ESRB President Defends Game Rating System

An anonymous reader writes "The president of the Entertainment Software Rating Board wrote an open letter to Kotaku in response to an editorial that ran there a few days back about the ESRB and the system used to rate games. The editorial basically said that the ESRB isn't doing their job and needs to start if they don't want to be replaced by the Feds. The letter today said Kotaku is wrong and explained why. Does the current rating system serve its purpose?"

Comments

Problem with Ratings

[Prien715]

There seems to be at least 4 distinct independent rating "ladders" if you will.

First, there's sex. Now some parents feel differently about this than others, but I don't think there's a 14 year old out there who didn't at least try and look at pr0n. Males are biologically interested in sex about this age or younger. American society's take on this is that if we pretend it doesn't exist and don't talk about it, it'll be all better.

Second, there's language. Society defines what profanity is. Different languages have different profanities. By censoring words and saying they're bad, we're only adding to their mythos.

Third, drugs and I'll throw violence in here too. Why? Because what matters from a psychological point of view is not that the player can do them, but what in game rewards/punishments such a system allows. Violence may be bad, but suppose I were to make a game where a player plays the role of a narcotics cop. This game would have both drugs and violence. But is it really bad? What rating does it deserve? Suppose you had the option of getting high before going to work which would cause you to get fired and lose the game. How about being able to run over civilians and also losing the game?

Games are really just sandboxes. Being an ostrich and pretending many facets of life simply don't exist seems to earn a good rating, when really good interaction can aid children.

I'm certainly not in favor of GTA being banned or whatnot, but its treatment of drugs and violence probably isn't good to show younger children (killing cops and doing drugs to make money). UT2K4 may be violent, but take out the blood and it's a glorified paintball game (no one actually dies, even when their bodies are in a million pieces, they'll just respawn. Additionally, you can even take out the blood and exploding bodies out of the game. Why don't they rate the game at the lowest violence settings since it doesn't effect the gameplay?)

Why?

[Headcase88]

I'm sick of editorials like this bashing the ESRB. I haven't played the Splinter Cell games much, but if I were to guess, Ubisoft deliberately toned down the violence just enough to get a T rating. Just because they add something (drugs) it does not mean the whole package is as (im)mature.

I guess the ESRB isn't perfectly objective (they're close), but it should give you a very good idea as to what to expect. Is objectivity even possible? Everyone has different opinions, you can't please everyone.

I'm sure you can plunk down millions of taxpayers dollars for a tighter system that .01% of the population would appreciate, but why?