DaMan1500 said:
What's not okay is the ESRB trying to prohibit people from buying certain games, which is where most of the gamer frustration comes from.
The ESRB is a non-profit extension of the ESA, which is the gaming lobby group in this government. At no point does the ESRB prohibit people from buying certain games. Regulations have been put into place so that games that are too graphic for certain audiences and thus receive an M-rating cannot be purchased by audiences that are not yet 18. The same goes for movie ratings, as many have pointed out in this thread, not allowing those under 18 into R-rated films.
The ESRB is not and cannot be an end-all, be-all perfect system. The most gruesome, violent, naughty, etc. bits of a game are brought before the ESRB, not the entire game. They make their ratings off of only a small portion of the whole. They only suggest audiences because they don't have any other power than that of suggestion. Many of the anti-gaming crusaders, such as Hilary Clinton and Jack Thompson, have moved toward more rash actions, trying to force the ESRB to play through EVERY cut scene and EVERY bit of content in EVERY game (Think about how many hours of content games like, say, Fable, have, then add on extra hours to play through every single different combination of moral paths you can take). They also wanted to completely remove the ESRB in general in favor of an easier to understand system of Red, Yellow, and Green stickers on the box as labeling.
The moral of my story here is this: The ESRB is not meant to tell you what you can and cannot buy, but rather warn the consumer of the products features and suggest an audience that it would be suitable for. Whatever happens after that is not their responsibility. Places post signs explaining the ratings (because T for Teen and M for Mature are obviously that hard to understand), but that's about the end of it.
