The 5 dumbest video game controversies

Every year seems to have at least a couple video game-related controversies. Rather it be a mass shooter who so happened to like video games or someone making an exploitation film-esque apocalypse game, games have never been given the same liberty or benefit of the doubt that films, television series, and books often do. This is perhaps due to common stereotypes about gamers as antisocial, violent, and misogynistic.

However, some of these controversies can simply be summarized as “much ado about nothing.” When it came to these incidents, news outlets all of a sudden didn’t feel the need to fact-check, and the public went into a panic about something that didn’t actually exist. I’ll be talking about five of these incidents in this post.

Now, you may be asking to yourself, “What does this have to do with age ratings?” Well, the controversies I’m showcasing here all have something in common—they were easily avoidable if a few people would’ve either looked at or looked at the associated advice of an age rating.

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Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is perhaps the most well-known example on this list, and this won’t be our first time talking about it on this blog. However, as I’ve dug more into this incident, I’ve found even more peculiar things about it that I’d like to share in this post.

For the few that may be unfamiliar, retail copies of San Andreas were recalled in (North America?) after modders unlocked a sex-based minigame that had been removed before the game’s release but was still in the game’s files. The ESRB retracted their original rating for the game and rerated it as AO (also adding “Nudity” to the content descriptors), forcing Rockstar Games to patch/re-release the game to make the content completely inaccessible.

However, if we seriously look at the Hot Coffee minigame, we can find that the content contained in it didn’t cross the line into what would generally be considered above an R rating—there’s thrusting and flopping around, but no graphic nudity beyond backsides. Grand Theft Auto V would be able to get away with way more explicit depictions just nine years later.

Furthermore, the public seemed to temporarily forget that Vice City was a game already full of adult content from a historically mature franchise, sex minigame or not. An 85-year-old grandmother attempted to sue Rockstar after purchasing the game for her 14-year-old grandson. The game was already rated as unsuitable for her grandson, and the only way he would see the locked content is if he deliberately seeked it out online.

The most amusing part of all this is probably Rockstar’s website, “No More Hot Coffee”, which appears to have been made for parents who want to lock their children out of the Hot Coffee mod…never mind the fact that their children, if seeking it out, certainly know how to get around this.

Mass Effect

Mass Effect was an exciting release in gaming, particularly due to its storytelling and how every choice you make and relationship you build affects the gameplay. If a relationship becomes intimate, a cutscene which shows the player caressing their lover and partial breast/buttock nudity may occur.

Somehow, a neoconservative blogger managed to turn this into the game allowing the player to “sodomize” whoever they please and create “virtual orgasmic rape.” One crazy guy like this should’ve been blown off, right?

Well, somehow this story managed to continue, live on the air, on Fox News, where reporters claimed the game “left nothing to the imagination” and contained “full digital nudity.” Game journalist Geoff Keighley was brought on in a half-hearted attempt to “present both sides”, but he was placed against a holier-than-thou psychologist who seemed to think she knew everything about this game she hadn’t played.

The Fox News segment ended with the “news team” clearly on the psychologist’s side, wondering aloud why the game hadn’t received an AO rating. Uhh…because it doesn’t have any AO content?

Thankfully, this story has a happy ending—the psychologist later retracted her statements in an interview after actually watching someone playing the game, saying she’d seen episodes of Lost that were more sexually explicit. The first Mass Effect game went on to sell millions of copies, at least some of them likely fueled by the Fox News segment that went viral online.

For anyone looking for an honest look at Mass Effect‘s content, read the BBFC’s long insight.

Night Trap

Night Trap appeared before the Senate as an example of a potentially youth-corrupting game. It, along with Mortal Kombat, was fundamental in the creation of the ESRB.

Its controversy was also majorly overblown and based on exaggerations, if not complete fabrications of the game’s content.

When Night Trap was first released, its Sega CD cover (pictured above) had a small advisory sideways on the right corner that read “CONTENT ADVISORY: May not be suitable for young children”. This was an understandably easy-to-miss warning compared to Mortal Kombat‘s clear MA-13 rating, but the front and back cover clearly indicated a certain level of menace in the game.

The main goal of Night Trap was to save a group of girls at a sleepover from being attacked by vampiric creatures. Somehow, some of those testifying at the Congressional hearings condemned the bad endings of the game as “endorsing violence” and letting players take joy in the killing of women. (On a side note, it’s funny how this is still a problem when modern-day media presents something ‘problematic’, even if it’s presented in a negative fashion.)

In response to all the controversy (and the game being pulled from Toys R’ Us and KB Toys), Sega voluntarily pulled the Sega CD version of the game from store shelves in January of 1994. After the controversy blew over, they re-released the game on multiple platforms, this time with an M rating from the ESRB.

The story doesn’t end there. In 2017, a 25th-anniversary edition of the game was released, with a rating downgrade from the ESRB to a T rating. In 2018, this anniversary edition was released for the Nintendo Switch. Back in the Congressional hearings, Howard Lincoln, then vice president of Nintendo of America, attempted to kiss up to Congress by telling them “Night Trap will never appear on a Nintendo system.”

♪ And isn’t it ironic, don’t you think? ♪

Rule of Rose

Rule of Rose was a survival horror game with the uniqueness of having a mainly young female cast. Somehow, this got twisted by British tabloids as the game having “children being buried alive underground, in-game sadomasochism, and underage eroticism.”

Of course, none of these tabloids cared that the game had already received a PEGI rating of 16+ for violence, which certainly wouldn’t cover sadomasochism, underage eroticism, or even anything too gory in general.

Unlike Mass Effect, this controversy doesn’t have a happy ending—the Video Standards Council came out and called the accusations “nonsense”, but the game’s release was canceled in Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The game received a North American release under Atlus, but it was limited enough to make the game expensive on the second-hand market today.

We Dare

While We Dare‘s controversy may be ridiculous, at the end of the day, the distributors/marketing team have no one but themselves to blame for it.

The game’s largest promotion was a risque trailer which implied a lot more was going on than what was actually in the game. Instead of putting their focus on the (lame) gameplay, they showed a group of young people having a randy old time, basically implying the game was easy foreplay for an orgy.

As such, when age ratings for the game began to come out (PG by the Australian OFLC and a 12 by PEGI), people began to protest without actually playing the game nor knowing its true contents.

The Australian OFLC’s review board has the best summary of the reality of the game—there are some mild sexual references in some text in the game, but the gameplay itself is more awkward than sexual, and age rating boards cannot rate content that doesn’t exist in the game/potential actions of players outside of the game.

Fitness Boxing’s ratings highlight an American (and Japanese?) hang-up over women’s bodies

Fitness Boxing is a 2018 (2019 in North America) game for the Nintendo Switch about…well, fitness and boxing. In particular, what the game describes as “boxing-based rhythmic exercises.”

Some have hoped that this game would be the Nintendo Switch’s ‘killer app’, much like how games such as Wii Sports and Wii Fit helped sell Wiis to families–even families that weren’t big on gaming–worldwide.

However, a certain factor unique to Fitness Boxing compared to those two other games may impact its success: the game carries a T rating from the ESRB, with advisories of “Mild Violence, Suggestive Themes”.

According to the ESRB’s summary, this is what constitutes for the “suggestive themes” in the game: “All of the female characters have breast physics incorporated into their movements; their breasts frequently jiggle/bounce in a noticeable manner during stretching and boxing routines.”

The warning of ‘suggestive’ material, combined with the anime art style, may leave some consumers thinking that the game fits into anime stereotypes (ecchi content, suggestive content of underage girls, etc.) and cause them to avoid purchasing the game.

However, if the content is truly suggestive, why is no other (non-Japanese) rating boards concerned about it?

Here are the international classifications for Fitness Boxing:

Australia: G

Germany: 0

PEGI: 7 (“non-realistic violence in a child-friendly setting or context and non-realistic looking violence towards characters which although human are not very detailed”)

Singapore: G

South Korea: All

Taiwan: 0+

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After viewing a considerable amount of footage for the game, I have yet to see anything truly “suggestive” enough that I think it requires a T rating. Women are portrayed with breasts, and sometimes they move in their clothing during the exercises, but it’s not presented with the intention to titillate, nor is ever even slightly drawn attention to over the overall exercise. It was hard for me to notice much “jiggling” as someone sitting watching game footage looking for it, let alone someone who’s actually playing the game.

There are a number of E10+ games with factors such as “large amounts of cleavage” and “gyrating” that make Fitness Boxing sound tame by comparison.  (In fact, there are rating descriptions for E10+ games that mention breast-jiggling.)

As such, I think an E10+ rating for “Mild Violence, Mild Suggestive Themes” would be more then appropriate for Fitness Boxing, if not a bit on the strict side.

If I were Nintendo, I would have personally tried to appeal the decision in some way to the ESRB because of the potential impact on sales that I mentioned earlier.

Interestingly, the only other country that flagged the game for sexual content was its home country of Japan, where it received a CERO B (12+) for it. However, this isn’t an equivalent decision–games in the CERO B rating have ranged from E10+ to M by the ESRB.

10 of the ESRB’s most questionable decisions

The year was 1994. In response to the controversy of games like Mortal Kombat and Night Trap, which led to ridiculous and unnecessary Senate hearings, the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) was formed, largely to avoid government intervention/federally-managed video game ratings.

Over the course of 24 years, the ESRB has rated thousands of games…and much like pretty much every rating system we’ve covered here, not all of their decisions have been spot-on or consistent. (I still have more respect for the ESRB than PEGI.) Here are ten decisions they’ve made over the years that stand out as being off the mark.

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Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy (original “director’s cut” rating)

ESRB rating: AO for Blood, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Use of Drugs and Alcohol, Violence

The interactive drama game Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy had some trouble with its movie-like atmosphere, which included cutscenes with brief full-frontal nudity and sex scenes (including one interactive sex scene, where you pushed the analogue stick on the controller forward to keep your partner pleasured), earning the “director’s cut” version of the game an AO rating—as such, it could only be released on PC.

However, these sex scenes and nudity were highly overblown by the ESRB and were no more graphic than a lot of mainstream R-rated films. In fact, they were tame enough that the game was given a 15 rating completely uncensored by the BBFC for “moderate horror and sex” and a 16+ rating by PEGI.

Considering the AO-rated version of the game had material that can be found in M-rated games, the censored version though was certainly much more censored than a lot of M-rated games—for example, even a nonsexual shot of the main female’s bare breasts in the shower had the nipples digitally erased.

A remastered release of the game in 2011 was based on the “director’s cut”, yet managed to receive an M rating completely uncensored for “Violence, Blood, Sexual Content, Nudity, Language” (not even “Strong Sexual Content”), which is the ESRB sort-of admitting they were wrong the first time.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (re-rating)

ESRB rating: AO for Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Use of Drugs

An ESRB rating that made national news. Most video game fans are familiar, even if just in passing, with the “Hot Coffee incident.”

When Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas originally went to the market with an M rating, modders found and were able to unlock a previously inaccessible minigame of the main character having “crudely animated sexual intercourse” (in the words of Wikipedia) with his girlfriend. (You are required to push “up and down” in rhythm, and both of them have their clothes on their top halves. No visible nudity at all.)

This led to a ridiculous controversy of the game being rerated as AO by the ESRB and refused classification in Australia, leading Rockstar to have to re-release the game without the content and patch existing versions of the game which had the content.

Let’s put this into perspective. The ESRB rerated a game as AO based on content you couldn’t access without hacking the game—content which depicted no pornographic material, or even explicit nudity. It was basic cable sex.

Grand Theft Auto V then proceeded to get away with the same type of interactive sex about nine years later, allowing the player to purchase and interactively pleasure a prostitute in a car, with an M rating.

(“Does the fact that more content is allowed several years later simply mean their guidelines have changed?” Maybe, but the ESRB is very quiet about their guidelines and hasn’t indicated any sort of change since the E10+ rating was introduced in March of 2005.)

The Halo series (before Halo 5: Guardians)

ESRB rating: M for Blood and Gore, Violence

The Halo series is often cited as a “seriously, why is this rated M?” example of how the ESRB system is broken, considering Halo and Postal 2 are in the same age rating category. The Halo games contain some moderate fantasy violence and alien blood, but nothing that seemed like it couldn’t have been contained in a T rating.

In fact, early promotions for the first game suggested that it was going to be rated T, with the exact same rating descriptors. It’s rumored that the rating was bumped up after 9/11.

Halo 5: Guardians was the first game in the series to receive a T rating (and keep it) for “Blood, Mild Language, Violence”. Under the PEGI and USK systems, it received the same rating as every other Halo game.

Heart of Darkness

ESRB rating: E for Animated Violence, Use of Alcohol and Tobacco

Heart of Darkness was a 1998 platformer game with an insane amount of violent deaths for an E-rated game. I’m not sure how better to explain it than linking this compilation of supposedly E-rated violence.

Internationally, original copies of the game rated by the ELSPA carried a 3+ rating—however, this was changed to a more appropriate 11+ on a rerelease.

Mega Man Battle Network 2

ESRB rating: E for Comic Mischief

It appears that the ESRB handwaved this game because…come on, it’s a Mega Man game, how much objectionable content can be in there? Well, more than you might think.

Just for starters, there’s some clear mild profanity in the dialogue, including ‘damn’, ‘hell’, and ‘crap’, which the ESRB seemed to have overlooked. Furthermore, the game includes alcohol as part of its gameplay (the young child character has to acquire whiskey for a venomous spider trap). When the young child attempts to acquire the whiskey from an older gentleman, he is shooed off and told to “go suck mama’s milk.”

The two of them then proceed to have a rap battle with a substantial amount of innuendo such as “Chicky-chicky baby, make me go kaboom!”.

Furthermore, the game has a villain who frequently speaks in innuendoes relating to sadomasochism. After losing to the child protagonist, she says “I lost, but it was pure ecstasy. You dirty boy!”

The game would likely sit on the upper end of an E10+ rating today but would’ve been more appropriately rated T when it was originally rated.

(“A T rating for a Mega Man game? Preposterous!” Well, it happened to Digimon.)

Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition

ESRB rating: E10+ for Mild Language, Mild Violence

I doubt there’s anything in the main gameplay/storyline of this game which goes above the E10+ rating. However, the ESRB appears to have completely overlooked some (or all, considering there’s no sort of warning/mention of it at all) of the music in this game, which would be enough to get the game at least a T rating and a “Strong Lyrics” content descriptor in my opinion. Take, for example, the lyrics of the version of Petey Pablo’s “Freek-a-Leek” used in-game, which has some words reversed/muted but is still very raunchy:

“Would she do it from the front?/Can she take it from the back?”

“Love to get her [reversed ‘p*ssy’] licked/by another [reversed ‘bitch’]/cuz I ain’t drunk enough to do that”

“Need a ding-dong, take her tongue and take her to ball”

“Tell me what you want/Do you want it missionary with your feet crammed to the headboard? Do you want it from the back with your face in the pillow so you can yell as loud as you want to?”

There are several other examples in the game, but this is likely the most blatant one, and surely shocked some parents who had simply bought their kid a racing game with an E10+ rating.

The Orion Conspiracy

ESRB rating: T for Strong Language

To this day, the bland graphic adventure game The Orion Conspiracy is remembered for two things: being one of the first video games to openly reference/include homosexuality in its main storyline, and being the only T-rated game to get away with at least a dozen, uncensored F-bombs (which are both voiced and seen in the text). It was also one of the first games to contain strong language, which is why it advertises it on the front like it’s a feature.

This was a very early decision for the ESRB, so perhaps no clear standards on strong language were established yet. The game has interesting classifications all over the world, with an M rating in Australia, a 6 rating from the USK in Germany, and an 18+ rating from the now-defunct ELSPA in the UK. (It’d likely receive a PEGI 16 today.)

Senran Kagura Burst

ESRB rating: T for Violence, Blood, Sexual Themes, Partial Nudity, Language, Use of Alcohol

This was the first game in the semi-controversial Senran Kagura series to cross the border to Japan. The reason I say “semi-controversial” is because occasionally, someone raises a fuss about the game’s highly sexualized gameplay, including girls’ combatting by the bizarre style of “whoever gets stripped naked first loses”, as well as the popular “dressing rooms” where you can put girls in different outfits, rub/poke them as they protest, and get bonus points if you strip them down. (I’m not certain if Burst features the dressing room or not.)

The game received a 16 rating by PEGI and Germany’s USK, and a “D” (!7+) rating in its home country of Japan. Despite this, it somehow managed to pass with a T rating by the ESRB—the lowest rating of any ratings board around the world for the game. considering America’s more Puritan attitude towards sexuality, it’s probably a good thing this was a digital-only release in North America; otherwise, it would’ve caused a lot more controversy.

By comparison, just about a decade prior, Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, which featured some mildly provocative images/minigames of bikini-clad girls from the Dead or Alive series with no real overt sexualization/nudity (and received a PEGI 12), got an M rating for “Gambling, Mature Sexual Themes, Nudity”.

Shantae: Half-Genie Hero

ESRB rating: T for Cartoon Violence, Suggestive Themes

I have no idea why the ESRB went with a T rating for this game. Previous Shantae games have mostly been rated E10+, with one of them, Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse, carrying almost identical content descriptors (“Fantasy Violence, Suggestive Themes”) at the E10+ category.

My verdict that this is identical in content to previous Shantae games was agreed with by several international age rating boards—this game carries the same Australian rating (G), PEGI rating (12), and USK rating (6) as Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse did.

The only thing that I could find that could have led to the ESRB being harsher on this Shantae game is their allegation in the rating summary that “female creatures are depicted with exposed breasts, without discernible details (i.e., no nipples).” However, having gone through several images of all of the characters in the game, I found none with “exposed” breasts. There was some cleavage and stomach-baring in skimpy costumes, but nothing that would even expose enough for the possibility of “discernible details” to even arise. (The majority of these costumes had also been seen in the previous E10+ games.)

Super Smash Bros. Brawl

ESRB rating: T for Cartoon Violence, Crude Humor

This game is up there with the Halo series in ESRB decisions that have been publicly questioned.

A bit of history on Super Smash Bros.: The first game, for the Nintendo 64, was rated E for “Animated Violence”. The next game in the series, Super Smash Bros. Melee on the GameCube, was rated T for “Comic Mischief, Mild Violence”.

The T rating for Melee was mostly understandable—the violence was a bit more intense than the original Nintendo 64 game, with improved graphics. When Melee was released, the E10+ rating wasn’t yet in existence, meaning the ESRB had no choice but to go with a T rating. (This also explains the T rating for things like games based on The Incredibles, Shrek, and Tom and Jerry in the early 2000s.)

However, when Super Smash Bros. Brawl was released in 2008, the E10+ rating had been around for three years. There was no reason why the mild violence in the game couldn’t have been contained at said E10+ rating. A T rating for a game with Nintendo characters who throw each other off platforms is ridiculously strict. I went to friends’ houses where this was the only T-rated console game they owned as if their parents either made an exception or had no idea the game was even rated T. After all, why would it be?

When the newest Super Smash Bros. game was released for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS, it received a proper E10+ rating for “Cartoon Violence, Comic Mischief, Mild Suggestive Themes”, despite absolutely no change in content.