I believe you don't even get what I'm talking about. I'm not comparing agricultural to industrialized systems. I'm simply talking about the past. We all pretty much share most of that, Europeans and Americans in particular, for obvious reasons. It looked very similar across all nations too.
I'm just saying, about a hundred years ago, you went to work when you were old enough to walk and carry bricks.
And half a millenium ago you worked even sooner and you'd see people starve in the streets, your siblings die like flies and your parents make children in your bed-/living room/kitchen. And they didn't tell you about the birds and the bees. oh and hands on violence of course. you remember those knights from your childhood bedtime stories? most of them were plundering brutes instead of honest men the stories make them out to be. you or your father or your mother could lose a hand or an arm for so many things... failing to have all the taxes his majesty wanted. a neighboring kingdom trying to reduce your kingdoms agricultural productivity etc etc. yes they actually crippled the farmworkers (and outside of royalty and a few handimen, everyone worked on farms) to weaken their enemies economy.
Yes, obviously there was something called child and the age in which you were a child was called childhood, but it usually didn't last very long.
and that was pretty much when Europeans hadn't yet made their way to America. but you can be damn sure that early day America didn't have much time or interest in childhood either.
it was far from shielded from reality. if you went into the past now and tried to explain the 1990 concept of what a child is and what childhood means, they wouldn't understand it. at least they wouldn't understand why that's so important.
yes, even today, some people learn about death very early, my own brother drowned when I was 7, but back then, families had to have a dozen babies to guarantee that at least one or two would end up old enough to be married off, work and carry on the family name (if you even had one). times were very different.
just go and look it up, childhood as we know it is a very new concept that happened to spread very fast across many cultures.
Anyway, back on topic, yes, region lock is a business decision and Iwata tells us a half truth at best. But if it helps them doing it this way, why not, let them. They have all the right in the world to make their stuff as restrictive as they wish it to be.
I am one of the last people you have to explain the concept of not romanticising the past to. However there was a marked different between slums of the industrial age (and even then it was not so much doom and gloom) and the agricultural age. No point in history has it ever been as nice to be a poor person and certainly much of life could be classified as brutal and short, especially by the standards of today, but you risk painting it all as an unending, unspeakable hell that humanity somehow suffered through.
"I'm just saying, about a hundred years ago, you went to work when you were old enough to walk and carry bricks."
Depends. Schools were mandatory from some time before that (late 1800's in the UK with all sorts of things happening before then). No argument there was child labour and it was not pleasant by any means.
"I'm simply talking about the past. We all pretty much share most of that,"
Europe sure and the US being largely comprised of people from Europe then sure again, however this discussion seems to be encompassing a forum with people from far further afield and some of that was quite different (give or take some oddities with empires).
I just have issue with the idea of childhood being sold as an inherently modern one. Radical changes have certainly been seen but new is not something I can get behind.
To take it back to the censorship topic and ignoring the "differences between countries and types of media thing" your main justification for all of it was "it seems reasonable". What is innocence and what is a dangerous lack of realism (physics pays no heed to age after all)? Likewise what values are tied to innocence
Sex -- 12 years old and we are taught about it. Cultural differences are also worth considering here.
Violence -- still fairly present in a lot of things.
Aspects of psychology. What is a haunted house and what is a murder scene?
Religion/philosophy. You are taught all the major ones early and the Greek and Roman legends are a favourite of quite young children.
Determinations of complex probability -- any kid old enough to wander around outside can go into any seaside town and play on various types of fruit machines (there are limits on money that can go in without restrictions I believe), 2p machines and more around here. I can buy a lottery ticket at age 16 and that is probably the worst form of gambling there is as far as winning things goes. Also games without gambling elements when you boil it right down to the mechanics level are probably only slightly more common than games without any form of conflict within them.
Drugs. Depending upon where you are many will have seen people smoke or drink and yet they are frowned upon in a lot of media. Proper drugs are another interesting discussion.
"But if it helps them doing it this way, why not, let them. They have all the right in the world to make their stuff as restrictive as they wish it to be."
My mobile phone company has to give me unlock codes depending upon where I am (if they are even allowed to sell me a locked device at all), my ISP locked router is being looked at very unfavourably by various government groups (granted mainly environmental) and we already had a discussion about the WTO and restrictions upon global trade. To this end they might not have the right or at least there is serious precedent for disallowing them from doing this.
Also so what if it helps them, I am out for me and software enforced otherwise arbitrary technical limitations do not seem like something I should swallow.
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