ESRB and Censorship: The bane of Fallout

[Immortalkickass]

With the Child Killing mod already out, I guess this mod will be a staple in every TES/Fallout game, since ESRB won't allow a game to be released if its children can die. Child Killing is not even the right term, since the mod basically just removes the children's invulnerability. So this got me thinking: Have common sense gone right out the window? I'm starting to hate ESRB and their stupid policies. Banning 'Child Killing' is like banning all knives and blade tools just because they can be used to harm humans.

Also, this is a form of censorship, on a game already rated as Mature. IMO, here is the stupidest part: YOU DONT HAVE TO DO BOTH. The M rating is the filter to prevent children from accessing it, censoring said content then disqualifies the product to be rated as M. It happens a lot in movies too. A show is rated 18SX, yet has all the steamy scenes deleted. Its freaking stupid. Plenty of games don't deserve the M rating, like fighting games labeled as 'violent'. Fallout 4 has the 'strong language' label. Seriously? I didn't hear a single F word in the whole game. Whereas NV have Boxcars, FO4 have.... I don't know, Cait? If you want to go for the full Irish stereotype, might as well make it authentic.

And while Child Killing is branded as evil, somehow cannibalism is okay. Fallout 4 is already too clean. No rape, no torture, no slavery, in a world without law & enforcement. But its okay, its just a game right?

Maybe Beth just handled the Child Killing thing poorly. I mean, in a world where almost every named NPC is attackable, 90% of them cannot die. If Beth didnt want them to die, why make them attackable in the first place? If Beth make them unattackable in FO5, watch the Beth fanboys cry about the lack of freedom as if it wasn't like that already.

Here is a quote: "Submitting to censorship is to enter the seductive world of 'The Giver': the world where there are no bad words and no bad deeds. But it is also the world where choice has been taken away and reality distorted. And that is the most dangerous world of all."

 

[Spacemunkey]

I don't even know why they bother with kids in the game at all, tbh, it's not like they're ever going to make them killable; well unless they happen to be squires in the BOS.

 

[dopezilla]

Who is behind rating and censoring media in America anyway? I feel like conservative forces have a tight grip on the entertainment industry there. I grew up in the Netherlands, and I've seen my first titties on television when I was eight years old, and it was a children's programme too (some Swedish movie about a dog or something, I forget). I've seen my first vaginas and penises on public television too, and I'm pretty sure those things didn't leave me scarred for life.

What's weird to me is that stuff like blood and gore and other gruesome stuff is never really censored out of anything, but anything relating even slightly to sex is. Who makes these decisions, and why? What is the morale behind all this?

Also, the whole unkillable kids thing pissed me off bigtime. If you can't kill 'em, don't put 'em in the game. Morrowind didn't have kids, and it never bothered me I couldn't kill them, because they weren't there to begin with. Also, did Fallout 3 have kids? I only remember New Vegas kids and I haven't ever played Fallout 4.

Anyway, why would strong language be a reason to change the rating of a game/movie/series to 18+? I never got the whole big deal about the F-word and whatnot. Maybe that's just me being Western European and all, though.

Oh well, I guess we'll just have to deal with stuff like this when it comes to American AAA+ entertainment. I've gotten used to it too. I just sometimes wonder what's behind it all.

 

[Izak]

Who is behind rating and censoring media in America anyway? I feel like conservative forces have a tight grip on the entertainment industry there. I grew up in the Netherlands, and I've seen my first titties on television when I was eight years old, and it was a children's programme too (some Swedish movie about a dog or something, I forget). I've seen my first vaginas and penises on public television too, and I'm pretty sure those things didn't leave me scarred for life.

What's weird to me is that stuff like blood and gore and other gruesome stuff is never really censored out of anything, but anything relating even slightly to sex is. Who makes these decisions, and why? What is the morale behind all this?

Uniformed ultra sensitive white parents make up the majority of people who rate stuff for the ESRB and MPAA, they generally don't have a wide enough sample space to rate entertainment fairly and they rate sex as being worse than violence because they've been desensitised to gore and such; I couldn't tell you why they're afraid of sex though, they're probably the same people who censored Anne Frank's diary.

Also, the whole unkillable kids thing pissed me off bigtime. If you can't kill 'em, don't put 'em in the game. Morrowind didn't have kids, and it never bothered me I couldn't kill them, because they weren't there to begin with. Also, did Fallout 3 have kids? I only remember New Vegas kids and I haven't ever played Fallout 4.

Fallout 3 had a shit-ton of kids, don't you remember little lamplight?

 

[dopezilla]

Fallout 3 had a shit-ton of kids, don't you remember little lamplight?

Oh, yeah. Wow. How could I forget? Just goes to show how memorable the game was. Or how terrible my memory is. Probably the latter.

Uniformed ultra sensitive white parents make up the majority of people who rate stuff for the ESRB and MPAA, they generally don't have a wide enough sample space to rate entertainment fairly and they rate sex as being worse than violence because they've been desensitised to gore and such; I couldn't tell you why they're afraid of sex though, they're probably the same people who censored Anne Frank's diary.

Gonna google me some information on that. Seriously, they censored Anne Frank's diary? That's insane.

Edit: so far google tells me Otto Frank was the one who censored the diary in the first place, and there's some angry moms who can't handle their children reading about labia, but I can't find anything about there recently being any censoring going on. You have some sauce?