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What's So Wrong With the ESRB? 85

Posted by Zonk from the huff-and-puff-and-blow-your-industry-in dept.
1up has an in-depth look at the Hot Coffee hoopla, and the resulting impact on the ESRB. From the article: "Hot Coffee's wake was also the tipping point for The National Institute for Media and the Family. Its strongly worded 10th Annual MediaWise Video and Computer Game Report Card awarded the ESRB an 'F' for ratings accuracy and a 'C+' for ratings education. More damning was the Report Card's statement: 'The so-called 'hot coffee' scandal does not simply reveal the bad faith of one of the industry's most prominent companies; it has shown once and for all that the present rating system is broken and can't be fixed.'"
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What's So Wrong With the ESRB? More

What's So Wrong With the ESRB?

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  • How do the rate them? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tont0r ( 868535 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @03:55PM (#14663130)
    Because no one really cared TOO much about what they said until the hot coffee mod slipped through the cracks. But this is what angers me. Hot Coffee had nothing to do with the ESRB. It was code that was hidden from the game. How was the ESRB supposed to rate the game down because of that? What groups like the National Institute for Media and the Family and Mrs. Clinton doesnt understand is that in order to find hidden content such as that, its not as simple as "put in the up up down down left right left right code" to unlock it. This feature was exploited by people who literally hacked the game to find it. Yes, Ill agree it should not have been there in the first place, but it is not the ESRB's fault it was hidden and they didnt find it. The ESRB plays the game and rates it on its content as well as how the game is described to them by the developer. They are not responsible hack every single game that comes across their table to find all hidden feature buried within the games source code.
    • I guess it's the same for Janet "Superbowl" Jackson, nobody could have known that this family-oriented event would contain nudity until she decided to "hack" the program.

      Should FCC fine Jackson or the TV network?
      • FCC is the government. In the government, the guy in charge takes responsibility. Therefore, it must fine itself. Its leader must commit ritual seppuku so his head can adorn the battlements.
        • In the government, the guy in charge takes responsibility.

          Maybe on pluto the guy in charge takes responsibility. Here on earth some unknown aide takes one for the team. He is then awarded by getting a job for a company loyal to party in control, probably a nice 6-figure job with a corner office.

      • That's not even close to a good analogy. A good analogy would be if the Jackson boob was on the tape at the studio, but never broadcast. Then some guy broke in, stole the tape, and broadcast it on a different channel. (I understand this was a live event, so there was no "tape", but you can see the point.)

        People keep failing to recognize that just because something is in the code does not mean that it is in the final game. To access the content in question requires violating the EULA, there is no leg

        • The GP's post was a good analogy, and I'm afraid that yours is not quite as good because when you bought the GTA game it came with the data; you didn't have to break into Rockstar's servers to steal it. There is no "hidden code" analogy for a TV because what you see is what you get.

          A better analogy would be finding that an R rated DVD had an NC-17 rated video buried on it in the special features but you couldn't access it through the menu system and could only access it if you ripped the DVD to your hard d
          • I'm going to stand by my analogy. GTA is not open source, Rockstar owns the code regardless of the fact that it resides on a physical disc that you own. By modifying it, you are breaking into Rockstar property, virtual property, but still property according to current laws.

            But you are right, analogies aren't terribly helpful here. And we basicaly agree on the facts, responsibility rests squarely with the modders, and not Rockstar or the ESRB.

            • There's no EULA for video games (you didn't click I Agree, did you?) and therefore there it isn't illegal (not even under the DMCA) to modify (your saved game, on your hardware, not the actual game image itself) it, or even to tell other people how to do it. I still think it's stupid to put any blame at all on the ESRB over this. The content wasn't "in the game" in any reasonable sense. Futhermore, the actual hidden content shouldn't have raised the rating at all anyway.

              Rockstare was foolish for leaving th

            • You know what a good analogy would be? Some performance vehicles are delivered with deliberate crippling technology included to make them pass environmental regulations, and there are simple instructions online about how to modify the vehicle to get all the performance out of it. Sometimes it's as simple as removing a fuse or jumper from the fuse panel.

              We don't sue the car company for selling a car that can be modified to the point where it no longer meets environmental regulations - we charge the modder
      • actually, they ended up fining CBS for the little miss hap.

        which is stupid, if anyone should of been fined it should be Justin Timberlake, he's the one who removed that peice of janets clothing, he's the one who exposed her nipple to the US.
    • The ESRB doesn't even play the game, usually. The developers send in video of what they consider to be reflective of what's in the game, and the ESRB rates accordingly. It's very trust-based.

  • I know I should pay more attention to the topic... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @03:56PM (#14663137)
    But I'm sorry, I still can't take an ethics and censorship organisation whose acronym is pronouced 'nymph' seriously.

  • Yeah, government regulation, that's what we need.. (Score:5, Informative)

    by jacoplane ( 78110 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @03:59PM (#14663155) Homepage Journal
    Great, government regulation of video games. Just what the world needs. If there's anything that the Hot Coffee Mod fiasco has made clear, it's that the media and the public are doing a pretty good job at being a ESRB-watchdog. Rockstar has felt the results in its bottom line. What's the problem? More info:

    ESRB [wikipedia.org], Video game controversy [wikipedia.org], Family Entertainment Protection Act [slashdot.org].
    • I think it's funny that a game rated M for mature and is full of violence gets in trouble for some half finished sex minigames.

      While R rated movies are chock full of violence, gore, and nudity and everyone is alright.

      The M rating for games is the same fucking thing as the R rating for movies! I bet I could make a bunch of money suing Blockbuster for giving people under 17 access to R rated games.
      • Unlike pornography and alcohol, it's not actually against the law to sell violent games and movies to minors. Even those states that have passed bans on the latter have all had them overturned.

        Stores and theaters voluntarily agree to abide by these guidelines because the either the good publicity apparently does more for them than the loss of sales or the CEO beleives its worth it despite lesser revenue.

  • A lot of failed logic. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by OS24Ever ( 245667 ) * <trekkie@nomorestars.com> on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @04:01PM (#14663173) Homepage Journal
    From TFA:
    "They have tweaked things," said Olson, "but there is blatant pornography on the best-selling game of the year. That says that the ratings system didn't work."
    Do what? So apparently only minors are interested in pornography, and even though the core gamer market seems to be 18-34 year olds they wouldn't have bought the game had it had an MA rating?

    I'm 34, and a parent. I have the quaint idea that a parent should review the content of any thing before they let their children have it if they are so concerned about said content. I do believe the ratings in general, but for every example you can always find a 'but wait' example. For exmaple Fox and the Hound was rated G. However in the movie there is an extremely intense, somewhat violent fight with a monstrous scary bear that sends most >5 year olds running for the hills. Should I scream and gnash my teeth? Or should I just not put that movie in next time because it startled them...

    But what do I know, I'm part of the 80% of the US that is normal, it's the 20% that run the country that screw things up.
    • I'm 34, and a parent. I have the quaint idea that a parent should review the content of any thing before they let their children have it if they are so concerned about said content

      C'mon maannnn, approaching it that way takes time. Effort. AKA giving a shit. Something most parents don't have or seem to want to give.

      Anybody else find it strange that some of the figures that champion this type of meaningless, unenforcable ratings bullshit, like Tipper Gore and Hillary Clinton, are career politicians who pr

    • I have the quaint idea that a parent should review the content of any thing before they let their children have it if they are so concerned about said content.

      How do you review content that isn't exposed to the player until someone outside the game exposes the hidden keys or codes that unlock it?

      The problem with Hot Coffee is that the mini-game arguably went beyond even the M rating on the box. It certainly did undermine trust in the voluntary rating system.

      • The problem is that in my view of the world an R and a X rating and the M vs. 'Adults Only' doesn't mean jack shit. Both aren't appropriate 17 in most cases.

        The guys that did South Park proved without a doubt that in order to get an X rating you just need to show some natural, normal, god given human skin. But if you murder half a country in gory & grusome ways it's ok and it's only an R rating (Orgazmo vs. South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut)

        The top (or bottom depending on your view) of the ratin

  • Does it seem to anyone else.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pjwalen ( 546460 ) <pjwalen@p[ ]ispenser.net ['ezd' in gap]> on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @04:02PM (#14663182) Homepage
    that "The National Institute for Media and the Family" will continue to "fail" the ESRB until is has the kind of control over what people can and can't do inside of videos that THEY want, and not what the population as a whole wants? I don't disagree with ratings on video games, kids shouldn't play GTA (or the like), but I disagree with an independant board of people with very strong ideals, who don't necessarilly coincide with my own, having so much clout in what I do with my free time.

  • The system seems to be working (Score:5, Insightful)

    by j1m+5n0w ( 749199 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @04:03PM (#14663201) Homepage Journal
    Once the Hot Coffee content was discovered, the ESRB immediately launched an investigation, Vance explained. Concluding that the "bonus" content was a Rockstar creation, the ESRB revoked GTA: San Andreas' rating and demanded that Take-Two correct the content. "We acted swiftly, and decisively to fix the situation and make sure that consumers had correct ratings information once this non-playable content was unlocked," said Vance.

    The performance garnered the praise of Senator Clinton for "its quick and thorough investigation" and of Senator Lieberman for its demand for immediate corrective action, but it could not redeem the ESRB's damaged credibility.

    How is the ESRB's credibility damaged? They were presented with a fraudulent representation of a game's content, and then they revoked the rating when that became apparent. It seems to me that the system is working as well as anyone can reasonably expect it to, under the circumstances.

    • Since that part of the game was not accessible without a cheat device, I don't see it as fraudulent.
    • > How is the ESRB's credibility damaged? Step into the mind of someone not on Slashdot... Joe Consumer: The ESRB says this game isn't an Adults Only game, and they govern this stuff, so this is safe for me to get. The News: [Coffee Mod] Joe Consumer: WTF? The ESRB lied! They are supposed to protect me. It doesn't matter whether the ESRB was lied to or not... Joe Consumer isn't going to do the research into such a trivial venture. (If he was, we wouldn't need ESRB at all anyway) Even more practi

      • if you assume that the mod was left in so that it could be found and activated later, you could argue that the ESRB just doesn't have enough teeth to scare developers into revealing everything in their games. (This isn't an uncommon belief, so it can't just be ignored when factoring credibilty over a large group) No teeth = no credibility

        I suppose someone has to be the first to test if the ESRB really does have teeth. Rockstar got a lot of bad publicity over this and had their rating revoked, which to me

  • Should've had a warning label (Score:4, Funny)

    by Kawolski ( 939414 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @04:05PM (#14663220)
    "Game Experience May Change When Applying 3rd Party Hacks and Mods"

  • I wonder (Score:2, Insightful)

    by DarkNemesis618 ( 908703 )
    I wonder how much fault lies in the education factor today. So many parents are working leaving their kids home alone, or buying them whatever to make up for the fact that they're not there. They're so caught up in their work that they either don't care that their kids are playing M-rated games or don't even take notice. The rating system is there good or bad, and the mature rated games are mature, and are meant for people who fully understand right from wrong. You can't always blame the ESRB for this

  • Really? An F and a C+ - over one game? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dark Paladin ( 116525 ) * <jhummel&johnhummel,net> on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @04:07PM (#14663239) Homepage
    So, you have a game which is rated M, with the label:

    Contains sexual content, violence, drug use, heavy lifting, baby snatching, people getting their heads chopped off with katanas, swearing, bad language, improper use of commas, and buckets of blood.

    Then, some people discover a mode which has you voluntarily patch your own game with a non-company made or approved patch so you can see a fully clothed male and a barbie doll engaging in quasi sex acts.

    So, because of this *one* mistake, the ESRB gets an F for accuracy? How about we take a look at the other 100 games released last year and see how "accurate" the ratings are. Did "Katamary Damacy" deserve a "E" for everyone? How about "Chessmaster 8000"? "Resident Evil 4" deserved the M rating I'm sure, and didn't need an AO rating. So right there we're at a score of around 80% for accuracy, which from school is at least a B.

    I'm guessing that the "The National Institute for Media and the Family" has an axe to grind - and looking at their review of Harvest Moon [mediafamily.org] which rates the game's "Illegal/Harmful: Yellow" - I mean, it's a game about farming! Where's the "Illegal/Harmful" in the entire game!

    Anyway. Organization with an axe to grind about entertainment in general being unsafe for, well, just about everybody gives the ratings board they don't control an F. In other news, Republicans give Democrats an F for being patriotic, and Democrats give Bush an F for managing foreign conflicts.

    At least, that's my opinion after reading the articles. I could be wrong.
    • Violence Amount: Yellow

      WoW only gets a yellow for violence?! Whoa! I must be playing the wrong version since I've seen Civilian NPCs get killed, theres an outright war going on (especially on the PvP servers) and players are lining up to enter Battlegrounds to bash each other's heads in.

      • Yeah - I get the feeling that this group's rating systems are even worse than the ESRB. At least the ESRB is trying, and has an enforcement system to keep developers in line. These guys seem to have some guy in a basement making snap decisions while he's playing, rather than a panel reaching a consensus.

        Then again, I imagine most members of the group have the "videogames - baaaad" approach, so that may be an issue.
    • They gave Harvest Moon a yellow in illegal/harmful due to : FTFA "Other minor things to watch out for include some alcohol references, and the occasional translation/cultural gap between the U.S. and Japanese version." Having not played the game, I'm curious how intense these alcohol references are. Anyone?

  • If I had a talk show... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...then the next Senator, lawyer, "family" institute, or pundit who talks about the "blatant pornography" in GTA:SA would be handed a PS2, a pre-recall copy of the game, and a memory card with a save game just prior to where the Hot Coffee content is supposed to be. I would then give them 1 hour to unlock this "blatant" pornography. I mean, it's right there, isn't it? The very next scene? Just waiting to devour our children's souls? Should be easy for them, right?

  • *sigh* (Score:3, Informative)

    by SeekerDarksteel ( 896422 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @04:09PM (#14663268)
    "They have tweaked things," said Olson, "but there is blatant pornography on the best-selling game of the year. That says that the ratings system didn't work."

    But there's NOT. It is a FLAT OUT LIE That GTA:SA contained pornography. As soon as someone makes that claim everything else they say becomes null and void. They have proven that they are not qualified to speak about the subject. It is absolutely pointless to talk about anything else related to the subject until people actually know what the fuck they're talking about.

  • Not the ESRB's fault (Score:3, Insightful)

    by aztektum ( 170569 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @04:10PM (#14663284)
    There are a lot of outlets for parents to find out about the games they buy their kids. However, as usual, the media and "family values" groups are looking for sound bites and blaming the industry itself. Far more useful ones than a sticker/label on the box.

    There is no reasonable way the ESRB could have known that the "Hot Coffee" content was there. This is mostly Rockstar's fault for A) Lying about it in the first place B) Leaving it there to easily be uncovered.

    But most of all it's the fault of people who are out to help protect everyone else, for keeping this alive. FUCK OFF. I don't see things the same way you do and neither do millions of other people (if not billions), just fuck off, ok? Let people control themselves and stop trying to tell society how it needs to behave in order to appear, at best, that we are a civilized people.

    Millions die from cureable disease, hunger, and from having to drink from water sources tainted by billion dollar companies that spew shit all over us, how the hell can this be the most important thing that we should be worrying about?

    FUCK OFF.
    • There are a lot of outlets for parents to find out about the games they buy their kids. However, as usual, the media and "family values" groups are looking for sound bites and blaming the industry itself. Far more useful ones than a sticker/label on the box.

      Hell, the sticker/label on the box was pretty damn useful. I know for a fact it said "M," "Mature," and "17+." I do not know what specific content descriptors it contains, but I'd bet they make it clear that the game is quite simply not appropriate
  • So ONE game from ONE company having hidden content proves that the industry as a whole which produces scores, if not hundreds, of titles per year has failed the ratings system? Uhuh. [sarcasm] I heard this one time that a kid totally saw an animated boobie in the movie Cool World(PG13) that his older brother rented for him. Oh noes! All of Hollywood has deceived us! [/sarcasm]

    The ESRB rating system is only as useful as the store clerks that enforce it and the parents that bother to educate themselves about

  • Hot coffee (Score:5, Informative)

    by ebrandsberg ( 75344 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @04:13PM (#14663325)
    Personally, as someone who works in the computer sector, hot coffee realistically was perfectly fine, and should NOT have impacted their ESRB. If so, then everybody should be charged with public nudity, because if someone were to come by and rip your clothes off, you would be naked, and that is NOT acceptable. This is exactly the same thing. Yes, the programmers as a gag threw this in. Yes, they left the code in, but disabled it. Yes, someone figured out how to enable it. It is standard practice NOT to gut code when a feature is not desired, but to simply disable the feature to prevent side effects in otherwise tested code. As a result it made it easy to reveal, but it is NOT the fault of the developer for it being released. If modifying code to reveal something unintended should be put on the ESRB labels, then every ESRB label should have "warning: ESRB rating can change if code is modifed", much like online ESRB labels warn about changing ratings for online play.
    • so where do i get a job implementing "pornographic" features for future video games, and then get to test it with those features enabled, before the boss decides it's gotta go?

      i'm pretty sure it's not in kansas . . . (or about 1000 miles around there either)
  • The ratings system isn't broken.

    While I don't have a problem with adult content in games, I think they should (in general) be honest about the content of their games. I won't get into whether or not Rockstar should have reported the code (playable or not, blah blah) but if the game companies are honest and forthcoming about the content of their games, then the current ESRB ratings system should work just fine.

    People are blowing the whole thing out proportion by questioning the system based on one event of o

    • Re:System isn't broken (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The Ratings system IS broken, but not it the way that people think. The problem with the Ratings system is not that it is too weak, but that it is TOO HARSH, especially with regards to Rated "M" and Rated "T" games.

      "Cops & Robbers," or "Cowboys and Indians" are typical child's games, but every game with cops, robbers, or cowboys will immediately get a "T" or "M" for subject matter. A good example is "Sid Meier's Pirates," which is essentially a collection of rhythm mingames & is suitable for the f
      • A garden variety beat-em-up like Devil May Cry, which is low on the purely objectionable content and which would be rated PG-13 as a movie, gets the same "M" rating as muder simulator Manhunt.

        Let's not forget that the ESRB is still new...the MPAA did not always have a PG-13 rating either. They used to have G, PG, and R, much like E, T, and M. And they had the same problem: movies that walked the thin line between that which is appropriate for children and that which is not had to be filtered into eith

  • What's So Wrong With the ESRB? (Score:3, Funny)

    by voice_of_all_reason ( 926702 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @04:16PM (#14663356)
    It exists.
  • It's not the ESRB's fault that people outside of their offices are ignoring the rating... is it? Yes? No? Depends?
  • Before these parent groups start complaining about the ESRB, they should actually pay attention to the ratings these games get. GTA was rated 'M', which, according to ESRB's website, is "... suitable for persons ages 17 and older. Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content, and/or strong language." 'AO' rating is "... content that should only be played by persons 18 years and older." Only 1 year difference.

    So, putting aside the problem with how the ESRB is suppos
    • Before these parent groups start complaining about the ESRB, they should actually pay attention to the ratings these games get. GTA was rated 'M', which, according to ESRB's website, is "... suitable for persons ages 17 and older. Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content, and/or strong language." 'AO' rating is "... content that should only be played by persons 18 years and older." Only 1 year difference.

      The beauty of the AO rating is that it has almost nothing
  • What gives these busibodies more authority than the ESRB? They're just a bunch of self-appointed moralists, one group in a cause already crowded with nutjobs and fundamentalists. The ESRB has the support and recognition of most game producers and merchants who sell games. They admit the rating was a mistake because Rockstar deceived them, and they corrected that rating very quickly. The system worked, what are the whining about?

  • Stupid plebians... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RyoShin ( 610051 ) <tukaro@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @04:35PM (#14663572) Homepage Journal
    This whole "Hot Coffee" mod thing is and always has been blown completely out of proportion by those who don't know what the hell they're talking about.

    Firstly, if parents were doing their job (which is unheard of in this day and age, gasp!), the game wouldn't have been in the hands of anyone who couldn't handle the nudity to begin with. This would have made the whole thing a small blip, where someone goes "Hey, there's sex in this game if you do all these changes", someone would write a program to do it automatically, and it would have faded away.

    Second, the only way to access the content was to hack the game. The content was, to my understanding, unreachable through normal play. It's like blaming the toothbrush manufacturer that some inmate turned his toothbrush into a shank and stabbed you. Was the shank already in the toothbrush? Yes, but you had to modify the toothbrush, from it's originally intended purpose, to get to the shank.

    Rockstar (or Take Two or whoever) should have removed the content if they weren't going to use it, but leaving it in should not have gotten the attention it did, especially because the ESRB did jump in and pull the M rating.
    • Sorry, bad analogy.

      It's like blaming the toothbrush manufacturer that some inmate turned his toothbrush into a shank and stabbed you. Was the shank already in the toothbrush? Yes, but you had to modify the toothbrush, from it's originally intended purpose, to get to the shank.

      No, it's as if they made toothbrush bristles was attached to a shank, and then molded some plastic over the (intentionally) sharp point to form a smooth handle. (Hrmm... sounds like a fun thing to try at the next prison visit...)

  • A Useless War (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Rapter09 ( 866502 )
    I'm 19 now, on the cusp of being an adult (more or less). I grew up with ESRB, and I think they've done a great job. I don't think this peddling from another opponent needs to be even payed attention to. The gamers, the industry as a whole, and educated peoples in the public stand behind ESRB. Granted, my parents have not been involved in actively monitoring what games I play, but since I grew up with the ESRB ratings system, whenever I make little ones of my own I'll know what to look for. It's all about

  • Why we cannot trust the ESRB (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    An M-rated game was revealed to have content accessible through adding an unauthorized patch to the game. This hidden content was less sexually explicit than many R-rated movies. In spite of the not-so-explicit nature of the sexual content, the ESRB reacted to the resulting public hysteria by bypassing their usual rating procedure, and slapping an AO rating on it.

    The ESRB caved in to public pressure, and placed the equivalent of an X-rating on the equivalent of an R-rated game. What next? Will a protest
    • Remember the Law of Inverse Importance:
      The less you know about something, the more important it is.

      No one allowed to demo Halo 2? Huge midnight madness.

      Don't know where the WMDs are? Go to War.

      Not sure what this Hot Coffee thing is all about? Bans and shame! Think of the children!
    • FUD FUD FUD...

      Seriously, if there was any more doom and gloom in this post, it would magically shoot smoke out of my monitor. Have you reviewed the ESRB's methods and standards of rating games? Have you also reviewed the content accessible in the "Hot Coffee" mod, and then compared this against the ESRB's methods and standards? Only if you can say yes to both of these can you give an informed opinion as to whether or not the change in rating was appropriate. Otherwise, your point is pure FUD.

  • Not just the ESRB (Score:3, Insightful)

    by twoallbeefpatties ( 615632 ) on Tuesday February 07, 2006 @05:33PM (#14664145)
    Anyone who has had to deal with the process of getting a violent movie hacked down from a NC-17 rating to an R rating could probably tell you that the movie business's process of rating a film has its own problems. Think about it - is that the kind of rating system we want, where a game has to be produced and sent in to a ratings board, who then nitpicks a series of random encounters that they think may the game too violent and send it back with a list of things that would need to be taken out to avoid an AO rating?

    To this point, the ratings board has been very non-subjective, if I must say. They haven't tried to apply a lot of their own values to the games; they've mostly recognized that bloody games are just bloody games, and the only thing that constitutes pornography is actual, intended pornography. This is how other games with nudity and serious gore (God of War, anyone?) squeaked by with an M rating. It's too bad that the public pressure came down that they felt the rating on San Andreas had to be changed. Certainly the worst thing that could happen is that the public pressure causes them to apply the same kind of litmus test that has to be applied to film.

    Anyone who takes a serious beef with the ESRB, I hope you happen to catch This Film Is Not Yet Rated when it comes out in a few months.
    • to be produced and sent in to a ratings board, who then nitpicks a series of random encounters that they think may the game too violent and send it back with a list of things that would need to be taken out to avoid an AO rating?

      It's my understanding that they don't do that, though. The MPAA ratings board hangs a rating on a movie and that's that. If the producer wants to chop it down to get a lower rating he has to play a kind of guessing game to determine what he has to remove to get the lower
      • I think the rating board is given a target rating and then watches the film and then either grants the rating or sets a different one. If they choose a different (higher) rating for the movie they say what would get it lower.

        I've heard filmmakers talk about what they had to cut out to get it down and it sounded to me like it is a pretty specific list they get back of where they could make changes to comply with the rating they want. 'Eyes Wide Shut' is a good example. It was going to get an NC-17 for t
  • The ESRB does a fine job. It competently rates games on an easy-to-understand scale. The organization provides a guideline--which is what any rating system is--allowing people who are concerned about the nature of content in a game to know more about it. It is not a force for media control or change, which is what this review wants it to be, but merely a tool--one that any individual can choose to follow or ignore. Simply because this reviewer want parents to pay more attention to what their kids are do
  • It is my firm belief that if a kid wants to do something, he's going to do it regardless of what ratings or his parents say about it.

    My parents may or may not have been concerned with the video games I grew up with (the 80s and early 90s were different). You could, however, expect some titles to be obviously violent. Robocop, Rampage, anything with "Ninja" in the title, etc. I don't think that parents would expect anything less than Robocop going around shooting baddies and Ninjas cutting stuff up with s
  • The only thing broken here is The National Institute for Media and the Family itself with it's broken record speaches and utterly useless 'report cards'. The ESRB shot back at these twits a couple times already, and I have to 100% with the ESRB in this case. The Institute has no interest in accuracy of ratings. They are only interested in their sound bites, and frankly they have long since lost any credibility in my book.
  • To quote Maddox: "I want to shoot people in the face, bang prostitutes, traffic drugs, steal cars, and terrorize police officers without this filthy smut in my game. Frankly, I'm appalled that Rockstar would allow such wholesale corruption of our youth." I agree with whoever said that it's the parent's job to review the game before allowing their kid to play it. The child who sparked the controversy was waaaay to young to play according to the original rating. Why is it that the conservative elements in
  • Ok, so MediaWise gave them an F. So who the hell is MediaWise, and why should I (or the ESRB) care about what they have to say?

    Anyone can start an organization and give out Fs to everything they hate. It's easy, watch.

    The Headcase88 Advisory Group [yourethemannowdog.com] gave MediaWise a D+ for "grading accuracy", a 0/2 for "ability to get to their site by typing the name of their organization and adding .com [mediawise.com] or .org [mediawise.org]", and an F--- for "amount of positive impact on society per dollar [mediafamily.org]".

    See, it's really not all that hard.

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