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Modern Games and Technology Challenging ESRB's Effectiveness
The Entertainment Software Rating Board has been around for 15 years now, overcoming an ineffective start and a host of controversial events to become a fairly well-respected ratings agency. However, as this article at The Escapist points out, the world of video games is changing, and the ESRB does not seem to be adapting along with it.
"The most pressing problem is the ESRB's reluctance to address online interactions. Seeing as we're moving more and more toward online and internet-enabled games, this inevitably limits the ESRB's authority as a ratings board. Although the ESRB rates the submitted developer content within online games, these ratings are always qualified by an important disclaimer: 'Online Interactions Not Rated by the ESRB.' To date, this has meant that the rating given to the designed game content doesn't cover chat and other forms of player-to-player communication. That's unfortunate, because the ESRB's intimate relationship with the game industry could provide it with a unique vantage point from which to evaluate aspects of online games that are beyond the purview of other would-be raters, including the quality of the game's moderation system, programmed restrictions on chat and known player demographics."
Every time someone takes their kids outside they run the risk of those kids being exposed to god knows what, I don't see how online experiences are any different.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
I for one am glad they aren't policing internet interactions in gaming, the last thing I want is game companies being forced to attempt to censor every bad word to kowtow to the ESRB for an M rating. As for all the companies that already attempt to do it, good luck with your stupid useless endeavor.
Fu(K!ng n0o85!!1
1) The South Korea's Games Rating Board is supposed to certify every game.
2) The Jesus Phone is finally about to be launched in South Korea and it will be widely popular for lots of reasons (you can trust me on this one).
But because of 1), the South Korean AppStore will not include games... Now that's not keeping up with the times.
Nobox: Only simple products.
I can't see how they would be able to rate online games.
The fact of the matter is, they can only rate the underlying content of the game, not the interactions in the game.
In a lot of games you can manipulate environment, and create scenarios which isn't covered in the rating.
For example, make a NPC standing behind a cow and moving in a certain way, making it look like he is fornicating with said cow.
There is no way they can rate against things like this. The above example may be harmless as it's only insinuating something sexual, however, it wasn't intentional in the game.
Same thing can be said of online play.
The moment you introduce human interaction, anything can (and will) happen.
Spore got entire solar systems inhabited by several "races" of penis' for crying out loud.
That's a pretty innocent rated game.
So alternatively, all online interactions should be rated "M+: Enter at own risk".
tl;dr: They can rate the underlying game, but cannot rate human interaction, and thus can't accurately rate online play, imo.
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
including the quality of the game's moderation system, programmed restrictions on chat and known player demographics.
As someone who works on a large website targeted towards children which has both chat and UGC with various systems around who you can communicate with, whitelists, moderation, etc. this seems very unlikely to prove useful. Our weekly lists of banned phrases show just how creative people can be with regular, every day words and their ability to use them in ways which while using no established slang still very clearly come across as harassing/derogatory/sexual, etc - and as noted, the demographics here are young children (hence I don't think there's much value in "known player demographics"). I think the only way they could truly rate a game with real-time interaction with other players is based on what types of interactions you can have (which could still be tricky).
For instance - an online game of chess with no communication system, just the ability to make moves... probably pretty safe (though I'm sure someone will find a way to get creative with a horse and a queen). Whereas a game where you can run around and have the ability to duck - well, someone's gonna get tea bagged. But it all seems of limited usefulness, because very quickly you get to the point with your interactions where all bets are off - you'll end up with a very small segment of "safe" games with everything else being "at your own risk." Parents, et al are probably better off considering any game with online play "at your own risk."
You know why they don't/can't rate online experiences? Here's an example of World of Warcraft Trade chat when in a city:
[2. Trade] Deringer: ANAL [Attack]
[2. Trade] Arrtthhaass: ANAL [Corpse Explosion]
[2. Trade] Treqir: ANAL [Injection]
[2. Trade] Arrtthhaass: lol
[2. Trade] Yosim: STFU an stay out of trade
[2. Trade] Deringer: lol u have downs
They should just design a few tier labels to classify online interaction types.
Controlled - Anonymous multiplay only. All user content must be approved. Chat limited to preset phrases.
Friends only - Unfiltered user content and open chat from Friends Only.
Unfiltered - Open online community. Supervision recommended under 17.
That would at least let parents know what's going on in the game. It's a lot more informative than a simple: "Online interactions not Rated"
Most gamers have come to consider ESRB as "the enemy", given the degree to which they disagree (which at times tends to be rather extreme).
Why, then, should gamers (and by extension, game companies) welcome their expansion into intra-game communications? They're not the bloody FCC, and ORPG companies have been doing a pretty good job of limiting what can be sent (via text) to other players. And trying to limit spoken words in a game would do no good, because they would just bypass it with Ventrilo or some such program.
Bye-bye, ESRB.
Rephrasing ESRB's notice: "The Internet can be a dangerous place". Rating online gaming experience equals them attempting to rate my ability to understand this statement. Which they can't do.
They're not lagging behind modern times, they're just flat-out telling us the truth: online interactions can't be rated.
One would laughingly dismiss the statement saying "Accessing Internet via Opera is always safe" or "Yahoo Messenger rating: TEEN". It would be careless, stupid and would take away all trust in the company making those statements. So they wisely stay away of moving sands.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
I have found that no rating or ruling agency (whether Government or Private) can replace the effects of parents who get involved with their children and actually attempt to understand what their kids are doing and who they're interacting with. I don't care what stamp or rating is put on the outside of the box, if I haven't researched whatever my children are doing, then I'd consider myself a failure as a parent, which is really what the underlying problem is here... not the fact that the ESRB doesn't rate online content / social interaction.
"If all the world's a stage, I want to operate the trap door." - Paul Beatty
Any responsible parent explores the games content on their own. Ratings are unreliable for any game where addons, mods, or online interaction are concerned.
I still find it disturbing that little Billy's parents would go batshit crazy if he saw a female nipple, but couldn't care less if he was playing a game where the goal was to murder police officers.
The article talks about rating online games based on their demographics and moderation systems, but I believe even that is pointless. Just look at Nintendo, I lost count of the number of hairy dicks people had drawn on the front of their karts in Mario Kart DS, and that game has no text or voice chat and no webcam features. No matter how many people you ban for inappropriate behaviour, there will always be someone new on the game ready to mis-behave.
The ESRB can't rate online interactions and they're right not to try to do so. The only thing they should be doing is educating parents about the risks of playing games online and recommending that parents monitor who their kids are talking to in those games.
It's like saying "Hey parents, we can't control what other people write on Slashdot, but they have a really decent moderation system." If (for those poor at comprehension, we call this a hypothetical statement) Slashdot offered parental controls to set the minimum threshold on your kids' accounts, they could conclude "While there is some nasty stuff when browsing at -1 which we have no control over, fortunately Slashdot offers you the ability to restrict your kids viewing to a much higher threshold and mitigate the risk of them reading material inappropriate for their age."
Slashdot's policy would still be found deficient, as posts containing the word "fucking" still get moderated to (Score:+5, Funny) or (Score:+5, Insightful).
The ESRB doesn't want to be forced into rating everything 17+ because some kid said fuck a few times. By not rating online interactions, they actually maintain some integrity to their ratings, whether people agree or disagree with them.
As for parents wanting to know the 'online climate' of a game, that's bullshit. If you buy your kid an online FPS, you can expect there's going to be at least one guy who wants to cuss his head off at everyone. If you don't want your kids to experience that, then don't buy the game, or take it from them if they buy it. (Not like the kid isn't going to be exposed to profanity anyways, but this would be a parent obstinate about controlling their home environment).
"Our goal each year should be to increase the number of goals we set for ourselves!"
I like the way you phrased that. My first thought was of right-wing nutjobs complaining that Command and Conquer (random game choice with "Reds" in it) should have a much higher rating because their kid has been playing it and had all of these "dirty", "immoral" and "disgusting" thoughts put into their heads about socialism, freedom, a world without religion and other such "bad" topics :D
Come on, one of the most notoriously funny quotes on bash.org is about someone caught cybering on a Scrabble website.
NSFW
SCRABBLE: Rated AO for sexual content! And that's not even counting a triple word score for "epididymis".