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M-Rated Game Sales to Kids Down, Shows FTC Report

Posted by Zonk on from the that-i-believe-is-a-good-thing dept.

Kotaku examines a report drawn up the the Federal Trade Commission on 'inappropriate content' sales to children. The study (pdf) examined sales of M-Rated games, R-rated movie tickets, and explicit music to underage persons in the most extensive look at the topic since 2000. While it appears the games industry still has a way to go, the study shows that it's much harder than it was four years ago for a young person to buy an M-Rated game. "Video games showed the greatest improvement, dropping from 69 percent being able to make the purchase in 2003 to 42 percent in 2006. That's just three percent more than the number of underage children able to get into R-rated movies."

1 of 67 comments (clear)

  1. Not surprising... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Look at dates. This is the first major survey done since 2000. The ESRB ratings system was created in 1995, and the system went through a lot of changes up until 2001. Not to mention the competing RSAC standard was still around until 1999, which served to dilute awareness about the competing system. The last time they looked at the data, the ESRB system was only five years old, and was still undergoing heavy changes, with descriptors and rating levels being added and removed. It isn't surprising that enforcement was low. Now we're looking at a market where the rating system is unified and has been unchanged for 6 years. Of course the enforcement rate is going to be better!

    I don't understand why they say the ESRB system "still has a ways to go"; at retail 42% of underage mystery shoppers were able to buy an M rated game, while 4/10 were able to see an R rated movie in theaters. That's the same rate or enforcement from our 12 year old game rating system as we see in our 50 year old movie rating system; I don't think we're going to get much better than that. On the other hand, 7/10 mystery shoppers were able to buy an R rated DVD from a retail outlet, which indicates that at retail the enforcement rate for movies is actually much worse than the enforcement rate for games. Why the double standard?