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.'"

Comments

In other news...

[torchdragon]

Parents who don't involve themselves in their kids lives still attempting to blame society for not raising their kids properly. Lawyers are still fat and happy with irresponsible parents, no plans for change.

Re:In other news...

[nomadic]

Parents who don't involve themselves in their kids lives still attempting to blame society for not raising their kids properly.

This article is showing exactly the opposite. Parents are involving themselves in their kids' lives by monitoring the ESRB rating. Or do you think parents should decide whether the game is appropriate themselves? i.e., plunk down 50 bucks, bring it home, and spend 40 hours playing it through before letting junior get his grubby hands on it? The ESRB ratings are voluntary, and I really don't see the problem with them.

Lawyers are still fat and happy with irresponsible parents, no plans for change.

Ah, lawyer-bashing time. How does this comment relate to the article? Has there been a single successful lawsuit aimed at video game violence?

Ratings not the problem

[GigsVT]

Not the solution either.

Seems mostly like people that the ratings are designed for, i.e. the ones that don't care to look into whether a game is appropriate for their kids or not, aren't looking at the ratings anyway.

I was talking to another parent about video games, and they were surprised by all the stuff that was in GTA. I asked them if they knew the game was rated M, and they said they didn't.

It seems to me that my kid looks at the ratings more than I do. He knows if he asks for a game that's rated M he's probably not going to get it.

Headline

[Bogtha]

Wouldn't a more accurate headline read "ESRB say parents agree with them"? Is anybody shocked by this? Seems to be as obvious as Microsoft saying that Windows is better than Linux. Also:

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.'"

Isn't this entirely dependent upon what footage from the games is shown? And isn't that choice made by the ESRB? So can't they produce whatever conclusions they like? Violent game rated as suitable for children? Show the parents footage from a particularly mundane part of the game.

Conker's Bad Fur Day (N64)

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Conker's Bad Fur Day (N64)

[some guy on slashdot]

Yes, parents are still responsible for reading the game box. But that doesn't negate the need for this kind of study.

The point here is that Jack Thompson and several California congresspeople have been hemming and hawing for the past few months that the ESRB isn't doing its job - basically claiming that, since the board is controlled by the industry, there is incentive for them to put more kid-friendly ratings on mature games. They even proposed creating a government committee to do its job instead, although that part of the law never made it into the final draft.

Now, to you and me, it's blindingly obvious that the ESRB is doing nothing of the sort. Violent titles have a "M" on the box for a reason. But some people don't bother looking at the evidence, or they actually want to believe that all the game companies are evilly trying to corrupt our youth. The ESRB is just trying to dispel the myth that they are intentionally using the wrong ratings. Maybe once that issue is cleared up, our policymakers can get back to debating actual issues instead of wildly gesticulating toward some vague conspiracy theory.

Sure, they may agree with the ratings...

[dividedsky319]

But... will that stop them from complaining about all the sex and violence in video games?

I doubt it. They'll still go after the game developers, even though it plainly says "M" on the box... when there's a simple solution: don't buy it for your kid if you think it's too violent. Just because it exists doesn't mean you need to buy it.

In short: Stop blaming others and start taking responsibility as a parent.

Re:Newsflash

[AvitarX]

Except good parenting will curb those desires and keep them at least within healthy levels.

And I think you will find that most teens (at least that I knew) sexually experimented far less, and intoxicated themselves far less then they wanted to. Due to a combination of non-oblivious parents, laws, girls not experimenting with them, and a sense of responisbility.

Believe it or not, it is harder for a teen to get an R rated movie than a PG 13 one, and harder to get a beer than a coke. It is moving that way with games too.

Wonder how the parents rated with their kids...

[ianscot]

...people that the ratings are designed for, i.e. the ones that don't care to look into whether a game is appropriate for their kids or not, aren't looking at the ratings anyway.

At any rate those are the very parents who've responded to this ESRB study. The point is that they're not tuned into what's in the games, so they're supposed to use the ratings as a shortcut.

This story is pretty telling. The "study" method they use is to show a parent a random selection of the "most extreme" moments from a given game, and then ask the parent to rate it her/himself, and then ask the parent to assess the real ESRB rating. It's very much a reacting-to-isolated-moments-out-of-context sort of a process, and meant to provoke a quick reaction rather than a thoughtful position on the games. They're all about that knee-jerk thing:

the ESRB's effectiveness depends largely on how accurately its ratings reflect the attitudes of American parents.

Funny how relativistic that is, isn't it? No absolute truths about what's in a game, to let me make my own parental choice -- just gut-level "attitudes" they need to agree with to be "effective." This is the Family Feud method of ratings, in which information can be true or false or whatever -- just as long as you agree with the most people, you're "effective." If Americans are terrified of civil rights, a game with black characters will become an M in this system.

For me, as a parent, "effective" means something that equips me to make choices. I absolutely need the list of reasons -- the laundry list from the little ratings box thing -- to even get a start on deciding, and even then I'm suspicious. The MPAA ratings for movies are sometimes so surreally idiotic, and things like "Whale Rider" being PG-13 seem to spring from the odd history of that institution so irrationally, that I almost have to have full reviews.

It seems to me that my kid looks at the ratings more than I do. He knows if he asks for a game that's rated M he's probably not going to get it.

You're so right. My 12-year-old kids know which games are rated what. I saw my son reading reviews of "Gun" -- an open-ended western thing that's just out -- and wondered if he wanted it. He dismissed it out of hand as "an M." A couple of reviews on the Web showed me why the rating was there, and because it had to do with brutal violence I'll say no. But he almost takes them more seriously, as a gauge of what I'll accept, than I do.