Do Game Ratings Really Do Their Job?

Thanks to CNN Money for its article exploring whether videogame ratings are as relevant as they need to be, with particular reference to Manhunt, the gory Rockstar-developed stealth action game which sparked similar discussions at Slashdot earlier this week over its M (Mature), but not AO (Adults Only) rating. The ESRB ratings board officially commented: "The ratings and content descriptors printed on all game boxes, including Manhunt, tell consumers what to expect from the game and provide the detail parents need to make informed purchasing decisions", but the CNN writer argues: "By way of comparison, 'Deus Ex: Invisible War', which hits streets next week, is also rated M... it's a game I wouldn't mind seeing a 15-year old play, whereas any responsible adult would cringe if they saw a child or young teen playing 'Manhunt'."

Comments

Trust your kids

[ObviousGuy]

You were once kids too. Games aren't going to warp their minds if their minds aren't already warped by you, their parents.

Re:Trust your kids

[hawkbug]

Just something to think about - I never had video games like "Man Hunt" when I was a kid, I was busy playing Super Mario Brothers and Rad Racer. I do think I turned out fine.... but man, I think games like Man Hunt are disturbing to anyone, not just kids. I don't want to know what kind of 10 year would want to play that game.

Re:Trust your kids

[tibike77]

I used to LAUGH (as a late-teenager) at gross stuff such games had in them instead of actually playing them for that.
But... it's the curiosity that will make a 10-year-old play it. The fact that is "restricted" makes it only more desirable. And nobody will make him *not* play it if he sets his mind on it.

Me, I would rather let kids play this game and forbid them to watch the evening news... the problem nowadays is DE-sensitivisation.
People are subjected from a younger age to information about violence, crime in general and all sorts of stuff that would gross an adult out... then you wonder how some kids see nothing wrong in picking up a machine gun and killing their classmates.

IF and only IF you would have severe punishments even in-game for "criminal behaviour", I would let kids play it JUST for that: to feel first-hand what happends to you when you break the law (or generally do harm to others).
You can't expect anybody to know much more than he was thought... even if he thought much himself.

Argh, I lost focus (hey, it's 5 AM and at 7 AM I need to be in the office, lol). What I wanted to say is... NO amount of violence or gore is too big to be over the "hey, I can offset that" when it comes to a child's mind. And you don't even need much effort put into it.
"Purists" would probably forbid their kids from watching anything "sordid" or "horrid", but that's not the way to go: exposure to it won't hurt (quite the contrary)... subjecting one to "constant onslaught" (of anything), without something there to counter-balance it WILL hurt in the long run.

So, again, we just turn back to the source of the problem: parents should pay attention to their children, even if work seems to be gaining the upper hand lest they want to have a dysfunctional child (like most these days) in spite of their apparent "quick-judgement efforts" to shelter him.

*bah* I'm getting too young/old/wrong-aged for this *grr*
Sleep time...

Can't be enforced...

[DarkBlackFox]

The problem with video game ratings is that they are extremely difficult to enforce. With a movie, it's pretty easy to stick a drone at the entrance of the auditorium to ensure no one under 17 gets into an R rated movie. With games though, while they may restrict the sales to minors, all it takes is an older friend or clueless parent to pick up the latest Grand Theft Auto and hand it to a 7 year old.

Sure, the ratings may help for more conscious parents whom read the box before they buy, but for the majority of people out there, the ratings are useless. Same goes for ratings on DVD/videos- people either just don't look or don't care.

Gee...

[Captain Splendid]

Manhunt is causing a flap. How predictable. Can we get over ourselves and please give the responsibility for parenting children back to parents? That would be nice.

Do they HAVE to be 100% correct?

[tibike77]

I mean, your kid comes running and says "dad, dad, I want this new game, it's awesome".
Do you just buy it by looking at the E-something rating, or do you at least have the decency to read the darn package first?

And anyway... as a previous poster said: there is no "irreparable damage" dealt to any kid for seing something... the damage comes if you LET him play that game for too long and have no ideea later why he starts poking people's eyes out or something like that.

Hey, it's not *that* long ago since I was a kid (I'm 26 now), I have a pretty clear recollection of what I have played and when (*cough* agreed, the violence level of PacMan, Nether Earth and Chuckie Egg I was subjected to at a pretty young age doesn't scale to today's titles *cough*).
Still, I DID have younger friends meddling with Doom when it came out (the kids I was talking about were 7-9 years old then), playing it like crazy... still, they *COULD* make a difference between real-life and a computer game, and even very well.

In pre-conclusion: buy your kid just about anything he can play... but look at him the first times he plays it... then again in about one week, etc (ok, I'm *NOT* going to start a child-psychology lecture here).

And (finally...) in conclusion: don't judge a book by its cover, or a game by its rating. If your kid wants something and you can very well afford it, give it to him, NO FEAR of not being able to take it away later if he does stupid (not defining what stupid in this context means) things with it... (if you fear that you can't take it away later, you might have already a spoiled brat and it's too late for education anyway).

Relevant, yes; perfect guide, no.

[Babbster]

The main problem lies in the expectations for game ratings. Some people expect that the rating of a game will tell them all they need to know about whether or not it's suitable for particular age groups. Those who know better understand that knowing the rating can only be the start of that process.

As is standard for this kind of discussion, I'll use a movie comparison. Both "Bound" and "The Matrix" were rated R by the MPAA. However, one (The Matrix) is far more likely to be acceptable to a parent for viewing by their 14-year-old than the other (Bound). The Matrix was rated R primarily for violence, secondarily for language with a relatively small amount of [non-sexual] nudity. Bound, on the other hand, was rated R primarily for violence and sexual content (specifically, the homosexual aspect) and secondarily for language. Thus we have two movies with the same rating that are going to be judged differently as to appropriateness by parents.

The same applies to the ESRB ratings. "Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball" was rated M primarily for its perceived sexual content/nudity while "Manhunt" received an M based on graphic violence. The former would be acceptable to any parent whose children would be permitted to peruse the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, while the latter would probably bother most parents of children under 16 (and probably many parents of children OVER 16).

I think the television ratings system is probably a better direction for video games in that it provides a much better breakdown of ratings (seven ratings plus descriptors) and it covers content which parents are less likely to view in full (few parents want to sit through a half-hour of Pokemon, and even fewer want to sit and watch their children play two hours of a video game).

So, I think the ESRB is doing its job within the framework that already exists (five ratings with only three that truly matter - E for Everyone, T for Teen and M for Mature). It's just that some people are expecting that simple framework to provide more information than it truly can. Adopting a system with a larger number of simple ratings based on a more complex decision-making process would probably provide the information in a way that would be more useful.

It's how it's done in America

[frankjr]

America can care less about the level of violence in something. America is more worried about sex than violence.

Shouldn't we be asking something else?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not, "Do game ratings really do their job?"

But, "Are game ratings doing your job?"

Don't let the answer to the second one be Yes.

Violence vs Sex

[cgenman]

America, and by extension the ESRB, has an odd relationship with violence and sex. Violence is, by and large, seen as a viable solution to the problems of the world (usually violence). Sex, on the other hand, is a morally corrupt abhorration. While videogames, movies, and television have no problems showing camera pans through the heads of suicide victims, women put onto meathooks, gun-toting henchmen having their heads severed in half, sex seems to put the industry in a tussle.

NYPD Blue, a show whose subject is violent homicide, caused quite an uproar when they showed a female breast for a fraction of a second. The violence equivalence of flashing a breast would be to show a quick clip of a knife under someone's jacket. How dare they! In a PG-13 movie, you are allowed to show a gun shooting and have someone falling over in death throes, though you cannot show the gun pointing at someone in the same frame. That's reserved for R. A sex equivalent would be to show someone pointing their "gun" at someone else, and the other person bouncing up and down in pleasure. Not something you could get away with in... For example... Pirates of the Carribbean.

Very few movies have ever received an X or MA for violence, and the few that did were re-cut. Paul Verhoeven is probably the only Hollywood director to achieve such a plateau, but even then the discrepancy shows through. Total Recall had a total of 3 shots altered to achieve an R rating, with no screentime lost. Verhoeven's Basic Instinct had to be re-submitted 7 times before it was accepted, and had 16 minutes altered. It made it to the European market intact. However, his movie RoboCop lost between 4 and 24 minutes depending upon the European market, yet hit the Americans largely unadulterated.

After watching the violence prevalent in, for example, Freddy vs. Jason, it becomes painfully obvious that no amount of videogame violence will draw an AO rating in this country. Not only is violence the core crutch for designers, but no amount of violence will truly exceed the threshold of the movie screen. And while we claim to worry about children's exposure to violence, parents get truly livid when the possibility of sex arises. Ever wonder why we see hostages take bullets to the head in the gritty, realistic world of Max Payne 2, but all sexual activity must be very generally implied?

Simple bloody violence is perfectly OK in this country. Despite most R-rated movies being violence pornography, there is little movement to stop them. When people talk of the sexualization of the youth, they usually point to Brittany Spears or some such. Sex is apparently such a horrific thing that we must protect our youth from the symbols that represent it. Brittany spears doesn't have sex on television. Brittany spears doesn't simulate having sex on television. Many people on MTV either kill or die in their videos.

Theories about the ramifications this prioritization has on international affairs are welcome. However, WRT the subject at hand, Manhunt doesn't achieve the level of violence required to be considered perverse because we have given up all concept that pure violence can be perverse: That there is anything at all wrong with watching a man use a lawnmower against a room full of the rotting undead, or melting a man's skin off his body then running him over with a car is a foreign concept to us Americans.

Show all of the pain you like. Just don't have any characters pleasure eachother.

Re:Violence vs Sex

[GTarrant]

A key point here is the interesting fact that everything you mention in your (excellent) post could be flipped on top of itself if we just cross the Altantic (something alluded to in your movie examples).

In Europe, for the most part, violence is completely taboo - movies, television, wherever, American movies often must be edited an incredible amount to reduce instances of graphic violence. Television shows rarely show the types of violence that are routine on CSI, NYPD Blue, or numerous other shows. Hell, in some countries, you even have police that can't carry firearms. Yet at the same time, sex is commonplace. In foreign versions of the reality show "Big Brother" it's not unusual for the station to show contestants having sex with each other, and it happens on television shows as well. Maybe not hardcore, but it's done. In fact, one recent story mentioned that a show (loosely translated as) "How to Have Sex" was recently reduced in airtime because people were getting BORED of it.

Interesting how desensitized Americans are to violence (when was the last time violence, really was SHOCKING to most people here?) while sex is abhorrent (reminds one of the Simpsons' when the town wanted to protest Michaelangelo's 'David' - saying it depicted parts of the body which, however practical and necessary, were EVIL), while in Europe, it's the opposite.

Sure, America started as a rather puritanical place, but Europe itself was pretty dominated by similar religions for a long time, yet seems to have gone the other direction...

Out of the mouths of babes...

[dmorin]

Just this weekend my team met the boss's son, who is about 11. We were discussing the purchase of a new game console for the office. When the question came up of PS/2 versus X-Box, this 11yr old said "The PS/2 has mostly E for Everyone games. The X-Box is better, it has lots of M titles."

Ratings systems in general

[randomlogik]

You seem to have quite a interesting range of ratings in the states.

In Australia, we have a standardized rating system (sorry its called a classification system here) for Games, Music, Movies and most of tv.

It goes like this:

G - General Exhibition
PG - Parental Guidance for those under 15
M15+ - Recommended for Mature Audiences 15 and over
MA15+ - Restricted to audienced 15 and over
R18+ - Restricted to adults 18+
X - Hard core porn

This is used across the board, however it is enforced unfairly. I can't get my friends 17 year old girlfriend into Kill Bill, however she can buy it when it comes out on DVD.

What is funny here is the R18+ category doesnt exist for games. Basically if the game is too violent and/or too much sex - it gets banned (ie GTA3, Postal).

The ratings system here has always been under controversy by one group or another. And the moment some other game gets banned (possibly Manhunt) there will be another gamer's uproar.

I agree with restricted classification for children (but not overkill), but I do not believe anyone has the right to BAN films or games and the such.

Basic human psycology here

[1eyedhive]

Human psych 101:
If something is Taboo, it is desired more

Example:
10 year old wants T or M rated game, say Half-Life. His parents deny it to him because of the rating, ergo he wants it even MORE, eventually getting it off an older friend or someone with more liberal parents.

Violence vs Sex:
American society was hugely victorian at the turn of the century, and with the outlawing of prostitution, sex, depicted in an form became taboo. Granted, society has made several leaps in the past few decades, but the conservatives seem to always prevail, thus the victorian mentality continues here in the US, anything of a sexual nature is restricted to 18+, even though we humans are aware of it's allure from age 12 or so, and because it's taboo, it is desired greatly, leading to misconceptions, and curiosity, and due to the taboos of discussing it in public, we have a massive teen pregnancy rate.

OK, back to the games, violence is more socially accepted than sex for no good reason. I have no qualms in seeing someone get shot up in a bloody mess (very violent), but a scene of a nude body is FORBIDDEN.

What a strange would we live in, eh?

What IS the job of video game ratings?

[nanojath]

The author's primary argument is that Manhunt should have received an AO (Adults Only) rating: his secondary argument is that the rating system is inconsistent and consequently does not do the job of serving as an information source for parents.

I agree with the author in one sense: the infrequent application of an AO rating mirrors the reality of movie ratings, which is that the only thing we, as a culture, seem to think really justifies restriction for adults only is sexual content. And this is a sick, twisted reflection of modern society: that it is perceived as somehow healthier to see depictions of humans brutally killing one another than to see nudity or even the graphic depiction of sex.

Meanwhile mainstream pop culture is so saturated with sex in every kind of portrayal except an honest, direct and complex one that the sexual sophistication of modern humanity seems to be in the ballpark of a socially retarded fourteen-year-old.

Having said this, I don't really agree with the author. Personally I think rating levels are mostly pointless - they can serve a function as an arbitrary cut-off point for the restriction of sales based on age, but you can't expect a handfull of broad classifications to give you the information you need if you want to make an informed choice as a parent, which is the only rational function of ratings. A voluntary rating should, like a movie, accurately list the relevant components of a game. It should specify whether there is language, crime, drug use, violence (and whether the violence is prevalent, gory, and/or sadistic), sexuality and/or nudity. Maybe I'm missing some categories of vice. But this is basically the best that can be done. It's up to a parent to decide how involved they're going to be with the media their children consume.

I do question some of the ratings I see. Enter the Matrix is rated Teen. This is a game that could be called Let's Kill Some Cops. The violence isn't particularly bloody or gory but I question whether that should be the fundamental issue. You just blow away an awful lot of cops. This reflects the movies, of course, but then the movies are rated R. You can also blow away innocent bystanders if you feel like it. You can give random maintenance workers a rap on the head to get them to lie down and surrender... and then, if you feel like it, you can switch to sniper mode and put a cap in the back of their heads, execution style. Versatile. There is no punishment or disincentive for this behavior. Contrast, say, Eternal Darkness, where I recently got stuck for a while in a level and, in the spirit of trying everything, cut down an innocent monk. And boy did my character lose some serious sanity for that decision... I'm not saying video games should be obligated to impose some sort of moral code of behavior, just pointing out that the distinctions can get pretty subtle.

On the other hand, by the time I was seventeen my parents had pretty much stopped exercising control over the media I consumed and that seems appropriate to me. My folks actually paid attention to what I was consuming and gave their input, whether I wanted it or not, of what they thought of questionable components. I find it significant that the main, pretty much the only objection my dad ever voiced to the video games I played was the way my brother and I would get into loud, foul-mouthed arguments when we played against each other. Apparently he had this crazy idea that actual behavior towards actual human beings required the most active parenting.

I have very broad tastes and consume a lot of media I don't imagine my parents would enjoy or "approve" of. What I received as a child that made a difference was not some checklist of permitted and forbidden content, but rather parental engagement in how I spent my time, input on the kinds of things I was seeing or listening to, and a strong influence on my real behavior in the real world. I haven't had an uncontrollable urge to kill people so far.