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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."
Government enforcement of third party ratings have already been thrown out as violation of due process.
I'm not sure how realistic it'll be to make something like this actually work. Are they expecting the ESRB to examine only content of a game that is disclosed to them by the developer, or are they planning to make the ESRB hire people to pound on a title for any potential exploits that might allow a game to become open to third party modification, such as the "Hot Coffee" mod to GTA:SA that enabled a "feature" that was never intended for the end user to access in the first place?
And who will be accountable for what? Will the ESRB be held accountable for not getting the rating right on the first try? Will the developer's be held accountable because some 3D model they use is too accurately detailed and exposed only through third party modification, even though the detail of the model actually improves the visual quality of the game itself? Will developers be forced by law to hold any "controversial" games indefinitely until the ESRB rates it under the new criteria proposed in this?
Personally, I think we may be looking at the end of the ESRB. This act would make the stakes too high for any civilian agency to control. Get ready for the new Federal Video Games Rating Board, powered by same good people in the red states who put our fearless leader into office.
8==8 Bones 8==8
This thing can't possibly fly. (And because this bill is starting in the House, it probably won't.) Attempting to play Final Fantasy X-2 entirely through to completion, for example, is a mission for doofuses on gamefaqs.com with all the time in the world on their hands, not an organization like the ESRB.
I have no idea where your insanity comes from, but I can garentee you that as a skilled developer, I could create just about anything and insert it into a game if it exists on the PC. The amount of effort, and time, required would vary of course, but some mods are far simpler than others.
Any game can be mod'd with obscene skins however, with relative ease, if it exists on the PC. It happens that way because it is 100% neccessary to separate the game engine from the textures, because of a few simple facts.
Most developers suck at art. They're math-based people, generally. (I said most, not all!)
Most Artists suck at code. They're art-based people, generally.
The textures must be done by artists, and the engine by developers. This means the two pieces will be separated, to a degree, on disk, and therefore that replacing a texture will be reasonably simple.
What you're requesting will have no net gain to anyone, except to add more layers of fines.
See that's the problem. Only one file is found but everyone acts like hackers ALWAYS find the files.
They don't. I can't give the names of the games, but I work in the industry and know for a bunch of guys that I worked with that often ESRB has told people "remove this or get a higher rating" and it's removed from the gameplay, but not the data (removing it from the data takes more work, and can cause problems). So the code remains but it's not found. ONE piece of code was found and everyone acts like no one else has ever done it, just because it's never been found.
The ratings system for TV, movies, music, and video games is all baloney.
First of all, only the parent can determine what is offensive. Who can say what porn is? Is Janet Jackson flashing porn? How about a naked David sculpture? How about watching to monkeys get it on at the zoo? If a 2 frame flash of boob gives a TV show one rating, and 30 seconds of hot monkey sex gives another show another rating then that is whacky.
Second, there are not enough raters to rate everything on the same standard. If every game has to be rated, then I feel bad for the rater that gets the short straw and has to play every possible path in Chessmaster XX. If Grand Theft Auto has to have every scenario played just to be sure the princess pole dancers keep their skirts on, then Chessmaster should get the same treatment to make sure the queen doesn't get molested by a frisky knight.
Third, only the parent can keep material away from a child. Ratings or no ratings, parent's are the only ones with a shot at keeping stuff away from their kids. Look at cigarettes. Kids are not supposed to smoke. Everyone agrees which cigarettes are not supposed to smoke. All the merchants are told not to sell tabacco to kids. Yet, any day of the week you can drive by most highschools in the US and see kids outside smoking. If something as "black and white" (relatively) as tabacco can't be kept out of the hands of kids, then why all the hubbub over video games, movies, etc?
Tangent: Why don't books come with ratings? There are tens of thousands of books published every year. If protecting the children is so important, then shouldn't all illicit material get stampped M for mature, P for pansy, etc? Sounds whacky to apply it to books, so why apply it to other knowledge/entertainment mediums? If anyone wants to sound really stupid try the line of thought that says games are for kids and books are not.
My solution: Leave rating entirely in the hands of NGOs (non government organizations). Let the MPAA and ESRB rate stuff. If parent's want to heed the rating advice fine. If not, so what. If some parent's do not like the standards used by those organizations, then use an organization that is tougher/easier as desired. www.screenit.com for movies for instance. Or a parent could watch/listen/play/read everything before letting their kids at it. It sounds crazy, but some parent's do it. Surely the government has better things to do than try to censure material from kids.
This come to your from here. So based on this description, wouldn't monitoring the ESRB be outside the departments normal duties? Also, wouldn't this take away from the Office's real job...you know acting like it is making the government accountable. I guess when your government is so corrupt and backwards (and yes I live in the US) distracting the Government Accountability Office isn't such a bad idea...
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
So you mean to tell me that the lazy fucks who have made a family tradition out of Welfare and Food Stamps are giong to get up off of their asses and form together and attack the government? If they're that motivated, why aren't they employed right now instead of wasting my tax money?