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Before I dive into this discussion, promise me one thing, that you'll be thinking along the way with some of your own opinions and not feed off of the responses you may get for this thread, because this topic is too big to answer in one post.
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Well, I think that the violence in video games isn't a brand new topic to hear about, because you will find the same exact thing happening throughout our world and it has been this way for centuries past, and centuries to come. What bothers me the most about the banning of video games over violent content is how the politicians are able to fix a problem like pixels colored red on the television screen in front of your child, but they're unable to fix the many real life deaths that occur everyday in areas like Africa, Vietnam, the United States, you know, the places we're living in as humans. That's what bothers me, is how they're focusing on fixing something as little as a video game when they were supposedly running for presidency to rid our countries of poverty, violence, and get it back into a state of peace, and fairness.

The sexual content in video games rarely ever happens as far as the Hot Coffee code, but if you were talking about the various "revealing" clothes that designers love to put their female characters in, then I would worry about that even less. Our elders [as teenagers] were doing the same exact thing that we were doing at this age, scoping out our hormones and killing our curiosities. People admit in interviews all the time, as they were young they would try to steal their parents' playboys just to look at them. Compare that to watching someone with something as far as a bikini on the screen, and you've got nothing to worry about. Besides, there have never been any games sold in stores on public racks that had anything go farther than a whole shirt off on either gender, so what's the problem there? They couldn't get rid of Maxim magazine along the way?

Now, language...we all know that everyone has cursed at least once in their life, and it didn't even have to be a curse word either, it could've been just something mean plain and simple. A word is a word, and something as far as a word being used (because we've all heard them so much in our lifetime to know what they mean, thus building up a good tolerance towards them) and so just saying something isn't going to hurt anyone. Besides, there are plenty of other ways to offend someone, by let's say, using racial slurs, public embarrassment, mental abuse, so no, I highly doubt that a curse word would affect our youth, seeing as how we hear it on a daily basis in our lives.

Basically, what if politics banned war instead of video games? What if they banned domestic violence before video games? How about banning poverty, identity theft, or anything else, thus putting it all to a complete halt before banning a little video game? I'm just saying, there are worse things that could happen...

I'll start by saying that it should be the parent's decision but there has to be a way for parents to know whether a game meets a standard of theirs or not. Parents can't decide if a game is appropriate for their child if they don't know about the game.

I don't think excessive sex, violence, language, etc.. does anything to improve a game. I don't think it's needed anyway. The sex in GTA? Is it really necessary? That's like when they make some horror films with extremely excessive gore with little to nothing deeper than that as far as the story or actual Horror (fright, fear, terror, etc) goes. Does that really improve anything or is it just over the top and redundant? Only when it is extremely excessive and/or takes away from other elements of the genre it is over the top and redundant.

I think in plenty of games excessive sex, violence, language, etc.. is redundant. Not all of them but some do.

@Zombicide: The average number of gamers is actually lower than that. Most if not all kids play video games and own consoles.

There is no real sex in any GTA game. The closest thing was that sex mini-game which was a downloadable mod. God of War did have a sex mini-game, but the camera panned to another part of the room so it was ok I guess.

Now Manhunt2 did not have sex in the game, so why was it threatened to be a AO rated game? Was it the blood and violence? No because these are tons of games without an AO rating with blood and violence. Was it the dark story? No because again, there are many games who have dark stories like Kain and Lynch. Was there sex? NO. So I don't see why the original version of the game cannot just be a M rated game.

Sometimes, I wonder why the ESRB was even created in the first place, cause obviously, it's currently waste of tax payers money if parents are still bitching and complaining about the violent game they bough Little Jimmy for his stupid ******** tenth birthday.

ESRB was created because parents bitched about having not having a ratings system to keep kids from playing violent games back in the 80s/90s, games like Mortal Kombat, which kids pumped endless amounts of quarters in from guess who...

Well then, now that a rating system is in place, all we need to do is broadcast it to the parents of America, thought the ESRB. Then the parents can take responsibility, or punish Little Jaime for playing violent video games, cause we now have a rating system that tells gamers what's violent and what's not.

Ten Years later, I see Little Jimmy asking his mom if he can buy Gears of War, God Of War, Saints Row, and And Grand Theft Auto: Vice City(Greatest Hits Edition), and him mom saying, "Well of course honey!"

See the Problem?

Here, lemmie esplain it.
Either:
1)The ESRB is not doing a good enough job of labeling games E,T,M,AO, or whatever the ******** comes next, which they are, the label takes up a nice sized chunk of box art, thank you very much.

2)The gov. isn't taking a big enough role in making it harder to for Jimmy to get his hands on Bloodfest: The Inferno. Either tell Wal-Mart to quit being such selfish jackasses and ID the ******** people, or make it even more illegal to sell M+ games to kids.

Or

3)Parents. Yeah, I said it, Parents. ********, you get so ******** angry when you see some little alien blood or here the word, "Damn" in you child's video game, yet you never take any responsibility when blaming somebody, especially if YOU bough the damn game in the first place. Don't blame the Developers, they aren't selling the game to minors, that why there is a sticker on the front of the box that tells you who the games for and why the game's for the certain age group, and also why Wal-Mart (should) ID you for legal purchase of the game. And don't bring up that, "My child brought it himself," bullshit. ******** monitor what your child does with his ******** money. You don't let him/her go to the corner and buy crack, and then blame the crack dealer do you? No, you ******** kick the child's a** and take away all his/her LIFE, but when it comes to violent video games, oh no, it's the person who made it, it's all THEIR fault.


stare

Ok, Longest Rant ever for me......

I don't doubt that one bit. wink

All I saw was "inside view" and "sex side".

ROFL

Yes, I thought of oral after I read what I wrote.