The Laughability of "Mature"

Recently, I was combing through the Kotaku archives, and I found an interesting article regarding a study published in the U.S. Pediatrics Journal back in May 2009. It detailed that "giving a video game a mature rating makes it 'unspeakably desirable' to children." This got me to thinking, "Why do we even bother with making a rating system at all if the kids are just going to find a way to get the mature games anyway?"


Before you jump the gun in the comments section and blast me for saying that the ratings of the games are useless (and I'm not so sure that they aren't) hear me out. When you look at the game's ESRB rating, and see that big, honking M sitting there, aren't you thinking you may have found a decent game? Maybe even the "T" for Teen has tickled your fancy once or twice. This "forbidden fruit" angle that the Kotaku article explored depicted the study as a "foregone conclusion," and that the study's findings, "surprise(d) no one." 


The original idea behind the ESRB was to rate video games based on the maturity level of the content that the game held within. Having a game with gratuitous violence, gore, nudity, drug and alcohol use (and abuse) would obviously fall into the "Mature" category. Violence, drug and alcohol reference and the like would fall under the "Teen" category, and so on. But there's a rather large flaw with this system: The kids are playing the games anyway, regardless of this ban on the sale of Mature games to minors.


I suppose the point of this post is the fact that kids are going to play these games regardless of the Mature or Teen ratings barring them from purchasing the games in the first place. They'll receive them as gifts from parents, aunts, uncles, or people who just plain don't know any better, or even care. Why do we bother with a rating system that doesn't prevent anything except a minor inconvenience of having to receive the game via a middle man?


I've been playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 since a month after the game came out, and whenever I had my headphones (and sound) on, I heard the voice chat of at least one boy that sounded as if he hadn't hit puberty yet. At least one I heard sounded like he was maybe eight.


It's disconcerting to think that these children are able to freely roam the ultraviolence of Modern Warfare 2, trying to impress the older generation by calling them all sorts of filthy, vile things, and cursing with abandon. I'm not sure if it's bad parenting, a poor enforcement of ratings at the stores, perhaps an archaic ratings system or a mixture of the three.


I suppose my point is rather selfish in nature but: I'm pretty sure just about everyone would like to play these mature games without a shrill voice shouting in our ears that we're "hacking c*nts."