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The 'Truth in Videogame Rating' Act
The Escapist News Room reports on the introduction of the Truth in Videogame Ratings act to the floor of Congress. The act would require ratings boards to entirely complete the content of a videogame before applying a rating, and would involve the Government Accountability Office to oversee the ESRB's practices. This is a big change from the current system of developer disclosure. From the article: "Under the microscope would be the ESRB's effectiveness, the validity of peer review and advertisements targeted toward ages younger than a game's recommended audience. Less specific to the ESRB, the bill would also require research on 'the efficacy of a universal ratings system for visual content, including films, broadcast and cable TV, and video and computer games.' Game Politics notes that Co-Sponsors Rep. Jim Matheson (D-UT) and Rep. Mike McIntyre (D-NC) are up for re-election this November along with Congressman Cliff Stearns."
"Perhaps not surprisingly, Stearns, Matheson, and McIntyre are all running for re-election in November."
Everyone referred to as a Congressman (or Representative) is up for election every two years. Members of the House of Representatives are supposed to receive the Congressman honorific, while members of the Senate are called Senators.
Congressmen = elected every two years
Senators = elected every six years
Erm, but, the ratings do not carry the force of law. Well, at least not until this law (and its companion bill or FEPA) gets passed.
Nope. MPAA and ESRB ratings are both voluntary which is not to say the don't carry some amount of weight since they are both accepted industry standards that are usually (although not because of any legal threat) enforced by the content distributors (Walmart and movie theatres in this example).
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The videogames rating board is made up of random people selected from different groups. They are no allowed to work within the industry. They tend to be people from a diverse group so that they can get a good cross-section of responses and ratings.
You mad
Not currently. The MPAA specifically started doing its own moving ratings to stave off government regulation (and if the Wikipedia article is to be believed, the SCOTUS ruled in 1915 that movies were not protected by the First Amendment). In the early years of Hollywood, the U.S. government started doing to the film industry what the current Congress is doing to the videogame industry -- hearings, ill-conceived proposed legislation, you name it. (See this article for more on the history of the current U.S. rating system.)
This story has played out many times before -- another example from our history is the origin of the Comics Code Authority, which was created in direct response to Congressional efforts to regulate and censor comic books. The years of most stringent enforcement of the Code resulted in some of the worst quality comic writing and art. Technically, the code was voluntary, but most news stands wouldn't carry comic books that didn't carry the CCA seal of approval; this is not unlike the current situation with movie theaters and unrated films. Usually, an unrated film won't even get shown in a U.S. movie theater, except perhaps in a small art-house theater. Such films are treated similarly to films given an NC-17 rating (though, interestingly, many theater owners would be more inclined to show an unrated documentary or foreign film than they would to show a domestically produced NC-17 film because of the stigma of that rating, regardless of why the film got an NC-17 rating).
What I find interesting is that this new proposed legislation gives the U.S. Congress a back door to regulate the film industry. It's not just about video games! The U.S. government would very much like to have a single rating system for every kind of media that can be produced or consumed, and if they can get people to forget about First Amendment protections in at least one case, they can use that as a wedge to get other kinds of media (which are now recognized as having free speech protections) included under the same regulatory umbrella.
Final note: Although the SCOTUS ruled in 1915 that motion pictures didn't have First Amendment protections, a later 1952 decision reversed the earlier decision and established film as a protected form of speech.
Now we know where you have been for the last year. Under a rock somewhere. GTA:SAs rating was NOT changed because of the violence. There was a mod that unlocked a pixelated sex scene between two consenting adults who happened to be both wearing clothes. Google hot coffee. Look it up on Wikipedia. But by golly, don't go around claiming that GTA:SA is AO because you can kill and slaughter and otherwise cause mayhem.
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