Tycho of Penny Arcade made a pretty sizable ruckus the other day (http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php?date=2005-07-21) pertaining to the distinction the ESRB makes between their "M" (Mature, 17+) rating, and their "AO" (Adults Only, theoretically 18+) rating for video games. Apparently their written distinction is that it's the _length_ of the scenes of violence and/or sex that determine what rating the game gets, and he doesn't like it. Neither do I really, I think it's too vague to be useful as a determination, and can lend itself too easily to circus antics to swing the "offical rating" one way or the other.

For a rating system to be useful, it *must* be applied equally to all the things it's supposed to rate, and in this instance, the circus antics of Senator Clinton and the various video-game haters of America have clearly swung the rating. I present to you a blatant evasion of the smoking gun by Patricia Vance (president of the ESRB) as posted in a Gamespot article today...

From: http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/07/21/news_6129557.html?part=rss&tag=gs_news&subj=6129557

GameSpot: Arguably [Sony Computer Entertainment's] God of War has similar levels of violence and even more graphic portrayal of sexual activity. Rockstar could argue that its Grand Theft Auto has been singled out...

Patricia Vance: I'm certainly familiar with the materials that were submitted to us, and it was rated, you know, as a relatively high M, with a number of content descriptors that indicate the game is inappropriate for anybody under the age of 17. Our action [on San Andreas] was really as a result of determining that the content--the sexual depictions--were the result of the developer creating those depictions and leaving them on the disc, coded not to be accessed by the player. Nevertheless, once they were made available and made accessible, we had no choice but to change the rating.

What this boils down to is that Sony managed to get God Of War (which is by and far more graphically violent than GTA:SA) to market without making too many ripples so that no one would have a chance to make a stink over it, so it got to keep the "M" rating. Manhunt (which is another Rockstar North title BTW) which also has an "M" rating, practically redefines "extended duration" for scenes of graphic violence, since the whole point of the game is to make the violence as sadistic and malicious as possible. In Manhunt, you are being forced to make a snuff flick for pete's sake.

Now, I'm not particularly against graphic and adult-oriented games in the least. Personally, I like playing something with more bite than a damp spongebat when I play a video game, but this business of giving Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas an "AO" rating because a third-party modification drew attention to it is complete and utter bullshit. Rockstar *is* being singled-out because there's been a big media stink, even though there are multiple other titles that the ESRB has failed to rate as "AO" which contain even more graphic content than this.

BTW, if anyone's still stocking the "AO" version of the game, let me know. I won't wait for the price drop--I'd rather buy it without the taint of politics.