A woman, a Jew, and a politician’s son walk into a video game store — stop me if you’ve heard this one before. . .
Sylvia Smith has an article entitled Video game ratings draw senators’ ire. Evan Bayh is apparently disgruntled because a video game entitled Manhunt 2 was given a “mature” rating when apparently the Senators think it deserves an “adults only” rating.
“We have consistently urged parents to pay attention to the (board’s) rating system. We must ensure that parents can rely on the consistency and accuracy of those ratings,†they wrote to the president of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board.
“They” in this case refers to Senators Bayh, Clinton, Lieberman, and Brownback. Umm, hello? What part of “Manhunt” is confusing to parents?
If they wanted to be nannies, maybe they shouldn’t have run for the Senate.
Funny thing about “consistency” is that apparently Manhunt 2 was held to higher standards than its predecessor, and thus had to end up less explicit to earn the same rating.
Joshua: True. The actual kills, at least in the Wii version, are pretty much invisible to the player.
Besides, the difference between the M and AO ratings is one year (17+ vs. 18+) – except for the fact that most stores won’t carry AO titles since AO is pretty much exclusively given to games with sexual content. It’s a form of subtle censorship.
Then again, all this isn’t surprising – Bayh, Hillary and Holy Joe are birds of a feather in the game-censorship department. This is why I’m in favor of a gamers’ lobby in Washington, independent of the actual game companies.
Of course, mom and dad can sign for little Timmy to get blown up in Iraq at 17. I wonder what Lieberman, Clinton, and Bayh think about that…