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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."
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
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.
Parents know about the movie ratings because they go and watch movies as well. Most (not all) parents to not play video games, or stoped playing video games by the time the ESRB was really around.
I doubt that when the movie system was first started up that there was a large push/campaign/whatever to make sure parents understood what the raitings were about. They just learned aobut them as they went to movies. Combine that with the fact that the movie industry caters to a much larger selection of the population and you can see why movie rateings are known, and the ESRB ones are not.
oh, and as a fun little note, it is alot harder to get an M rated game then to get into an R rated movie (this is speaking from personal experiance.)
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
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.
Third party rating systems mandated by law violate due process. That's already been held in the case of movies.
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.
The MPAA ratings board is even more opaque than the ESRB. The members of the board are not publically identified, and the board will not give specific reasons behind their ratings, only generalities. Also, their appeals process involves a board made up entirely of major studio and major distributor insiders.
In addition, the MPAA suffers from the same problem the ESRB seems to have by rating sexual content (even if it's only implied) far more harshly than violent content.
To say the ESRB has shortcomings and then invoke the MPAA's ratings board as an example of the right way to do things is silly. Check out This Film is Not Yet Rated for more details on how the MPAA Ratings Board (doesn't) work.
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