Inside the ESRB Ratings System

Gamasutra has a lengthy piece up today looking at the ins and outs of ESRB ratings. There are a lot of misconceptions about the process, and ESRB president Patricia Vance took some time to set the record straight: "Q: What do raters receive or know about a game before the video arrives? Do raters receive information on the game along with the video? For example, could a publisher send along promotional or explanatory material for the rater? A: Along with the video, the only other information that might be provided to raters is a script or lyric sheet provided by the publisher for the game being evaluated. Capturing language and dialogue on the video submission, particularly in context, can be tricky. So sometimes, instead of having a video with a montage of several instances of foul language (including the most extreme), the raters review the scripts and lyric sheets to gain a better understanding of the dialogue and frequency with which profanity and other potentially offensive language occur."

Re:How would she know if the ESRB is doing it's jo

[steveo777]

I think the main problem they have here in the ESRB are not gamers and not privy to the differences say between the violence of Halo/GTA (posted /. yesterday).

Try reading TFA:

How diverse is your pool of raters?

PV: Our group of raters includes a mix of male and female, parents and non-parents, hardcore gamers and more casual gamers, younger and older. We recruit from the New York metropolitan area, which has one of the most culturally and socially diverse populations in the country.

Sounds to me like they've got their bases covered pretty well.

And for the record, I think the ESRB does a pretty good job. Even when they re-rated GTA:SA. And Manhunt and Manhunt 2 should probably both be AO, but I'm not rating them.

The real question you should as is "who would you rather rate the games?" Besides yourself. You have to have a few qualifications to satisfy publishers. The group has to be small enough to ensure confidentiality, non-objective based (no or minimal political or social skews), and private. Draw on a larger pool and the publishers will get upset. They don't want any leaks about their content that they don't release.

And so, if you don't give it to the ESRB, or something very similar, then the job will fall into the laps of the politicians. Nobody wants that.

Re:How would she know if the ESRB is doing it's jo

[setien]

I think they do a ridiculously bad job. I worked for a game company, and while we had no significant trouble getting grizzly, visceral murders through the rating process as below M, ESRB had problems with hints of nipple showing through a female characters shirt, and they had problems with characters smoking certain types of drugs. I think the hypersensitivity to sexual(-ish) content and drugs, but non-sensitivity to ultra violent content is a monumental double standard, which smacks all too much of a religion-based concept of ethics.