The Entertainment Software Ratings Board -- known to you and I as the ESRB -- has come under fire from one its own ex-employees, who has provided a little rating of his own regarding the company's practices.
Jerry Bonner worked as a full-time rater within the ESRB for six months and has criticized the way the organization does its job with several key factors that need changing. His complaints include the suggestion that the ESRB needs to play the games it rates and, more unnervingly, the accusation that sequels are not judged on their own merits, but rather the merits of games that came before it. Next-Generation provides a summary of Bonner's key issues:
- Drop the "AO" Rating and add a T-16 rating
- Play through the games all the way
- Stop rating sequels according to the content in their predecessors (according to Bonner, ESRB does this)
- Be more open; don't be so secretive
The last two issues are, for me, the key ones. It's pretty obvious that sequels to controversial games get viewed with a more disparaging eye by censors (for instance, had Stephan Pakeerah not had his death falsely attributed to Mahunt, I believe British stores would be selling Manhunt 2 right now), and above all, this need that ratings boards seem to have to shroud themselves in secrecy ought to stop. Dodging questions and acting like a clandestine Illuminati is not going to help the ESRB or, in fact, any rating body being scrutinized by power-hungry politicians. While I agree with Next-Gen that the above points won't stop government busybodies from wanting to control the ESRB's work, I do believe that his suggestions certainly won't hurt, and might at least endear the rest of us some more to the group.
ESRB boss Patricia Vance had a few things to say about Bonner's statements herself, and you can view her counterpoints after the jump.
Patricia Vance's response to Bonner's criticism:
"Mr. Bonner’s article contains numerous misleading statements, factual inaccuracies, and misrepresentations… The author also fails to mention the unique and limited nature of his six-month tenure at the ESRB…
He implies that we arbitrarily change ratings after the raters have done their jobs. This is not the case… And, contrary to Mr. Bonner’s contention, the fact that a title being rated is part of a series has no bearing on the decision…
The author unfortunately also confuses our efforts to ensure the integrity and trustworthiness of the ratings system with unnecessary levels of secrecy. It is regrettable that the author does not appreciate the importance of protecting the confidentiality of the raters to avoid even the possibility of undue influence from external sources.
At the end of the day, ESRB stands behind each rating it assigns, and the process by which it assigns those ratings."
Contest:
3:17 PM on 03.06.2008
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I'm SO glad there isn't any of this shit at where i live...
E
E10+ (effectively ages 10-13)
T (13-17)
M (17+)
AO
Where is this T-16 rating supposed to fit in? Otherwise, though, all the changes that he calls for make sense to me.
From the actual EGM article, his M rating would be 18+.
There is an interesting point there: Should the rating process be more transparent to the public? Raters/Testers? Game developers? All, or some subset?
If the ESRB cannot fully play every game they get then they need to do their job and hire more staff.
I agree with everything Boner (lol) said except for adding a T-16 rating. That sounds pretty pointless to me. What they should do is change the age restrictions on M titles to 16, not 17. If I'm mature enough to drive myself to the store in my own car then I should be mature enough to discern the real world from the virtual world.
W. T. F.?
What about those massive games that take forever to get through? What about MMO's? What about games that are difficult for even the most seasoned, hardcore gamer to beat?
If the ESRB did have to play every game through, in it's entirety, it would mean that some games would be delayed until God knows when. Let's take an MMO for example, let's go with one everyone knows, love it or hate it, WoW.
In order for WoW to get a rating, the ESRB would have to plow through every single quest available, kill every type of mob possible, get every single item available, interact with every NPC and item, create every kind of character possible, ect, ect.
THAT is what the "truth in videogames" bill wants the ESRB to do, and when you say you want the ESRB to "play through the game all the way", THAT'S what you're saying the ESRB should do.
If something like that were to go into effect, some games would be delayed indefinitely, just so a group of raters could go over every nook and cranny of the game. Just keep that in mind.
If they did that, I wouldn't mind so much if they actually *enforced* the rules for the 18+ games. Realistically, games like Call of Duty, Halo, or Devil May Cry aren't so terribly heavy on the violence/nudity/language that they deserve to only be sold to people who are 17+, but there are some games like Manhunt 2 that really do push the line for vulgar content and just shouldn't be sold to minors.
As for playing the whole game, I don't think that would be a good idea. What if a developer put a secret sodomy mini-game in Animal Crossing 2, but it was only accessible by doing a whole bunch of stuff that the average reviewer wouldn't have time to sift through? The whole point of the video is it forces developers to put the most mature content in the game right up front so that reviewers can make a good decision.
*Note, I doubt Animal Crossing 2 would have sodomy, it's an extreme example, but that would still be totally awesome.
I feel this is a fair rating, and ratings system.
Two numbers: A green one for an age that's ... say, -2 standard deviations (~97%) sound to play UNsupervised, and a yellow one for 97% sound to play supervised (Obviously the yellow should be lower than the green). If they're the same, then just put the green one on. If the unsupervised age is majority, then just put the yellow one on. If the game really isn't suitable for minors, I suppose just go with the yellow one set at majority, because to make it a big ol' red flag would lead to the same problems with existing NC-whatever and AO and Z ratings (and whatever the hell they use in other countries).
Of course, if the unsupervised number is much lower than 7 or 8, ever, you're just encouraging proxy parenting, and that discussion's been beaten into the ground.
And then: SAY WHAT IS SO BAD THAT IT DESERVES THE RATING IT GETS. Some of the content labels in place right now cover ridiculously wide ranges. You've all seen the Sexual themes flag: Is it a double-entendre? Is it a full-on sex scene? Is it something in between? Half the time it's something the player wouldn't even recognise as sexual! (There's other badly used tags, but that's probably the most egregious.)
This isn't to say the procedure doesn't need work. There are a lot of M games that are probably T material, and some T games that are probably 10 material, &c.... and there's a few games that are rated too leniently as well. But I doubt this is going to change unless you can get people to not react to snippets and soundbytes and understand things in a broader context - which isn't something that humans are suited to do.
And on top of that, yes there's a middle ground between 'play the thing to the point where there's no remaining test cases anywhere at all (Good luck with ever getting a sandbox game published again) and 'demo reel of the stuff we (want you to) think is the darkest, edgiest, most dangerous content in the game'. I'm going to say 'exposed and implemented assets', maybe with the game's general flowchart. See it how the developers do. If you STILL can't make a sound judgment off that, then the medium itself has a problem.
Now keep in mind that the same people who want to get rid of the mature content also generally want to turn the world around them into their own image. (Their progeny are simply easier targets.)
And they've either been told or driven themselves to believe that the video game is the most potent indoctrinating tool in human history. (As in the whole 'GTA made little Timmy kill his classmates' and too many media-enhanced stories in the same vein.)
Put all this together and suddenly video games are a challenge to their authority. Of course they're going to do what they can to get anything they can tell would be socially or philosophically moving blacklisted. And since companies like money more than ideas, they do it.
This is basically why it's up to massively obfuscated content and PC indie work to say the things that the community has to say right now.
Driving age varies, I think Alberta and some of the states (??Alaska) allow driving at 14, I don't think cause these kids can drive they should necessarily buy mature games.
Maybe rather than an AO type rating, it would be more sensible to come at it from a 'this is not for children angle'; NFC16, or NFC18, or content not advisable for children or something to that effect. It carries a different connotation, which doesnt scream satan and tits to the conservative biblethumpers.
Also, stop refusing me my satan and tits game, I can listen to it on my stereo, I can watch it on DVD, I can get it on TV, but you wont let me see it on my console??
The only thing we need is to enable adults to play whatever game they want. Then we can debate (for the sake of argument) whether Half-Life is too shocking for an average teenager. The same teenager that binge-drinks, has unprotected sex and smokes coke, but is oh-so-endangered by videogames.