"IGN: Rated M for must have." Guess Mature games really are for the kids.

[MaxwellGT2000]

Rated 'M' For Must-have

New research shows mature ratings make games more desirable to kids.

by Ryan Geddes

March 2, 2009 - Mature ratings on videogames are designed to keep age-inappropriate content out of the hands of children. But the very act of designating some games as mature makes them desirable to young people, according to a new study on the effects of videogame ratings.

Researchers at the University of Michigan and VU University in Amsterdam studied 310 Dutch children between the ages of 7 and 17. The participants were shown made-up game descriptions and then answered a survey about how much (or how little) they wanted each fictional game. The games with the most mature content, which the researchers refer to as "forbidden fruit," were consistently more desirable for the participants, the researchers found.

"Although the Pan European Game Information system was developed to protect youth from objectionable content, this system actually makes such games forbidden fruits," the researchers concluded. "Pediatricians should be aware of this forbidden-fruit effect, because video games with objectionable content can have harmful effects on children and adolescents."

The results of the study are published in the March issue of the journal Pediatrics (via the Chicago Tribune).

LINK: http://ds.ign.com/articles/958/958301p1.html

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This goes along with a lot of what I've been saying for a long time, a lot of people throw around the M rating as if it's makes them mature and makes different consoles more geared towards adults, when typically parents don't care about the M ratings and will buy games for their kids anyway, which personally I'm 100% for because I think ratings and censorship is rather pointless and parents should govern their own kids not organizations or the government itself.

I myself played M rated games when I was really young, I had parents that knew what I was playing, made sure I knew that I shouldn't do those sorts of things in real life, but from a perspective of a kid you just like seeing things explode and see things get beat up, like the slap stick comedy of the Looney Toons kids like watching violence and therefore like playing it as well. 

I do believe these developers know kids like playing these games and make them more outragous because of it, now does that make the game and the console it's on more mature?  Hardly.  More games with adult appeal are in the Teen and E for everyone catagory, ala Guitar Hero, Wii Fit, Brain Age, etc.