Originally posted by: Xavier434
The rating system for games is a little unbalanced. I feel that the M rating is handed out too often. Halo 3 is a good example. You simply cannot look at Halo 3 and then look at games like Manhunt 2 and say that they both even come close to comparison. The point of the rating system is to inform parents who are interested in censoring their kids. I feel that they need to raise the bar a little when handing out the M rating.
That's the official reasoning. In actuality, the ratings scheme is a profit-maximizing schema. This is the same phenomenon with MPAA ratings. There are a ton of R-rated movies out there - some with intense violence and gore and lots of swearing, others with only one f-bomb or boob shot. There is no consistency. What is consistent is how the movies are carefully crafted to earn a certain rating, sometimes at the expense of the creative content within.
No studio wants over-the-top violence or sex that earns an NC-17 rating - the movie will lose wider distribution and revenue. It will tank. Similarly, AO games aren't sold in mainstream stores, so game companies lobby hard for M ratings, even if they don't really deserve them (Manhunt 2 being a great example). So the game or movie is toned down just enough to earn the M or R.
Same deal with PG-13 movies, which can be overly violent or scary, but only contain one f-bomb. This avoids an R rating, which would exclude revenue from most of the teen population. You can bet that if game ratings were more rigidly enforced, there would be a lot more T-rated games, in order to maximize revenue.
Honestly, there's too large of a psychological development gap between 13 and 17, and I think that perpetuates these problems. A more effective rating scheme is
PEGI, which includes 12+, 15+ and 18+ ratings (only 3 year gaps).