The ESRB Don't Get No Respect

Via the ffwd linklog, a story on the Hollywood Reporter site discussing the public image of the ESRB, from "pain in the butt" on the developer's side to lax child perverter on the lawmaker's side. From the article: "The issue Greenberg describes is one involving dollars and cents: Almost every single retail chain chooses not to sell 'AO' rated games, period. In just the same way that many movie theaters will not show films branded with an 'NC-17' rating, the 'AO' severely limits a game's distribution, to put it mildly."

Comments

WOOSH!

[databoing]

That was the sound of the Rodney Dangerfield reference + joke flying over your head!

Shocked, shocked I am

[the_skywise]

No I'm not... I said this when they first implemented this monstrosity back when I was working in the game industry.

"Oh.. we only want to help parents to make an educated CHOICE... we don't want to censor anything."

Look it up, those were the "pro" arguments for such a system.

And now we have attempts at laws to ban shops from even displaying M rated games (unless you go into that back room) and AO is right out.

Meanwhile the game industry is playing the same game as the movie industry is. R rated movies (M games) sell better than the PG stuff.
(Of course that's been changing since the crackdown of theaters to actually ID people for R rated movies... My friend laments that the Ring 2 was PG-13. How scary can it be in PG-13?!)

Not that I'm disparaging parents from making an educated decision. It's a double edged sword.

Re:Shocked, shocked I am

[badasscat]

No I'm not... I said this when they first implemented this monstrosity back when I was working in the game industry.

"Oh.. we only want to help parents to make an educated CHOICE... we don't want to censor anything."

One fact that gets lost in comments like these - and really, you should know better - is that the ESRB is part of the game industry. Literally. It is comprised of all of the game developers and publishers who choose to participate in it. A publisher is perfectly free not to pay the membership fees, not to have ESRB representatives and not to have their games rated. It is a voluntary system that is funded by the publishers themselves. Most publishers choose to be a part of it for several reasons, including the fact that certain large chain stores will not accept unrated games for sale.

As a former member of the industry myself, I know a bit about how the ESRB works. Rating games is an almost shockingly simple yet seemingly arbitrary process. Publishers are told to send samples of the most prurient and violent content of their games, and then a panel of three average people rate what they see. This panel constantly rotates. They do not play the games. They may make their ratings based on the ten minutes of video the publisher sends.

You would think this process would be open to all sorts of abuse on both sides (especially given that it's an industry-funded organization), but in reality there are all sorts of checks and balances that prevent that from happening. There is an appeals process if a publisher believes their game was rated too harshly, and all ratings are subject to review. Conversely, a publisher faces heavy fines (and paying the fines is not voluntary, if you want to keep getting your games rated), not to mention a potential embarassing recall, if they are found to have withheld content that would result in a harsher rating or additional content descriptors.

Most publishers are pretty good about this stuff. It is rarely a surprise to a publisher when a game gets a particular rating or particular content descriptors - I mean most publishers were not born yesterday, they go through this many, many times a year and they pretty much know what to expect. Some of the descriptors themselves can be pretty goofy - I remember one of the games I worked on got a T rating with a descriptor of "Mild Lyrics", whatever the hell that means. "We just want to warn you... these lyrics, are really not that bad!" (The ESRB does provide specific definitions of all descriptors to publishers, but some of them are still a little wacky.) Most of the goofy ones, though, are not really worth worrying about. The one thing that trips some publishers up sometimes are distinctions between things like "cartoon violence" and plain old "violence", which can mean the difference between a T and an M rating. But even that's pretty rare, because the ESRB is pretty specific about what defines each of those descriptors, and again, publishers usually have plenty of past experience to go on.

I think the point I'm trying to make is that this is a more symbiotic relationship than most people think. Yes, publishers can groan every once in a while about the process or their ratings or whatever. But it's not the way a dissident groans about his government; it's more like the way a kid groans about his parents. The ESRB is literally related to the game publishers, and everybody is part of the same industry.

It may surprise many of you to know also that few, if anybody, in the industry want to get rid of the ESRB. Because they know the alternative is government action. The ESRB, as the game industry's self-regulating body, is obviously far preferable to getting congress and law enforcement involved. It's in the industry's best interests for the ESRB to be as effective as possible, and unfortunately the retailers have been letting the industry down in terms of ratings enforcement. At all the ESRB meetings I had to attend (and yes, I groaned at these along with everybody else) the complaints were always centered around retailers screwing everything up for the rest of the industry, not about the ESRB itself.

Re:Horrible!

[mooingyak]

But at least 'Repect' makes sense.

Not a replacement

[9mm Censor]

A rating system no matter how good it is, is not an excuse for poor parenting.

Re:Not a replacement

[Anonymous Coward]

The point of ratings is to enable good parenting.

Article mixing facts

[frikazoyd]

First of all, the ESRB is doing its job. They take a game, and I'm sure they have a tally sheet marking whether games have certain degrees of violence type 1,2, and 3, or whether it has certain degrees of nudity. That's not the issue.

The article paints a picture of "lawmakers vs. ESRB", but it mentions one Republican who is accusing the ESRB of being too light on handing out AOs, and another (Clinton) of launching an investigation into the effects of M games.

Now, read that again. Clinton (and, for that matter, almost every other lawmaker "fighting the good fight") doesn't have a problem with the rating system, they have a problem with the games. The article only has one quote from one senator that thinks the ESRB is not tough enough. Then the article goes on to point out how tough the ESRB is. And the insight they give there is pretty spot-on, espeically the comparisons between the MPAA and the ESRB.

However, the majority of the article is a defense against the first politician's quote, and doesn't really hold water against the other attacks (which are against videogames that have been rated M, not the rating system itself). Besides, it isn't the ESRB's job to ensure that games rated M aren't sold to 17 year olds, it is the retailer's job. And video game (only) retail stores are pretty scuzzy to begin with, especially the chain ones.

Re:Censor is BS

[frikazoyd]

I don't know what world you live in, but in this world countries have banned several video games, and that fact was used as a selling point here in America. The only thing we really censor is nudity, we just try to control the amount of violence that a child observes here in America.

Example, Carmageddon was banned in Australia I believe, as well as Postal 2 and more that I can't remember off hand.

Also, it may be the parent's job to do so, but you have to admit that children can be pretty convincing/conniving if they want a game that is "Adult" enough. And, the industry is pretty guilty of trying to sell on that type of appeal, whether they want to admit it or not.

The trouble with the ESRB.

[ronfar]

People have gotten used to the movie rating system. They know what G, PG, and R mean. (I know PG-13 and NC-17 are in there too, but I think those are both more ambiguous.).

G - Kid's cartoon
PG - Action movie without much violence
R - Movie with enough violence and/or sex to be a concern for children

Do people know what E, T, M mean? Well, I was reading a review of The Incredibles for Gamecube on Amazon. The angry dad reviewer said he wanted to get the game for his kid, but he was upset that it was "Teen" rated. He thought it was inappropriate for a game based on a G Rated movie (of course, The Incredibles was PG, but never mind.).

It's clear that T, in this case, was meant to indicate a PG rated game. Instead, T means an age group. It is more like the "reccomended for kids 8 and up" notes on toys than a movie rating.

Some parents see the system as:

E = games for kids
T = games for thuggy teenagers
M = X-Rated games that should be banned.

So, of course the ERSB gets no respect. They've failed to create a coherent rating system.

I'll tell you whats f'd up about ESRB.

[JVert]

So I buy the collectors edition right? it has all the marketing hype on the back on a peice of shiny paper that is tacked on with glue. The rest of the box is all themed out except the stupid little ESRB rating on the front.