The ESRB Don't Get No Respect 61
Via the ffwd linklog, a story on the Hollywood Reporter site discussing the public image of the ESRB, from "pain in the butt" on the developer's side to lax child perverter on the lawmaker's side. From the article: "The issue Greenberg describes is one involving dollars and cents: Almost every single retail chain chooses not to sell 'AO' rated games, period. In just the same way that many movie theaters will not show films branded with an 'NC-17' rating, the 'AO' severely limits a game's distribution, to put it mildly."
Re:Shocked, shocked I am (Score:4, Interesting)
"Oh.. we only want to help parents to make an educated CHOICE... we don't want to censor anything."
One fact that gets lost in comments like these - and really, you should know better - is that the ESRB is part of the game industry. Literally. It is comprised of all of the game developers and publishers who choose to participate in it. A publisher is perfectly free not to pay the membership fees, not to have ESRB representatives and not to have their games rated. It is a voluntary system that is funded by the publishers themselves. Most publishers choose to be a part of it for several reasons, including the fact that certain large chain stores will not accept unrated games for sale.
As a former member of the industry myself, I know a bit about how the ESRB works. Rating games is an almost shockingly simple yet seemingly arbitrary process. Publishers are told to send samples of the most prurient and violent content of their games, and then a panel of three average people rate what they see. This panel constantly rotates. They do not play the games. They may make their ratings based on the ten minutes of video the publisher sends.
You would think this process would be open to all sorts of abuse on both sides (especially given that it's an industry-funded organization), but in reality there are all sorts of checks and balances that prevent that from happening. There is an appeals process if a publisher believes their game was rated too harshly, and all ratings are subject to review. Conversely, a publisher faces heavy fines (and paying the fines is not voluntary, if you want to keep getting your games rated), not to mention a potential embarassing recall, if they are found to have withheld content that would result in a harsher rating or additional content descriptors.
Most publishers are pretty good about this stuff. It is rarely a surprise to a publisher when a game gets a particular rating or particular content descriptors - I mean most publishers were not born yesterday, they go through this many, many times a year and they pretty much know what to expect. Some of the descriptors themselves can be pretty goofy - I remember one of the games I worked on got a T rating with a descriptor of "Mild Lyrics", whatever the hell that means. "We just want to warn you... these lyrics, are really not that bad!" (The ESRB does provide specific definitions of all descriptors to publishers, but some of them are still a little wacky.) Most of the goofy ones, though, are not really worth worrying about. The one thing that trips some publishers up sometimes are distinctions between things like "cartoon violence" and plain old "violence", which can mean the difference between a T and an M rating. But even that's pretty rare, because the ESRB is pretty specific about what defines each of those descriptors, and again, publishers usually have plenty of past experience to go on.
I think the point I'm trying to make is that this is a more symbiotic relationship than most people think. Yes, publishers can groan every once in a while about the process or their ratings or whatever. But it's not the way a dissident groans about his government; it's more like the way a kid groans about his parents. The ESRB is literally related to the game publishers, and everybody is part of the same industry.
It may surprise many of you to know also that few, if anybody, in the industry want to get rid of the ESRB. Because they know the alternative is government action. The ESRB, as the game industry's self-regulating body, is obviously far preferable to getting congress and law enforcement involved. It's in the industry's best interests for the ESRB to be as effective as possible, and unfortunately the retailers have been letting the industry down in terms of ratings enforcement. At all the ESRB meetings I had to attend (and yes, I groaned at these along with everybody else) the complaints were always centered around retailers screwing everything up for the rest of the industry, not about the ESRB itself.
Re:Not a replacement (Score:3, Interesting)
True, but parents need a guide. We can't possibly know everything about every game out there, so we need to make quick decision for our children when we're renting and purchasing games. Cartoonish games like Jak 2 and 3, Ratchet & Clank, etc. all carry "T" ratings, but otherwise how would we know about all of the violence in those games? The covers look innocent enough. Some are obvious, like GTA, Halo, war simulations. Others like the aforementioned titles are not. Without these ratings, parents are stuck guessing at the content based on the cover.
It also helps when your child is out of your reach, such as at a friend's house. We just tell other parents that there are no "T" or "M" rated games for our kids, and we expect them to honor that. Despite what all of the naysayers around here want to cry, a parent can't be everywhere at once.