No more M+ games for Little Johnny: two state-wide laws are about to come into effect

According to Central Michigan Life this law comes into effect on December 1—just in time for Christmas. Hopefully the Little Johnnies of Michigan won't be finding the latest GTA under the tree this year.

I think this is a major win for gamers everywhere. Underage children should most certainly not be playing these games anyway, and in a way once they're properly restricted they'll feel more special to you once you can access them, kinda like holding off having sex until your wedding night. But I digress. Anyway, this basically means it will be a criminal offence for a child to buy an M or AO game.

Unfortunately retailers don't share these sentiments, "[they] fear it will hurt video game sales statewide." I myself don't agree with this; when I walk into my local The Warehouse or K-Mart or EB or whatever on any given day there will be about a dozen 20-somethings merrily shopping for Xbox and PC games, with two or three Little Johnnies milling around and pawing at PS2 copies of GTA: San Andreas and similar, hopefully in vain. Those are good statistics, because it's the geeky guys who have all the money to burn.

With children of the current generation rapidly maturing and coming within the age group themselves they'll have an entirely new buying generation in addition to this one. I also don't see gaming interest dying out within the current mature age group; I'm 21 and have been merrily gaming since 1996, but I don't see me stopping. Even by 40 I'll still be lusting after er, waiting for the Xbox 12.

But I decided to cover the best news first; now comes the worst, and that's thanks to—who would have guessed?—Arnie. Kinda like how he was evil in the first Terminator movie before he turned good, the California governer is now helping to introduce an abusive rating system that will impact gamers everywhere.

According to Gamespot, "...[the boxes will] be marked by a 2-by-2-inch sticker with a "solid white '18' outlined in black" on their front covers". Ugh. The mind boggles to imagine what this would look like in the flesh, er, plastic.

This law is stupid and abusive. Many modern videogame covers are minor works of art; the ESRB's clever rating label design does its best to avoid defiling the box art—but what will this new rating sticker look like?



See this? Work. Of. Art. Even if you don't like the game contained within, line-art is a beatiful thing. See the discreet little ESRB logo in the corner? It barely gets in the way of the box art, but it's still clearly visible.



See this? Mockup of Arnie's proposed rating label. No I didn't exaggerate that, I checked its dimensions twice; regardless of your screen resolution, 2 inches by 2 inches looks fudging huge. Now imagine that crap overlaid on the box above BESIDE the ESRB rating. According to one report both stickers will feature alongside each other (since the ESRB is a national requirement I guess it can't be overridden and obscured due to a state-wide law). Once that's done, how much of that luscious box art will be left?!

Now I know a lot of modern parents out there are stupid enough to buy games for Little Johnny despite the ESRB's tastefully-sized rating sticker, but are they that stupid that we need to make it larger than life? Even a person with macular degeneration could probably read the ESRB's M!

Naturally the ESRB is uber-pissed by this stupidity and is going to try to stop it, and we can only hope they succeed. UPDATE: they're already preparing to press charges. Kudos ESRB, this update's aqua-toast is to you.

And so within less than a week of each other we've had some good news and some bad news. Hopefully just like in Terminator 2 Arnie can be reprogrammed back onto our side, but until then it's gonna be hell for gaming in California. —Garrett