Hello all!
I read an article this morning from Gamesradar about how most games in the past 10 years or so have continuously lost what the meaning of mature is. Even recently we are making games that are teaching or showing the wrong description of what maturity is. Now this isn't saying that the ESRB is wrong when rating bloody violent games mature.
The article talks about how, as a child when you are playing a game or looking at games you would consider a game mature is you knew it had sex, drugs and/or alcohol. Now this is true to an extent. Technically these games are mature and should be rated so but are they really life lesson learning mature? Grand Theft Auto is probably one of the biggest offenders when it comes to this topic. The concept of GTA is to let the player have free reign on the game. They can literally do whatever they want. It just happens that some of the best things involve sex and violence. Even the article talks about how in Jak and Daxter 2 got "mature" by adding torture, revenge, and drugs.
Now the main point of the article and this blog is that a game does NOT need these things to be a mature game. The game that the article mentions is The Last of Us. This game is truly mature because of the story, the pain the characters go through, as well as the character development each character goes through. I believe that a "mature" game means that it has subject matter that really impacts the player. It means that the games content addresses serious issues and that the player can learn and feel through the game.
Alright well that's all for today. If you want to check out this article the link is here.
Thanks guys
