Slashdot Mirror
ESRB Should Stand Down?
Next Generation has a piece wondering if the ESRB should step down in favour of an independent board, to restore the faith of consumers in the game ratings system. They talk with a company that proposes just that, wanting to substitute a new system for the current model. From the article: "Profanity Sex Violence (PSV) Ratings differ from the ESRB in that they describe levels of sex, violence and profanity in games (using a traffic light system) instead of judging a game to be appropriate for a certain age."
Minority Report, carries red for violence and profanity
So apparently this rating system can't distinguish between Minority Report and a Quentin Tarantino film. How useless.
That's a big issue with this "proposal"; it's even more vague, arbitrary and uninformative than the current system. But here's another problem, for me anyway. From TFA:
"As far as I know, they use a few gamers that reside in New York. They are trying to follow the way that the NPAA does it in that they are very circumspect about who their reviewers are. From what we can piece together they have a group of gamers who live in New York, watch the videotape footage and then issue a rating based upon what they see."
He adds, with heavy sarcasm, "Of course we know that a group of gamers in New York represent the social and cultural values of everyone in America."
So, quite clearly this guy has something against New Yorkers. He comes off sounding, to me, like a borderline nutcase. Probably some sort of bible belter or equivalent. So what does he think, reviewers in Alabama would better represent the values of America? Or is he, in fact, proposing that everyone in America review the content of games? How else to reflect the "cultural values of everyone in America"?
Regardless, he obviously has no idea how the ESRB works. Because this isn't how it works. The ESRB has a rotating group of content reviewers from a variety of areas in the United States, not just New York (in fact, I'm not sure any of them were actually in New York last I worked in the industry, although the ESRB does have offices there, among other places). And they hire new ones all the time, making sure nobody stays in the system long enough to get jaded. They keep the actual identity of the reviewers secret, but the general demographic of who they are is not secret, and none of them are "gamers". They are selected in part because they are respected members of their communities; some of them are clergy, some are doctors, some are teachers, some are housewives. Few of them are actually of the stereotypical "gamer" age and last I knew of it, none of them actually play games recreationally. (My knowledge dates back about 2 years, but I doubt all that much has changed since then.) Again, none of this is a secret - this guy could have called the ESRB and asked and they would have told him all of this.
Frankly, this all just seems like a guy running an "organization" out of his apartment looking for publicity, which Next Generation seems all too happy to give him. His "ideas", if you can call them that, range from non-existent (he has few actual proposals for change, just simple criticisms of the current system of which he's almost completely ignorant) to unworkable. There's really no reason for me to be wasting my time posting about it except that 70 other people so far seem to think it's important enough to talk about.
The ESRB is wise to have not bothered returning Next Gen's calls, though.