Inside the ESRB Ratings System

Gamasutra has a lengthy piece up today looking at the ins and outs of ESRB ratings. There are a lot of misconceptions about the process, and ESRB president Patricia Vance took some time to set the record straight: "Q: What do raters receive or know about a game before the video arrives? Do raters receive information on the game along with the video? For example, could a publisher send along promotional or explanatory material for the rater? A: Along with the video, the only other information that might be provided to raters is a script or lyric sheet provided by the publisher for the game being evaluated. Capturing language and dialogue on the video submission, particularly in context, can be tricky. So sometimes, instead of having a video with a montage of several instances of foul language (including the most extreme), the raters review the scripts and lyric sheets to gain a better understanding of the dialogue and frequency with which profanity and other potentially offensive language occur."

Comments

They May Have the Best Intentions...

[cromar]

but I still don't trust them.

Re:They May Have the Best Intentions...

[morari]

Trust no one!

...except Deep Throat and Mr. X.

Left out one key piece of information

[tepples]

One thing I was expecting to find in this interview but did not find was how much it costs to submit or resubmit a product for rating, especially a simple little budget puzzle game from a smaller publisher that would otherwise have no problem getting an E.

Mirrored the MPAA

[A Name Similar to Di]

If anyone hasn't seen This Film is not yet Rated which the Gamasutra article's title alludes to I would recommend it as an eye opening look into the ratings process.

Just like the MPAA the ESRB is using an anonymous group of individuals with no clearly defined lines between ratings to effectively censor content (since many consoles will not even play AO content similar to many major studios refusing to release NC-17 content).

And here's the quote that the summary should have included in my opinion:

Do raters apply their own moral standards (on subjects like violence, substance abuse, and sexuality) to guide their rating recommendations? Or, are they merely to apply a standard that the ESRB has set out for them?

PV: It's really a combination of both. Rating games is an inherently subjective practice in the sense that content is always going to be interpreted in different ways by different people. So part of the equation is the raters' own views on content, but as I said, parity and consistency play important roles as well.

Re:Mirrored the MPAA

[coolhandlucas]

"Rating games is an inherently subjective practice in the sense that content is always going to be interpreted in different ways by different people."

Yep, and the rules we use to frame the arguments about this crap change very quickly, just as they have with movies. Look at "Barbarella" (1968) - full frontal nudity on a number of occasions with a PG rating; no modern movie could get away with that (I remember there being some brouhaha about one tit shown in "Titanic"). 40 years later and we've gone through many iterations of subjectivity in the MPAA ... it's no shock that the relatively young ESRB would have some issues. The real problem here is the level of import placed on these scores in political circles when they are intended simply be used as a guideline for a concerned parent, at which they more or less succeed.

I am, however, going to enjoy looking back in 39 years and saying "Can you believe they tried to ban Manhunt 2?"

How would she know if the ESRB is doing it's job?

[zzqzzq_zzq]

Page 3..

"Truth be told, though, I'm just not privy to the conversations that take place when the raters are doing their job. We take the integrity of the process extremely seriously, and nobody else is present in the viewing room when raters are reviewing and discussing content."

So for all she knows they may be rolling d100, and BS'ing the rest of the session...

Its the ESRB, not Jury duty.........

Re:How would she know if the ESRB is doing it's jo

[steveo777]

I think the main problem they have here in the ESRB are not gamers and not privy to the differences say between the violence of Halo/GTA (posted /. yesterday).

Try reading TFA:

How diverse is your pool of raters?

PV: Our group of raters includes a mix of male and female, parents and non-parents, hardcore gamers and more casual gamers, younger and older. We recruit from the New York metropolitan area, which has one of the most culturally and socially diverse populations in the country. Sounds to me like they've got their bases covered pretty well.

And for the record, I think the ESRB does a pretty good job. Even when they re-rated GTA:SA. And Manhunt and Manhunt 2 should probably both be AO, but I'm not rating them.

The real question you should as is "who would you rather rate the games?" Besides yourself. You have to have a few qualifications to satisfy publishers. The group has to be small enough to ensure confidentiality, non-objective based (no or minimal political or social skews), and private. Draw on a larger pool and the publishers will get upset. They don't want any leaks about their content that they don't release.

And so, if you don't give it to the ESRB, or something very similar, then the job will fall into the laps of the politicians. Nobody wants that.

Re:How would she know if the ESRB is doing it's jo

[moderatorrater]

That's bullshit. They've got six raters total; how diverse is that? If you were to divide people based on age (above/below a certain age so there's 2 groups), gender, and whether they're a parent or not, you would need eight different people to get each perspective. Adding more dimensions and more granularity (eg more age categories, age/number of children, race, etc), you're going to need more and more people to represent those groups. For her to say that they've got diversity when there's only six freaking testers total and only three from each game is, frankly, ridiculous.

Re:How would she know if the ESRB is doing it's jo

[setien]

I think they do a ridiculously bad job. I worked for a game company, and while we had no significant trouble getting grizzly, visceral murders through the rating process as below M, ESRB had problems with hints of nipple showing through a female characters shirt, and they had problems with characters smoking certain types of drugs. I think the hypersensitivity to sexual(-ish) content and drugs, but non-sensitivity to ultra violent content is a monumental double standard, which smacks all too much of a religion-based concept of ethics.