Last week, we asked if the ESRB was effective at rating games and informing people of game content. People seemed to have skipped voting in the poll this week (about 60-40 yes/no) in favor of long-winded answers and back and forth discussion. That's hardly a bad thing, is it? Feel free to peruse the sexier posts down at the bottom of this news post!

This week: Assist Trophies, a new item in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, were announced just the other day. This week, we're asking: What characters need to become Assist Trophies? Please share and explain your ideas!

Also, do not under any circumstances vote in our comedy option poll.

What we're giving away this week:

A Super Mario Bros. Super Show DVD! Volume 1! Pretty sweet, huh?

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Last week's winner of the RC Mario Kart was Chasefox, who needs to send us his mailing address! His post was one of many about the ESRB. These guys posted a mouthful. Or a monitor-full?

bustin98 posted:

While I voted that the content ratings are accurate to a point, I question the usage of them. It seems they are meant for parents and retailers to keep mature content out of the hands of underage consumers. As an adult buying for myself, the rating is meaningless. I have learned to research what I buy and if it seems worthy of the money, I purchase it. But I should be the one making the choice, not a corporation or some politician who is more squeemish than I.

Look at the sales of GTA or Halo. And hop on any online match in Gears of War or Halo2. You would find it difficult to count the number of kids playing these games. Maybe the parent made a deliberate decision to ignore the suggested 'M' rating. Or maybe he or she or both feel as long as the kid is happy all is good in their lives. Either way, its the parents' responsiblity to monitor their children, and no one else.

Ratings or no, it all falls to the parent. Whether its music, movies, or games, the parent needs to be involved and just as knowledgable in these entertainment choices as their children. Is it really that hard to say 'no'?

Chasefox posted:

IS the ESRB effective? Yes, it absolutely is. Now, don't get me mixed up or swing some crazy accusations at me, I don't think it is always accurate with it's game ratings, but it does have an effect on the market, and here are some examples. First, for stores that follow the rules, certain games can not be sold to certain buyers, such as AO rated games to minors. Though some may argue games should be allowed to be bought by anyone, as well as movies and music, stores following protocol will limit the retail of such games and therefore certain games will theoretically not reach as high a sale count, a la R-rated movies released in theaters. Now I know most of us find this annoying, and we wer all at one point that kid that wanted that game we couldn't have, but it is a rule in place that is most often followed, despite how annoying it may be.

Secondly, this is shorter and to the point, parents can see the clear label on the box. It tells them what the game is like, what it contains, and it is an easy and convenient way for them to choose what their children may or may not play.

But for my third reason of why the ESRB is effective, though it may not be an intended reason, it has helped to save the gaming industry, by which I mean it has helped to allow more freedom than other circumstances may have afforded it. Such as this article :

http://www.thelastboss.com/post.phtml?pk=2630

Sure, the ESA had more to do with that situation, but the same idea applies; the ESRB is helping to protect our gaming content, even if it does limit the scope of people who can play...

Now let's just hope the FEPA bill doesn't pass....

TheFleece posted:

I worked at a video game store for some time and from what I saw parents were clueless about the ESRB system and they still are. I've witnessed few adults deny kids a game after learning about the system and as well as space out when someone talks about it.

For the most part however young teenagers are able to purchase these games from small outlets and chain stores- or they are able to play them by other means ie friends or even older siblings. So far there is no punishment for a store selling a Mature game to a minor.

I've been reading about the release of Manhunt 2 and it seemedthat people felt betrayed that Nintendo would release that type of game, but no one takes into account that parental involvement is the solution. Parental blocks are available for the Wii and other systems, mine are set- are yours?

I feel that games I've noticed are rated accurately, but games are still abused by kids playing very violent games and by parents who aren't involved with their kids gaming habits.

forum superstar thatguy posted:

Plain and simple: No.

ESRB ratings are just as comprehensive as movie ratings. They give the same amount of detail, the same descriptive words are used. I have two issues with the ESRB in relation to comparisons to the MPAA and movie industry in general. Look at movies. How much did you, the casual consumer, know about Shrek the Third before seeing this movie? Live Free and Die hard? Silence of the Lambs? You saw the commercials, you read nationally published reviews, and its very likely your friends talked about these movies at some time. It's very easy before-hand to walk into the movie theater, and through what you've seen publicized/heard about the movie in relation to the movie's rating, it's pretty easy to tell what content to expect.

Now switch gears to video games. Few newspapers detail any, let alone almost all video games. Commercials aren't yet common for most video games, and are much less prevalent than movie commercials are. Unless you are a 'gamer,' you really don't know how to qualify "Sexual Content." Does that mean dirty talk? Innuendo? Nipples? Penis? With movies, people can read the answers to these questions in the paper's preview/review. It works out great, and if a parent has a doubt, he or she can spend two hours to watch the movie before he or she takes the child to the movie. With a game, you can't get that kind of information so easily. You won't see a review in the newspaper, and you certainly won't be a able to beat most of the current games in around two hours if you have any doubts.

So yes, the ESRB's ratings do well to match the MPAA's ratings, but the difference is the sheer volume of market penetration movies have over games. People just don't have a secondary way to learn about the content each game has, aside from vague clues on the back of each box. If the ESRB actually had a widely advertised website that contained information, i.e "This game has boobies." or "This game contains the words ****, ****, ****, ****, and ****," then parents would be able to utilize the rating system a whole lot better. The ESRB would still not have to play every game, and would contain actual vital information for every parent. Although, the website itself might need to be rated AO or M, and it might need a parental lock of sorts, at least parents wouldn't have to rely on clueless store fodder to tell them if they think there is sex in a game, or if the hero just goes postal.

NeeLee posted:

The ESRB, at least from a consumer standpoint, would seem to operate too vaguely for their rating system to hold relevance. Scrubbing through the FAQ on the ESRB website, the organization does not give consumers an in-depth look at their rating process or the guidelines upon which raters are to form their "independent judgement" of game content, if any exist. The approach they do describe, which is submitting publisher-produced questionnaires and DVDs for raters to view, would seem to breed inconsistency amongst the ratings, especially with games the ESRB deems suitable for more mature audiences. So just from a philosophical standpoint, the rating system seems shaky at best.

There's also real world examples of the systems flaws. The ESRB highlights two main points that influence their ratings the most: First, the "extreme content zenith and frequency" and finally the products presentation as a whole. The Behemoth's "Alien Hominid" received a "T" rating from the ESRB for "Blood and Gore" and "Cartoon Violence." These descriptors are accurate: Alien Hominid features extremely large amounts of blood, throughout the game, and high resolution, animated images of mutilated and exploding bodies.

The level of detailed and intense violence in Alien Hominid far exceeds that of the game Red Faction, rated "M" for "Blood and Gore" and "Violence." To this end, the ESRB would seem to suggest that cartoon style graphics warrant a product that carries a lower rating, despite the intensity and frequency of extreme content. This runs counter to the ESRB's own philosophy as well as exposes more detailed violence to a younger audience. It is because of paradigms such as these which render the ESRB rating system ineffective under its own function.

Windy "Dale" WindyMan posted:

I think the major problem with the ESRB ratings is simply people aren't educated about them. We take G, PG, PG-13 and R for granted because we've been exposed to that rating system for pretty much our entire life. E, T and M didn't come about until 1995 or so, which is only 12 years. I'd bet you a dollar and ninety-eight cents that people don't even know game ratings exist, let alone what they mean, let alone what the content descriptors mean. The ESRB knows that, which is why it's been advertising itself for a while now.

I think the system works, but only if you know about it. It's rather worthless unless you're educated about the ratings. I think PEGI in Europe's got it right. Just rate games by age categories: 12+, 15+, 18+, whatever. So easy, a caveman could understand it.

KDR_11k posted:

I think it's barely effective. It works for slowing some overzealous censors down but the courts still play a bigger role at it because almost every state of the union has by now attempted to regulate game sales themselves (and EVERY SINGLE FREAKING TIME it got knocked down in the courts). I think the lack of distinction between 16 and 18 rated games (all rated M) and the introduction of a "banned" rating (AO) makes it difficult to judge the higher end of the scale just by the rating. The M rating can be anything from seeing a guy fall over dead to having each organ fly away in a different direction. The AO rating is just plain dumb, the ESRB told D3P that a game with an AO rating is not allowed to have trailers on the internet! WTF??? If age gating is good enough for M content, why isn't it for AO? And why do you have to put so much violence into a game that it gets confiscated in Europe to get an AO rating but one exposed nipple and you get it, too? What the hell is wrong with these people? Do they think that seeing one naked body is going to make every teen in the country run out and get pregnant? They use porn for that, not videogames with a bit less cloting than usual.

Forum supertroll S-U-P-E-R posted:

You know, while the ESRB may be helping to surpress chances of any government imposed censorship (which I'm pretty sure would be unconstitutional in the U.S. for most games, but that's a whole 'nother post)... it seems to me that it's causing some self-imposed censorship, which is also pretty much horrible.

The thing is, video game companies will tone down some content if their game is borderline between E and T, or T and M, etc. Remember the arcade version of Cruis'n USA? It had animals you could run over, and bikini girls that present your trophy. They took those out of the home version to bump the rating down to E (or I guess K-A if they were still using that rating at the time). E ratings mean a wider audience/more sales, I guess, but at the expense of some of the nice touches that made Cruis'n USA what it is.

And I'm gonna bet this happens ALL the time, and we don't even know because 95% of games that come out aren't arcade ports. It could be happening to Manhunt 2 right now!

In conclusion, I think the ESRB is terrible and I would be very happy if they did away with it. But I doubt that will happen, at this rate. :[

If a couple of video game companies went ahead and released a couple games without ratings, I think that would be a very interesting and positive step. It's just another awful thing that potentially complicates and delays video games.

If someone knew the ESA rules regarding membership and acceptance of ratings, I would very much enjoy seeing them shared in this thread.

partybear posted:

This is precisely why using age as some kind of metric for maturity is idiotic. Age is useful as a metric of physical and mental development, e.g. a board game that says "Ages 8 and up" or "Choking Hazard - not for children under 3." You can't cross the two without causing confusion. The ESRB should have simply gone with content ratings in the first place. It's not like they've saved themselves any trouble, since they have to run public education campaigns like the commercials I've recently started seeing just to explain the supposedly easy to understand age ratings. They might as well suck it up and use the millions they're spending on those commercials to explain something more useful, like a series of severity ratings for various categories of objectionable content. I'd like to see at least three separate bars for violence, sexual content, and language. Let parents decide individually whether little Billy can handle seeing boobies but not shooting cops or vice versa.

Comparisons to the MPAA system are invalid. It sort of works because we're used to it, sure, but there's no reason to assume there couldn't be a better system that doesn't require decades of use before it becomes widely understood. The ESRB can't just copy the MPAA anyway, since the MPAA ratings are vigorously protected trademarks. They wouldn't work otherwise. It prevents studios from putting a PG rating on a movie the MPAA hasn't actually rated. In other words, the MPAA can't allow anyone else to use its ratings because their authority as the sole film industry ratings body hinges on exclusive control of those ratings. I'm sure the ESRB is in the same position with its own ratings, or else Manhunt 2 could be released with an M on the cover regardless of what the ESRB said.

Spak-Spang posted:

I would say that the ESRB could definitely have some refinements made to the system to make it better.

However, I would also say that it works for basically doing what it is supposed to do. Give parents that want to be aware about game content a means to know what is in a game at the time of purchase. (If they look.)

It does not reflect the context of the content...but ratings systems never do. It is just a general idea for people. And since gamers can still buy a game without being carded, it is not a big worry about gamers being screwed by the system. (Yes I know some places check age, but those are few and far between.)

Now, the refinements I would suggest needs to be changed is an definite outline of what material will get a game what rating, and having it placed for developers and customers to be able to read and study. No rating system will be perfect, (Just look at movies. Nell was rated PG-13 but contained full nudity in it...because it wasn't sexual. But other movies got R for less nudity and such.)

A perfect system will never be in place. The ESRB at least is creating some standards for games that help legitimize the industry and provide the customers an idea of what content is in the game...without preventing purchases like the movie ratings can.

NotRimmer posted:

Because there's no sense of parental accountability anymore, the ESRB is worthless. Especially since Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo refuse to license AO games. The Wii is never going to realize its full potential without sexy fun time games.

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