Mysteries

[pompe]

Sometimes I wonder about the little things in life. Like just how computer games are coded for audience. (Or movies, where you can do things like wondering over the cultural dimensions of how say Brokeback Mountain is rated. Try this: France: Unrated, Sweden: 7 , UK: 15, USA: R, Poland: 18 and China: Banned)

If you look at this list, as an example

Comments

[mmcirvin]

In the US, movie ratings are done by the MPAA (a non-governmental industry group) and it's pretty much all political jockeying for the rating that the marketing people think is best for the movie.

Nobody but kids' movie producers want a G rating, and many of them also want a PG so bigger kids aren't repelled, so they'll put in a mild curse word somewhere to get it up to a PG. Anything with even vaguely controversial sexual content or particularly graphic violence is rated R, and nobody but indie art-house types wants an NC-17 (formerly X) so they'll pare down anything the MPAA finds too objectionable for an R.

PG-13 was introduced in the 1980s because the system had effectively contracted into two ratings for the vast majority of movies, PG and R, and there were some action-adventure movies that seemed to fall somewhere in the middle, mostly because of depictions of cartoonish violence. These days it seems to have expanded to incorporate a huge range of romantic comedies and action and horror flicks.

The X rating is an interesting special case: originally, the MPAA intentionally declined to trademark it so that porn producers could just label their movies X and the MPAA wouldn't have to deal with them. NC-17, on the other hand, is trademarked. The issue's pretty much disappeared these days since theatrical distribution of porn has more or less vanished, killed by home video and the Internet.

I assume that similar coding has developed for games, but I don't know as much about it.