Adult Games for An Adult Audience

Over the last several years video games and gamers have been brutally stigmatized in the media, and as a result due to your obligation to your stock holders you have let the media, the ESRB and yourselves censor your creative work and inhibit your own and our, the gamers, First Amendment rights. You have let games like Manhunt 2 and Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, be thrown to the wolves and butchered for a MA (Mature Audience) rating. Capcom you let Germany ban one of your games. Your fear of retailers not selling an AO (Adult Only) game, has deprived the gamers, the consumers of your product, of choice, the fundamental right all of all humanity.

An ESA (Entertainment Software Association) study from 2006 shows that the median age of a gamer is 33 years old, and a majority of gamers, outstanding 61 percent, are over 18 years old. Furthermore when games are bought by a child, their parent or guardian are there 89 percent of the time.
The system in place works but it is not perfect. When a criminal is let out of jail and commits another crime do the courts and justice systems fold up shop? The answer is no, it evolves. Just as the justice system is ridiculed so will the game industry.

There is a market for AO games and society is more than wiling to not only buy them but to also understand that the process is not perfect. Even some game developers have expressed the interest in make an AO game such as a developer from Sierra Games, who was on The Loop on G4TV during E3 2007, on June 13th. MA and AO games are not for children, parents will monitor their own children as the ESA study quoted above states that 35 percent of parents in America play video games and of those parents 80 percent play with their children. It is not the government's , the ESRB's or Jack Thompson's, job to monitor you children just as it is not the game makers job.

Just as their is a market for AO games there is a distribution method budding and waiting to be exploited, Digital Content Distribution (DCD). Retailers time and time again have stated they will not sell AO games. Do not use those channels, offer your content on your websites, on the PSN (Playstation Network), and on XBL (Xbox Live). With full games such as Warhawk for the PSN and Half-Life 2 for the PC, and with the expansion of broadband internet, as a July 2007 PC World article states over half of American homes have broadband, there is a mode and vehicle for AO game distribution. Gamespot, Gamespy, and EB Games have offered content over DCD for years now and people regularly now download demos for their consoles and PCs.

We as your consumers are tired of being treated as though we are children just because the bias media has an issue with people who play games. We buy your content and use it to its fullest, we now want content to suit our evolving lives. Its time for you to mature and treat us with the respect we deserve. Make an MA version of a game and make and unrated just as movie have for years, do the humane thing give us choice as we have that right. We are not children and as such we demand someone out there to let us Adults play an Adult Only game. Thank You.