ESRB Hiring Pro Content Reviewers

In April of this year, the Entertainment Software Ratings Board will move to using full-time reviewers to determine ratings for game content. With rumblings of 'play the whole game' legislation in the halls of Congress, the organization is pre-empting the problem by having full-time raters. The ESRB's Patricia Vance commented on the project: 'Having full-time raters will allow for each one to have greater experience actually reviewing content and recommending ratings ... this would provide each rater with a greater sense of historical parity for ratings, not to mention helping them to be more attuned to pertinent content and how it should be considered from a ratings standpoint. The full-time raters would also be responsible for play-testing final versions of the game, time permitting, which would allow for ESRB to play-test a greater number of games than it currently does.'

Comments

Good friggin luck

[Sciros]

Well perhaps their full-time testers will get an MMO pretty soon here, and maybe one of those 90+ hour RPGs to boot. That should keep them busy while other games continue getting however little playtime they do.

Then again, supposing 85 hours into a game that was rated Teen there is some nude ninja combat (M-rated), does the ESRB get in any trouble for that? If not, then they can just decide on some "max time played" for a game (say, 20 hours, i.e. ~4 days' worth of a full-time employee's "clean playing time") and that will be fine.

play the whole game throughout? why?

[PhetusPolice]

Playing through the entire game sounds very arduous for anyone. Wouldn't it be easier for ESRB to consult with the designers and director to know the game's details beforehand? A thorough coverage can be done through a small Q&A.