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HappySqurriel on 16 April 2009
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Words Of Wisdom said:
Onyxmeth said:

You're also going about it all wrong. It isn't the game that is Mature, it's the audience that should be mature to handle the images and gameplay of Madworld. I still don't get why people can't grasp this concept.

The problem has been around for a while but the release of the Wii pretty much set it on fire.  

You see, a couple years back gamers saw the HD consoles (360/PS3) getting vastly more M-rated titles while the Wii was slated for a lot of E-rated titles.  Consequently, the Wii fanboys were mocked by PS3/360 fanboys and told their games were for kiddies.  Of course, they resented that treatment and responded in kind by bashing M-rated games in the form of saying that they're actually immature (completely ignoring the purpose of the actual ratings).

Today, this has grown from a simple flame war into a mindset.  People who put so much effort into bashing games rated Mature a couple years ago have drilled that mentality into themselves.  Now they look down on games rated mature and will often take time just to bash them on that rating alone.  Although, hypocrisy kicks in nicely every time a game rated mature is released for the Wii in some of those posters.  They'll be happy to brag about having mature rated games on their platform of choice while bashing mature rated games on other platforms.

Meanwhile, the people who called the Wii's games kiddie still hold that opinion though they're not as vocal as they used to be (at least on vgChartz) as they tend to get banned a lot faster than the above group.

 

You can actually still see a slight resemblence to the original flamewars in a post from above in this thread: 

Esa-Petteri said:
melbye said:
Like every other game were the main purpose is violence for the sake of violence it's juvenile

And every game with cartoony graphics is made for little kids?


Anyway, there's your history lesson on why there's so much debate around M-rated titles.

 

It actually pre-dates the Wii by several decades ...

When the ESRB was formed (primarily in response to the outrage caused by games like Mortal Kombat) they created a rating system which closely resembled the rating system put in place for movies decades earlier. There has been a very long standing criticism of the movie ratings system that "Restricted" are designed to appeal primarily to the testosterone driven insecure teenage boys that are supposed to be prevented from seeing the movie. Until recently, very few serious dramas ever received a "R" rating, and even then there is a clear distinction between the mature movies which require the "R" rating to explore their subject and the movies that push limits to attract an immature audience.

Basically, movies like Slumdog Millionare are certainly designed to appeal to a mature audience while     Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay is certainly designed to appeal to a very immature audience ... The maturity of the content is not determined by the rating, and a lot of the most immature content receives the highest ratings.