ESRB, FUD, and XXX

By Shamus Posted Friday Jun 2, 2006

Filed under: Links 9 comments

Jay Barnson, in talking about the difficulty in rating open-ended videogames, has this to say:

But I think this points out the ultimate futility of games ratings systems for being anything other than a VERY rough guideline for parents. But force of law in the recent epidemic of FUD-fueled legislation? Silly and stupid.

After all, how WOULD the ESRB rate, say, the Star Trek holodeck?

Geeze. I bet Riker has a few password-protected holodeck programs that would make Larry Flynt blush.

He also has some great observations on Oblivion. Read the whole thing.

 


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9 thoughts on “ESRB, FUD, and XXX

  1. Pixy Misa says:

    Ayup. Flower-picking simulator is about right.

  2. Pixy Misa says:

    (Goes back to copying blogs from DoSed server to the one that just has a flaky boot drive…)

  3. Shamus says:

    (Goes back to copying blogs from DoSed server to the one that just has a flaky boot drive…)

    I swear, mu.nu is the website equivalent of the Millenium Falcon.

  4. Pixy Misa says:

    Yeah, well. It’s better than the old server. Hardware RAID-1. Both drives failed at the same time.

  5. I dunno about Ryker, but Lt. Barclay sure must have. We saw a couple of them, in fact.

  6. Shamus says:

    I dunno about Ryker, but Lt. Barclay sure must have. We saw a couple of them, in fact.

    This is why it is always important to clear program history (and mop up) after using the holodeck.

  7. Shamus says:

    BTW: Barclay was my favorite Star Trek character. He wasn’t one of the relentlessly beautiful, talented, highly-motivated super-people. He had flaws. He was far more real to me than most of the main characters.

  8. ubu roi says:

    Yeah, there were times when he was painful to watch, because I empathized with him too much. The one episode where he got to cut loose as a super-genius was funny, just for contrast.

  9. Evil Otto says:

    Gotta agree with you, Shamus… Barclay was the only character with flaws (at least until one achieved the rank of Starfleet admiral and went insane) in the entire series. Most of the rest of the plastic, perfect people never really interested me, and I think it’s one of the reasons I never got into TNG very much. Other than Barclay, the only characters that seemed human were the ones who weren’t.

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