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OKay-this is really a mix of incomplete thoughts, but I'm gonna try to organize them.

Ther'e a video game out called Killer7. It's fairly graphic, and it's pretty brutal. There are several scenes that are fairly bad: One Character, Curtis Blackburn, throws the head of another character's daughter an said other character; there are hints that Blackburn is a *****, there are hints that another character is raped; two characters discuss when a third character stabbed his mother to death after she tried to have sex with him, one of the characters is a severed head...the list goes on, and I'm sure Semper can add more examples.

Anyway, there was a campaign by Jack Thompson (look him up, he's a dickhead) to get teh game changed from an M rating (17+) to and Ao rating (18+).

The basic question is this: Is there some magical thing that happens when you turn 18 that makes you somehow more mature than you were at age 17? What the hell's the difference? (My mother bought me this game, so...yeah. I was 16 at the time.) Anyway-is there a difference between when you're 17 and when you're 18? Are you any more mature? Or are you just a year older?

I was 16 when I got the game as well. And I don't remember having any moralistic problem with Curtis tossing Mary's head at Pedro, or the implied rape that Samantha suffered. Such short segments of violence function as story elements, and are far from being rationally considered senseless.

But I must say, this is just one of those games that just isn't made for children. The sheer complexity of the plot alone should be enough to prove my point. This game pushes a lot of ideas, and is more of a work of modern art than a video game. As such, I doubt many children will be able to fathom its depth.

Although the age of maturity is completely relative, there's more to the matter than that. An Adults Only rating implies that a game's content is obscene and lacks any redeeming qualities. However, I think we can both agree that there are plenty of redeeming qualities for Killer7's content.

The scene you cited as an example, in which Curtis tosses Mary's head to Pedro, is meant to instill in the player a sense of intense dislike toward Curtis. And the scene in which Samantha rapes Harman (both being fully clothed) doesn't exactly count as pornography. Because of these scenes, the game definitely deserves Mature rating, but the scenes are not exactly the examples of needless violence or "full-blown sex sequences" that Jack Thompson so vehemently opposes.

Oddly enough, if we were to see scenes like the ones I discussed in a movie, it's pretty likely that they would only be explicit enough to garner an R rating at best. And I doubt Jack Thompson plans to start attacking movies and stop his sensationalistic, prejudicial crusade against the interactive sector of the entertainment industry.