As someone who has been a part of MANY ESRB submissions, let me tell you: Their system for rating is flawed. Sure, I don't like it any more than you do when a senator tries to tell me what to play on my own console, but the fact of the matter is that the ESRB is a load of crap.
1) The ESRB pays people off the street to rate your games! They try to get people that can spare an hour and have some sort of relations with children either as a parent or a teacher, etc. Then, they sit them down for an hour and make them watch a video of gameplay! No one ever plays the game before it is rated!!!
2) A typical ESRB rating costs $2500! This means that taking the game back in and trimming parts out to get a lower rating will cost $2500 per attempt!!! Don't like the fact that "soccer mom" doesn't like the "gore" or "blood" found in a game and now it's rated higher than anticipated? Tell the ESRB.
3) There are a number of things that the ESRB doesn't take into account. For instance, Morality. The ESRB is not concerned with lying, cheating, right or wrong or just about anything else that has moral or questionable implications. Instead, they focus 100% of their efforts on graphics and sound. They care more about whether or not one of the songs on the soundtrack uses the f-word than whether or not the only gameplay option is to lie to people.
4) The ESRB does not care what your game is about! They care about the content of said game. You could make a game that is all about killing people, slicing them up, eating them, etc. but do it off-screen, do it with green blood or with a loveable main character and suddenly the game is E for Everyone.
The fact of the matter is that we have created the ESRB to police our video games for us but the whole system is run along the premise of the movies, "What you see is what you get."
The really sad thing is that the ESRB rating isn't even mandatory! The only reason that developers and publishers put up with the flawed system is because NOT having a rating is market suicide because Wal-Mart and other retailers won't touch your game without it. Sadly, we've dug this hole for ourselves.
I'm in the wrong business... I should rate games at $2500 a pop. Hell, you don't even have to play the game. Just sit down and watch a "No longer than 45 minute" video and read the 8 pages of accompanying paperwork then cash the check.
Leaving your key in the door doesn't make it right for the next person who finds them to just walk into your house. Was it dumb to leave the keys in the door? Undoubtedly. Was it wrong for the intruder to enter unlawfully anyway? Yes. The problem here is that the guy "opened the door" looked around and listened and then went and told people about how the door was unlocked and they could just open it and listen in. Sounds like the problem here isn't that he shouldn't have done it, but more that he shouldn't have opened his mouth about it.
PS - Hacking MySpace should be no less of a crime than hacking the embassy. If its ok to exploit MySpace by not the government then we have created a huge double standard and rift in the justice system. Typically, I'd say that knowing how to do something doesn't mean that you should do it, but then again the Hacker's Manifesto does state that it should be hacked simply because its there.
The bottome line is copy protection. I know more people with pirated versions of Adobe software than I know of companies that use the products... it's that bad. The main problem is their steep price tags on their software, though many people are so cheap these days it wouldn't suprise me if the problems were the same even if prices were slashed.
At my work, we have two problems that this situation would affect. 1) we use Photoshop almost daily and 2) we have notoriously bad internet with it going down about 1 - 2 times a month. From a personal standpoint that's fine, 1 - 2 free days off a month, but from a business standpoint, those are lost days. Sure, we can blame the poor ISP for what its worth, but the fact is that the time is still lost and we all know that time is $money$.
I think that personally, I'll pick up a copy of the normal version that runs locally and probably just never update to a web-based app because frankly, the web isn't where I want to do my image editing, document creation or anything else quasi-productive. I'd much rather work on my local machine and then upload, etc.
Boy do I second that! Everytime I try to change my service plan, I end up with fewer minutes and paying just about the same. But seriously, every service provider of cell phones are after one thing... the money. They're not nice or friendly... they're greedy. It's their job to be so.
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As someone who has been a part of MANY ESRB submissions, let me tell you: Their system for rating is flawed. Sure, I don't like it any more than you do when a senator tries to tell me what to play on my own console, but the fact of the matter is that the ESRB is a load of crap. 1) The ESRB pays people off the street to rate your games! They try to get people that can spare an hour and have some sort of relations with children either as a parent or a teacher, etc. Then, they sit them down for an hour and make them watch a video of gameplay! No one ever plays the game before it is rated!!! 2) A typical ESRB rating costs $2500! This means that taking the game back in and trimming parts out to get a lower rating will cost $2500 per attempt!!! Don't like the fact that "soccer mom" doesn't like the "gore" or "blood" found in a game and now it's rated higher than anticipated? Tell the ESRB. 3) There are a number of things that the ESRB doesn't take into account. For instance, Morality. The ESRB is not concerned with lying, cheating, right or wrong or just about anything else that has moral or questionable implications. Instead, they focus 100% of their efforts on graphics and sound. They care more about whether or not one of the songs on the soundtrack uses the f-word than whether or not the only gameplay option is to lie to people. 4) The ESRB does not care what your game is about! They care about the content of said game. You could make a game that is all about killing people, slicing them up, eating them, etc. but do it off-screen, do it with green blood or with a loveable main character and suddenly the game is E for Everyone. The fact of the matter is that we have created the ESRB to police our video games for us but the whole system is run along the premise of the movies, "What you see is what you get." The really sad thing is that the ESRB rating isn't even mandatory! The only reason that developers and publishers put up with the flawed system is because NOT having a rating is market suicide because Wal-Mart and other retailers won't touch your game without it. Sadly, we've dug this hole for ourselves. I'm in the wrong business... I should rate games at $2500 a pop. Hell, you don't even have to play the game. Just sit down and watch a "No longer than 45 minute" video and read the 8 pages of accompanying paperwork then cash the check.
Leaving your key in the door doesn't make it right for the next person who finds them to just walk into your house. Was it dumb to leave the keys in the door? Undoubtedly. Was it wrong for the intruder to enter unlawfully anyway? Yes. The problem here is that the guy "opened the door" looked around and listened and then went and told people about how the door was unlocked and they could just open it and listen in. Sounds like the problem here isn't that he shouldn't have done it, but more that he shouldn't have opened his mouth about it. PS - Hacking MySpace should be no less of a crime than hacking the embassy. If its ok to exploit MySpace by not the government then we have created a huge double standard and rift in the justice system. Typically, I'd say that knowing how to do something doesn't mean that you should do it, but then again the Hacker's Manifesto does state that it should be hacked simply because its there.
The bottome line is copy protection. I know more people with pirated versions of Adobe software than I know of companies that use the products... it's that bad. The main problem is their steep price tags on their software, though many people are so cheap these days it wouldn't suprise me if the problems were the same even if prices were slashed. At my work, we have two problems that this situation would affect. 1) we use Photoshop almost daily and 2) we have notoriously bad internet with it going down about 1 - 2 times a month. From a personal standpoint that's fine, 1 - 2 free days off a month, but from a business standpoint, those are lost days. Sure, we can blame the poor ISP for what its worth, but the fact is that the time is still lost and we all know that time is $money$. I think that personally, I'll pick up a copy of the normal version that runs locally and probably just never update to a web-based app because frankly, the web isn't where I want to do my image editing, document creation or anything else quasi-productive. I'd much rather work on my local machine and then upload, etc.
Isn't that why they call it Anti-trust?
Boy do I second that! Everytime I try to change my service plan, I end up with fewer minutes and paying just about the same. But seriously, every service provider of cell phones are after one thing... the money. They're not nice or friendly... they're greedy. It's their job to be so.