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Lawyer Opines On 'Flaws' in ESRB Rating Methodology
Gamepolitics has a post up looking at blog entry by attorney Mark Methenitis, who is not only a practitioner of the legal arts but also a gamer. At his site, he runs down some of the major pros and cons of the ESRB's ratings process, and on the whole he thinks they're doing a good job. Their major oversight, in his mind, is that at no point are the videogames ever actually played: "Game publishers send in a DVD of selected scenes and a lot of paperwork to get the game rated... The point being that the ratings board never plays the games. Yes, you read that right. The people who rate video games do not play the game they are rating. It would be the equivalent of basing movie ratings on a form and a trailer. Context would be wholly absent." The ESRB argues that if the publishers create their 'ratings package' within the organization's guidelines, they don't need to play the game. And indeed, with a title like Oblivion you can't expect the organization to play through the whole game. But ... c'mon ... maybe just the tutorial? How long would that take?
The idea is to rate the game based on its content. So they create a DVD with a range of the various types of content.
You can't expect them to play through the whole game. And what good would they get out of playing the tutorial? They're not rating how good the game is, how the controls work out, how well the gameplay works. They're rating its content. They don't need to play it to do that.
The only flaw is when the developer does not include a true spectrum of the game's content on the DVD, but they have policies in place to cover that, I'm sure, as we saw with the whole Hot Coffee crap.
I'm really not sure how else you could go about doing it. Perhaps a DVD that contained the entire game played through, but for some of the longer games, you couldn't expect them to watch it all. And how do you handle more open ended games, with multiple branching storylines? (do those even exist anymore?)
I think the system probably works reasonably well as is, as long as everyone is honest. And its usually in their interests to be honest, so it works out.
The major flaw is not how it's rated, but the fact that it is rated. I have no problem with independent reviewers rating games and/or movies, but I do have a problem with an arbitrary organization making ratings; it becomes legalized censorship.
It is a matter of resource availablity
:)
Do you want to pay the costs of adding extra staff, time, & money at the ESRB to do:
- game installation
- software/hardware support (just in case games have trouble running underneath the ESRB's setup)
- and then the time to PROPERLY play through what needs to be played through to get the rating
also, the staff would have to be decent enough game players at some of these games to get through the appropriate parts to rate
plus, some of the critical content to rate is not later int he game, do not want to force developer to further pigenhole the degien to cater to the ESRB players or force the dev team to make a special demo just for the ESRB to play.
i mean, yeah, it is doable... but the extra cost would be handed down to the consumers, and games are expensive enough already. Not "hard" at all, if you want to pay for it, sheesh....
Now, the problem with requiring the ESRB to play the game is that, either they have to play the whole thing (something which isn't time constrained, and won't even necessarily give you everything you need to know (read: things like mods can't be tested, and things like the infamous hot coffee won't necessarily be found), or you force them to play a demo, which is practially the same as screen shots (the developer still defines what you see in a demo). Dammed if you do dammed if you don't. The problem is people think games are the same as movies. But, unlike a movie, you can't see all the content in 2.5 hours.
"Gharbad no Hurt!" -Gharbad
They would only play a small subset of the game. Most likely the same small subset they would have normally watched.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
You know, if they actually DID play the games before rating them...
That would be a sweet job. I'd take it.
To me, this is like rating a novel by listening to an audio book rather than having to read and turn the pages. Yes, you read that right -- some organizations rate a novel without even turning one single page!
But seriously, as long as the content they review is what someone would experience were they to play, what does it matter that the marginal amount of additional context you get from playing is absent? Unless there's a game that shows a mother nursing her newborn child and the ESRB has a form with a checkbox for "Contains nudity", I think if a game is presented roughly in sequence the context should be quite apparent.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
The thing is, that's not how things are done. The ESRB ratings are mainly self certification from companies that really don't have any desire to mislead anyone.
The impression people seem to have is that developers write a game, and then the ESRB decides what rating to give it. A developer knows full well what rating they want right at the start of the design. The game is targetted at the rating. They'll remove anything that will give it a higher rating long before anyone at the ESRB gets to see it. They already know what rating they'll get. They've been working within the guidelines. All they need to do is make sure that their understanding of the ratings is right so they create a disc with various samples, including some of the more violent aspects of the game for an independent adjudicator to review.
In the unlikely event they're wrong, they'll remove the parts of the game that fail, or tone down the violence.
The whole 'Hot Coffee' thing was massively overblown; the content was not accessible to normal users, you had to go and download a mod to get it working. Complaining about content that requires a user-generated mod to run is like complaining that you can stick a mod on a game to play a porno every time the game starts (which, actually, probably takes less effort to write than it took to find the 'hot coffee' settings in the first place).
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
If the ESRB had to play through each and every game on the market to judge their content and make a rating, some games would have to be delayed for months just so judges could mull over all the easter eggs, missions, and other miscellany. For movies its a hell of a lot easier: spend two hours on it, done. If you really wanted that much from the ESRB, have it run by the people who review games for a living. They've got to do it anyway, so might as well make it beneficial.
It was a single bit in the main configu file or a savegame file, it wasn't some huge mod. It's conceivable that a bug, or minor drive corruption could have flipped that bit and turned the mini-game on.
We had one of the project leads from the video game Prey come to a user group meeting last year. He talked about how they put all of the worst content onto that DVD knowing that if they didn't put the worst on that CD, that the penalties and lawsuits after going gold would crush them. He even talked about specific parts that they were worried different ratings boards would object to and had mods ready to change blood color on some environmental objects and even to remove the sphincter things. And Yes, those things are supposed to be assholes.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Couldn't hey be given savegames to try out the game at many different stages?
or perhaps a god-mode?
errera hunamum ets
I would rather the industry was self regulated, instead of having big government come in, who has no effin clue about games and tell us what we can and cannot have.
The ESRB isn't holding back the AO games, its society, its the general consensus that video games are still just for kids and therefore we have to protect the children from bad content. This idea is changing, though slower than we might like. The boundaries are being pushed slowly allowing for more and more "adult/graphic" content. This isn't just meaning titties and extreme violence but, mature story lines and content that we identify with better instead of the usually spiky haired hero saves the day. Content that makes you think, challenges your ideals and makes the game more than just press button to shoot gun.
As we all have noticed our games and gaming habits are in the media spotlight, legislators and politicians as well as ambulance chasers and attention whores all have there two bits to say about how games are bad and this and that. Like Rock and Roll and Dungeons and Dragons, Video games are the scapegoat of the year and its up to us gamers to work with our system and to make people see that there fears and concerns are unfounded and a bunch of FUD.
We are parents, grandparents, business owners, teachers and responsible individuals, we play games, we love our games because we grew up with them. Its still a new medium and its slowly getting to be accepted and seen as more than just for kids.
For me, I'm for the ESRB
"I am a kernel in the linux army"
but they never give you the solution. I'm sorry, if every movie was 100 hours long and had hidden content revealed based on some obscure action you do, they would be doing the same thing. Oblivion is the perfect example. If some dumb lawyer said this to me I would drop a copy of Oblivion on his desk and tell him to give me a complete review of all the content in the game. I imagine he would come back to me some time in 2008. Then I would tell him to get all the online mods and expansion packs.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
The expansion would have to be rated because it is released by the company who created the game, any mods that were created by the company would likely also have to be rated.
Player made mods and such would not be applicable as they are not created by the company. If this was the case pretty much every PC game that is mod able would be considered AO.
Of course if this is what you meant then its all good.
"I am a kernel in the linux army"
If a private entity doesn't want to publish games with a certain rating, that has nothing to do with the rating's or the game's legality. All it means is that if you want to produce a AO game, your publishing and distribution options will be limited. They don't have to publish it just because you made it.
Back in the late 80s (or 90s), the US government basically told the game industry: "You have to rate your games or we'll do it for you." A couple of organizations were created, and the ESRB became the standard.
So, in short, the ESRB is the only thing that stops people like Hilary or Arnold from tell you what you can play.
(And, yes, it still sucks)
Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
The method used to rate games is perfect in this regard, because when video game critics attack games, they use video game footage of "objectionable" scenes taken out of context to do so.
Of course, this is why the "Hot Cofee" scandal was such a public relations nightmare, and I blame the ESRB for mishandling it. This is perhaps because the ESRB thinks that it really does exist to pass judgments on games. The goal should have been damage control, to the ESRB and to the game industry in general. Instead they caved into their worst critics and gave them new ammunition, based on some incomplete code that couldn't be reached through normal gameplay.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
From Wiki: "To obtain a rating for a game, a publisher sends the ESRB videotaped footage of the game's most graphic and extreme content. The publisher also fills out a questionnaire describing the game's content and encloses a check for between $2,000 and $3,000.
The ESRB states on its website that three trained raters, working independently, then watch the footage and recommend a rating. If all raters agree on the rating, content descriptors are added and the ESRB notifies the publisher of its decision. If there is no consensus, additional raters review the footage and materials. After the rating is agreed upon, the ESRB in-house personnel review the footage and all materials to ensure that all information is accurate and a certificate is sent to the publisher. If the publisher wishes, they may edit the game and resubmit the footage and questionnaire in order to achieve a lower rating. If this is the case, the process begins anew. The publisher may also appeal the game's rating if they wish. The appeals committee is composed of entertainment software industry representatives.
When the game is ready for release, the publisher sends copies of the final version of the game to the ESRB. The game packaging is reviewed, and the ESRB says that its in-house personnel randomly play games to ensure that all the information provided during the rating process was complete and accurate. Penalties may apply to the publisher if it is eventually found, either through the in-house personnel's playing or consumer comments that the game's content is more extreme than the publisher stated in its application.
The identities of the ESRB raters are kept confidential and selected randomly from a pool of full-time ESRB employees who live in the New York City area. According to an ESRB introductory brochure from 1994: "The raters represent a wide range of backgrounds, races, and ages and have no ties to the interactive entertainment industry. Raters include retired school principals, parents, professionals, and other individuals from all walks of life."
--- Ok, so you have to have a rating in order to be able to sell games. To get a rating you have to PAY money up front. Then you have anonymous people rating content, so the public has no way of checking the legitimacy of these raters. On top of which, the creators of the game can then get fined if these anonomyous reviewers feel that the demo footage is not in line with the actual game! Yes, that's not censorship.
I used to make those tapes that were sent to the ESRB by a certain publisher. We would play the game over and over countless times, restarting every time something happened that management didn't want the ESRB to see. We would continue until the right random encounters occurred in a row, so that we had something that had actually happened, but wasn't really representative of the violence normally encountered during play.
So, while it isn't practical for the ESRB to play through an entire game, I think they should be supplied the same cheat codes as the publisher's testers, to allow the ESRB to play random segments of content throughout the game.
I...I'm attacking the darkness!
I'm sorry, why can't we expect them to actually do what they claim to do? They aren't rating the game - they are rating the PR package created by the game company, a package specifically designed to garner a particular rating. Would it be equally credible if Consumer Reports never used and tested the products they rated nor examined actual quality statistics from the field, and instead just went over the MTBF and features lists the manufacturers provided?
It's BS and we all know it.
it would be a lot of time and money to play through whole games, but there needs to be a way that the MSRB can see the context of the scenes in the game, not just the scenes themselves.