Back on the subject, I'm kinda in agreement with those who say we should not be trying to influence the ESRB rating of Blade & Soul. I stand by this opinion for two reasons.
First, I disagree with the idea of censorship on a fundamental level. I do not feel governments (or worse, private organizations), should be able to use ratings or other means to limit the sales of games. I realize that participation in ESRB ratings is technically voluntary, but it's a de facto institution, and if your game does not have an ESRB rating, most retailers are going to be leery of stocking it. Further, many retailers can and do take ESRB ratings into account, so even though technically the ESRB censors nothing on its own, the effect an unfavorably-high ESRB rating has on a game renders it a form of censorship. If the ESRB were to shut down tomorrow, and parents were actually required to research the video games they share with their kids, I personally wouldn't bat an eyelash.
Yes, I believe that Blade & Soul demonstrates tasteless sexual objectification of women prominently. I encourage people who are offended by such to avoid purchasing the game on account of that, in order to force companies to reconsider such honestly tacky oversexualization (or at the very least, give players an alternative to it, like CoH does.) I cannot, however, endorse using censorship via the ESRB to force the issue.
The second reason is that, to be totally honest, I feel that attempting to use ESRB ratings to harm Blade & Soul is somewhat misaimed and ultimately won't be that effective. Even though NCsoft is really banking on Blade & Soul being a hit, it's still just one game in NCsoft's catalogue, and furthermore it's a brand-new game to boot. If it fails, NCsoft will hurt, but it's not a long-term investment, and they won't have wasted too much money developing it yet. They've still got their Korean games, the Lineage series, and the Guild Wars series, and potentially Wildstar if the latter doesn't become vaporware.
In my opinion, all of the effort attempting to censor Anime Loli Simulator 2012 (Pedobear-Approved) via the ESRB could be better spent generating more bad press against NCsoft and its business practices directly. If we can convince investors that NCsoft will mishandle the money they're given and that holding onto NCsoft stock is the equivalent of throwing money away (and given their recent stock prices, I honestly think it is), then we win - NCsoft will be forced to make more and more drastic business decisions to stay afloat and retain investors, or fail as a company. The carrot we've been dangling - selling or licensing CoH to a third party in order to reopen the game - becomes a lot more appealing at this point.
Even if we were to succeed in giving B&S a rating that would cause retailers to avoid carrying it, what have we achieved? We've lowered the potential playerbase of one game in NCsoft's library, and possibly earned some enmity from its playerbase, which doesn't do our cause any favors in the long run. To be blunt, I feel we have better options.
