Ratings That Make No Sense To You? (ESRB/MPAA/Etc)

[Tanis]

Playing SMT4 (3DS) and wondering how this got a 'M: For Mature' rating.

I'm just not 'seeing it'.

Maybe I've played one too many 'God of War' games, but it just seems so...tame so far.

Any other games/movies/music that got higher/lower ratings that confused you?

 

[Creator002]

Fable Anniversary in Australia.
Fable: The Lost Chapters is rated MA15+ (restricted to 15 years and over).
Fable:Anniversary, which is the exact same game with updated graphics and smartglass integration) is rated R18+ (restricted to 18 years and over).
The reason? A brothel in the game. The same brothel that was in the Lost Chapters game.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Playing SMT4 (3DS) and wondering how this got a 'M: For Mature' rating.

Easy, like most of the series, SMT4 has quite a few references to sexuality, both in the dialogue and in the visual design for some monsters[footnote]Let's face it, Mara is a tentacled dick on a chariot.[/footnote].

And if there is anything that makes a game skyrocket right into an M rating, it's anything sex. Well, at least in the US and some other countries. The PEGI rating for SMT4 is 12+ in most European countries, which is equivalent to a T rating in the ESRB.

 

[Flathole]

Why do "serious" first person shooters- like Calladooty, Medal of Honor, Battlefield- games that are based (loosely) around real world weaponry/techwank, politics, countries, ideologies, and people (mostly Americans(FUCKYA), Muslims, and Russians) CONSISTENTLY get the same ratings as, say the Halo games, which are practically as clean, sterile, and disconeccted from reality as Mario or Kirby games? Hell, at least Resident Evil and God of War games don't have gameplay/plotlines that can be summarized by "America saves the world by genocide, every other country is shit."

It almost seems like the ESRB has no fuckin' clue what they're doing and are just happy to have a job.

 

[Chairman Miaow]

Well I just watched Justice League: Flashpoint paradox, and it involves an alternate universe where a child is brutally murdered with broken knife, alternate Batman is an alcoholic vigilante who brutally murders the criminals, somebody else gets stabbed through the leg with broken rebar, a guy gets shot through the head and it lingers on the gory hole showing you the man who did it, lightning strikes, setting somebody on fire leaving them brutally scarred. It's seriously fucked up, and it's a PG-13.

 

[SilverLion]

In New Zealand Mad Max has an R18+ rating which is the Kiwi equivalent of NC-17. And I don't mean The Road Warrior or Fury Road, I mean the first one where apart from a guy getting shot in the knee and implying that a man will have to cut his foot off nothing really happens. And on the other end of the scale Beyond Thunderdome is only rated PG.
P... G... ... ... ...
I'm not sure exactly what was going through the minds of our rating boards when they classified these movies, but now I'm pretty sure that Mad Max 5 is going to have people sawing other people's heads off with sharpened carrots and it'll be rated G for the whole family!

 

[mduncan50]

Playing SMT4 (3DS) and wondering how this got a 'M: For Mature' rating.

I'm just not 'seeing it'.

Maybe I've played one too many 'God of War' games, but it just seems so...tame so far.

Any other games/movies/music that got higher/lower ratings that confused you?

Blood, violence, swearing, sexual themes and partial nudity. There's also that little issue of the SMT series delving into the darker side of the world's religions and covenants with demons and the like, that are probably left out of the hands of younger children.

 

[mduncan50]

In New Zealand Mad Max has an R18+ rating which is the Kiwi equivalent of NC-17. And I don't mean The Road Warrior or Fury Road, I mean the first one where apart from a guy getting shot in the knee and implying that a man will have to cut his foot off nothing really happens. And on the other end of the scale Beyond Thunderdome is only rated PG.
P... G... ... ... ...
I'm not sure exactly what was going through the minds of our rating boards when they classified these movies, but now I'm pretty sure that Mad Max 5 is going to have people sawing other people's heads off with sharpened carrots and it'll be rated G for the whole family!

I would guess that setting would have something to do with it, since Mad Max takes place in a world that is identifiable as our own, though with society beginning to break down, while the others all take place in an exaggerated "other" world that could be on a different planet if we didn't know the story from the first movie. "Sci-fi violence" or "fantasy violence" tend to be looked at as less serious because they are further removed from real life violence.

 

[CaitSeith]

Why is SMT4 M-rated? This is the reasoning from the ESRB:

Spoiler: Game spoilers, I suppose?

...some attacks result in blood-splatter effects. Blood is also depicted on the screen or in pools on the ground. One scene depicts a room with a large pile of corpses in the background. During the course of the game, some female demons wear outfits that expose their breasts or buttocks; other demons have phallic-shaped heads or torsos. Descriptions of demons sometimes include sexual references: "It ravishes women while they sleep, impregnating them" and "They visit sleeping men and have sexual intercourse with them." The words "sh*t" and "a*shole" appear in the dialogue.

OT: I think the definition of mature games is what makes little sense to me. Teens can play and understand the themes and scenes in most of the M-rated games out there.

 

[Fox12]

Playing SMT4 (3DS) and wondering how this got a 'M: For Mature' rating.

I'm just not 'seeing it'.

Maybe I've played one too many 'God of War' games, but it just seems so...tame so far.

Any other games/movies/music that got higher/lower ratings that confused you?

I assume it's the giant penis monster you can summon, veins and all. It's literally the only explanation. Atlus isn't Nintendo, they don't seem to care about western sensibilities when it comes to sex.

OT: Dark Souls. There's a naked spider lady, I guess, but you don't really see anything. It seemed like a pretty tame game, all things considered. Unless "fucking depressing" merits a mature content rating on the back of the box.

The one that confuses me the most is when a film gets a pg rating or higher because of "thematic material." What does that even mean? Your film is inappropriate because it's about something? The heck?

 

[chadachada123]

Why do "serious" first person shooters- like Calladooty, Medal of Honor, Battlefield- games that are based (loosely) around real world weaponry/techwank, politics, countries, ideologies, and people (mostly Americans(FUCKYA), Muslims, and Russians) CONSISTENTLY get the same ratings as, say the Halo games, which are practically as clean, sterile, and disconeccted from reality as Mario or Kirby games? Hell, at least Resident Evil and God of War games don't have gameplay/plotlines that can be summarized by "America saves the world by genocide, every other country is shit."

It almost seems like the ESRB has no fuckin' clue what they're doing and are just happy to have a job.

This ties into what I was going to say, but I believe it has much, MUCH more to do with the presence/amount of blood than the themes, to try to make it more objective despite how silly it looks.

OT: Perfect Dark (64). Aside from saying "hell" and "*****", and having a very tame amount of blood when compared to even modern T-rated shooters, it got stuck with an M rating. Hell, even the ESRB only lists "animated blood" and "animated violence" as its content descriptors. There are probably some E10+ games that have more of either.

 

[lacktheknack]

The one that confuses me the most is when a film gets a pg rating or higher because of "thematic material." What does that even mean? Your film is inappropriate because it's about something? The heck?

For example, "The Conjuring" is rated R. James Wan didn't like that, and tried to ask MPAA what he could cut to lower it to a PG-13. Their response: "You can't. It's too intrinsically disturbing." Demonic possession and a family being brutally terrorized by unseen forces are inherently upsetting ideas to many people, especially young kids. Even though there was surprisingly little "objectionable" content in the movie, MPAA decided to remove it from the hands of young kids and teens because it's incredibly dark subject matter.

This happens to a lot of demonic movies, actually. "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" was rated PG-13 because of thematic content, even though there's no real scary violence (beyond wall-scratching) that I can remember (although it's been a long, long time) and much of the movie was courtroom stuff, but because demonic possession upsets people, it got elevated. Heck, I remember hearing that the original "Exorcist" was threatened with an X rating of all things because of - and I'm not making this up - a scene where the girl crawls down a set of stairs backwards.

Basically, "thematic material" refers to material that is inappropriate for young children even though it's not easily classified into the usual categories of "sex", "violence", "profanity" or "terror". Unless you want them to have a bunch of additional categories like "contains verbal familial abuse" or "advocates suicide" or "contains possession".

 

[Bob_McMillan]

I don't understand how you can't trust someone who can drive, a person who is pretty much responsible for his or her life and the lives of their passengers and fellow drivers, to watch a gory/sexual movie.

So really, any 18+ only rating is stupid in my eyes.

 

[Vausch]

"The King's Speech".

Rated R because he let out a string of "fucks" and "shits". No sex, no violence, no suggestive content, yes it takes place during a war but no graphic images are shown.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail had worse in it and it was PG. Yes that was before PG-13 but my point still stands.

 

[Fijiman]

It will forever baffle me that a game like Ratchet&Clank(the first one at least) got a Teen rating while Shadow the Hedgehog got away with an E10+. No, I don't care that it was a sonic game, Shadow swears pretty frequently and they purposely made it dark and edgy.

 

[FPLOON]

Basically, "thematic material" refers to material that is inappropriate for young children even though it's not easily classified into the usual categories of "sex", "violence", "profanity" or "terror". Unless you want them to have a bunch of additional categories like "contains verbal familial abuse" or "advocates suicide" or "contains possession".

But, the MPAA is starting to add in more descriptive reasons for why a specific movie would get a specific rating... like a movie getting a PG-13 rating due to "biblical violence" or a movie getting a PG rating due to "an accident"...

And I just realized that both of those ratings went to two different bible-esque movies of 2016... Huh...

OT: Dream Drop Distance is rated E10+ for "fantasy violence"... despite the fact that during a cutscene within the Tron Legacy world, the words "damn" and "hell" are uttered and its not mentioned within the game's [general] ESRB rating... Meanwhile, when Chain of Memories came out for the Gameboy Advance, it was rated E for "fantasy violence" and "mild language" with the latter reflecting on the one time a certain character says the word "hell"... *heavy sigh*

Other than that, I'm still confused about how Halo 5 got a T rating unlike the previous 4 Halo games... I mean, is it still the same game, just less intense in its depiction of language and/or violence?

 

[JCAll]

Playing SMT4 (3DS) and wondering how this got a 'M: For Mature' rating.

I'm just not 'seeing it'.

Maybe I've played one too many 'God of War' games, but it just seems so...tame so far.

Any other games/movies/music that got higher/lower ratings that confused you?

Probably the child rape and cannibalism plotlines.

Anyway, I've always wondered how some of the RPGs that came out during the PS1 era got away with T ratings. Everyone was sort of aping Final Fantasy in seeing how far they could push the line back then, so I have to assume it was just because the graphics were too shit to be considered graphic.