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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 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.
Playing the game would allow a ratings board to get a sense of context, as the article states.
Context is provided in various ways. The ratings board is not just presented a series of money shots. They're given a DVD that is "representative" of the game but also includes its most salacious content. Both of those are requirements.
If the ratings board were forced to play the games, I guarantee two things would happen:
a) It would take forever to get games rated, resulting in huge delays and potentially fewer game releases,
and
b) It would result in a lot more AO-rated titles.
Why?
First of all, understand that the ratings board is not made up of "gamers", by design. When I last dealt with the ESRB, they wouldn't tell us who was actually on the ratings board but they did tell us that one of the three people was an ordained minister and another was a middle-aged housewife. Ratings board members are always "regular" people, the idea being that you get a cross-section of the general population, not just gamers. The whole point of the ratings are to help parents determine what content they want their kids to play, not to help the kids themselves. So they want people who could be "average parents" deciding the ratings.
Given that, these people are by and large not even going to be able to figure out how to play most games, much less get anywhere in the game if they do. And since the entire point is for them to see the worst parts of the game (ie. the Manhunt kill scenes), they're either still not going to get specific context for these scenes or they're going to spend months and maybe even years playing a game to try to get to those parts. You're still going to need a DVD, meaning those specific scenes will still be out of context... and those are the scenes that matter.
As for the second point, the fact that these are regular people who might have a higher (or more prudish) moral standard than you do would suggest to me that actually playing the game and having that visceral experience would make them more, not less, likely to rate games tougher than they do now. Let's say you're homophobic. What's the root of that homophobia? The fact that you're afraid of those tendencies within yourself. So the more you're forced into an acceptance of that which you hate, the more you hate it. It's the same with violence or sex or anything else. The closer you get to it, the harsher your reaction.
I think gamers have to understand first and foremost that ESRB ratings are by nature not for them. They are for the people who have legal guardianship over them. As for AO basically being a kiss of death for a game, that's an issue between you and the console makers, not the ESRB. All they do is rate the game. It's up to the console makers what ratings can and can't show up on their systems.