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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."
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.
All I see here is voter bait. From the ESRB site:
"Additionally, ESRB's in-house game experts randomly play the final games to verify that all the information provided during the rating process was accurate and complete."
So they already test the games, just not all of them. Kind of like taxes; does the IRS audit all US tax returns? No, they have to let the majority go by with a skin deep look and use random fine-tooth comb audits to try and keep everyone honest. Could they audit all the tax returns? Yes, but it would be very time consuming and costly. If the ESRB had to take an in-depth approach, they'd have to find some way to cover these costs. Whether they get that from the game developers or the government, it'll cost gamers in the end.
I think it's ok to trust the game developers to be honest. Past instances where the rating has failed have been delt with appropriatly and I think this bill is unnecessary buracracy.
btw, here's where you signup for employment. Its only 1-4 times a month.
Demented But Determined.