When did the USA started rating things like Movies, Board games, TV shows & Video games? Why did we start rating those things as well?

[BBFDancer]

[WindAtMyBack]

I remember it, but I don't remember what year it was. I think it was late 60s or early 70s. The original ratings were a bit different than now. I think they only had four: G, M, R, and X.

This was largely in response to a lot of R and X rated movies becoming mainstream at regular theaters. Before that you could only see such things a seedy places, not mainstream theaters.

A lot of people tried to stop those kind of movies, but the courts ruled that they were allowed. So they came out with ratings.

[BCA6010]

ESRB game ratings were created in 1994 on the heels of the original Mortal Kombat, Doom, and some other game being released and made available for home computers resulted in 1993 congressional hearings regarding excessive violence and sexual content. What they came up with is actually voluntary, but since everything was sold as a physical copy at the time, most stores wouldn't stock a game that was unrated. PEGI ratings (Europe) started about a decade later for pretty much the same reasons.

The movie rating system started in the late 60s, replacing the Hays Code with a new system that put the decision whether or not to see a movie in the hands of parents and adults. Under Hays, most movies that would earn R and even many PG13 movies would never have gone to screen.

[TheSpaceGnome]

Sexually repressed and religious women (usually old fashioned middle aged moms), are why the rest of us deal with censorship. They are offended by everything, and think everything fun or interesting okr educational is evil or bad.

I remember when pokemon, harry potter, and pretty much any DnD style thing was labeled as "satanic witchcraft" by these nutjobs. And of course to them nudity is just obscene, because surely no other creature on this planet is nude 24/7 *coughallofthemarecough*

The choice to be rated is actually optional, but most theaters/consoles/stores/etc. won't stock your product if you don't have it rated, for fear of being harrassed by a board of angry old ladies.

And women claim men have all the power 😂

[TheSpaceGnome]

or* not okr

[BCRanger10]

According to Google, movie ratings started in 1968 and video games in 1994. Don't know about the others. As to why? Probably because of the changes in style and content, as well as in moral boundaries. That and because parents have the right to know what their kids are watching and playing.