Spirit of the Game

NOTE: This article contains satire and is not to be taken seriously.

I remember the days when characters in games could openly drink alcohol (and become intoxicated) without causing the game's rating to be above T for Teen. Ah, those were the days.

In the present, an upcoming Wii game with the name "Beer Pong" has been scrutinized for depicting the game of, well, beer pong. The Attorney General of Connecticut and Prickdom (and, apparently, wanna-be Jack Thompson), Richard Blumenthal, insists that the ESRB should change the game's rating to M for Mature. In response, the game has removed all references to beer (calling it instead "Pong Toss"), saying that the spirit is "in the game, not the beer." That's like making Grand Theft Virginity, then taking out all the sex because it's "just for the spirit of cornering a girl in an alley."


I suppose that next, they'll be clamping down on all movies in which anyone takes a drink, changing the ratings from PG-13 to R. What's the point? If Blumenthal really thinks that this will some how affect teen drinking, he's going to have a few broken bones with the gravity of reality brings him back down to earth.