Should more games be rated AO?

[Final-Fan]

The following is taken from a post I made on this thread:

Final-Fan said:

I firmly believe that Gears of War should have been rated AO.

I mean, the secondary function of the default weapon is a chainsaw that spatters blood all over the place. Not to mention curb stomping.

I greatly enjoyed this game but it is full of graphic violence. AO should not become relegated to things the ESRB sees as "perverse" the way NC-17 is for movies. I mean, Saw I, II, and III all got R ratings, which is frankly ridiculous.

Those movies and their ilk are nothing but tributes to moviegoers' apparent thirst for gore and sadism, and for those to not be given the highest rating the MPAA can dole out is just an admission that the ratings system is corrupt. Saw actually started out as NC-17 when it was shown at the Sundance Film Festival; when they wanted to distribute it to theaters they cut out a few bits (Wikipedia describes the difference as "minimal") and got it re-rated to "R".

Gears of War is just the most famous and obvious example, off the top of my head, of a game that perhaps should have gotten the maximum rating the ESRB can give out, but didn't.

I can sympathize with game publishers not wanting to be trailblazers on this particularly dangerous path. I don't shop at Wal-Mart even once a month, but I understand what a blow it is to not be able to sell one's game there. However, when the simple fact that a game receives an AO rating is enough to cause instant death, and all 3 console makers say that there is no place on their systems for AO games, there is a serious problem that can only be dealt with in three ways:

1) Sensible people in various parts of the industry point out that blacklisting all AO games will just encourage developers to make games just barely within the M rating, possibly by means of pressuring the raters, thereby debasing the ratings system and potentially hurting the whole industry;
2) Cowardly people everywhere fail to point out the above;
3) Admit that the AO rating is already radioactive beyond redemption and drop it altogether.

The only reason to keep a rating around that never gets used is for people to be able to defend the violence in their games by saying, "Well at least it's not bad enough to get THAT rating!" That is short-sighted, because eventually people either get wise to the deception or forget that the 'boogeyman rating' even exists. It is also bad for consumers, because it becomes harder to distinguish the level of actual violence, etc. in the media in question.

Example 1: Die Hard 1, 2, 3 vs. Saw 1, 2, 3: both R. Someone going by the rating might think that there is a comparable level of graphic vioence in these sets of movies. That person would be very wrong. Also: The latest Die Hard was rated PG-13; there is wide consensus that they calculated the level of violence to fall just under what would earn it an R. This idea, applied to video games, is repugnant to me.

Example 2: Halo, Halo 2 vs. Gears of War: both M. Someone going by the rating might think that there is a comparable level of graphic vioence in these games. That person would be very wrong.

Do you agree or disagree? Would you like to expand on what I have said? Do you think it's already too late to 'save' the AO rating?