How on earth is having a "sexism rating system", which people can choose to look at or ignore, censorship?

Do you also think putting nutritional information on food packaging censorship?

One of those is subjective and the other is objective.

And what exactly constitutes "sexism"? There's disagreement even among feminists.

So what we're actually talking about here is the imposition of a particular subjective view of sexism with the deliberate aim of affecting the perception of and market for certain games.

And being a government program, everyone is forced to fund this social engineering effort via taxes.

So, yeah... Consider it censorship or not, it's still shitty.

Edit: Ninja'd by tremere110! ;)

So many times, which is doubly funny since they're not exactly doing hard-hitting investigative reporting. I mean, I have a small gaming site. I know what press kits are. I know gaming sites receive them day in and day out, filled with information (screenshots and game art to use in writeups about said game, videos, a summary, a Kickstarter link when applicable) about upcoming games. They're not going to stop sending them because a gaming news site isn't populated by their close friends.

The only stuff we ever find out about before we're supposed to tends to come from posts on NeoGAF that these sites then shamelessly "report" on.

Let's not forget that TIME gave Leigh Alexander a platform to spew her hatred against us.

It is when you have major retailers ban games based on that rating system. When the same thing happened for music, Walmart quit selling some titles, those acts may have later been dropped by their record companies and so on.

Clearly the intent of any such rating system is to cause fewer people to buy the "Sexist" rated game, because "Sexist" is wrong.

I don't see anything wrong with the idea of the ESRB (I'm all in favor of products being required to clearly label what they contain so that consumers can make an informed decision).

However I do think in practice the ESRB has resulted in censorship. I've seen interviews with game developers where they were asked questions like, "How come the game has such stupid cartoony death animations?" and their answer was that the publisher wanted a T-rating and due to the ratings board being inconsistent about what exactly constitutes T versus M they had to play it safe. And I don't have any interest in AO games, but the fact that they aren't sold in most retail stores means that developers have to avoid putting certain things in their games if they want the games to be widely available for sale.

And of course there was that case in California where the state tried to ban the sale of extremely violent M-rated games to children, but the Supreme Court threw the law out because the state couldn't even define what would qualify as an extremely violent M-rated game versus a normal M-rated game (currently in the US the ESRB is voluntary and while stores don't sell M-rated games to minors, they don't face criminal charges if they do sell an M-rated game to a minor).

The way things worked out, ESRB ratings create a convenient way for politicians, stores, or whoever to try to restrict games without even evaluating the game on an individual basis. That might not be bad if the ratings were extremely consistent, but they're not (and I don't think they realistically can be consistent when evaluating something creative because there will always be different opinions and interpretations).

That's true too. Kids always want something if they're told it's too "mature" for them. Having said that, if there's an album I want from a band I like, I'll always go for the "explicit" version if such a version exists. I hate censorship on general principle, and it is so very aggravating when songs have bleeps over the curses (or even worse, if the company just mutes the singing during each curse which I find to be even more obnoxious). If they really must sell a "clean" version for children then they should at least rerecord the song with different lyrics so it still sounds like a complete song (I'm sure some bands do this, but the bad examples are more memorable).

Because for a radical feminist fucknut every game would be classified as sexist and let's not talk about T-shirts for men... :p

Because getting the ratings system in place is the first step. The next step is to pressure major retailers to not sell games that get the "sexist" rating. That way developers will be commercially pressured to censor themselves in order to avoid getting labeled as sexist by the ratings board. It shouldn't work that way. It's very subjective what counts as sexism in a game and what doesn't, so there shouldn't be some official board making the decision to effectively prevent games they don't like from being widely available for sale.

It's already bad enough with the ESRB's influence affecting developers' decisions about what they're allowed to put in the game without risking that the game will get a rating that limits their options for selling it. I really don't think we should add even more restrictions and complications onto that. It's fine for someone to make a site evaluating each game and whether they personally think it's sexist, and it's fine if consumers decide to buy or not buy based on sites like that, but there shouldn't be an official designation for games especially if it will limit where games are allowed to be sold.

Totalbiscuit and Game Reviews:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj6jREPcp10&list=UUy1Ms_5qBTawC-k7PVjHXKQ

What else did you expect?

Switzerland's non-technical universities appear to have been overrun by neurotic neoliberal faculty. The only thing that matters to such people is to show how "liberal" they are, it's never about solutions or logical and fair discourse but all about positioning themselves and using the topic at hand as a mere instrument. Their worst nightmare is to be called "intolerant, racist, sexist, backwards" so they'll say anything just so no one can hold any of these things against them. Not realizing that batshit insane level political correctness is the worst offense of all, plus their hypocrisy level is somewhere over 9000.
Why am I disgruntled about that, well for one this nonsense is funded by everyone's tax money and it would be nice to see something constructive resulting from it. I wish for a fair and balanced culture in our educational institutions, not this wanna-be-liberal at all costs crap which in reality has nothing to do with classic liberalism and is highly intolerant on top of that.
Any hillbilly farmer in the deepest countryside could give you more sane answers than those urban progressives (progressive as in progressive brain failure)
I'm worried because there might be quite a lot of young people studying under these misguided professors and they might buy the BS or are already indoctrinated by it, not to the country's benefit I think.

But of course, such an opinion is see as fear mongering and therefor conservative and therefor "bad".
They would have me stand in the corner of shame holding the shame bucket , if they only could.

Ok, yeah... that's not good. But at the same time, I think there does need to be some sort of game rating system. We always talk about how it's the parent's responsibility to keep adult media away from their children, which is true, but how on earth are parents supposed to do that if they don't have something to go off of? Or, conversely, what if someone is really not interested in seeing graphic sex in a game, and wants to know whether game X has it or not? Or graphic violence? Or drugs?

I don't think giving consumers information about the contents of a game is ever a bad thing... well, until it's used to censor content, that is :P

The thing is that the ESRB ratings don't really provide answers to those questions. They're very general, and even when the rating label lists some descriptors for violence, sexual themes, etc. it still doesn't really give a good idea of what will be in the game. For example Mass Effect 1 got "sexual themes" while Mass Effect 2 got "sexual content" despite that the sex scene in Mass Effect 1 showed more (at least from the scenes I saw on my play-through). And there's no way that the ME2 scenes were as explicit as the scenes in Witcher 2, which also got "sexual content."

And most parents completely ignore the ESRB ratings anyway. The parents who actually care what games their kids play will read reviews before buying anything (and that also goes for people who have strong feelings about not wanting to play a game with particular themes or content).

Reading a couple of different reviews and watching the game's trailer give a far better idea of whether the game will contain content that a person finds objectionable. It's impossible to objectively rate creative content to begin with (it isn't like food where the label can explicitly state ingredients and percentages) so it's impossible to fairly and consistently rate all games. The ratings are general at best and certainly are no replacement for looking up information about a game before buying it.

So you think censorship is not so much about the suppression of speech, as it is about giving something a rating based on subjective criteria. So when a reviewer on "Good Game" (a tv show run by the Australian Government on the government owned Australian Broadcasting Channel) gives a game a 2 out of 10 based on the subjective experience of that reviewer, that is censorship now?
I agree, sexism subjective (as are many things), but what has that got to do with censorship?

I have no problem with people saying its shitty because they might have a different opinion on sexism but its not censorship. How do you know the majority of Swedes aren't ok with spending $36k on it? Are you saying because you don't like the idea, they shouldn't be allowed to have that rating system? That sounds a little like… censorship :)

Doesn't Australia have censorship based on the ratings? I've definitely heard of games with M-ratings being forced to censor content or else be banned in Australia. Is this still going on? And why would it be any different if there was a separate rating for "sexism" which was also subject to the same politics as the current ratings system?

So if a retailer wants to stop selling a particular game, for whatever reason, they cannot do so? Are you saying retailers MUST sell all games, whether they like it or not?

What if a game is shitty and doesn't sell? They HAVE to sell it so its not censorship?

What if a retailer doesn't want to sell games that portray racism? They are not allowed to? They can't decide what games they sell because.. censorship?

Personally I think retailers should be allowed to choose what they sell or don't sell. If I think a retailer is refusing to sell a game for a reason I disagree with, I'll go elsewhere, and if I feel strongly enough about it, I won't shop there again. I think the free market works fine that way.

If you want to force retailers to have to sell games they don't want to sell, that's way too weird for me.
Who is saying this rating will limit where games are being sold? Who is saying there will be another step? Why would this rating system prevent games from being sold in certain places? Does the nutritional rating system prevent foods from being sold in certain places? (hint: nope) Why shouldn't the Swedes be allowed to have a rating system if thats what the people they elect want to do?

You're complaint doesn't seem to be with the rating system but with people subsequently pressuring major retailers to not sell games that get the sexist rating. You know that, they could do that anyway, right? Right now, even without a rating system, people could be pressuring retailers to not sell games that are considered "sexist".

The slippery slope fallacy is one thing, but if your complaint is about people "pressuring" retailers to do or not do things, focus on that. Why not wait until the feminazis inevitably try to force a retailer to not sell a game, make a decision whether the retailer should be permitted to sell the game or not, and then complain?

Again, I have no problem with people saying its a stupid rating system. My problem is that whenever someone criticises something, all of a sudden, that criticisms censorship and the people suggesting that criticism should not be allowed, are apparently against censorship.

Personally, I think the rating system would be unhelpful, but its obviously not censorship.