The ESRB Interview
Sometimes you just get lucky.The same day that I write about the ESRB ratings being a joke, ESRB President Patricia Vance does a puff piece with Next-Gen to defend them.
Thanks, ma'am!
Let's look at this interview, because it's a doozy
(http://tinyurl.com/auo98).
Next Generation: Why is the Entertainment Software Ratings Board under constant fire?
Patricia Vance: There are people who just don't believe in self regulation. They don't believe that an industry can regulate itself, even though there are plenty of examples of successful regulatory bodies out there, including the film business.
But consumers aren't the ones complaining. Parents with kids between the ages of 13 and 17 as well as parents with kids between the ages of three and 14 heavily rely on the ratings and find them to be effective. We have plenty of research to show that.
That's funny. Last time I checked, I was a consumer, and I complained just earlier today. At length.
And you have "plenty of research" that finds the ratings to be effective? How exactly do you define "plenty" and "effective?" It'd be great if you'd share some of that research with us, because I have this really funny feeling of smoke being blown up my ass.
The real answer: the ESRB is "under constant fire" because they are more self-promotional than self-regulating. They're seemingly less interested in self-regulation than they are avoiding legislation.
Next Generation: The industry is under fire from pressure groups who argue that self-regulation isn't working. Wouldn't it be easier all round if we, as an industry, closed ESRB down and handed this off to an independent, commercial entity?
Patricia Vance: Our ratings are based on independent raters. The people who rate these games have no ties to the game industry. They come in for two to three hours a week.
See, it's funny you should mention that. How exactly do you rate a game's content when you play it for two or three hours and it has fifty hours of content? How exactly would that be done?
I have a feeling the reason she doesn't mention how many "independent raters" they have because the number, to us, would be shockingly small. Remember, it would take about fifteen raters to equal one 40-hour work week.
Next Generation: There has been some criticism that many gamers are just rated by people who don't even play the games.
Patricia Vance: Our ratings are based on the consensus of independent raters who come in and view content. They don't have to play the game but they need to look at the (video) content...
We do tests every year on whether our ratings are accurate and the research we do - year in and year out with independent researchers - proves that consumers overwhelmingly agree with the ratings we assign.
So raters don't play games. They watch videos of other people playing games. And it must be a fraction of the game's content. That would be like rating a movie by watching, oh, ten minutes of the film. That would probably work really well.
Then there's some more of that "research" stuff that must be top-secret. I'm glad they have this super secret research group to prove that they regulate themeselves effectively. Why would anybody have a problem with that?
Next Generation: Many critics focus on the M-rating and the AO rating. Between those two lines lies retail presence and, effectively, a ban...
Patricia Vance: There are some people who would like product to be banned, in other words not available at all. Those people tend to claim that a game like Grand Theft Auto, for example, should not be rated 17 or older but 18 or older which thereby would limit its market potential because many retailers don't carry AO product.
But there is no science to ratings. There is no child psychologist who will stand up and say 'this is not good for 17-year-olds but it's okay for 18 year olds'.
Exactly. There is no way to have a rating that applies a one-year difference that is anything but meaningless, which makes it, in a word, bullshit. Thanks for making my point so concisely. You should start a blog.
Next Generation: Do you believe the media gives you a fair hearing?
Patricia Vance: Some reporters understand the industry but some make assumptions about games and the industry. They assume that most of the games are violent. They don't know that only 12% of the games we rate are mature.
That's kind of a clever tactic that politicians use all the time. By saying that only 12% of the games they rate get an "M" rating, it linguistically minimizes the issues presented by those games. Notice that what she doesn't do is talk about percentage of sales, because if she did, I'm guessing that the percentage of sales for "M" rated games would be much higher.
And the issues that those 12% of games pose for the game industry are not going to go away, no matter how many times she spouts that number. Politicians are trying to capitalize on the video game industry as an easy way to pad their moral resumes. That doesn't mean that issues don't exist, because clearly they do. The ESRB, though, does nothing but stonewall. Why, their secret research shows that everything is just hunky-dory, even though all of us know that it's simply not true.
The political price of stonewalling is that your oganization loses credibility. How refreshing it would have been to hear her say that they were going to make all their research methodology public and share all the results. Specifically. They would have come off as an organization that responds to witch hunts by carefully gathering data.
That would have made them look pretty smart.
Next Generation: Are the ratings working at the retail level, where much of the new legislation is targeted?
Patricia Vance: Retail enforcement has significantly improved in the last few years so I think that we are on our way. Is it 100% fail-proof, that a kid can never buy a Mature rated game? No.
What it boils down to is often a minimum wage store associate in a big store environment checking out a consumer with a line of 12 people waiting. That person is checking out everything from laundry detergent to movies and games. A register prompt says 'check for ID' but the associate may not know why, or may not have the time or someone in the line complains. There are a host of practical issues. And it's worth noting that they are not being asked to check for ID for an R rated DVD.
I think most stores have implemented policies but it all boils down to execution.
Again, I wish she'd let us in on that secret research she's conducted that shows they're "on their way" to 100% effectiveness.
Here's where it gets really, really funny. She practically removes her own colon twisting around to put absolutely every single iota of responsibility on the point of sale at the retail level. Why, the gaming industry isn't involved with any of that. It's just not our problem, right? And the same thing happens with DVD's, so it's really not our problem, right?
Wrong, lady. It is your problem, because you've got politicians lined up to regulate you. And when you dissemble and blame everything on the "minimum wage store associates," you have actually argued, if anything, in favor of criminalizing the point of sale, because then retail stores would take it far more seriously.
Oops. I hope you can take that back.
For God's sake, lady. Pull your head out of the political sand long enough to pay attention. You have no data. You need to know how easy it is for an underage kid to buy an "M" rated game, because if you don't collect valid data, politicans are just going to make it up. You have to set up a data collection method, it needs to be thorough, and you have to be scrupulously accurate. Then you have data to report and they don't, and if there really was a problem, you could propose a plan to fix it, then measure whether it worked or not.
Agggghhh. These people make my head hurt. It's so easy to manage this situation effectively and they just absolutely refuse to do it.
Send me an e-mail, lady. I'll fix your problem for ten bucks.
Why ten bucks? Because I don't work for free.
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