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Mobile Industry Rolls Out Game Rating System
alphadogg writes "Mobile telecom trade group CTIA and the Entertainment Software Rating Board will roll out a rating system for mobile applications similar to ratings on other electronic games, the groups announced Tuesday. Six mobile application storefronts will support the rating system and will roll out the ratings in the coming months, CTIA said. AT&T, Microsoft, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA, U.S. Cellular and Verizon Wireless are the founding members of the rating system."
An opinion piece at Gamasutra points out that this initiative falls a bit flat without Apple or Google on board, since iOS and Android are so vital to the current mobile gaming industry. "In the long run, the ESRB/CTIA announcement could be another sign of shifting power in the gaming industry. Normally, the ESRB gets what it wants. But it has no leverage against Apple and Google."
"It's as addictive as Angry Birds"
"It'll pass the time like Bubble Breaker"
"As fun as Snake"
"Sorry, you can't delete the Demo"
http://xkcd.com/937/
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Eventually people are going to want phone makers to make Ratings mandatory to get sold on app stores, and once that happens, you can say goodbye to cheap mobile games, or mobile games in general. Fees and having to wait for your game to be reviewed when hundreds of new games pop up in the review queue daily will bring mobile gaming to its knees.
Are the going to copy the homeland security system.
This game is rated Sunset Orange.
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Doesn't Apple already have a rating system for iOS apps?
The title should have been "ESRB Rolls Out Game Rating System For Mobile, Is Completely Ignored By Mobile Industry". Seriously! Neither Apple nor Google intend to support this thing, so it's pretty much dead in the water. This is before even considering the damage it would do to mobile gaming. I guess it wouldn't be the first /. title to be off.
If this is just an application of the same ESRB ratings to mobile games (which is suggested with "The CTIA Mobile Application Rating System with ESRB will utilize the well-known and trusted age rating icons that ESRB assigns to computer and video games to provide parents and consumers reliable information about the age-appropriateness of applications." in the press release), then this doesn't warrant a story, as smartphones and their ilk are computers (however hobbled by their small form and bad service providers).
If they'll instead use a new set of rating categories or descriptors, then it's wasted effort, as they could've just applied the ESRB ones to these games since they're becoming more and more like computer and console games (partly because, well, smartphones are computers). In this case, it not only doesn't warrant a story but does warrant a point-and-laugh for the repetitive noobs they are.
Also, slapping A Capitalized Slogan(R) in front of your name more than once per page, as if to be part of it, is highly loathsome and annoying; and I want to physically harm whoever made "onboard" a verb.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
According to Wikipedia, to have a game evaluated for ESRB costs $800 to $4,000.
And a large share of mobile phone games are free and many are made by small-time developers or even individuals.
I think the ESRB is looking to be a solution to a problem that does not exist, at least for the Apple App Store. I cannot speak for Android.
I don't think they are, I think it's fantastic that an industry can have it's own content ratings system. It is the one thing that the MPAA is good for, keeping the government out of the movie theaters. If anything, there's a complaint it's expensive, but TFA is about solving this very problem by letting publishers fill out a detailed questionnaire instead of submitting demos and clips for review.
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If you think the MPAA ratings are good I highly recommend you watch the movie "This Film Is Not Yet Rated." The ratings are not so much a "help parents make informed decisions about movies" tool as it is a tool to protect the oligopoly in the movie industry.
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But "9+" isn't an ESRB rating and thus doesn't imply that the publisher paid the ESRB's fee, which can run into the hundreds of USD or thousands of USD.
Why are people against the ESRB? It's just metadata. If you don't want to use it, ignore it.
Or do they charge for the rating or something?
Yes they do. This piece of metadata can become cost-prohibitive for an individual developer or 2-man family business working on its first title. See Anonymous Coward's comment right before yours.
The ESRB is an especially poor rating system, exemplified by its use of the word "mature" in the ratings themselves. This renders it too easily used as a marketing term for vendors looking to market some of the most puerile content imaginable to the segments of the population least able to handle it, all by using the word "mature" to imply that the game will make them feel like men. Indeed, there are entire companies that depend on this business model: witness Rockstar.
When and if the ESRB removes marketing terms from its ratings, they may deserve to be taken seriously. Certainly not until then.
$800 is hardly going to break the bank of someone trying to sell a game. If it does, the bank was going to break anyway.
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If it does, the bank was going to break anyway.
This is true of any startup: seed capital is hard to come by especially while the team are trying to build their portfolio from scratch.
Why are people against the ESRB? It's just metadata. If you don't want to use it, ignore it.
The problem is when retailers use that metadata to keep things out of their shop and away from their devices, as then it becomes simply a censorship method. In the mobile space the ESRB might not yet have that power, but on game console it has, getting an AO rating means your game becomes unpublishable. Of course Apple is censoring what you can run anyway, even without the ESRB, so the damage is already done there and the ESRB might not be able to do additional harm.
I'm not making the claim the MPAA is competent, or even that it's easy to get a rating or break into the industry... Just that it's better than the alternative of government controls on movie theaters like we see in other countries, and TFA is about solving some of the same problems that exist in the game industry.
Wonder what the public key field is for?