Zombie Love

Mature Content

To follow the formula that raised my grades in history class, I’m going to start out by telling you my point: What are the merits of ‘mature content’ in video games?

Now I’ll jabber on about it for a bit.

For the past couple day’s I found myself thinking about mature content, and what it means when we talk about games being mature. I think it was planted in my head when I read this post at Broken Toys.

Go ahead, I’ll wait…

Outside of video games, when we talk about maturity, it seems like we usually mean dealing with a situation in a responsible and socially acceptable manner.

• Paying your bills on time.
• Choosing the sensible slightly used car you can afford the monthly payments for.
• Resolving a difficult situation with reason and words.
• Using articulate language to express oneself.

Wow. That game sounds terrible. I wouldn’t pay to play that. Actually I play it for free anyway all the time. I wonder if it’s ad supported?

Anyway, that’s obviously not what we mean when we talk about maturity in video games. If it were, we wouldn’t be all kinds of hullabaloo about underage children buying M rated games. Instead we’d be desperately trying to sell them to teenagers and failing because they are more interested in:

• Boobies!
• Uncouth language.
• Violence.
• Boobies!
• Alcohol.

Yes this is mostly from the perspective of a teenage male. It would be creepy if I knew what teenage girls were interested in. If I ever become the father of a teenage girl, I just plan on holing in my mahogany paneled library in with a glass of scotch, newspaper and pipe until the whole thing blows over. I’m sure this doesn’t have anything to do with the focus of the games industry at all.

So how do these things become a notable feature or selling point for a game? I buy that you need a bunch of them if you’re making an action packed war fight simulation game. One of the great things about games is that they allow you to do and experience things that you can’t do normally. However it’s not sexual content in a ‘Birds and the Bees’ game, or gore in an ‘Emergency Response Stomach Trainer’ sim.

I think that we can use these ‘mature’ elements to craft great experiences, but I think that it has to be done carefully and skillfully otherwise it just becomes juvenile and gratuitous. Although the 17 year old in me says a little bit of that is still okay. You still want to have fun you know?