Quote from JeffThat the stupidest thing I've ever heard. If you're arguing about whether or not you SHOULD have a system that already exists, why not discuss why it's there in the first place and express why you disagree/agree, rather than what people are doing now, which is wane intellectual about hypothetical situations that make no sense.
Uhh, well first of all it's not an international system, so if you're just talking about the ESRB it doesn't apply to any non-American members of this forum, which we have plenty of. Keeping the debate focused on the concept of banning games in a general sense makes it more accessible to them.
But sure, let's do that, since my suggestion was apparently fucking retarded. Ratings boards were established after graphics became capable of depicting violence relatively realistically. The federal government threatened to intervene if the industry didn't self-regulate itself, so several ratings boards were created throughout the next year, eventually leading to the ESRB which became the national standard for rating games... so, that's why it exists. The government wanted a system in place, so one was made. That's not really something we can agree or disagree with.
As far as their reasoning for establishing it in the first place, they don't really matter to someone presenting an argument like mine. If someone thinks they should be banned, they're more than welcome to list the reasons why the system already exists, and we'll discuss them, but until someone does that I think I'm allowed to present an argument that isn't based off of them.
The medium's regulation has some serious implications about the perceived susceptibility of people when exposed to simulated violence, almost to the point of implied vulnerability, as if these games can turn innocent, bright eyed kids into mass-murdering psychopaths just through the act of playing them. Games have been used as scapegoats to blame violence on when no other viable reason could be found, as if there even needs to be one. How do these come up if we're only talking about ratings boards?
The things that can be discussed relating to those matters have nothing to do with the system that already exists. I didn't say we shouldn't talk about it at all, I only offered a reason for why it hasn't been mentioned yet: there's a lot more to discuss about the issue. Your insistence that the debate should center around that which doesn't even consider the moral or psychological aspects of the discussion is, in my opinion, a lot more fucking stupid than what I said.