Misanthropy

Okay, stuff has been building up in my mind and now it’s time to voice my opinion. First thing up, ESRB vs NIMF.

The ESRB is an indepenedent agency that rates video games, much like the MPAA rates movies. The ratings for videos are similar to those of movies as well. NIMF is the Nation Institute on Media and Family, which essentially is a cloaked conservative, religious fundamentalist pushing group of idiots. They publish a “report card” annually on the ESRB’s effectiveness at rating games and keeping children safe from the horrible evils of porn and violence; essentially everything the world is compromised of when they reach adulthood. NIMF report card is here. ESRB response here.

The gist of it is that NIMF failed the ESRB, claiming their ratings and practices are inadequate and deceiving. I actually watched this hearing on PCN the other day and it was quite amusing. The driving force behind NIMF and every other person crying foul over game ratings this year is of course the Hot Coffee Mod for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Basically there was some code within the game for “sex minigames”. Yes, kids probably shouldn’t be exposed to that. But here are the facts regarding the situation that no one seemed to even consider because they were all to busy crying foul and trying to be heard and win the attention-whore of the year award.

This Hot Coffee fiasco-sex-stuff is, was, and will only ever be accessable on the PC version of the game through a patch created by a 3rd party. All it does is allow access to hidden, dormant, unused code in the game. The code is also in the console versions of the game however, for all intents and purposes, you can’t patch these and thus no one who has a console version of GTA:SA will EVER see the sex scenes. God himself could not access this if he played the game. Millions of copies of the game were sold for the console vs the… what? 5? copies sold for the PC.

The ESRB had no way to know this content was even in the game when it was rated. The MPAA doesn’t review movies and the edited film clippings that were removed from the movie to give it it’s final rating, right? Same concept here.

I won’t discuss Rockstar’s ethics in this. Personally I don’t give a shit if they left the code in or not. Millions of programs - no. EVERY program in existence has code in it that no one can or ever will access. So shut up already.

NIMF is trying to censor games, violence, sex, whatever they deem inappropriate for the family. The ESRB is a ratings group, not a censorship group. They did their job.

All the retailers who pulled the game? Idiots. Kill your revenue and drive consumers away, that’s fine with me. Wal-mart not wanting to sell “pornography” to children? Once again this statement is invalid, incorrect and preposterous. As stated before, no one purchasing or owning the console game will ever be able to access the sex scenes and thus for all intents and purposes it does not exist in the game.

Some political people accused Rockstar of peddling porn to children. Talk about blowing things out of proportion. Once again the code was not meant to be seen by anyone and is only available on the PC version via an unauthorized patch for the game.

Let me start at the top here. First the game by default has a Mature Rating which means 17 years or older. An Adult Only rating means 18+. One year means absolutely nothing to teenagers as far as their maturity. Everyone knows it, shut up about it. Second, there were more than the fair amount of parents, I’m sure, complaining that they bought this game for their kids and were appalled about the revelations of in game, inaccessible sex. One article I read that stands out was some grandmother filing lawsuit against Rockstar because, and I quote, “If I had known there was sex in the game I wouldn’t have bought it for my 14 year old grand-son.” She also went on to admit she knew the game had a mature rating, for 17+. Right there you’re doing bad parenting but because you feel guilty you’re trying to place blame elsewhere.

Tons of kids have this game and you can’t buy it without being 17. So the obvious point here is that parents either don’t care, or don’t have a clue. If you don’t have a clue you shouldn’t be having sex and producing off-spring and filthifying the gene pool. Don’t practice what you wish to hide from your children.

It comes down to this. As a parent, do your job. Got it? If you can’t do your job, then you can’t bitch when your “shocked” to discover things aren’t perfect in the world. There’s no point in shielding your kids from sex and violence. You know what this really does? It makes them ill-equipped to face the real world when they have to. They’ll be naive, stupid, un-educated. Worse? Their peers will ridicule them and they will hate you for it. And there’s good chance they’ll be come twisted, demented, serial killers or child rapists at the same time. All because you were too ignorant of life and reality to raise your kids.

Am I biased? Maybe. I have no kids, and I like video games. I won’t let my younger brother (8) play this game though, mainly because he doesn’t need to learn the foul language. He’s aware of violence in the world, and he does have some games that may not be the best but he’ll be better suited in life then the rest of the bible-beaters who home school their children and shield them from reality and try to create this fantasy world around them that everything is nice and dandy.

And don’t even get me started on the fact that violent video games cause children to become more violent. It doesn’t. There’s plenty of research saying it doesn’t. Just because your agenda doesn’t have any supporting facts, just because you don’t like the truth doesn’t mean it’s not true and ignoring it doesn’t make it untrue.

Family value groups need to disappear. There’s no place for religious based moral and ethical values in politics and any kind of rating systems for any kind of entertainment. This is not a suitable tool for parents to use because it does not allow parents to think for themselves. It only allows them to slack on the job of parenting which is another story.

After all, the bible is a work of fiction.