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Originally posted by: Jonnyboy117
No. The ESRB itself has strict rules about where games can be advertised based on their ratings. The rules were put into effect a couple of years ago after legislators complained that games were being accurately rated, but M-rated games were still being advertised in children's venues, which made it seem "cool" to play M-rated games.
Okay, so it's not some random publisher that's making the demands. But I think the principle is still there.
- NOA buys ad in Disney Weekly News (I don't know if that actually exists).
- NOA notices some minorly "mature" content in their game that they didn't notice before, and says "Oh no! We're going to lose the money we gave Disney!"
- NOA censors the game.
They're not censoring because they
like making
kiddy games. They're censoring because they like advertising in Disney Weekly News.
Yes, I know that censorship not a major problem with Nintendo right now, I just don't like the idea of it. It tells me that Nintendo doesn't like
making games, they like
selling them. Which is probably 100% true, but I usually don't like to think about that.
Like a bad game, a censored game is censored forever, and for everybody. If they don't want to lose their advertising money, they should avoid putting it in "risky" places. Considering Nintendo's currently-damaging image problems, AND Nintendo's longtime marketing problems, they should really consider making a total philosophy change, not just putting more effort into fixing things. Make "games first". Marketing can be second, but
games are first, and can't be messed with.