It has occurred to me since I wrote this, that the ‘conventional wisdom’ has for years held that adults are clueless and kids are in the know with regards to technology. When comparing the tech-literacy gap between myself (33) and my parents (mid-60s) I see this holding true to an extent… but it’s been 30 years since Pong, and we’ve grown up with computers. In the next decade or two we’re going to become the first generation of fully tech-literate middleaged folk; teenagers will just have to discriminate against us on some other basis.

One suggestion would be to put the genre label next to the ESRB rating. This could help categorize games for consumer review, however, (like everything else) there’s pros and cons to this idea and would ultimately come down to the Marketing/Sales department of the company to decide if it would be finacially benficial to make this change/update.

To sum things up, maybe it’s not the rating that we should be reviewing (since we’re adults and we’re not censoring ourselves), maybe it’s a genre that needs to be established. Then, the games could be categorized according to demand and we would look in the right direction for the games we want to purchase.

It’s just one perspective to weigh against the many others out there. One thing I have learned from personal experience is it’s very difficult to find a game my wife likes better than the Marios and Sonics. I feel that a genre of new games based on the classic gameplay would bring in revenue not currently being tapped while keeping programming costs low. Same gameplay, updated graphics and levels, new category of purchasers. In theory, it sounds like great idea, but it has to be profitable.

I like the old school games Mario & Sonic, but I do enjoy Black Hawk Striker and a few others games like it.

There’s no blood and guts in The Dig. No foul language. There is a death, pretty early on actually. I doubt this game would receive anything higher than a T to the ESRB (can’t remember if they were around in ’94), but does that mean it’s best played by teens? Does M for Mature mean all these games are targeted to adults? Doubtful. House of the Dead Overkill looks like complete schlock to me, as does Madworld. That doesn’t make these games bad to those that enjoy that sort of thing, but it certainly doesn’t make the game or the gamer that plays it any more “mature” just because of its rating.

It seems these days ratings have become the measuring stick for the audience, when it really should just be a guide. It took a while for the MPAA ratings to do that; no one would say that an R rating means ONLY adults can enjoy or understand the movie, just that any other audience should be cautioned by the content it contains. Still, the audience that actually wants R rated movies are those that technically can’t see them, i.e. adolescents. Guess who are the ones that clamor for M rated games? An adult can enjoy all sorts of content no matter what the rating, but it seems an M rating does not equal adult tastes.

Katie, I feel your pain. I’m not a woman and I agree (and game similarly) to your all points.

I got out of playing video games when they started to all be fighting and killing games. I.e. the ones where most girls resort to ‘button mashing’. I love Nintendo games because they appeal to my desire to play a more technically simple, aesthetically pleasing (bright colours!) and peaceful games.

I’m certainly not trying to speak for all women, but I imagine a great deal of women (who still enjoy playing video games) would feel the same. We’re not the target audience for systems like Xbox, but Nintendo has a following.