The ESRB Ratings: Stupid on Parade
From Gamecloud:This Brandon Sun news article reports that the Manitoba, Canada Film and Classification Board has warned a Future Shop store in Brandon about a possible sale of an "M" rated game to a 12 year old. The warning is one of the first to be given to a store since the Canadian provience made it a crime to sell "M" rated games to people under 17 years old on June 1. The possible penalty for the store could be up to $5,000 but a fine in this case is not likely.
I've been focusing on U.S. legislation (which all appears, at this point, to be unconstitutional), but totally missed that legislation criminalizing the sale of "M" rated games to minors already exists in other countries.
Here's a question: do these countries use the ESRB ratings standard? Because they are absolute shit. They create confusion instead of clarification. And this is yet another reason why the gaming industry constantly finds itself in hot water with legislators. Again, as I've said many times before, what's obscured by the hysteria of politcians is that the video game industry does an absolutely horrible job of managing this issue. It would be downright funny if I didn't care about games.
We're going to look at the game ratings categories. First, though, let's look at the MPAA ratings categories for motion pictures:
G: General Audiences. All ages admitted.
PG: Parental Guidance suggested. Some material may not be suitable for children.
PG-13: Parent strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.
R: Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.
NC-17: No one 17 and under admitted.
Talk about vague. What age qualifies as "children" for the "PG" rating? The only two ratings that matter at all are "R" and "NC-17." Those actually restrict attendance.
What a
re the specific criteria behind these ratings? That's not easy to find, actually, although I eventually did here: http://www.localmovies.com/mpaa.html. I've only rarely seen this information, and it's by design--the MPAA doesn't want to show the drill-down. They don't want to have you ever see any negative words like "violence" associated with one of those ratings categories. They focus on very emotionally neutral words: "suitable" and "unsuitable."
It's not a nine minute scene of ritual human sacrifice, it's just "inappropriate."
There's another reason they don't want you to see the drill-down: because you can drive a truck through some of this stuff. Here's an excerpt from the "PG" rating criteria:
horror and violence do not exceed moderate levels.
Here's something from "PG-13":
Rough or persistent violence is absent; sexually-oriented nudity is generally absent...
Rough violence as opposed to what? And how is anything "generally absent?" That's linquistic torture.
And politically savvy. "Generally absent" sounds so much less threatening than "infrequent."
These ratings are a marketing tool. Yes, they do inform parents, but they're designed to keep Congress off Hollywood's back and out of its business. And since Hollywood has an extremely powerful lobbying effort in Washington, this gobbledygook is enough.
The video gaming industry, however, does not have a powerful lobby in comparison. And they tried to copy the MPAA, but they did a lousy job of it. Let's look at the ratings:
EARLY CHILDHOOD
Titles rated EC - (Early Childhood) have content that may be suitable for ages 3 and older. Contains no material that parents would find inappropriate.
EVERYONE
Titles rated E (Everyone) have content that may be suitable for ages 6 and older. Titles in this category may contain minimal cartoon, fantasy or mild violence and/or infrequent use of mild language.
EVERYONE
10+Titles rated E10+ (Everyone 10 and older) have content that may be suitable for ages 10 and older. Titles in this category may contain more cartoon, fantasy or mild violence, mild language, and/or minimal suggestive themes.
TEEN
Titles rated T (Teen) have content that may be suitable for ages 13 and older. Titles in this category may contain violence, suggestive themes, crude humor, minimal blood and/or infrequent use of strong language.
MATURE
Titles rated M (Mature) have content that may be suitable for persons ages 17 and older. Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content, and/or strong language.
ADULTS ONLY
Titles rated AO (Adults Only) have content that should only be played by persons 18 years and older. Titles in this category may include prolonged scenes of intense violence and/or graphic sexual content and nudity.
Too many categories. Way too much information--they're showing the drill-down with the rating (big mistake). And besides all that, the ratings don't make sense. "M" titles may contain "intense" violence. "AO" titles may contain "prolonged scenes of intense violence." The distinction between "M" and "AO" in terms of violence is bullshit, and everyone knows it. Showing the drill-down just highlights all the contradictions.
One of the MPAA's key goals is to avoid the "NC-17" rating. One of the ESRB's key goals is to avoid the "AO" rating. But it's easier to cut three minutes from a film than it is to yank out a gigantic chunk of gameplay from a game with thirty-plus hours of content. And games where you can virtually kill hundreds of creatures or humans, almost by definition, must contain "prolonged scenes" of intense "violence." Of course they do.
So clearly, the ESRB isn't rating games according to its own guidelines. The ESRB can't argue that the ratings work. It's too easy to find a game with mass pretend carnage rated "M." It's ridiculous on its face. And when you have a voluntary ratings system and you're ignoring it by rating everyhing "M" no matter how violent it is, then some people are going to get pissed off.
Do I want the sale of games criminalized? Absolutely not. It creates new problems and doesn't solve any old ones. Do politicians have a point when they say that the ESRB ratings system is a joke? Unfortunately, yes.
Does the MPAA do the same thing? Absolutely. Look at their guideline for NC-17:
film may contain explicit sex scenes, an accumulation of sexually-oriented language, and/or scenes of excessive violence.
Damn, I guess the definition of "excessive" must have changed. I've seen movies with fifty deaths in them, at the bare minimum, and they're still rated "R." You'd think a death every two minutes would qualify as "excessive."
Same thing. Different lobbies. But if I'm a parent, I'd really like to have information before I buy a game for my kid. And this ratings system is almost completely useless.
So yes, legislators are hysterical about games right now. But the gaming industry keeps punching itself in the face.
And here's their biggest mistake: they want to be like Hollywood, but they're not. A game is functionally different than a movie. We watch movies. We play games. The game mechanic of "killing" something in a first person shooter is just that--a game mechanic. It involves reflexes and timing and strategy. It's not a "killing simulation." The act of moving a character and shooting something in a game has much more in common with running and jumping over obstacles in a platform game than it does with anything "real."
That's why gaming can be a contest, and why some players can make nice livings from being gamers. First person games, especially the highly violent ones, are much closer to being a sport than being some kind of virtual Clockwork Orange. And damn, that distinction matters.
The ESRB has never explained gaming that way. They haven't even started the process of educating non-gamers about this distinction. And without that education, I can totally understand why non-gamers are freaked out about "violent" games.
Think about it. How many games create an environment in which you can just virtually kill people without opposition? Almost none, really. That opposition is what creates the tension in the game. It's what creates the contest, the sport. In almost any game where you can shoot or destroy something in a virtual world, the A.I. is trying to shoot or destroy you at the same time.
In other words, sport. In a pretend world.
The Grand Theft Auto games aren't like that. You can walk right up to somebody and shoot them in the back of the head, usually with no consequences. And I've written about the GTA series before, but that's one of the reason that the gameplay, in some senses, is weak.
Violence without context is a very bad game mechanic. It's also creatively pointless, whether it's in a game, a song, or a film.
Now that I've totally digressed over to GTA, let's just wind this up. The ESRB, instead of trying to emulate Hollywood, should be trying to distinguish themselves from Hollywood. Meanwhile, the legislative pressure is going to continue to mount until leadership in the video game industry actually starts talking sense.
Good luck with that.
<< Home