Halo In Church Points Out ESRB Flaws

The recent controversy over church groups making use of Halo 3 to attract young men to their services continues to be a subject of debate outside of the fan press. GamePolitics notes that the debate is indicative of flaws in the ESRB's system, and in mainstream culture's understanding of those ratings. "When you look at it like that, it's hard to blame those who criticize bringing Halo into sacred space. For the most part the critics are not gamers and have no concept of the vast difference between Halo and GTA. All they know is that the games share a common M rating, a designation assigned by the game industry itself, theoretically for the protection of impressionable youth. For the uninitiated it's only logical to assume the content must be of a similar character as well. As someone who has played both, I'd argue that there is a world of difference between Halo and GTA."

Still out of place...

[azuredrake]

While I would agree that Halo and GTA are worlds apart, and hope that this controversy catalyzes much-needed revamping of the ESRB's functionality, I still find it out of place that churches are using Halo to bring young men to services. "Thou shalt not kill" does not mesh well with "Thou shalt kill aliens in copious numbers". Also, it just strikes me of bribery - they should be there because they're interested in the religion, not because they wanna get a mad sic deathmatch in after church lets out. But maybe that's just me.

Yeah Halo and GTA are different!

[powerlord]

In GTA you run around breaking the law, consorting with whores and fellons, and killing people in bloody episodes.

In Halo, you just run around listening to profanity on your headset and trying to get headshots. ... MUCH better ... right?

Re:Read the bible lately?

[markbt73]

A game based on parts of the Bible could get an M rating as well.

Nah, it only gets a T rating [amazon.com].

Rationality

[Anonymous Coward]

We are talking about groups of people who interpret the obviously mythological content of the Bible as if it were concrete history. While not all sects of Christianity do this, more than a few of them do.

It does not seem rational to me to expect consistency from people who can't differentiate fantasy from reality. They will believe whatever their priest tells them to believe, whether it is logically consistent (and whether it makes any sense at all) or not.

Why is Halo rated M in the first place?

[Asmor]

That's always struck me a bit odd... Halo's a fairly clean game. There's very minimal swearing (I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I'm pretty sure there's a at least one "shit" uttered at dispariaging moments...), and the violence is really on the cartoony side... It's not realistic at all, there's very little blood, absolutely no gore, and when people die they just fall over, as opposed to being ripped apart or dismembered.

Heck, most of the things you're killing are aliens or, online, Spartans who are encased in full-body armor with no skin visible.

Personally, I would have rated Halo 3 as a T, not an M. And personally I think it's even on the tamer side of T.

ESRB should be used by parents.

[JayDot]

The ESRB rating system should be used by parents to review the content of games for what they believe to be acceptable for their children. And yes, different games may get the same rating for completely different reasons. IIRC, SWAT 3 got an M rating as well. However, anyone could look at the 2 or 3 lines of text underneath the rating to find out exactly why the game was rated what it was. Using the example of Halo 3 in a church outreach or fellowship activity to say that the ESRB rating is flawed is exactly wrong.

The ESRB rating tells you what is there. Some parents and church leaders will decide to not allow M rated games. Others will look at the descriptors and prohibit certain games based on that. But this shows that the system, properly understood as a tool that informs parents and responsible adults, is not flawed. What is flawed is the idea that some regulatory body, whether mandated by government or not, is responsible for what children and teenagers see and experience in video games today. That responsibility should always rest on the parents.

Re:Read the bible lately?

[Wolfrider]

--Oh, **shut up** you annoyingly stupid troll.

--Every serious Bible scholar knows that the NIV is not to be used for Serious Bible Study. :P

--Try a couple of different versions (recognized by scholars wolrdwide as USEFUL FOR STUDY) - before you shoot off your mouth in public and make yourself look like a fool.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%202:9-10;&version=50 [biblegateway.com];
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=john%202:9-10;&version=49 [biblegateway.com];

--If you REALLY want to know what the Bible says (at least the New Testament), take the time to learn Greek.

--For Teh Interested, see also:

http://www.biblegateway.com/resources/commentaries/index.php?action=getCommentaryText&cid=51&source=2&seq=i.50.2.1 [biblegateway.com]

Re:Rating systems

[nschubach]

New ratings:

S-ex (S1 no naughties/S2 rear naughties/S3 front naughties/S4 You betcha, it's porn)
D-rugs (D1 OTC(tobacco?)/D2 Prescrip/D3 "intro drugs" MJ/D4 Anyone order a meth-lab? Cocaine?)
G-un Violence (G1 War, History, no blood/G2 Blood, no impact shots/G3 body parts/G4 chunks)
C-omedy (C1 Mickey Mouse/C2 someone actually funny/C3 mild language/C4 Bob Saget) ...etc.

I know. It looks a bit complicated. But think of the store shelves. Start high rated at the top and work down to the kid stuff.

Of course the ratings panel would be "S2-D4-G2-C2-..." but they could get stylish with it.

Re:Why is Halo rated M in the first place?

[ucblockhead]

Unfortunately, the current ratings system (like the movie ratings system) doesn't differentiate between cartoonish violence like Halo (which I personally don't think is a big deal for most kids) from realistic, morally suspect violence as in Manhunt, which definitely should be limited to adults and/or only very mature teenagers. In my mind, it's not the realism so much as the intent. Stuff that glorifies criminal violence is not for kids.

Re:Read the bible lately?

[Creepy]

Since when is the King James Version more accurate than NIV or even, say the Revised Standard? Just because Jack Chick and Jack Thompson say so (at least for King James)? All 3 are based on the Textus Receptus, which is a 16th century Latin translation based on 12th century Greek text. Calling any one of them more or less accurate is inane, as all are different and yet based on the same source.

I agree that the ASV (and updates) should be more accurate since they go back to the oldest available documents and try to keep as close to the text as possible unless the meaning has changed, but unless you have an annotated ASV (though some are in the footnotes of mine, as I recall), you can miss some of the literal translations - for instance, as I understand it, there is no distinction between words like virgin and young woman in (ancient) Greek, so saying one person translated it wrong because they say the young woman Mary instead of the virgin Mary is entirely a matter of opinion. Many of the oldest available documents are damaged and a "best guess" approach was taken, as well - for instance, in Revelation the number of the beast is likely 666, but since that page is damaged in the available scrolls it could possibly be 667 (or another number - I believe it was 665) depending on whether a small mark is at the end of the number on the damaged page or not.

    The old testament is dicey, too - the English version is a translation from the Greek Septuagint, which is a translation itself from the Hebrew Tanakh/Tanach. Whenever you talk about a translation from a translation (or worse), you're bound to find translation errors - unless you believe that God would not allow errors, which I'll leave between you and your beliefs.