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New ESRB Legislation in the Works
Gamasutra is reporting on new Senate legislation intended to place additional requirements on the ESRB. Backed by R-Kansas Sam Brownback, the 'Truth in Video Game Rating Act' aims to mandate specific amounts of time with each title, and places the organization under the auspices of the Government Accountability Office. From the article: "Were the Truth in Video Game Rating Act to pass, it would require the ESRB to have access to the full content of and hands-on time with the games it was to rate, rather than simply relying on the video demonstrations submitted by developers and publishers as it currently. The hands-on system might be more akin to the UK's BBFC ratings board's approach, which requires a team of testers to spend at least a day playing through a game."
"Rated R; for retarded"
having a stronger examination on the games rated is a good idea IMO. The ratings can help the purchasers not only decide what games they want (or in the case of parents, what they want their kdis to have), and the more accurate the ratings are, the mor reliable the decisions can be.
Not to mention I'd love to have the job of one of those testers...
"What do you do?"
"I sit around and play video games all day."
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
The courts will uphold the right of the ESRB to give an opinion on any game they choose to, without having to jump through government mandated hoops. This is their right under the first amendment. The courts will uphold the right of game publishers to display the ESRB's opinions on their games if they choose to. This is their right under the first amendment.
Any attempt to interfere with these rights will be struck down. This is a waste of time and money.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
After all, a small, independant game has a better shot at online distribution anyway. The only reason most games are rated is to get them into stores (or not), but if it's available as a download, there's no reason for it.
Now to actually make a game in the first place...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
At this point, the ESRB, as well as the video games industry in general, are both aware of what could happen should another ratings scandal take place. No one would be foolish enough to hide the violence from the ESRB to obtain a disingenuous rating. Plus, requiring longer periods of review for the ratings board, I think, is a good thing, but also, somewhat pointless. If you play 10 hours or 24 hours, it's not likely that a violent game is going to be all happy and peachy at the beginning, and then suddenly halfway through reveal tremendous amounts of gory violence.
This is a knee-jerk reaction to a non-existant problem. Longer reviews of both GTA: SA and Oblivion would not have revealed either situation in normal gameplay. Both were exploited by third parties after the fact. Their ratings would not have changed. Admittedly, it was foolish for Rockstar not to remove the hot coffee features completely, and for Bethesda to leave that topless texture on the disc, but unless the ESRB starts employing hackers and programmers to digg through the game's content as a whole aside from playing it, these things will continue to go unnoticed until found by third parties should they ever occur again.
Legislating this is a stab at "Save the Children" for an election boost. The Do-Nothing congress of the 21st century will probably fail at doing anything here as well.
Most parents largely do ignore ESRB ratings as it is now, and complain when the games they buy for their kids contain what the box says. Perhaps making the ESRB do more than watch a video and apply a label will drive them to be more than a sticker that publishers can point to saying "THE RATING WAS ON THE BOX!!!". If the MPAA can have their rating system known by parents, then so can the ESRB.
From what I understand the ESRP gathers people almost at random to test games. Non-gamers, who make up a good portion of each board, would be unable to cope with being forced to play the games for a long period of time, so more non-gamers would turn down the chance to rate a game. Because of that you get more gamers participating, so the rating would be off, usually towards the kiddie side of things.
Public PC, no spell checking.
Here's a head start!
V A-INVADERS-00.tutorial
http://www.planetalia.com/cursos/Java-Invaders/JA
Covers enough of the basics that you could definitely whip up a game.
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
A rating on a game should be a guideline only. As a parent it is your duty to check the game out yourself and see if it's ok for your kid. The rating will give you an idea of the ballpark it's in and why it's there (they specify what the game contains that earned it a rating) but only you know your kids and what is ok and not ok for them to see.
And let's please not forget the stupidity that caused all this: GTA: SA. The game features graphic violence of all kinds, you can kill people with weapons, your fists, running them over, etc. In fact you are required to and rewarded for it. You can have sex in the game, just drive up to a prostitute when damaged, she'll get in your car and you can do your business. You can even kill her and take your money back afterwards (or simply become a pimp and she'll pay you). All that is in the main, M-rated version of the game. What got everyone worked up was you could mod the game to allow access to a removed mini game where you could bang your girlfriend. She is naked, though not in any sort of high detail.
That's what people got worked up over. All the rest of that was ok for their kids, but god forbid they see a 10-polygon TLO (tit like object)! We clearly need stronger ratings control.
The ESRB does a good job rating games as it is, it's just retards getting all worked up over nothing. They scream about how inappropriate GTA: SA is but it's clear they never bothered to read the rating that's there in the first place. I highly doubt there's many people who'd think all the shit that's in the game is ok, but not the one removed mini-game you have to mod it to activate. They were mostly just pissed that they'd been a bad parent and bought their kids a game they shouldn't have.
Just let TheVede rate them all. At least the PC games any way. Coconut monkey would be pleased.
Not only will this have absolutely no effect on ratings, it will make ESRB ratings much more expensive, putting innovative indie developers at an even greater disadvantage. Thanks, assholes.
I'd love to see them even attempt this at games that support modding. Look towards MMORPGs for an excellent example of the mainstay "content may change over time" to see that this ideal is clearly unenforceable. Further, the ESRB uses generic parents, not superparents, capable of thwarting games their more gamingly-adept children can't surmount.
Difficulty, "easter eggs" and games such as the MMO genre offer make this a sure-fire loss.
The problem with this is that it assumes all games have competely defined experiences right out of the box. This can't account for online gaming, sandbox titles using the GTA/Oblivion approach or third party mods. The mod thing is particularly troubling because it means developers have to design their games around the possibility it could eventually be modded, forcing them to sacrifice otherwise useful and innovative features. (One example is clothing... it would have to be "welded" to all character models, requiring developers to include multiple versions of the same character, just to change the outfit.) Another troubling issue, is that such legislation would require the ESRB to be aware of any and all possible exploitable parts of a game (including weird ones, like unintended mid-game disc swaps used to open holes). Also, does this mean the ESRB would be require to hire dozens of skilled hackers to pound on a game from every possible angle, in order to determine where alterations *might* be inserted into a game?
This could prove to be such a costly measure, that a civilian run ESRB could eventually become impossible to maintain. If you think this is bad, I can only guess as to what a federally run version of the ESRB would be like.
8==8 Bones 8==8
The deciding issue between Gore vs Bush in the first election for me was that Lieberman was for strong video game ratings/censorship in the name of it's for the children. Or let's ban all those somewhat violent games because it leads folks to think Republican thoughts of upgrading the military or bigger boom toys.
There just wasn't enough negatives between the 2 to force me to pick one or the other. They were both "middle of the road" for their respective parties at the the time. The only thing worse though is for "Christians" to censor games "for the childern." Kids may get violent thoughts or see sexually related pics in games if our group doesn't censor their entire industry.
Damn, I hate censors of all parties. Let the kids see the violence, sex, hate, and langauage. Let them see humanity at it's worst. Nah, cause then all the kids would really critically think about what limits the government wants on the liberties of the average citizen and that's not what either party wants.
All this is going to do is allow the government to take more money from the businesses at gunpoint. If they're going after the violent video games, why not go after all games except for the Ungame as they could have a negative effect on children. Just another example of government abuse of power.
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A vote against a Libertarian candidate is
a vote to abolish the Constitution itself.
Ah, false dichotomy. Where would we be without you?
If they are going to spend a full day playing each game -- they are going to need more testers. Which means more jobs for the American video gamer! ;P
Imagine the office drama at a job like that.
"She always gets the good games to rate -- I hear she's playing with the bosses joystick!"
Grimwell - old, cranky, mean, obsessive
So it isn't feasible to analyze the executable binary to find all the content included on the disk, but how about analyzing how the binary is executed and what data is actually accessed, mapping out the data determining what got executed, what didn't, and what data was accessed? Then go to the game maker and ask what is in the areas that weren't accessed or executed and how to trigger their execution. Instead of analyzing the code, you analyze what the code does and track disk accesses to memory storage and associating subsequent memory access back to the disk.
Shouldn't that give them a way to ensure full disclosure of content? They should be able to demand all console makers provide to them a runtime (and real time) analysis platform that will gather this data; if they don't, no games for that platform will get rated by the ESRB and thus no games for that platform will be carried at Walmart and other must-be-rated stores.
In fact, developers should have access to such analysis machines as well so as to better audit their own code and assist the ESRB.
The idea stems from a truism about system security, which (according to Google) apparently I'm the first to coin as a phrase: "The lowest code owns."
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Since I haven't seen anyone else mention it yet, I just thought I'd point out that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) exists to ensure the GOVERNMENT'S accountability, not some public group like the ESRB. Methinks some senator hasn't been paying attention in class.
From the GAO's site (emphasis mine):
Under recently passed legislation, we have changed our name from the General Accounting Office to the Government Accountability Office. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is an agency that works for Congress and the American people. Congress asks GAO to study the programs and expenditures of the federal government. GAO, commonly called the investigative arm of Congress or the congressional watchdog, is independent and nonpartisan. It studies how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars. GAO advises Congress and the heads of executive agencies (such as Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, Department of Defense, DOD, and Health and Human Services, HHS) about ways to make government more effective and responsive. GAO evaluates federal programs, audits federal expenditures, and issues legal opinions. When GAO reports its findings to Congress, it recommends actions. Its work leads to laws and acts that improve government operations, and save billions of dollars.
What a way to debate the points, oh wait you were just trolling for the Republicrats and Democans. This demonstrates you want an intrusive, activist government to take our rights and money at gunpoint. As such you have no room to complain, you ASKED FOR THIS!!!
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A vote against a Libertarian candidate is
a vote to abolish the Constitution itself.
Once you have made your game, you can determine and apply a TIGRS rating.
Screw ESRB. What's wrong with TIGRS?