So he started by writing an awful, ridiculous article about Mass Effect being marketed to underage teenagers. Penny Arcade ripped on him. Then, he wrote another one, responding to the outcries from the “Gamer-Nerds”, condemning the ineffectiveness of the ESRB rating. In the finale of the trilogy, he apologized for not getting his facts right, and realized that the ESRB rating does do something.
I refrained from spreading this because I thought it was ridiculous. Then he apologized, so I guess it’s all good? The man’s got the right idea of keeping adult contents out of underage hands. I do sincerely think we need voices of oppositions in our society in order to maintain friendly tensions to propel us to the next level. But please, research your facts, throughout, before you speak out. This is very lasting damaging effects in mis-informing people. Someone not familiar with the issue would read the first post and just take it as is without doubt.
In any case, I still can’t agree with writing on such topic without even playing the game yourself. He based his judgment solely on YouTube videos, as well as conversations with his “gamer friends” (one would wonder if he considers these friends of his “gamer-nerds”?). He argued that you didn’t need to experience what a strip club has to offer before making a judgment about it, but this argument is flawed. A strip club has only one function. You know what goes on. Video games have all different kinds. You don’t really know what a game offers unless you actually play it.
In any case, I am not completely against government censorship, other than the fact that it will adversely affect development cycles. ESRB is not perfect yet, but I would love for ESRB to be so effective that we don’t need to waste our government resources to police video games. That would be ideal.
