Slashdot Mirror
The 64% Violent Pacman
DreamWinkle writes "During the recent Senate hearings on video game violence, one expert claimed that the ESRB underrated violent games. They went on to say that Pacman was 64% violent. To some, this means you shouldn't play Pacman; to others, it highlights what's wrong with Senate hearings. Whether a game is violent or not depends on how you classify violence, and the ESRB has the job of doing just that. They're not regulated by the government, they let the game makers recommend their own ratings, and don't play every game they rate. Is the ESRB to be trusted?"
It comes from in a bad edcation, particularly one lacking in how to handle data.
You can't take a (admittedly fuzzy) interval measurement, convert it into and ordinal measurement, and tally them up over a data set to create a rational measurement.
By that method, you'd decide that a three stooges is far worse than a snuff film.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Apparently from a study by a Harvard professor:
q s8.html
http://www.kidsrisk.harvard.edu/mainFrame/news/fa
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
they don't play every game they rate? !??
My understanding is that they don't play any game they rate.
Have things changed? Their description seems a little off. I'll highlight what they seem to get wrong in the quote from the article below.
Instead of having members of the ESRB sit down and play the games in order to decide a rating, developers must submit a written report of everything the game includes. They must also compile a video that is representative of the content a gamer will find in the game when they purchase it at the store. Additionally, the game is played by a number of people who are unaffiliated to the game industry, and who then recommend the game's rating. All three elements, as well as others, are taken into consideration when the rating is assigned.
For the first highlight, it's a little misleading, "representative of the content a gamer will find" makes it sound like a representitive cross-section of the content. So, for a game like Animal Crossing you would expect hours of gathering fruit and catching fish. But actually the footage is of selected acts and elements (there is a list) and of those acts or elements carried out the the greatest degree present anywhere in the game. So, for Animal Crossing you would have footage of the character getting bitten by Tarantulas and Scorpions, showing the greatest degree of violence in the game.
They make a point of saying that they don't care about the context of the event, because a parent glancing over at the screen won't care either.
This system is why Rockstar is liable in the eyes of the ESRB for not disclosing the content on the disc - they shipped those animation paths, models,et al. They provided footage that was supposed to show the greatest degree of sexuality on the disc and it was probably just kissing and a bouncing car. It doesn't matter that it required a hack to access because the ESRB doesn't care how the shipped content is played, they just care about the content.
For the second point, "the game is played by a number of people who are unaffiliated to the game industry" -- maybe I just don't remember the process correctly and maybe it's changed, but I don't think that you ever send the ESRB actual code. After all, a lot of games recieve their ratings before they're complete.
You joke, but they're dead serious. Of the 65 games studied, Super Mario Brothers ranked #5 in the death rate. It earned a whopping 4.8 deaths per minute! This "Mario" guy must be some kind of mass murderer. Read it & weep.