Cigarettes and guns. Always fun, but a tough sell in Korea.
You know, the one with the curtain
Most of us have seen it at one time or another. An otherwise upstanding movie store, frequented by mothers, teenagers, and children, but with one oddity – that curtained room at the back.
Many of us stared in wonderment the first time we saw it, curious as to why there was a large sign above it, emblazoned with the massive word “STOP“, and the infinitesimally smaller “Unless you’re over 18” scrawled underneath it.
Oh sure, we saw the mustached magnificos wandering in there, frenetically eying everyone else in the place, brows furrowed and jaws clenched, but we could never figure out why.
Until we were of “that age”, of course, or we had access to the Internet, whichever came first.
“That Room” was for, you know, adults only.
And it appears that in Korea, so is Starcraft II.
That’s right, little Jim Raynors and rambunctious Sarah Kerrigans, the official ratings board of Korea, a division of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST?) has decided that the drug use, language and violence in the game make it unsuitable for anyone under the age of 18, according to Fudzilla.com.
This is…odd.
In a country obsessed with Starcraft, an Adults Only (AO) rating on this game just doesn’t make sense. All of these elements were present in the original Starcraft, but were likely less obvious due to the poor graphics and slick 1999 engine the thing ran on.
The first time around, the game received a Teen rating in both Korea and the USA, and Starcraft 2 is getting a Teen rating again here on North American soil. For some reason, however, despite the plethora of violent, sex-filled and drug-addled game choices out there, the MCST has chosen to slap the proverbial ratings bible down hard on SC2.
We know there have been some recent SC betting scandals taking place among the best pro teams in Korea, including leaked strategies and thrown matches, but that hardly seems like enough to justify this decision.
Blizzard apparently has 30 days to appeal this rating, but also has the choice to “correct” the game’s problems and re-submit it. If the former route fails and they decide that mass distribution is more important than original content, the game could be delayed up to one month past the official worldwide release date in Korea.
This puts Blizzard between a rock and a hard place. The decision of the Board appears to be irreversible, leaving two not-so-hot choices.
Honestly, we’d like to see Blizzard fight the good fight and lobby to keep its content intact, but at some level every company is driven by the numbers. An AO rating might just cut too heavily into Blizzard’s market share in Korea, especially after lukewarm assessments of the Beta by professional gamers in both the US and Korea thus far.
Hopefully North American ratings boards don’t start following the Korean example, but if they do, we’d be willing to step into the curtained room for Blizzard. Plus, there’s got to be other worthwhile stuff in there, right?
We’re going to need a mustache.
