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PlayStation (Games) XBox (Games) Entertainment Games

How Important Are Mature Videogames To The Industry? 58

Posted by simoniker from the triple-x-it-up dept.
Thanks to GamesIndustry.biz for its editorial discussing whether the market for 'Mature'-rated videogames is really that significant, following "EA CFO Warren Jenson's announcement last week that the company is working on a videogame based on Francis Ford Coppola's classic mafia movie The Godfather. The resulting game is expected to be EA's first foray into publishing M-rated... titles for several years." But the editorial argues: "Mature games, although certainly a popular theme with the stock market, are still basically a hot topic because of one franchise - namely Rockstar North's Grand Theft Auto titles." It goes on to point out: "M-rated games accounted for only 11.9 per cent of videogame sales in the USA last year in total... despite this, publishers are rushing headlong into making mature games, believing that emulating the success of Grand Theft Auto is just a splash of blood and a bucketful of swearwords away."
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How Important Are Mature Videogames To The Industry? More

How Important Are Mature Videogames To The Industry?

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  • EA wants a piece of the pie... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by splerdu ( 187709 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @08:16AM (#8608387)
    Sure it's only 11.9%. But if GTA accounted for 90% of that 11.9% that's a lot of sales. Fact is there aren't many popular M-rated games.

    Might be better than duking it out with the hundreds of other titles.

  • Only 11.9 per cent? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kidbro ( 80868 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @08:20AM (#8608400)
    Yeah, cos we all know that 11.9% of $35.8 billion [216.239.59.104] is next to nothing.

  • Gamers are getting older (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fozzmeister ( 160968 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @08:23AM (#8608405) Homepage
    Just like on TV there are kids films (for kids) there are Family Films (something for everyone), teen flics for teens, and things like The Godfather etc, so it will be natural that as the Gamer covers more and more of the age range, some games will be made that target those different areas

    • Re:Gamers are getting older (Score:5, Insightful)

      by raygundan ( 16760 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @03:34PM (#8613277) Homepage
      Very true, but I suspect that "gamers get older" has very little to do with the popularity of "mature" games. ("mature" is a bit misused, here, i think...) In fact, I would go so far as to surmise that these games are most popular with teenage boys. I don't think overwhelming bloodiness is the way into the pocketbooks of actual adults, except by way of their children.

      What do adults play in stupendous numbers? Bejeweled, The Sims, Myst, and Mario Kart.

      You're not going to catch your parents opining over the lack of realtime 3D evisceration in their games. I will, of course, continue to get a good laugh out of the gibs in quake, though.
  • Chances are that the same people who already don't understand solid game design are the same people who think blood and curse words make best sellers. All that's likely to change is why they fail, not so much whether they fail.

  • I don't think they're important at all. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mantrid ( 250133 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @09:06AM (#8608540) Journal
    I'm not sure that I've ever bought a game based on its rating; well perhaps in the Mortal Kombat days it was interesting to see what all the fuss was about, but those days are long past. Only how fun the game is matters, and I must confess it must look decent for me to be interested as well, but I wouldn't buy or not buy a game based on whether or not I could see a decapitation or some T&A.

  • 'Mature' Games? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by chendo ( 678767 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @09:36AM (#8608779)
    As most of us know, at least 90% of the internet is porn, therefore adult games would sell well- huh? Oh. Mature games. Nevermind, carry on.
  • I for one LOOK for the M rated games. I hate playing E (for Everyone), I like a little naughtiness, a little blood, a little violence, a little sexual innuendo.

    If I see two similar games, and one is rated M, and one is rated T (for teen) and I have no other research to go on, I will pick the M rated one.

    But whatever happened with the A-O rating? I still haven't found any games (in the US) for PS2 or GameCube (I don't have XBOX) that is rated Adults-Only... of course I haven't been frequenting the porn s

  • counter-productive (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bigbigbison ( 104532 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @10:00AM (#8608989) Homepage
    I think it is safe to say that for the most part, the only people that buy anything based on the rating is people the rating is allegedly designed to prevent from buying it in the first place.

    That is to say that the only time i really cared about ratings on anything was when I was a kid. Now certainly not all kids actively seek out the forbidden fruit, but I can't really see an adult saying "I'll buy this one because it's for mature people!"
    • ...but I can't really see an adult saying "I'll buy this one because it's for mature people!"

      Oh really? Maybe you should look harder.

      I'll bet that the game's content rating can be a rather important factor when purchasing a game... and I don't just mean as a deterrent.

      The distinction between 'adult' and 'kid' is quite blurry. And age will only approximate that... poorly.
      • Could you give me an example? Seriously, I really can't see that happening. I'm just speaking from personal experience, but I do not remember ever looking at the rating of a game before I bought it. If adults do look at the ratings when buying games for themselves, I would be interested in knowing why and reading some examples.
    • I can't really see an adult saying "I'll buy this one because it's for mature people!"

      There are plenty of "adults" who've never gotten past the mental age of 13, and still feel the need to prove that they're not kids any more.

      I don't have a cite for this, unfortunately, but I recall reading an interview with someone in the game industry who said that even though Shigeru Miyamoto's games are great, he doesn't play them because he's not a child.

  • Same goes for movies (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Hungus ( 585181 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @10:03AM (#8609014) Journal
    I was unable to find any definate statistics as for percentages of movies made. average box office sales etc unfortunately. I can say that no R rated movie is in the top 20 highest grossing films of all time [boxofficemojo.com] nor was there one for 2003. [usatoday.com] yet appearently the majority of movies released are rated R. You can also find teh listing of top movies as adjusted by inflation here [the-movie-times.com]

    • Re:Same goes for movies (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      yea none are in the top 20 (yet) but matrix reloaded is number 21 and passion of christ will finish in the top 10.

      Also argueably some of the BEST movies of all time got and R rating. The Godfathers, Shawshank Redemption (top two movies on imdb not personal peference)

    • I found a study (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Hungus ( 585181 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @12:08PM (#8610503) Journal
      After having posted a couple of hours ago I came across this study of movie ratings and box office sales. [geocities.com] It is a geocities site, but that aside it is well documented. To quote from it:
      An Analysis of Film grosses


      Do film ratings effect the box office success of a film? Theoretically, the impact should be minimal. Strictly based on the size of the potential audience, G, PG, and PG-13 rated movies should have an equal probability of success, while R rated films should be slightly less (due to the portion of the audience that is cut off), while X rated films should be the least successful. On the other hand a 'carnal nature' analysis would indicate that the most obscene movies would attract the greatest audiences, with people desiring to see the 'forbidden fruit' of R and X rated films, while wanting to avoid the child play of G rated films. Furthermore, since the price of adult admission is higher than that for children, the adult films have another advantage in the quest for the box office dollar. In the first ten years of the modern rating system, it was found that from the implementation of the modern rating system that as a whole, more R rated films were produced than any other film type.[7]However, these restricted films were much less successful than their unrestricted counterparts. The G-rated films, though viewed as "box-office poison" were produced in the fewest number, yet enjoyed very high success ratios. The theory of movie ratings and their impact on the success of a film were analyzed to determine the success of the ratings system. Does the system appear to produce the films that the public desires? Does the system allow the motion picture companies to maximize profits? Is artistic freedom enhanced by the implementation of the rating system? In order to determine the conclusion to these problems, the ratings of films were compared with their box office gross. Furthermore the trend of the ratings were analyzed over time. The analysis led to a system similar to that found earlier[8], in which the number of restricted films, while enjoying a lower level of profitability were being produced in increasingly greater number. The most popular films continue to be those that are not restricted.
      • I've heard this argument before, the most common explanation I've read is that the majority of the profits in G-Rated films are from Disney/Pixar films, and that Disney is exceptionally good at creating synergy through it's various businesses to promote their movies.

        When other studios have tried to emulate this success it's been pretty hit and miss (Spirited Away and Iron Giant were brilliant and went nowhere at the box office, but Ice Age did well). So the reason more G-Rated films aren't being produced

    • When it comes to movies, you also have to consider supply and demand. Think about it this way: You have a couple of kids, and you want to take them to see a movie. There are 7 different movies playing at the local multiplex, and only 1 is rated G. You will probably see that movie, because it's the only one appropriate for your kids. Therefore that movie sells a lot of tickets. On the other hand, if 3 or 4 of the movies where rated G, you would see that the number of tickets sold for each movie would n
      • That argument would work if teh numbers were proportional in that manner, however take a look at teh article I found and is now linked to my replay to my previous post in this thread.

    • Re:Same goes for movies (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Pizzop ( 605441 )
      the problem with you using the highest grossing movies of all time is that there are seperate audiences. The biggest audience is kids, because they are willing to kick and scream to go see a movie, and they are willing to go see a movie 7 or 8 times in the THEATRE. If you look at qualtity also, R doesn't necessiate quality, it does however mean that there are some concepts that kids "shouldn't" be exposed too. It's the same way with Video Games. Great games don't always sell high, and rating doesn't change

  • Making a good "M" rated game... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zokrath ( 593920 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @10:31AM (#8609278)
    ...Takes maturity on the part of the developer. Assuming an "M" rating when creating a game should be a freedom to not worry about toning down the game's flavor, not an excuse to add meaningless cursing, sexuality, and violence.

    GTA and Vice City have excellent storylines and great voice acting to string together the amusing gameplay. Without the memorable characters or the hilarious radio talk shows the game loses much of its charm.

    Sure, you can still run around and kill hookers for hours on end, but that is the player's choice. Some kids torture insects all day, and parents don't go and blame the Orkin man. Kids are going to do what they find amusing, or what they have been told is amusing. I doubt that many kids' respect for "workin' girls" was tarnished due to the influences of Grand Theft Auto.

    Any parent that complains about what their children are exposed to in M rated games needs to be asked why their children are allowed to play M rated games in the first place.

    But parents couldn't be to blame could they? Shame on me for asking parents to involve themselves in the raising of their own children, that is the task of the government, and the media, and that homeless guy that sits outside the mall asking for nickles.

    • Absolutely! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Mongoose Disciple ( 722373 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @10:58AM (#8609617)
      ..Takes maturity on the part of the developer. Assuming an "M" rating when creating a game should be a freedom to not worry about toning down the game's flavor, not an excuse to add meaningless cursing, sexuality, and violence.

      GTA and Vice City have excellent storylines and great voice acting to string together the amusing gameplay. Without the memorable characters or the hilarious radio talk shows the game loses much of its charm.

      I couldn't agree more.

      In a lot of ways, I think this fixation of game developers upon "mature" games is a mistake. For people not very familiar with GTA, it's easy to make the (incorrect) assumption that the game sells because of its adult content.

      The truth is that GTA sells because it's a good game.

      There's always going to be a market for good games of any genre, platform, maturity level, or whatever. That's the lesson game developers should be learning here.

    • "Assuming an "M" rating when creating a game should be a freedom to not worry about toning down the game's flavor, not an excuse to add meaningless cursing, sexuality, and violence."

      This is why GTA dominates the mature market. It's a genuinely good game that has content unsuitable for children. The rest of the "mature" games are decidedly immature. Things like BMX XXX, DOA Xtreme Beach Volleyball, Postal 2, and Rockstar's own State of Emergency.

      It's not the hooker-beating that makes GTA fun. Simpsons

    • "Making a good 'M' rated game...Takes maturity on the part of the developer. Assuming an "M" rating when creating a game should be a freedom to not worry about toning down the game's flavor, not an excuse to add meaningless cursing, sexuality, and violence."

      Exactly! I'm all in favour of using mature, even adult concepts in a video game, but the rating should not be the focus. If a company knows that such-and-such game is targeting mature players, they should really just make it the best game they can, THE

  • Mature? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by thegrommit ( 13025 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @10:53AM (#8609547)
    publishers are rushing headlong into making mature games, believing that emulating the success of Grand Theft Auto is just a splash of blood and a bucketful of swearwords away."

    Since when has this been the definition of "mature"?

  • I don't know what's wrong with Simoniker (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I don't know what's wrong with him, but I've just hit my limit. No more "is this the fundamental issue of the games industry" filler crap.

    Doesn't he understand that on /., you can put ANYTHING up there and people will relate it back to their pet issues? Explain that a new Mario game is coming out, and everyone will discuss whether Nintendo is dying... explain that there's a GTA lawsuit, and people will discuss the necessity of mature games for the industry. On ANY topic people will criticize Duke Nukem Fo

  • Picking posies (Score:2, Insightful)

    by clem9796 ( 725685 )
    would be a crappy theme for a game. Plain and simple. I'm a 25 year old, mentally well adjusted gamer but i'm also someone who gets very bored with things quite easily. I did however, play GTA: Vice to 99% completion. The only rated E games i play are sports games, a couple T games, but mostly M. i love driving games (True Crime, The Getaway, Driver) and it's a bonus to have good 1st person shooting in it. As i said above, a 25 year old guy playing a game where a small white kitten, named Baby, picks up pos
    • There are plenty of games that adults play that are rated E and T. A whole slew of Mario and Zelda games that are a blast to play and, as I recall, has no part of picking posies or a small, white kitten named Baby. Price of Persia was named game of the year for several publications, yet it was only rated T. It doesn't need excessive gore and explicit sex and language to be a fun game. All it needs is good gameplay and [sometimes] a good story to tie it all together.

      I think anyone who is bent on buying M ra
    • im a 29 year old gamer with 2 degrees and a crappy helpdesk job.. though it doesnt qualify me anymore than you to speak on behalf of 16-30's (thats one fuck of a range by the way... most 16 year old i consider "kids") I love to play the pig stacking game [ferryhalim.com] on the web.. just stacking pigs to nice music.

      so whilst you are representatvie of you, i am representative of me..

      and as my nan likes to say... "It takes all kinds to make a world"
      • Okay, granted, i shouldn't have said i don't have or play any T games. I do go to Pogo.com every once in a while and play popit and card games too, i guess on the whole, i guess many people have just become desensitized to things like this, including me. Many, many games focus on the hero fighting his way through enemies, but people seem to raise a stink when you put a human face on those same enemies. Mario; crush mushrooms with feet, no uprising from the censor groups. Frogger; don't get your guts splatte

    • Re:Picking posies (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Gwenna ( 763131 )
      I may be on the upper end of the 16-30 range, and I'm not a guy, but I do spend money on games (both for me and my partner) and I don't necessarily want M rated games.

      What I *do* want is an interesting story line, clever game play, cool graphics, or just a plain fun game. Currently I'm playing Crystal Chronicles with my partner, and I've spent weeks at a time playing RollerCoaster Tycoon; both are terrific non-M rated games that meet the above requirements. I wasn't a big Myst fan, but I know a lot of pe

  • They're important, but they never get it right (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dragoon412 ( 648209 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @11:56AM (#8610331)
    Here's a lot of anecdotal evidence:

    Back when I was probably 12 or 13, I was really into anime. That's when they were still making new episodes of Tank Police, and 8-man and the like; back when Sci-Fi showed Saturday morning anime. I eventually caught on to Gundam, and loved the mechs, but was rather ambivalent about the characters. Later, I felt the same way about NGE - awesome mechs, but I just wanted that whiney little fuck of a main character to die.

    Back then, during the 8-bit and 16-bit era of gaming, most main characters weren't really age-specific. Sure, it might say a character's young, but they never really looked or acted that way, so I never thought much about it.

    Then came the PSX era. If it wasn't the first time that games were really stratified into age groups, it was the first time I noticed it.

    I remember playing games like FF7 and WildARMs and Grandia and just being completely blown away by how flagrantly immature the main characters (and most of the games) were. Some games I never even managed to finish just because it became so annoying, and I was still in the target demographic back then (I was 16 when FF7 was released). And it's always struck me as odd that I can manage suspension of belief for magic and monsters, but the idea of the same fucktards who routinely screw up my order at Taco Bell saving the Earth is just too much for me to fathom.

    Flash forward to today: I'm 23. I no longer play console RPGs for the same reasons I can't stomach shows like Gundam (or almost any anime, for that matter): I'm sick to fucking death of having the main character act like a whiney, angsty pre-teen. I'm tired of watching stupid, clumsy, dysfunctional characters being put in positions of respect because they're portrayed as "cool." I'm tired of watching ham-fisted interpretations of serious issues because the devs needed to dumb it down for their target (barely literate) audience.

    So, at this point in my life, I only really enjoy two styles of games: mindless hack-and-slash (like Ninja Gaiden, ROTK), and non-story-driven games. Ideally, I'd like to play an intelligent game, but every stab I've seen at intelligence in a game winds up being some pretentious mess like Xenogears that takes itself far too seriously, and about has all the intellectual complexity of the first 5 minutes of Philosophy 101 as taught by a hung-over grad student.

    The point I'm trying to make is that with the 'original' gaming audience aging, games with more mature themes (or at least less immature characters) are going to become more important. The problem is that to developers, mature means gore. And that's the problem with mature games; many players, myself included, just don't want to be insulted by the game we're playing, we're not looking to strangle someone to death with his own intestines.
    • Wow. So that explains why the hoi polloi enjoy games that attempt provide a sophisticated story line, whereas refined, cultured gamers like myself only like games that don't even try!

      That sounded sarcastic, and I guess it sorta is... but it's true, when you try to provide a sophisticated story and fail miserably, I have to put work into ignoring the awful (and usually unskippable) cinematics in order to enjoy the gameplay. If you took that energy you put into creating rendered (awful, unskippable) cutsc

      • could someone please let me know when that happens?

        Best storyline I've seen in a game... has to be Sanitarium. It's kind of old, but I think it has a great atmosphere, even if the only movement speed is "mold growth". So far the cinematics have also been pretty shiny (for the times, but not too shabby today), and they've actually got points. As an example, a half-remembered memory morphs into a person you just met. Pretty cool...
        Actually, at the moment it's very strongly contending for my own personal "be

  • How Important are Entertaining Videogames? (Score:5, Informative)

    by robbway ( 200983 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @12:47PM (#8611015) Journal
    As an adult with no children, I don't even use the rating system. I buy games I either know or think will be fun to play. Since theoretically only adults should be buying M-Games, the rating system doesn't really apply to them.

    Therefore, the Mature label is really an enticement for younger age groups. It's very obvious to me. Old gamers stay old gamers until the games aren't appealing anymore. But young gamers get drawn in "for the first time." Therefore, the "M" is attempting to keep it's customer base.

    This unfortunately means we're in for a lot of artificially rated "M" games which could really be "E" if you removed the cursing or gratuitous violence. This has already taken over the movie industry where I see a PG-13 movie artificially rated R with gratuitous swearing.
    • You've completely missed the point of the rating system. It's not there to tell adults what to buy. It's there to tell adults what *not* to buy for their kids.

      I mean, alternatively, you could label all non-M games as "Child friendly", but that'll work to turn off the kids who write up the lists of what they want.
    • This has already taken over the movie industry where I see a PG-13 movie artificially rated R with gratuitous swearing.

      This is more a factor of MPAA's crusade against swearing than anything else. To paraphrase Kyle's mom from South Park The Movie: "Excessive violence is okay, as long as they don't use any naughty words." If in Finding Nemo a shark had eaten a fish, it would have jumped to PG or maybe PG-13. But just one 'fuck' would have sent it straight to R.

      The main problem with comparing Movie R
  • Imagine the movie industry flooded with PG13 films and no such thing as Rated R. Box office would be a disaster every week.

  • I see the future in gaming... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Yolegoman ( 762615 ) on Friday March 19, 2004 @04:03PM (#8613593) Homepage
    in "Optional" mature content. How many awesome games were NOT sold due to some kid's parents saying it was too violent/had too much cussing/etc?

    I understand that some people want "mature" content in their video games. But make it optional. Call of Duty [callofduty.com] has the blood as an optional setting. Halo: Combat Evolved [bungie.org] does too, at least in the pc version, albeit disguised as "texture quality".

    My suggestion is to have options like so in all video games, with a few exceptions, of course. Let the end user decide if he wants the gore. Cussing, naturally, isn't as easy to censor optionally, and I see no reason to have two different meshes for all female characters... one in the bikini, the other mesh with full-length dress, that's just nonsense. ;)

    Is "Mature" necessary to the video game industry? Yes and no. Yes in the sense that some gamers won't buy games unless they have "mature" content in them, but no in the sense that a game has to have "mature" content or it won't sell well.

  • Honestly (Score:2, Insightful)

    by g0bshiTe ( 596213 )
    What is the point of rating a shootem up with graphic effects? As for the swearing, who gives a shite?
    You can hear worse out in the streets on a daily basis. The problem is not in video game ratings, or even the content.
    True if there was a game that bordered on porn, then some warning is needed for parents who ar ein the dark of what their children are playing.
    As a parent myself, I will not rely solely on a label. It is my responsability as a parent to monitor the activities of my child.
    This includes being
  • Ninja Gaiden and Halo Xbox most sold titles are both M
    same goes for GTA for ps2
    Half life and CS for the PC
    Doom 3 for the PC and xbox and half life 2 are both M

    Quality not (ESRB ratings) is what has been made those games succesful. Copy cat publishers have always tried to imitate quality games, forget about the quality and always end up with an inferior product. (streets of LA anyone?) their rating is due to their nature (they are games based on violent scenarios) NOT what made them succesful or not.
  • If it wasn't for Mature games we may very well be with Nintendo, Sega, or MS atop the video game industry. Sony with their Playstation did something Nintendo wouldn't do. They catered to the Mature audience.

    Sure Nintendo had their big name franchise games, Mario, Zelda, Starfox, etc, but they refused to make any mature games and stayed towards marketing towards kids. Sony grabbed that audience that Nintendo abandoned and became king of the console market almost overnight.

    Today we see the effects of Ninten
  • Dead or Alive: Beach Volleyball

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