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

-------------------------------------------------------------------

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.

That's sad.

not surprised...
as kids, everyone wants to see cool awesome action fighting, blood, gore and guns.

By no means is the study the final word but does give more proof and shows that kids are big part of the appeal of M rated games.

It has nothing to do with kids liking blood gore and guts..it has to do with kids wanting to feel grown up and "cool"

well yes, thats the half of it. they also want to be like tough men...

which is why you dont see a lot of kids reading romance or comedy, they go straight to action and stuff like that.

I think the reason M games seem to appeal to kids more is because of how many of the high budget, great games coming out these days are rated M, not just because its ZOMG VIOLENCE.

Maybe I'm wrong, but none of the people I have ever known get these games simply because they spatter blood and guts around, but because they are fun. If anything thats only ever been a turn-off for most of the gamers I know, though its negligible to them at best.

Violence and Sex sells.

Then how would you explain the wide appeal of Mortal Kombat back in the day that every kid wanted, especially on the SEGA Gen cause it had blood and gore, Street Fighter II at the time appealed to the more mature gamer who wanted a good arcade fighter, while Mortal Kombat had all the kids gathered around the arcade machines.

and according to some companies (*R) full-frontal male nudity >.>