October 26, 2006
In today's Washington Post, reporter Mike Musgrove offers a terrific survey of the political landscape surrounding video game ratings:"Video game violence has long been a target for politicians, lawyers and parent groups concerned that the slashings and shootouts were having a negative effect on young gamers."
Musgrove interviews embattled ESRB head Patricia Vance on her view of why game ratings and the video game industry are constantly under political scrutiny:
"Vance said the video game industry is a target largely because it still suffers from a perception that games are for kids, even though the age of today's average gamer is over 30. 'I think a lot of people who propose this sort of legislation have never purchased a game or don't play them,' she said."
The WaPo reporter points out a problem that continues to damage perceptions of the ESRB:
"Consider this odd but surprising fact: Games are rated by folks who don't actually play the things; they just view an hour-long videotape of an upcoming title's most graphic content. Game companies pick the content and submit the tapes themselves to the ESRB."
Meanwhile, Republican Sen. Sam Brownback (left), sponsor of the Senate's Truth in Video Game Ratings Act, weighs in:
"'I think the consumer really needs to know the impact of these things. I would like to see an entity that has independence from the video game industry, not dependent on them, and have some standardization.'"
Musgrove, who wrote about Jack Thompson's initial success in the controversial attorney's attempt to declare Bully a public nuisance, talks about his own attendance at the game's fictitious Bulworth Academy:
"I played it a few hours this week, and it seemed relatively harmless, especially compared with just about every other game Rockstar has put out... Bully... is about as offensive to me as an issue of Mad magazine."
John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment, once again voices criticism of the video game industry's marketing of the ESRB system:
"I think we do a poor job as an industry in educating," he said. "It's a great system, but it's no good if people don't know about it. We're just not getting the word out there enough."
Oh, and Musgrove gave GP some unexpected props in the piece as well:
"Meanwhile, politicians and gamemakers are butting heads so frequently lately that there's a news site dedicated exclusively to the subject, the aptly named GamePolitics.com. For people who care about games, the site is becoming a must-read."
Comments
What difference would it make?
Andrew Eisen
The ESRB rating is on every game. Nevermind the fact that it's sometimes a little low (Bully, Killer7), it's also in fairly large print.
Jon Stewart said it best when he described it as a topic every politician of any party can grandstand about.
Enjoy your reign while you can, you layabout politicians. Each of the houses of congress worked less than a third of the year, and they seem compelled to demonize a subject they have no understanding of. One day, it will be difficult to find a politician who hasn't played a videogame, much less a candidate. The out-of-touch geriatric whiners will lose their little war on video games because of old age. But in the short run, it's up to us, the next generation of voters, to vote these fools out of office. It's not like they're going to adequately represent our interests on any other issues, so we may as well vote them out due to their stance on videogames.
November 7th is fast approaching.
I agree entirely. While a part of me is tempted to quickly label them as dolts, in reality it is just a political tactic as you said.
The ESRB's way of rating games is a double-edged sword. (first time i've used that term. I'm professional now! *Pee-Wee Herman laugh*) The whole tape thing, and the fact the the companies choose the content of the video does sound quite underhanded. And the more I look at the suggested idea (playing through whole game) the more I aggree that its quite annoying.
Behold! A man who didn't judge a game by its title! A man who actually *dum dum duuuuum* PLAYED THE DAMN THING. And when I look at it, I don't see it as 'Mad Magazine', but more like those teen flicks the Ian Black discusses on the "I Love..." series.
But Jack's sudden jump on Bully does makes me ponder. Was Jack bullied frequently as a kid?
Speaking of the java of sin,Hot coffee itself would have never been found even if the ESRB took a year to play the game with 5 different staffers...I wonder why that is...maybe because it technically a external mod as well sicne you will never see it without external code let me go one further the questionable scenes within the java of sin is like PG13 sex with no nudity vague grunting in R rated game....GIVE ME A BREAK PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Lets not forget RS and TT were fined by the ESRB and lost milloins when you add the loss of stock.
with that said what will happen if games have to be played thru in order to be rated games will be delayed in released by 6-15 months and or we will get the joys of undated DVDs in video game land.
I'll also echo the sentiments of a lot of other people out there - the politicking over violent video games is a solution in search of a problem. Show me the proof that video games will poison your mind - show me the rampant deceptions executed by the video game companies and the ESRB against concerned consumers - and then maybe I'll worry.
Of course, the problem is the legislation that suggests games must be played in their *entirety*, which ranges from difficult to impossible, is usually pointless, often enough doesn't even make sense and wouldn't fix the problems that started all this mess anyway.
Wow. I didn't know they only viewed a tape. Do they even play the games at all?
This is a great article though, I love to see respectful press for video games, at least those that seem to understand the dilemma from both sides :D
Your kidding, right? If your new here, hunt down the Smartbomb threads.
The problem with this analogy is that it's wrong. The reason a game can and SHOULD be judged by video is simple: Most games feature the same sort of content over and over again. Someone rating Metal Gear Solid 3 doesn't need to see Snake slitting a guard's throat thirty times in slightly different locations to get an idea about how graphic the animation is: it's the same animation. Repeating it would be a waste of time.
So what about procedurally-generated content, you ask? Well, if it's generated on the fly there's no guarantee that what the reviewers see is going to be anything like what the player sees later... So again the argument that the game needs to be played doesn't work. No matter how long the reviewer plays the game he might now see everything the game has to offer.
Games CAN'T be rated 100% completely by their very nature because an interactive experience is partially defined by the user. The only way to get a reasonable rating in a reasonable amount of time is to judge the game based on the most extreme content on offer. The easiest way to locate that content is to ask the developer to show it to you. The easiest way to show it to the reviewers is to submit a video of the content.
Of cource, I don't think it'd chage the rating compared to just using the video since the ratings are based off content rather than gameplay. But still, this way the ratings would be backed by first hand experence rather than simple observation.
I also agree with the statements by Vance that today's gamers are growing up. We're not all a bunch of little teenagers who don't know right from wrong (the right and wrong part alone is a horrible assumption for politicians to make).
I'm twenty-two now, but I've been playing violent games for years and never once considered acting out the scenarios in the game in real life, and there is a simple reason why. I am a sane person. My parents have never sat down with me while playing violent games as a child in a fruitless attempt to teach me right from wrong. Similarly, they never once tried to prevent me from buying a game or CD because of the content. By all of Thompson's arguments, I should be a powder keg of pure hatred and violence, but I'm not, and once again, it all comes down to the fact that I am a sane person. And, as any sane person knows, going in to school with a loaded gun is a stupid idea. I was a smart kid with a bright future who wasn't going to go in and muck it all up by doing something dumb, and even if I wasn't smart and didn't have a bright future, I'd still have enough moral integrity to tell right from wrong.
So yeah, Jack, we're not all stupid. There are a few crazy, dumbass people out there who make the rest of us look bad, and then all of you politicians and lawyers jump at the chance blame it on the games and music. The problem with your logic is that we all play games. I knew very few guys in high school who didn't have at least one video game console, and the times somebody ran into school with a gun and proceeded to go on a rampage was decidedly less than one.
The problem with these worthless politicians and lawyers is that they're all lying. Nobody is doing this for the kids because nobody gives a shit about kids. If they did, high school would be restructured in a way that didn't cater to the popular kids and bullies. No, all they really care about is their time in the limelight, and raging against violent games is a topic that parents from both parties can agree on. It's all about political standing and power at the expense of the kids. Honestly, I find it sickening that these people are exploiting children like this.
If you really want to help the kids, Jack Thompson, talk to them instead of making the wrong decisions for them and then refusing to hear any coherent logic. You, my friend, are everything that's wrong with America. You're a legislative bully and a horrible human being who undoubtedly lives a very shallow existence wallowing in the vile sludge you create whenever you speak. In five years, no one will remember you, Jack, or even care about your little crusade. If only that time were now...
Unfortunately, even if the ESRB did exactly what politicians want in ratings, they would not change their tune. They just target the ESRB to make them look like the "new" tobacco industry. It makes the politicians look more like a hero protecting the children.
By the way, as far as I'm concerned, anyone and everyone who claims to "protect the children" should not be trusted.
Furthermore, as was pointed out before, most games involve a lot of repeated actions.
Then there's time and money. This will take longer, which means longer production times, which means companies lose money. It also means the ESRB is going to need to charge more for its ratings, so I guess small developers won't be able to sell in major stores (so long, American Dream!)
All that and it still wouldn't have caught Hot Coffee. Nothing would have.
To be honest, I'm of the opinion "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." I hear a lot of complaints about the ESRB, but I have yet to hear anyone satisfactorily describe why its broken.
That being said, if this really is a problem, here's what I'd do to fix it. The company prepares footage of the game that includes a comprehensive display of the fighting system, including every move, and every cutscene in the game. It'd be long, especially for RPGS (Final Fantasy 10 had over 10 hours of recorded dialogue), but it'd be shorter than playing through the game.
I really don't think it's necessary. Here's a better version of the trailer analogy. If I showed you the most objectionable scenes from a movie (be they violent, sexual, whatever) wouldn't that be enough to judge the movie?
1) Its claimed by anti-gaming groups that games are more harmful because they are more interactive.
2) Some claim that actually playing a game to rate it would change the rating ultimately given a game.
So by forcing the ESRB to actually play a game to rate it would give credit to the anti-gaming groups beliefs. I maybe wrong from my point of view on this.
The ESRB's game Ratings remind me a LOT of the MPAA's system for rating movies, all thats different are the letters used. M is R for example. I know of a handful of theatres (or rather people during certian shifts at said theatres) that don't really care that much about ID checking beyond its formality, a lip service at best. I don't see anyone suing Warner Brothers because thier kid tried a stunt from The Matrix.
Unfortunately this is just the latest version of a vicious cycle of a combination of fear of what isn't understood, scapegoating, and ego-stroking to get votes. How it works is first Joe Q Politician says "this is what is corrupting your kids, something that we don't know about ourselves but you obviously fear." Then he would follow up with "it's not your fault my dear registered voter, it is the ones who create such things. You are clean, they are dirty." Then finishing the 3-pronged assault, he would say "we decent people need to stick together, people who don't agree with out absoulte and just morals are the enemy." Sometimes in that last part God's name is invoked.
This isn't exactly a new occurence either. In the 1960s and 70s (as is my understanding), they were after cartoon violence, the creator of He-Man (forgot his name) said "The reason certian cartoons... ...could exist is because the strong censorship effectively leveraged other types out." Winding time backward to the 1950's, we see comic books as a "seduction of the innocent" (Ironic that JT, whom uses similar tactics, has compared himself to batman). All of this was under the aegis of protecting children. Heck, in the dark ages there was bookburnings due to thier conveyal of dangerous and heretical ideas. As they said in The Secret of Mana, "Time flows like a river, and history repeats itself."
You've hit the nail on the head, these are the same folks who say "we must have an investigation into 9/11 to fix what is wrong with our national security!". Then, a report comes out from their peers, and they promptly ignore every last suggestion and instead introduce video game laws while Al Quida smuggles dirty bombs on cargo ships since virtually none of the containers are inspected.
These people don't give a flying fark about national security, the fate of the middle class, violent video games, getting out of Iraq, avoiding a Nuclear conflict or balancing the budget. All these morons want is to convince the voters they give two shits about the welfare of this nation so they can serve another 2 years and score more hot underage tail.
An interesting thought, but this would require the reviewers to keep track over the game for what could be years. Not to mention a lot of games never make it to the shelves.
@Deimos
You have to wonder what the idiots of our generation (assuming your in my generation) will blame when we've taken over.
We have a country run by POLITICIANS, when what we need is a country run by CIVIL SERVANTS - people with a genuine interest in the country and in serving its best interests.
Of course, you can't blame politicians for their selfish actions - wouldn't you fight hard and resort to dirty tricks to help get a job that pays $145K a year (http://www.c-span.org/questions/weekly18.htm), gives good benefits, and only requires you to actually be working for less than half the year?
I'd like to assume that, when our generation is in power (I'm twenty-two...don't know if you fall in with me or not but you probably are somewhere in that area) we won't be ignorant, but I think we all know that, in time, many people turn into those they once fought against. Aside from that, the rampant stupidity in contemporary American society does not bode well for our futures. We already have an entire political system filled with under-educated (despite the fact that they attended Yale or Harvard), power-hungry fools who are much more concerned with getting elected one more term than they are the welfare of the country. And, despite what I'd like to believe, I have a feeling this is only going to get worse and worse with time. After all, much like medieval monarchies, power in America stays within families and, much like those same governments, each generation gets subsequently dumber (in the past, it was due to inbreeding...but I can't pretend to know what made George W. Bush so stupid).
Don't worry, though. Sooner or later something new will come along and that will take the heat off of videogames and we'll spend all of our time trying to ensure our kids don't have fun with that.
Good point, a running file would need to be kept over the course of development, and ESRB man hours would be spent on some games that never are finished.
In this scenario, it may not be a bad idea for it to be a government funded agency. Then there can be the funding to have enough people keeping track of the development, over years, of all these games. Not that I like the idea of a government funded agency rating games, but if government wants the rating system to change, let them allocate the funds for a project such as this. Not just trying to ban things left and right.
Here is the BBFC Video Game submission form: (PDF)
http://tinyurl.com/yzntru
You are required to submit a copy of the game, along with cheatcodes, walkthroughs, scripts, plot summaries, etc. Video tapes of cutscenes & video summaries of the "worst" content are recommended to help speed the classification process.
So presumably they can browse through the game to verify that you haven't left anything out of the application form. But I doubt the BBFC plays all the way through, they just want the ability to if they need to.
Heh, I've wondered the same thing (for the record, I am 25). I would hope that humanity would have matured past such antics when said time comes, but thats an optimistic scenario.
You can't blame this uneducated attack at video games on politicians being ignorant on the subject. The fact is, they just really don't care. Some are intelligent, more so than the average Joe Schmoe, but they don't put the effort into putting their own research into the subject of video games. This, again, is because they don't care. They see an issue that a majority of voters could get behind, and run with it. "Video games" could be swaped with any other noun, as long as it is placed in the sentence "We need to protect our children from (noun)!", it will get the majority of voter's attention. It is political Mad Libs.
Now if a politician goes out and does research, and comes to the conclusion that there is not enough data to show a links between video games and real live violence...or even simply that content that is claimed to be in a game is not, in fact, in said game...they won't get the support of the public majority. A politician concerned with their number of votes is better off not looking further into the issue of video games, and just run with the claims that the content is dangerous, and that these games are
ONLY played by children.
The fact is, it is far easier to scare people into supporting an idea with unsupported threat, than to remove that fear with logic.
Hitler knew that.
Normally I'd call Godwin, but it is a valid point. McCarthy knew it too.
Alright, maybe "idiots" is going a bit far. They are ignorant, though. Anyone participating in an uneducated attack is, by definition, ignorant. If they're ignorant due to apathy as opposed to stupidity... well, I'm not sure which is worse.
"In this scenario, it may not be a bad idea for it to be a government funded agency. Then there can be the funding to have enough people keeping track of the development, over years, of all these games."
This is a bad idea because it leaves the government of influencing production of a studio's project even before they get it to a publisher. This would be like having the FCC on set while trying to produce a pilot for a network. All an official would have to do is say they don't like this scene in a game and then threaten with an AO rating if they don't change it. This is giving the government way too much power over a multi billion dollar industry.
Actually, the ESRB rating system is not much different than the BBFC. While the BBFC requires things like cheat codes, etc. It still relies on the company's honesty to submit all the material that will be on the final version. Just like the ESRB. Also the BBFC recommends submitting a video tape of the "worst" content to speed classification, presumably because it saves them the effort of playing through the game to document it themselves.
If a company wanted to fool either, they could just (with the ESRB) leave out the "worst" content from the video and (for the BBFC) neglect to provide cheat codes to access said content. Then neither system would be able to find it. Which is why Hot Coffee and Topless Oblivion slipped by both systems. (not saying they were intentional, but even mistakes will slip by due to both systems)
Both have harsh penalties for deceiving the system. The ESRB had $1,000,000 in fines, plus recalls (which means that most retailers yank it off their shelves), etc. The BBFC has roughly the same.
So both rely on the honesty of the publisher, and both can only ensure this by having harsh penalties for lying.
This is what irks me. Politicians believe they are doing the 'moral and just' way of shielding kids away from the stuff that would be deemed harmful to them. Unfortunately, kids are going to divulge themselves into the evils of the world based on the principle of them being very curious about it.
It's like if someone said there was a dead animal on the road and we shouldn't touch it: Well now that you mentioned there is a rotting carcass on the pavement, kids are going to flock to it because they want to see what all the fuss is about.
Same shit with controversial entertainment.
Sup, Foley. :-D
@BTW:
That was one of the better descriptions of Jack I've seen in a while. Much better than my "lop of shit" descriptor.
@Demios:
Haha, I'd forgotten about Jack's Batman reference! I think Jack forgot a few things:
1) Batman is cool.
2) Batman always wins.
3) Batman is rich.
4) Batman is one of the good guys.
5) Batman has balls.
Also how do you define a child? Are we no longer children as soon as we hit 18? This is an unrealistic concept, its not like people suddenly change and a day later are totally different. Imagine a person transforming into a cocoon on thier 18th birthday and emerging the next day as an "adult".
And if we define adulthood as 18+, then why do we want to totally insulate our children? Yes, it is true that what we experience as children affects us as adults. No one can deny that fact. The thing is, why must everyone be forced to protect YOUR children? I didn't have a baby. I don't know you. I just want to enjoy myself untill the time comes when I have a child. At which time, I will decide what my child sees, plays, and, to a lesser extent, does, untill they are "adults". It all comes back to the major arguement we have here on GP.com: "Its up to parents to decide what thier own child can and cannot play".
Besides, why does it need to be harder for a 8 year old to buy a M rated game. Last i checked, he can't even buy a E rated game without his mommy/daddy there to buy it for him.
That's the ticket!
Although the amount of titles for a single gamer would be quite mind-boggling.
@My previous post
Yeah, i'm still new to the rules around the ESRB >
And btw im not actually saying let kids play the mod, just make it and tell some news place.
Merge the ESRB and MPAA and the organisations that govern them into one large organisation, and roll over the ratings system into one unified classification system.
Make the new organisation half funded by the government, with additional funding by the industries involved, yet independent of both.
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