Tag Archives: age

Oblivion rated Mature

4 May 2006

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Ok – I’m all for video games getting an age rating and that kids need to be that age in order to buy the game! I’m all for that, really! But when stuff like this happens, I get outraged!

According to the Washington Post the ESRB has now changed the rating of Oblivion; The Elder Scrolls to Mature which means: “suitable for persons ages 17 and older. Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language”.

Isn’t that a bit extreme?

And it also seems like they’re blaming Bethesda for the nude patches created by the gamers themselves! That’s just ridiculous! I actually do understand that hidden sex games is a problem, but when gamers themselves are creating stuff – it’s just wrong to blame the game developers! Shame on them for inspiring creativity!

Where would technology be today without the wonderful creativity of horny geeks?

Update: Guilded Lillies knows far better than I what this is all about! They give a great account about what this is all about! I still think the ESRB is overreacting, but I also agree that Bethesda should know better after the Hot Coffee incident and I’m not comfortable with them using words like ‘hackers’.
It seems like the discussion has focused on the modding and not the ‘blood and gore’ dilemma. I would love to find out what ‘blood and gore’ was presented to the ESRB and what they’ve now recently found that’s offensive. And if the problem truely is the nude modding, should the X-Box version of the game not stay on Teen as there are no modding capabilities there?

Bland day part 2

20 April 2006

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Oh, I knew this was coming! I just knew it! And darnit for not blogging my predictions to prove to you that I really knew this was coming!
Clickable Culture has a story about Korean mothers helping their children powerlevel, because being a part of the game and being good at it means so much within the social circles of these kids! It has everything to do with respect and acceptance so if they’re stuck, affectionate mothers come to their aid! I swear…it’s not long before we’re going to be asked what we play and how good we are at playing in job applications and probably even for schools! I’m not sure if I think it’s a good or bad thing. I don’t want to force people to play games – and I kinda feel like that’s beginning to be the case.
Before Christmas I had a conversation with a very conservative and very important business man who incidently is also a father of a nine-year old (in all honesty I truely respect and admire this man, but he’s the exact opposite of hippie, if you get my drift). So we talked about what kind of games he could buy for his son, I suggested Narnia (because I knew both he and I were hardcore The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe fans). But he looked at me sceptically and said “But my boy is smart! He gets things other kids don’t get!”, which kinda threw me off guard because even I was looking forward to playing Narnia! He continued to say something like, “No, I’ve been thinking about getting him World of Warcraft. I think it’s crucial that he develops cyber social skills and he will be quite challenged from a gaming perspective!”. This blew me away! Yes! If I’m explaining this messy, let me say it another way! This guy wanted to buy World of Warcraft for his 9 year old son because he found it crucial that his kid learn and know such cybersocieties! I was just flabbergasted!

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