Posts Tagged ‘M Ratings’
M Ratings Make Games More Appealing
As fond of their vices as many adults are, they often seem just as fond of taking measures to ensure that children are protected from any influence that seems harmful. There’s a campaign underway intended to restrict smoking to R rated movies with the overall philosophy that only adults should see things that only adults can do.
Unfortunately most adults seem to forget that for many children the appeal of certain things is that they’re restricted, only for adults. When your parents rented a movie that they wouldn’t let you watch, you snuck downstairs while you were asleep and watched it yourself. It might have given you nightmares for a week, but it was worth the thrill.
A study of 310 Dutch children showed that kids between seven and seventeen were more likely to rate mature rated games as desirable. When shown a list of fictional games and their descriptions and asked to rate how desirable they found them the games with more mature content were rated more desirable.
This ‘forbidden fruit’ effect could be because the game has mature content or because games intended for mature audiences have to satisfy the desires and standards of adult audiences. While younger children are more easily satisfied, those who have been gaming for a long time are more likely to want the full, complex experiences intended for adults. Most games aimed at children are poorly crafted, so a more valid study could have given false review scores as well, designed to see if a game is as desirable with a lower rating when compared with less mature games with superior scores.