GTA: San Andreas sex scandal

[A Black Falcon]

Plus, I've SEEN this hidden content. (The news has a habbit of being shocked at lewd content and then SHOWING it to everyone over and over again.) It's poorly rendered models that resemble nude women in the sense that the brain has the amazing capacity to recognize forms even when they aren't there. It's as largely inoffensive as a naked cartoon character (though Ren and Stimpy did get pretty disturbing at times...).

Yeah, based on those screenshots ... well, let's just say that thanks to GTA:SA's not exactly fantastic graphics engine it's not like you're seeing much. I guess it's the principle of the thing, but if that's so, then what about The Sims... or...

Now onto another matter. Apparently the solution is, what, giving it an A rating? Adults Only? Um... ABF makes a great point. This is NOT a first in gaming. What about Leisure Suit Larry's... entire series? Penny Arcade made an interesting point on this too. They say that, after reading the descriptions of M and A, the only discernable difference is the length of time the adult content is experienced. To what degree they ask? As they pointed out, many M games involve contant violence for hours on end. How many more hours constitutes an A rating exactly? Leisure Suit Larry involves constant minigames with the end goal being "having sex with the hot foxies, we wear tight pants to show our bulges!", and this can last for hours on end as well.

Very good point here. Leisure Suit Larry provides the perfect example... nudity, sex, etc, much better graphics than GTA... it's ingame material you're meant to access... yet it gets an M, while this gets an AO?

I think the only explanation is that the ESRB is pandering to the politicians. I mean, it's not like this kind of content hasn't been in M-rated games before... yes, there is definitely a degree of randomness with some of their scores, but this just doesn't make sense. It looks to me like they're giving in to the critics who say that the AO rating should be used more often... but they just do not have a point. Let's compare to film. R does have limits on what it can show, but they're much higher limits than M-rated games now seem to have... if GTASA's new rating was reflected in movies there'd be a massive number of currently R-rated movies that should be getting relisted to NC-17...