Welcome to the Nanny State
The day dawns with news of victory. According to the New York Times all proposed legislation of video games have been rejected as unconstitutional. Yes there is usually outcry both from gamers and their antipodal representatives alike, and yes legal battles must be waged, but in the end we're winning. Sort of. As Newton's Third Law states, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and who are you to argue with Newton?
You see rather than contenting ourselves with allowing the government to regulate who can buy which games and where in their plodding bureaucratic style we turn to the industry we support to do it for us. With Manhunt 2 completely off the table for Rockstar Games due to the ESRB's rating of AO (Adults Only), Sony and Nintendo's unwillingness to allow AO rated games on their hardware, and large chain retailer's banning AO rated titles from their stores in spite of the fact that they sell media with far more realistic simulated violence in the very same section of the store, there brews trouble on the horizon.
Despite federal regulation of video games consistently being soundly rejected game designers are feeling the fear, and thus censoring or cutting back on their own content. And can you blame them? If your choices were waste a lot of money on a game that will never be released or release a creatively crippled version of a game in order to continue your existence as a business entity which way would you swing?
At this point the AO rating isn't even being used appropriately. In 1994, when the ESRB was created, the creation of the AO rating in concert with Mature was intended to single out interactive porn. Apparently the ESRB has only handed out this rating about a dozen times within the past 5 years, which while I have no real working knowledge of the rate with which interactive porn is produced, seems a little excessive. Just think about all the mindless sex and violence you've missed.
Keep in mind I'm not ungrateful for our apparently insightful federal judges. I think it's fantastic that (especially now) our constitutional right to explode the heads of virtual gangsters with high powered sniper rifles and committing unspeakable acts with virtual hookers is being protected. Bravo guys, really.
However, because major corporations have been bullied by overly-conscientious and often uninformed peer groups into blocking specific titles from being released I will never get to experience the full glory that is Manhunt 2 or any other number of titles that are currently being picked over with a fine tooth comb for content that might be considered questionable. I demand blood. I demand gore. I demand unspeakable acts of violence. Most importantly I demand the ability to make an informed decision, and not to have someone else tell me or my peers what I can or can't see because they feel it's in poor taste.
