What does /v/ think about 'age restriction' in vidya?

As an Australian I can tell you age restrictions here are a bit of a joke
A kid can go in with a parent and get a MA15+ game

also
>What about increasing the 'age restriction' to early 20s, say 25 for other games?
what fucking game in the world would require a 25 let alone over 18 year age restriction?

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They're utterly pointless since underage kids often have parents that will buy them whatever.

They shouldn't really matter for single player games unless if there's straight up malicious activity going on, in which case, don't put that game in the babbu shelf.
Keep them for multiplayer games, though, that'll mean less children, squeakers, and angsty teens.

>>385294149
Age restriction is fine here in Kangaroo Land, the problem is that the old cunts in government who run the classifications board still think it's their job to block or censor content they don't like. If you're an adult you should have the right to access whatever content you like provided it isn't actually causing any damage to the content creators or distributors. The people on the classifications board are just following the guidelines and doing their job in classifying content but those guidelines are outdated and there's no desire amongst the senior members to change that despite the desire there is among the people.

18 being the highest age classification is fine in Australia provided the government actually allows more content to be shown. If you're 18 then you should be old enough to know whether or not you're going to accept the level of violence, sexuality or themes in a piece of media you consume so you're also old enough to decide what you find morally acceptable or not without the government doing it for you. Also parents and the people selling the games should actually enforce the age ratings, the number of 6 year old kids playing R rated games online in this country is fucking absurd.

>>385294149
It's fine as long as it is industry run rather than government run.

>>385295008
this, if you censor my shit you can expect me to pirate the big boy version and piss on public toilet seats and toilet paper

>>385294149
is that crebain from dunland

>>385295008
You can basically say the same for Germany. Thankfully our rating board seems to have realized their bullshit over the past years.
There are no more unnecessary "low violence versions" like l4d or saints row that I know of.
Also they seem to be more lenient about putting stuff on the "Index", which means it's not allowed to be openly advertised or sold online. MK 9 was put on the index and I had to get it from a swiss online shop, but MK X is on Steam in Germany.

>>385294149
As a kid I would have fucking hated them and spent hours coming up with reasons why theyre bullshit.

Now that I'm an adult I don't think I give a shit. So this is what being jaded feels like.

>>385294149
I don't know about age restriction but I sure hope there's some kind of foolproof sociopath aptitude test for multiplayer games. I don't want /v/ playing games with my 13 year old son.

>>385295463
then don't give your 13 year old son video games unless you want him in a skirt sending me dick pics

>>385294492
>what fucking game in the world would require a 25 let alone over 18 year age restriction?
He doesn't get the well hidden reference

>>385294776
this anon potentially does.

>>385294149
they may as well not exist.
The sheer amount of modern parents who don't even look at them before buying their 7 year old the newest Call of duty or whatever just makes it obsolete and pointless.
Especially since most of those games ads are designed to be as appealing as possible to children so they will pester their parents into buying the game for them.
I miss the 90's when parents actually tried to give a shit about what types of games their children played

I can't believe I read through the entire thread before I realized what was actually going on here.

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>>385295756
Perish the thought, anon. I'm as clueless as he is.

>>385294149
In theory it's good but in practice it ends up in shit because everybody takes things out of context.

Just few examples:

>in one interview, Molyliar said that Microsoft execs told him to change the model of the female character in Fable 2. Reason? in some clothes/armour, the exec noticed that the model looked disgusting, nipples protruding when having it on. Now the point is not that they hated nipples(or that it was a very important change) but the reasoning behind it was: It will raise our ratings beyond your target. This is the level of paranoia rating agencies cause.
>Hatred got AO but I have a feeling that they bribed rating agencies to stir up controversy around it - it's not even that gory if you look at it. GTA V on the other hand got R/18/whatever. Is it that less gory? Not really. So how do they quantify violence to decide "oh, it's no biggie, 16" or "BEGONE DEMON, AO"? The answer is - they have some guidelines - for example most strategy games will get 7(PEGI) because they have "symbolic use of violence" - but for the cases that are more extreme they simply don't have any guidance.
>as I've said - strategies typically get 7 - but some don't. How to quickly raise the age to 12? Well, add alcohol. A mere existence of trade good called "wine" caused some EU3 expansions to get 12+ and "substance abuse" marking. Some didn't. Now of course no 7 y o is going to play those games but you can see the problem - there's inconsistency in the ratings and the additional warnings can mean everything. If your game is about drug dealing it's gonna have "substance abuse" warning, if the game has one character mentioning drinking beer, it may be the same fucking warning or may not, it tells you nothing about actual content of the game

That's of course beyond the general sex is worse than violence thing but I'll just leave it here.

The solution on it are very strict guidelines on what does contribute to "warning icon"(cont)

,
>>385296515
don't greentext like this ever again

>>385296515
as in - what exactly qualifies as substance abuse or harsh language(one character saying shit once is enough or not?) and getting rid of age ratings as a whole.

Parents typically buy their kids game regardless of those warnings anyway but the idea that you can somehow quantify the age on which this and that is harmless to your psyche is kinda dumb. It's a good idea to inform the buyer what exactly does the game contain and have more consistent rules when giving those warnings so when you see "violence" on the box you know that there is actual violence, not just symbolic representation of it or some other shit.

They don't work as they should in Aus, I used to work in a game shop. Games which should just be 18+ just have tiny things censored then are sold to minors. They need to just allow the proper over 18 classifications and allow game shops to enforce them. It would mean retailers would need to update their training but there is no reason for it to be any different from purchasing an R18 movie.

Restricting games based on age is something that shouldn't be necessary IMO. It should be the parents' job to check what is in a game and decide if their kid can play it. If a parent doesn't bother to check what their kids are consuming then they shouldn't complain when that media has an effect on the kid. If you aren't a kid then you should be aware of the difference between fiction and reality and therefore should be fine playing any game.

That said, there are now more ways than ever to get easy access to games behind someones back, but outright restricting things I think causes more inconvenience than it's worth.

>>385294149
I think generally speaking they're more of way to cover your ass so dumb parents can't complain. I grew up in a rough area so age rating wasn't a problem for my parents didn't mind as long as I wasn't an asshole etc. They're important for MMOs though they really do filter out the kiddies for the most part.

/v/ going full autismo with the answers.