Well, while I do think that it's annoying to see a game re-rated, I think I'd actually have to wind up infuriating some people, and siding with the ESRB. It's been unfairly criticized, and has actually done a pretty amazing job of rating games.
Unfortunately, what most people (gamers and anti-gaming politicians alike) fail to see is that games are vastly different from movies. Movies are linear content; you watch it, and you see everything. Games, on the other hand, place the player in control of when they reach what content. It's vastly more complex, and as such, it's also vastly more complex to scan through each game and determine what audience ranges it is most suitable for.
Actually taking a critical eye to the games they've rated, they've been rather consistent; with the exceptions of
San Andreas and
Oblivion, and POSSIBLY a game or two I didn't hear of, the ratings they've assigned have only gone DOWN, such the popular shooter
GoldenEye 007, and the MMORPG
Ultima Online, started with an "M" rating for each, for violence and blood. However, in years since, as they became readily less-realistic-looking, their ratings were "down-graded" to "T," and likewise, their descriptors to "animated blood, animated violence." (note that oddly enough, the old rating for
Ultima Online resurfaced on the ESRB website; newer versions of UO rated report the "T" rating)
At any rate, looking over the vast scope of games, with thousands released, and rated, every year, it's a monstrous task. Yet even so, the ESRB does manage to hold an amazingly strong sense of consistency among their ratings.
QUOTE(Akul @ May 6 2006, 06:35 PM)
The only difference betwen SA and OB is that SA had sex in it, not nudes. And that wasn't just a mesh, but a mini-game.
Yes, that actually is a very good summary there.
This is why
Oblivion, for the PC, was merely re-rated to "M," the same as the Xbox 360 version, (which lacked said content in any form) rather than "AO;" it only contained "nudity" rather than actual scripts, animations, etc. that would classified as "sexual scenes."