Y'all don't get it. It's everyone else's job to make sure nothing they do could be harmful should a child stumble upon it. It is your duty to make sure you never do anything that's not G-rated! Children are everywhere, man. That means no more MTS. We do have an age limit, but no one follows the rules anyway! This site should be shut down now because a kid might see it.

fuckn a, man.

My original point was, should The Sims 3 page have posted that pic. Not that kids can find out about drugs anywhere, or that I'm raging against drug use, or that it is "everyone else's job to make sure nothing they do could be harmful" should a child stumble upon it. It was more the fact that their facebook page is really a giant advertising service, and that this was the equivlent of posting a very bad ad for the game, considering it is a Teen rated game, not a Mature one.

yes, children know about drugs. and sex. and the Atom Bomb. and whatever bad thing you can think of. That doesn't mean that they should have to see it from a page that is supposed to be kid friendly, and a harmless form of escapism. Considering that they DID take the post down, someone higher up at EA must have thought the same thing, because it gave a negative impression to many fans and parents of those fans. EA already has a very negative image right now, even though they pretend to ignore that fact. This was just a bad idea from the get go.

There are Mods and CC on this site that some people may find to be objectionable content. However, the site itself does a pretty good job spelling out for people what they can expect to find here, so if they sign up for it, they have been warned ahead of time, and so they wouldn't have much ground for complaints. Some facebook pages are they same way, for example, on my page, I spell out right away what it's about, so if someone thinks I posted something they object to, I point out to them that they knew what they were getting when they liked my page. But the Sims page is supposed to be a "kid-appropriate" place. It's all a matter of context.

You use the words 'child', 'children', 'kid-friendly', 'kid-appropriate' which convey to me someone older than a toddler but younger than a teen. The Sims 3 is rated T which I assume means 13 and up and, as far as I know, does not mean you should have the expectation of it being 'kid-friendly' nor that the Facebook page for a game rated T would be 'kid-friendly'.

If I understand your apparent clarification correctly, then my response would be that the choice is up to EA and this is a non-debate. If you just think it's an error in marketing, that's up to them to decide, and there's no real reason for us to debate it because we don't have any say in their marketing. Debate room topics aren't for opinion polls, either. If you're trying to make a moral argument, then that's what the debate has been to this point.

Meh. The debate room has been really watered down recently anyways. This is the first discussion in a while that has actually had opposing sides. Bedsides I think the debate was intended to be if it's okay or not, not if they should have done it.

I'm thinking from what he's saying that the intent wasn't to make a normative claim, but the debate has been fine with the assumption that there is a normative claim here.

"Titles rated T (Teen) have content that may be suitable for ages 13 and older. Titles in this category may contain violence, suggestive themes, crude humor, minimal blood, simulated gambling, and/or infrequent use of strong language."

I think it's pretty clear that this qualifies as "crude humor."

I thought crude humor was farting noises. I got to get out more often...

The important bit is what it isn't:

"MATURE
Titles rated M (Mature) have content that may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older. Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language.

ADULTS ONLY
Titles rated AO (Adults Only) have content that should only be played by persons 18 years and older. Titles in this category may include prolonged scenes of intense violence and/or graphic sexual content and nudity."

So unless someone's arguing that EA "crossed a line" and went into Mature territory in its promotion of The Sims, which would imply something in the territory of Saw, Pulp Fiction, or Deep Throat, then I think they're pretty clearly not beyond the realm of the T rating.

I do sympathize with your concern and that this may present a bad image of EA to the populous particularly parents who have authority to end game play based on their decisions. However, I am forced to agree with many who have already replied by stating it is after all their opinion. Also since this is a Teen based game, hopefully those playing it are at a point where they will not be easily offended.

Second of all, as careful as EA can be, their are some out there who will look for a spot on a clean sheet and so forth. Is there a way to run a gaming company with a perfect rating where everyone agrees with your direction and focus? Probably not. So I agree with your concern but in the end I believe this is ball is in EA's media relations court.

Hopefully, this wasn't a critical fail but as strong as EA is I am not overly worried this publicity act on Facebook will irrevocably damage their image or invoke an alarmingly large number of parents to give the thumbs down to their teens for trying to play this game.

The page you linked to is currently unavailable, so if its any consolation, the controversy this has caused has backfired on EA.