The Forbidden Video Game Rating 

They said stuff like that in PG movies all the time!

But why?

And undertale also keeps its e10+ rating, even when there's a dog based euphemism for smoking (possibly weed) along with a line said by Burgerpants when the player tells him to "go to hell" in a Genocide run, where he says he can't because he's "all out of vacation days" Yet Deltarune, with only slightly more suggestive dialogue and mild blood (Kris ripping their soul out for blood, and a single titty joke (keep in mind it wasn't made in a sexual manner. It was just saying that bosom means titty) for suggestive dialogue) gets slapped with a T rating, despite there being barely anything in the game that wasn't also in Undertale, except the word piss.

Yes

The ESRB is run by Boomers.

It's funny because Donkey Kong Jungle Beat was the first game to be E10+ lol

​@@JTread2003 I mean yeah that's just TOO much for a 9 year old

And that's also why Smash Bros 3DS/Wii U and Ultimate, both E10+ games, feel nerfed compared to Melee and Brawl - which were both rated T.

Yet ESRB still gave A Hat in Time a T rating.

@@mouthshovel i read that in Scott the Woz's voice xD

i find it odd that the US has 17+ aka M for mature then a AO rating aka 18+ but Pegi doesn't have that extra ratings for adults and instead just has PEGI 18, but what i find interesting is the censorships like with the EU version of the 1st GOW, where kratos sacrifices an undead instead of an actual human (and kratos smiled elsewell) then there's Batman Arkham Origins where in the bank scene of joker being disguised as black mask, when he starts beating Sionis, it just cuts oddly and quickly cuts to joker just kicking him meanwhile the US version has joker hitting him multiple times with a gun to the face brutally and blood comes out in which, makes the pacing of the scene seem natural as well as when it gives a close up shot of batman to give the scene a more intense feeling as batman is not only vulnerable but has no control, then it cuts to joker kicking him multiple times but the EU version had more kicks since a new animation was made for joker kicking Sionis first rather than with the gun.

@@godzillazfriction Hmm, yeah that is strange. I think they’re more lenient when it comes to sex and nudity, meanwhile the ESRB is more lenient when it comes to guns and violence.

I got confused that the games with M rating are 16 in Europe. Look at Battlefield 2042 for examples

There were E+10 Games which were Pegi 12

@@Pearloryx pegi 16 is mostly the equivalent to a Teen rated game

The K-A rating was replaced by E for everyone early into the ESRB's lifetime.

Missed opportunity for "K-A-RT" "Kids to adult rating" 🤷‍♂️

I was expecting to hear this too. I had one game with the K-A rating as well.

I remember my Diddy Kong Racing game having that rating. Was so much fun!

I saw that rating used for game compilations like rare replay (I think that was the name)

by that logic AO shouldn't even exist!

@@cradica AO exists more as a boundary than a rating games actually get

@@joedav67 I remember someone mentioning that he doesn't understand why the AO rating exists since the pervious one (M) is only a year apart which I thought was kind of ironic since the TV rating system only goes up to 17 (TV-MA)

@@cradica I think it’s because AO is similar to the NC-17 rating in that they’re only intended for Adults to watch even though I guess they’re technically not porn. But more on the soft core porn line. For example when that infamous Hot Coffee cheat was discovered in GTA San Andreas it was enough to push the game to AO (albeit temporarily until the content was removed) because not only do you see the characters engage in sexual intercourse despite the lack of actual nudity (at least from what I’ve seen) you also control the sex with the controllers. For NC-17, the ones that comes to mind is the 1995 film “Showgirls” (rated NC-17 “ for nudity and erotic sexuality throughout, and for some graphic language and sexual violence” and the 2011 film “Shame” (specifically rated NC-17 for “some explicit sexual content”). Both have very graphic and heavily realistic sex scenes not to mention a lot of graphic nudity showing full frontal. Showgirls does have an edited VHS R-rated version though which toned down some of the sexual content

@@RB01.10 well for TV it's just one and the same (TV-MA). Now an interesting example is Interspecies Reviewers. The Manga was rated M (which is the equivalent of AO or NC-17) However the anime surpassed EVEN NC-17 levels since it actually was picked up by a hentai company!Yet it was rated TV-MA when it first came out. I remember someone saying TV-MA has potential to reach NC-17 levels levels and even exceed them and after this example I think he's right! Yet in Germany it was only rated 16 (with one 18 episode) . In Australia it was rated MA at first too (but their MA is 15) but later got banned which is interesting because they do have a porn rating (X-18). So it does make me wonder. How do the German ratings compare? However now I'm seeing even hentai titles like "fire in His Fingertips" tagged as TV-MA but also 18+ only. Which is just a contradiction on top of another contradiction. In fact I've seen porn/hentai labeled as being "for mature audiences only" which is exactly what TV-MA stands for (but the age is 17 instead of 18)

This! Absolutely this! I still don't understand that we can have full blown adult oriented movies, books, etc. But God forbid if it's adult video games, for whatever reason it's a fuckin taboo even though it's clear as day that the targeted audience was directly specifically for, well, adults. No kids allowed. And the excuse of "think of the children!" is just dumbass scape goat since no one sane enough would willingly brought Playboy magazine for their kids. If they somehow got those stuff, the blame would obviously on their parents failure of parenting, which they adamantly refuse to acknowledge and instead infuriatingly point their finger at someone else. I think it's due to parents in general, still thinking that video games are just for kids and oblivious of the bigger picture. I saw it with my own eyes an elementary kid asking his parents for GTA V for Christ sake, and they said "okay" and be done with it whatsoever even though they saw that blonde chick selfie loading screen. And the clerk just say nothing of the matters, no info, no context, none! He made profit, simple. The ignorant I swear is deep rooted in this industry.

You can actually make whatever you want on Steam. If a person wants to make a full on sex game they can

​@@ADreamingTravelerThat's a very recent thing, for the longest time Steam had inconsistent objections to sexual games, sometimes allowing it and sometimes not.

​@@komi-samabeliever7319 this idea that "video games are meant for kids" stemmed from marketing putting video games in the toys section rather than home entertainment; there's a couple of Adam Ruins Everything videos on the subject

NSFW video games can be found all over the internet, so I don’t think that should even be a problem anymore. Though for sales profits, video games are much more expensive to produce in comparison to photographed, written, or video recorded media. People are not willing to sell adults only video games because they are too expensive to be profitable enough.

Yeah I got really confused when he kept bring up the government. Like sure the hearing spurred the creation of the ESRB but it's not a regulatory body from the gov.

@@mynameisearl4170 yeah they just may have to answer to said Gov't but sure they ordered its creation & THAT'S FEDERALISM BABY

If we're being being honest, if the government established the rating system themselves games that would've been rated Teen would most likely be rated a Mature equivalent and our Mature games would be banned outright. The ESRB was probably the best outcome we're going to get out of the whole Tompson and Lieberman era.

@@ChunkSchuldinga So we would be like pre 2011 Australia? We already had an R rating for movies, and the government can't ban games, just restrict them to adults.

Didn’t Hilary Clinton ask the ESRB to change it to Adult Only? I heard that she wrote a personal letter for them to change it

Yeah, hatred is nowhere near as violent as say manhunt or mortal kombat in terms of gore. But its reason for getting the ao rating is because its premise and plot is literally some guy literally wants to kill as many people as possible before killing himself, theres no deep lore about not important, hes just a guy who wants to be the next columbine shooter except hes way more deadly. Compare that to a game like say hotline miami which has a complex story that explains why you are killing all these people and explores the mcs mental state and struggles as he goes on all those massacres, that game is just as violent as hatred yet it gets an m rating because the violence is portrayed as a consequence of his actions and isn't a mass shooter power fantasy though if you ignore the story the game could easily be seen as just that.

You know, come to think of it, despite how much more realistic the blood and gore has gotten in later years, and despite how sexual a lot of the games got, much of the violence is pretty cartoonish. I mean, many of the fatalities involved stuff that would be considered special attacks in Pokémon games like lightning, fire, turning into a dragon, ice, etc.

Exactly. There's not much risk of a real person recreating the violence in MK (unless they learn to breathe fire like Scorpion or grow two extra arms like Goro). The violence in Manhunt is something that a real person could actually recreate if they tried.

@@Nobodyimportant85Manhunt had a unique way of showing it too. The executions felt real and weighty. Plus the main character, through his deteriorated mental state, had realistic responses to the murders he was committing. The story and settings were just the cherry on top

Warhammer also has extreme violence but it is shown in a dark fantasy context that’s why it is not AO-rated

Oblivion got an M rating from unused nude models too

Not to mention Witcher 3 which showed frontal and topless nudity if I recall correctly yet that was M too. Also for NC-17, it means no one 17 or under is allowed in unlike R which states you have to be with someone of legal age (some theaters say 18, others say 21)

What’s worse is that most if not all of the Danganronpa characters are high schoolers.

@@twindrill2852 Or, even worse, fucking elementary school students, one of which had a mini game related to her which involved "slapping away" groping robot hands, and then you fight her, but she doesn't take damage, instead, her clothes get ripped off.

@@DanganKai11037 I remember that. What's worse is that they went out of their way to make that child character a victim of sexual abuse.

On the flip side, if the ESRB didn't exist, the government would've stepped in and started regulating what can and can't be in games, which would likely mean games like GTA or even Bully wouldn't even be allowed to exist in any form

@@joedav67 Which would likely cause massive backlash and have the government create an ESRB equivalent just for the sake of not having the blame, and then we're back to zero.

​@@joedav67easy solution. Just don't give the government the power to regulate commerce

​@@joedav67 no bc games fell under expression of speech eventually

It's a necessary evil. It was either going to be the ESRB or a moral panic government in the 90s regulating it.

Conker’s still based on fictional fantasy, they even censored live & reloaded lol.

Mk9 is the crazy one. Every female character had massive cleavage, especially mileena and jade, and add the blood on top of that, the fact it got an m was wild

@@littlemacisunderrated412What's M9K?

Conker is far from the edgiest M-rated game out there, the Rare Replay port didn't even get the Blood & Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, or Sexual Content descriptors, instead getting the tame Blood, Violence, Language, and Mature Humor ones, respectively. They've referenced Nazis in T and IIRC even a few E10+ games, that wouldn't have been problematic for the ESRB. AO is the equivalent of NC-17, not R.

​@@henryfleischer404mortal Kombat (2011)

Hatred is just postal 1 but boring

And is in black and white so blood is as unnoticeable as the rest of the game.

@@barastyr344 basically

​​@@barastyr344ep, just worst version of Postal. Also Postal 2 is far more graphic and offensive than anything in Hatred, yet only has an M rating.

its probably the rationale behind the murdering. basically genocide for all humans which is an F'ed up premise.

I do find it interesting how the first added an E-10+ and then removed EC. NOW WERE BACK WHERE WE STARTED!

Damn

Shadow the Hedgehog was actually originally going to be Teen rated but when E10+ came out around that time they found out they could change the blood from red to green and get the younger rating

Shadow was honestly more of an E10 game then most E10 games now.

Well you’re a Lego fan, Lego Star Wars was the first E10 game and all Lego games after, I think the rating makes sense for them because they tend to adapt “family friendly movies that are actually pretty violent”

Great job, America.

Yeah keep in mind in America we have a culture that largely normalizes violence and specifically gun violence. Like seriously even children play with fake guns and fantasize about being soldiers. So I'd blame it more on our country being weird.

@@henryfleischer404 Yes, the logic was always laughable.

Nudity is roughly as restricted as violence, and sex is as restricted as the most brutal forms of videogame violence. It's pretty equivalent.

@@ChucksSEADnDEAD To a degree sure but there are cases where the esrb was influenced by American cultural biases. To name a memorable instance Indigo Prophecy's sex scenes were toned down only in the u.s version.

For TV they don't seem to have a rating like that. The closest thing is TV-MA

@@cradica There's no way they can have a rating higher than TV-MA like that since it's on tv... The Censorship on television would make it impossible for them to even show anything...

@@gabegreen1744 Hang on a second here!!!! They don't JUST use TV rating on TV! They use them on streaming too! And you can find NC-17 movies on streaming sites. In fact they were even times when TV-MA ALMOST surpassed NC-17 levels. Like with Interspecies Reviewers. It was rated TV-MA for 3 episodes before getting taken off streaming and was eventually picked up by a p*** studio Also even for TV there are paid TV channels that feature more explicit than on normal TV.

@@cradica Ok when I said TV-MA I was talking exclusively about public cable television.

@@gabegreen1744 Okay, but I was just talking about other means of TV watching. Now I do wonder about PPV. I hear on HBO or showtime you can show pretty much anything just as long as it's not penetration.

Yep! i remember that rating lol

But TVMA means 18 ?

@@Pointman11111 there's a difference between that & full on porn. It's used to differentiate them. South Park & "Back Door Sluts 9" are different genres bro lol.

@@MrDmoney156 thank you lol

​@@Pointman11111it's more like an average Strong R Rated movie for television. It was for those 17+ however it had stricter and looser restrictions, depending if you have cable or not. Same with TV-14, but that rating is way looser since lots of strong language and violence are typically allowed

This guy looks like he was born after it first released

I never played it because my mom actually didn’t let me play rated M games lol

That's not a thing here in Aus. Plenty of games get the equivalent rating of R18+ on console like the GTA games.

Depends where you live,here in germany they banned those games on steam. Same for games containing pr0n.

It is nice on one hand, but on the other, it leads steam being flooded by awful low quality porn games (the title is always some shit like thicc gay furry hentai sex butts 3: the dawn of cum)

Elaborate?

@@Double-R-Nothing they'll get banned if they do (singular they ftw)

I just looked up why K-A was changed to E. I always thought customers didn't look kindly on games with the word "kids" right there in the rating, but no... it was a copyright dispute. They apparently wanted to use E from the start, but other companies already used a bold tilted "E" in their logo. They changed it because that dispute got resolved.

That's probably why devs of games like Wild Life just don't bother submitting their games for rating in the first place.

Faxts

Was it good?

@@henryfleischer404 Well, I actually played it and it does “teach” you stuff.

So much pain (quite)

GOOD THING THE RATINGS FOR TV ONLY GO UP TO TV-MA REDO OF HEALER GETS AN 18 + ON BLU-RAY ME: OH NO!!!!

@@cradica TV-AO

@@cycoyote2082 It's funny that Redo of Healer on blu-ray was 18+ when that's already a Canadian TV rating. Even funnier than that I've seen DVD's that says "For ages 18+" but at the same time TV-MA (even though TV-MA is a 17+ rating). Redo is still TV-MA on Hidive (it's censored). Now Amazon Prime DOSE have ratings that go up to 18 and yet even on Prime, Redo of Healer is still TV-MA! I actually do remember someone saying "just wait until the TV-AO", and then came Redo of Healer! It's just like Interspecies Reviewers. It was rated TV-MA for 3 episodes(censored), then it was taken off the air, on blu-ray was re-rated to an 18+ warning screen. Funny enough in Germany it was rated 16, with the only exception being the 3rd episode (the very one that got it take off streaming in the US. In Australia the censored version was, once again rated MA-15+ but uncensored, BANNED! Once again I remember someone saying "program getting taken off the air: adults" and then Interspecies Reviewers was literally taken off the air for that very reason!

Its just a 365 (or 366) day difference :)

The team just released a sequel called “Succubus” and geees its as adult as it gets for every reason u think

_anatomically correct demons_ What does that even mean? 🤨

I remember that one Nathaniel Bandy video where in he showed a mind you, GAMBLING GAME that's Rated E because of I kid you not, "Gaming".

Getting an ultimate team lineup isn't the same as betting one's life savings to try and pay the bank so they won't take the house. True gambling doesn't promise just a fancy cosmetic or team in a game, they want you to believe you'll win big abd become a billionaire.

Ong

im glad someone appreciated that one lmao

Imagine if they made a new Kirby game with an AO rating for ultra-violence & more

@@cycoyote2082I had a dream that the first T rated Kirby game came out and it got the rating because the villain literally kills everyone to ever be in the Kirby series (through a WoL type flash of light that consumed everyone), except for Kirby, who was very injured. The game had you fighting shadow versions of enemies that, once a certain number had been defeated, would become their normal selves in the town. Although it’s also fun to imagine what an AO Kirby game with sexual explicitness being the main reason would be like. I can only imagine what Kirby would suck.

@@grayanddevpdxthat sounds so cool but the last part.. he’s still a kid 😨

@@apple_pi.. technically hundreds of years old

@@grayanddevpdx true but kirby ages differently that normal humans so he's basically a baby/kid and is hinted as a kid in different media.

I've seen the light since thankfully

For your next family movie night You should suggest a Tarantino movie

@@franklindelanoroosevelt9177 Tarantino movie?

Most AO games are basically porn, anyway. Most people have never seen a single AO game in their lives.

@@HydraSpectre1138 Me neither

they discovered virtual crack and got hooked ever since

@@altf5326 it got me hooked (I have all the hoi4 dlc and own ck3 vic2 eu4)

yes

Fr

or -the now dead EC rated games are their equivalent of TV-Y rated shows. -E rated video games are their equivalent of TV-G rated shows. -E10+ rated video games are their equivalent of TV-Y7 and TV-PG rated shows. -T rated games are their equivalent of TV-14 rated shows -M and AO rated games are their equivalent of TV-MA rated shows

@@cradica That’s another way to interpret it.

@@puppymaroon964 I saw someone say TV-Y7 is equivalent to an E but TV-Y7-FV is equivalent to E10+, and TV-MA is just equivalent to M not AO.

In the US MA is still the max for tv

@@cradica That’s also the case for TV in Australia! :)

@Techno-Universal it's funny because in both the US and Australia, Interspecies reviewers was rated MA when it first came out but was re-rated for a Home Video release. In the US it was re-rated to an 18+ warning screen, and in Australia, it was banned, which I thought was interesting because doesn't Australia have an X-18+ for porn? Well in Germany, it was rated a mixture of 16 and 18. So, what are the equivalents between the US and German ratings? because I remember someone saying there's no US equivalent to X-18+.

@@cradica X is a thing in Australia but that sort of content can only be legally sold by adult video stores. Also Australia has always been a bit stricter than the US for ratings.

@@Techno-Universal normally content like that is labeled as "not for sale to minors" in the US. Though it's not exclusive to pornography. As in the case of Interspecies Reviewers. Which is why I thought it was interesting it was banned in Australia. The Manga was said to be tamer which honestly makes sense considering it was rated M which is the equivalent of the normal R-18+ rating in Australia or the AO and NC-17 ratings in the United States. However this doesn't make sense in the case of Germany since it was rated 16 (with only the 3rd episode being 18.) So if it has an 18+ warning in the US and is 18 in Germany does that mean they're not rated the same? Because you'd think they'd be the same but the German 18 is allowed on streaming whereas like I said even on Funimation it was TV-MA.

WHAT

It did catch my eye a while back and almost nought it but decided not to. Though if it's 'special/feature-filled' edition was that close or did get it I would be down to give it a go. Honestly, AO games may be frowned upon by the industry, but to us it's almost an honor to witness them let alone get the miracle of obtaining/playing one. Hatred kind of pushed me away from the game, but hearing that it was rated AO was like a 'Holy Shit' moment to me.

And yet lootboxes were allowed to be in games for kids, the irony is something here, though I do think both of these shouldn't be in games for people under 21.

" Virgin Interactive Entertainment" is crazy😂

I wish you luck in recovery

Speaking of which, how tf did SDR2 not get slapped with an AO rating for "THAT" unused file?

the middle ground between a kid and a teenager