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Parents Agree With ESRB Ratings
Gamespot reports that a study funded by the ESRB found that parents generally agree with the ESRB's ratings. From the article: "The study was conducted over 11 days in October, and included more than 400 parents. Each participant was shown footage from eight random games out of a pool of 80 titles rated by the ESRB within the last year. Each parent was asked to rate the game, then told what the actual rating was and asked to rate the rating as 'about right,' 'too strict,' or 'too lenient.'"
In my opinion Conker's Bad Fur Day was one of the better 'Mature' games released for the N64; do you want to know what the most common complaint about the game was at local retailers?
Every day (for months after it was released) parrents would come in and complain that they thought the game was appropriate for their 6-10 year old because of the 'cute' character; in many of these stores when a parent would come in and buy the game the sales people would even warn them that it was really not appropriate for younger children (hence the 'M' rating), and yet they still complained afterwords.
Now as I see it, it doesn't matter whether parents agree with the ratings (or not) the important thing is that parents actually inform themselves in order to make an informed decision. Being a videogame junkie myself, I have been asked often whether a game was appropriate for a given child; what I usually tell people is 'go to gamerankings.com, read a couple of reviews (they will give you an idea about what content and quality of the game), and check out the ESRB rating.' Do parents do it? For the most part no.
I recognize that parents are busy, and may not be interested in games, but if you want a game that they will enjoy (and at a level of content which is appropriate) then they have to do more than look at the games cover; the letter 'M' doesn't tell the whole story, neither does a fury character.