I think they have the rating and then little bits of description as to why it gets the rating.

Civ is dangerous stuff.

I'd have to leave the room and go look at the boxes, but I'm pretty sure they already are rated. There's plenty of information out there with which to make an informed decision.

The games are rated. And all the ads mention what rating the game has.

If you're (hypothetical you) buying GTA for your kid, and are miffed at the content or possible available downloadable extras, I'm not even gonna bother with the World's Smallest Violin, I'll just go straight to the pointing and laughing and mockity mock mocking.

Yep. Long ago, when I was working in Retail Hell, a Concerned Mother stormed into the store and started shrieking at me because I sold her baby (a surly-looking 13 y.o. boy) a Nine Inch Nails CD. Wasn't I aware that it was inappropriate for young children (cue boy looking embarrassed and uncomfortable)? Didn't I see the "Parental Advisory" sticker on it?! HOW could I be so irresponsible and evil to do such a thing?!

I looked at her calmly and said "If you're so concerned about what he might buy, then you should go shopping with him. It's not my job to tell kids what they can and can't buy; my job is to sell CDs."

I played Ms Pac-Man a year ago at a bar. I really sucked at it. I don't think I was ever good at it, as I rarely had quarters and access to an arcade. I don't think we had it on the Atari.

Silly Jilli -- parents can't be expected to know what their kids are doing! That's why it's Corporate America's job to protect the little darlings.

I was always a bigger fan of Mr than Ms Pac-Man (although props to her for the still relatively early use of "Ms" in popular culture!). Somehow, the Growing LARGE (which phrase now makes me giggle helplessly, thanks to Harvey Birdman) always struck me as a dumb gimmick. But my favorite-ever arcade game, the one that sucked more quarters than I want to think of, was and still is Tempest.

Ms. Pac-Man rocked. She had a bow on her head and lipstick.

Silly Jilli -- parents can't be expected to know what their kids are doing! That's why it's Corporate America's job to protect the little darlings.

ConcernedMother informed me that she was going to have me fired. I laughed at her, then went and put "Beers, Steers, and Queers" by the Revolting Cocks into the store stereo.

When her son came back in (by himself) a week or so later, I told him he needed to work on his hiding-things-from-mom skills. Then I sold him a Ministry CD.

I remember playing Tetris and SimCity on my roommate's computer in college. It was fun enough, but I'd rather spend my time on the computer reading fanfic.

I played the non-porny version of GTA with my nephew when he was about 16, in a room with his mom and dad. The violence seemed so over the top--it was like a Tarantino movie. The nephew had a good grasp on reality vs. what you can get away with in a video game, so I didn't particularly worry about him playing it, although his concurrent dislike of Harry Potter on religious grounds made me go, "Bwhuh?" He's since changed on the latter. He also claims that one of the GTA soundtracks got him into 80s metal, so we now can talk bands.

Which is probably a long-winded way of saying that my GTA experience has been largely tangental, and neutral-to-positive.

I am apparently missing the "Oooh, this is fun!" gene for them.

Me too. The extent to which I played video games was the text Hitchhiker's and I got bored with that fairly quickly.

Heh. It was one of the great joys of selling movie tickets to turn away under 17 kids from R rated movies. You gotta take your fun where you find it.