ESRB must play every game in its entirety says proposed legislation
The ESRB and their practices are back in the news with Republican Senator Sam Brownback trying to
get the ball rolling on legislation
that would force the ESRB to play an entire game before they give it a
rating. At the present time, the ESRB simply watches video given to them
by the developer that highlights the worst of the graphic content, and this
new law would make the people working in game ratings pick up a
controller themselves.
“The current video game
ratings system needs improvement,” Brownback said, “because reviewers
do not see the full content of games and don’t even play the games they
are supposed to rate. For video game ratings to be meaningful and
worthy of a parent’s trust, the game ratings must be more objective and
accurate.”
There are some obvious problems with this idea; how long would we have
to wait for a game like World of Warcraft to be rated? How many more
people would the ESRB have to hire and teach to play games? The hours
involved in playing every single game all the way through are mind-boggling.
The thing that bothers me about all this noise (and it is
noise) is that the ESRB is already doing a good job. There has been one
issue with the Hot Coffee scandal and one case of rerating with
Oblivion, but contrast that with the thousands of games that get
released every year with no problem. Making very rare issues
high-profile only to cite them as examples that the system is broken is
a pretty shoddy way to try to force legislation on games.
Ben Kuchera
September 27, 2006
Source:
Ars Technica