ESRB President Vance On UT3's User-Generated Content 56
Ars Technica's Opposable Thumbs blog passes on the comments of ESRB President Patricia Vance on user-generated content in Unreal Tournament III . As you may recall, it was announced at E3 that user mods will be available for the PS3 version of the game, and eventually the 360 as well. Vance clarified the situation from the ESRB's viewpoint: "The ESRB's Online Rating Notice, which warns consumers that 'Game Experience May Change During Online Play,' is intended to advise the buyer that, because the game enables users to play with others over an internet connection, they might encounter user-generated content that isn't a part of the ESRB rating ... That content can vary, whether it's chat or skins or maps or what have you, and it's certainly possible that some of that content won't be in line with the rating that we assigned to the product. That's why we created the notice in the first place."
Does not compute (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it me, or is this ESRB bureacracy now broken?
Compute? (Score:3, Insightful)
How exactly are they broken, in your estimation?
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Ah say, that's a joke, son.
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You're the first person I've heard of to suggest this is a good thing. Or am I missing something?
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It's your parents fault.
Either nurture (hippy biker beatnik parents yeay) or nature (pathological distrust of authorities is on MY psych report) it's your parents fault for not instilling you with any logical suspicion or doubt.
Watchfulness and wariness of being shortchanged ARE natural and universal traits among social mammals, if you don't know that then you've never seen two dogs eat.
I want to know the name of whatever you're taking becau
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You seem to be confused about what bureaucracy is -- in particular, you've got it mixed up with government. Bureaucracy is simply administration by bureaus -- it's how eve
Mostly... (Score:2)
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If I go down to the DMV to get my driver's license renewed, I am going to the bureau that handles license registration. Whether it is a bureaucracy or not has to be decided. Bureaucracy is when something like this becomes so large that people lose sight of the intended purpose in creating it, leading to all the red tape and routine you have to go through to get anything done.
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If you got to the DMV without having any problems or excessive paperwork and whatnot, the experience wont linger in your mind. You wont be left with recurring nightmares of forms and small-minded clerks with rubber stamps. You wont have any impression of the
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But bureaucracy is not an individual bureau. You said I probably deal with 12 bureaucracies a day. You are talking about the meaning of one definition, which would by definition mean that the entire government is a bureaucracy. Other definitions:
Excessive concentration in power of the administrators, causing...
excessive red tape
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Bureaucracy is just an inevitable aspect of how Humans organize themselves when more than a hundred or so people have to cooperate.
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Seems a bit hypocritical to me.
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Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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1. Remake Pac-Man
2. Get ESRB rating of E with a warning of User Generated Content
3. Upon boot, download content from user "NotRockstar", a whole 4 or 5 bytes adding a jmp to the code
4. Execute that code = Manhunt 2
5. ???
6. Profit!
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If you'd just needed to type "ABACABB" then I could see your point.
But if you have to apply a patch to unlock the "existing content" then from the user/parent point of view, you have a situation where:
1. As installed, there is no explicit sex or nudity in the game, and no way to get it to appear.
2. After downloading something from the internet and installing
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On the PC you can theoretically enter a "cheatcode" yourself by using a hex editor or the debug program that's included with Windows.
Anyway, I think the ESRB should rate what you can access from the default state without direct alterations to game files, not wh
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Re:Does not compute (Score:4, Interesting)
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I'm trying to figure out what the point of this story is and how the hell it got posted to
Swi
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Yes. It's just like Halo. (kidding, kidding)
Personally, I hope this isn't as bad as it sounds (Score:2, Troll)
Re:Personally, I hope this isn't as bad as it soun (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Personally, I hope this isn't as bad as it soun (Score:2, Funny)
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I fully agree. I was scrolling through to see if anyone had said as much before I posted, and I'm glad I'm not the only one. I'm amazed this made /., and I'm amazed (or perhaps saddened) that the ESRB felt obligated to justify this. When you go to the movies and see a PG movie, you can't yell at the MPAA if someone sitting behind you in the theatre drops the F-bomb 10 or 20 times while watching it.
Perhaps slightly more accurately, if you pick up a children's book in which someone has drawn obscene pi
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Experience or Content... (Score:1)
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Clarity (Score:1)
never really paid attention to that notice but... (Score:1)
Re:never really paid attention to that notice but. (Score:2)
This is news? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Generalizations are never helpful. Probably most gamers are mature enough to handle it, but some may not be. Parents are responsible for underage gamers and there is no doubt that ratings are useful.
Parents probably wouldn't let their kits play Unreal Tournament but I wonder what the situation would be for something like LittleBigPlanet. That game would probably get rated an E for everyone but it relies totally on user content. Most is going to be great but you
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No user generated content on 360. (Score:1)
Can I ask where the author of this article got the impression there would be? (assumption???)
Can we get Take Two (Score:1)