar to that of an R rated movie?

sort of: i'm saying that some (but not all) of those 21 games' content, if they were in movies, would probably get R rather than NC-17

also it's not a particularly good defense of how these ratings work to say that only 21 games have gotten AO ratings -- if anything that shows just how bad the self-censorship is in the industry (in terms of how much variety of content it prevents from being made). compare with the number of movies that have X / NC-17 ratings

[C.A. Sinner]

That's quite the slippery slope you've got there...

It's not a slippery slope at all. My point was that censorship is censorship regardless of whether the content being censored suits your personal idea of "good taste" or not.

EDIT: reworded to make my point clearer

[Christian Knudsen]

But that's not what you said before:

things that make a movie get an R would make a game get an AO.

If that was really the case, there would be a lot more than 21 games with an AO rating, since a lot of games have similar content to R-rated movies.

EDIT: This was in reply to Paul.

[Paul Eres]

@c.a. sinclair - yep, that's the entire point of free speech; to protect speech that most people feel is not worth saying, not to protect speech that everyone agrees is good to say

@christian knudsen - i feel as if it's more of a spectrum, you're thinking of it as if i literally meant "pg-13 = M, R = AO", but think of it this way:

- "R" allows a wide range of "offensive" content in movies, there are all kinds of reasons to rate a movie R
- similarly, "M" allows a wide range of offensive content in games
- there are many things which would get either a game or a movie placed in M or R
- but there are things which would get a game placed in AO, but would not get a movie placed in NC-17 (instead the movie would remain R), such as extended sex scenes with nudity

[Christian Knudsen]

you're thinking of it as if i literally meant "pg-13 = M, R = AO"

Of course that's what I'm thinking when you literally said:

things that make a movie get an R would make a game get an AO. M is really much more like PG-13.

But I agree with your revised argument...

[Christian Knudsen]

That's quite the slippery slope you've got there...

It's not a slippery slope at all. My point was that censorship is censorship regardless of whether the content being censored suits your personal idea of "good taste" or not.

EDIT: reworded to make my point clearer

I know and I agree. Just teasing a bit...

[Paul Eres]

things that make a movie get an R would make a game get an AO.

That literally means "R = AO". But I agree with your revised argument...

i didn't say "all things" there, just "things" -- it's only untrue if you thought i meant "all things" by "things"

i also think there are some things which would cause a game to get rated M and a movie to get rated PG-13, even though most of the things that cause a game to get rated M would cause a movie to get rated R. for instance, if the word f*ck is used in a game, it gets an M rating, whereas it gets a PG-13 rating (the equivalent of the T rating for games) if used in a movie

[Christian Knudsen]

things that make a movie get an R would make a game get an AO.

That literally means "R = AO". But I agree with your revised argument...

i didn't say "all things" there, just "things" -- it's only untrue if you thought i meant "all things" by "things"

Nope. You didn't say "some things" or "some games" or "will sometimes make a game get an AO". You literally said "the things that make a movie get an R will make a game get an AO". That's the same as saying "R = AO". This is what I mean by you revising your argument. If you backtrack any faster, you'll end up going back in time...

[Paul Eres]

now i think you're just being contentious on purpose -- if i said that i meant something, even if i worded it in a way so that you or a general audience would read it to mean something else, i don't really see how you can argue that i *actually* meant what you thought i meant rather than what i thought i meant. that's now how "meant" works

now you could argue that i said something and meant something else, that's fine. i'm not saying i was perfectly clear in what i meant or that i didn't exaggerate, i'm just saying that what i *meant* has remained constant throughout, even if how i expressed it wasn't clear

[Christian Knudsen]

now i think you're just being contentious on purpose -- if i said that i meant something, even if i worded it in a way so that you or a general audience would read it to mean something else, i don't really see how you can argue that i *actually* meant what you thought i meant rather than what i thought i meant. that's now how "meant" works

now you could argue that i said something and meant something else, that's fine. i'm not saying i was perfectly clear in what i meant or that i didn't exaggerate, i'm just saying that what i *meant* has remained constant throughout, even if how i expressed it wasn't clear

I'm being contentious? You clearly write something, then when I try to argue against it, you claim you didn't mean that in the first place (which is fine) and that I'm wrong for reading it that way (which isn't fine)? Whatever...

Welcome to 1867, Paul!