ERSB: love it or hate it?

[Takatchi]

To me, the rating system of the ESRB has to combine with good parenting in order to make an effective device. A parent must know they have a mature and responsible child in order to trust them with "M" rated games. An "M" rated game makes the assumption that mature adults are buying games for the appropriate individuals.

In the end, the ESRB does a necessary job and provides information that people tend to ignore.

 

[ElArabDeMagnifico]

The ESRB is a giant shitpickle. Content that wouldn't merit a PG rating in a movie gets M or worse, and decent content (movie R) is absolutely unheardof even in AO rated games.

This. It may be a tad exaggerated but the censorship in games is so prejudiced against, we're just always assuming it's the little kids playing games - and that's why games as cartoony and kiddy as SSBB get a T rating. I know that's not a worst case scenario but games are getting critiqued too harshly now, I had to import "The Witcher" because I didn't want my script to sound like it was written by radio editors.

 

[Alone Disciple]

The ESRB is only as good as the store AND parent that enforces it.

Personally I think it is a good idea, and one of the few times that I'm okay that government is involved. But I couple that only by saying the ESRB is 'suggesting' not 'enforcing' morality.

The ESRB in no diffrent from television or movie ratings. They are there to serve as a guideline and warning flag to parents. Seeing that most children need money from their parents to buy video games, parents are directly/indirectly involved in the transfer of cash to the store.

If a company like Rock Star puts a M+ sticker on their game....as far as I am concerned, they've done their job and due dilligence. If a parent go ahead and buys their 13 year old a game that drop the F-bomb and simulates prostitution pick up and sex acts in a parked car...I don't blame Rock Star. The parent is ignorant.

The store are just as bad. You may have 1 employee out of 3 or more that actually card the kids. We already do it for tobacco and alcohol, so this shouldn't be a foreign concept to game store employees. I've personally witnessed young kids buying mature titles in front of me with the sales associate just as ignorant.

Now if the government stepped in and used a little muscle in the terms of fines or jail time to store owners, then perhaps employees and gamestores may take it more seriously.

The argument that there are too many games to police is ludicrous, or even more so when parents feign knowledge on the subject. With today's internet, blogs, magazine, newswires talking about games, how can parents (BTW- I am one) play stupid? When I take my kid to the store, the rating is right there on the front of the package...how can I miss that? How can the employee miss it? How could I miss the advent of GTA IV with so much advertising and hype before it even came out. I own GTA IV myself, and enjoy it immensly....but no way do I play in front of my daughter.

 

[countrysteaksauce]

Useless.

If you wanted to buy an M-rated game when you're 12 or something, you'd find a way.
It has about as much use as the Parental Advisory: Explicit Content stickers. It only encourages underage people to buy it.

This thing doesnt even affect me anymore but when the gamer generation gets older, the ESRB will become obsolete since parents themselves will be much better judges of games and their contents.

And besides, what gamer parent would be his or her child a low-quality game? They'd check out what the internet has to say about it beforehand before dropping the $80 games will cost in a few years.

 

[cleverlymadeup]

the biggest (valid) complaint, i'm taking out the jack thompson stuff, i've heard is it's not gov run, well none of the ratings boards are, they are all industry run. in canada the films boards are headed by a gov person but has volunteers who rate

the ESRB does a good job, the sex worse than violence is a society thing it happens with movies too, especially female sexuality. the issue is the parents don't pay attention to them cause their crotch fruit wants that game and to shut them up they must get them the game

mind you when i was young i watched many an r rated movie, every friday night i used to watch 50s/60s horror films when i was 7, and i watched other horror movies and r rated movies and nothing happened to me. frankly the violence in video games won't make a kid violent, it's the lack of parenting

 

[Alex_P]

The ESRB is way better than any government-mandated ratings/censorship organization would be.

Some retailers choose to use its ratings to limit what they sell, but the ESRB itself isn't trying to restrict anything -- just slapping labels on things to provide a very small amount of guidance. Descriptive, not prescriptive... I like that.

Also, sometimes those labels are good for a laugh.

-- Alex

 

[Logan Westbrook]

The ESRB is way better than any government-mandated ratings/censorship organization would be.

I'm curious, do you mean that the ESRB is better than an American government ratings body, or any government ratings body?

The reason I ask is that in the UK we have the BBFC, which while not a governmental body per se, operates with the government's approval and is, on the whole, fairly liberal.

 

[Alex_P]

I mean better than any body that actually controls content per se rather than just slapping stickers on things on a mostly-voluntary basis.


-- Alex

 

[clarinetJWD]

The store are just as bad. You may have 1 employee out of 3 or more that actually card the kids. We already do it for tobacco and alcohol, so this shouldn't be a foreign concept to game store employees. I've personally witnessed young kids buying mature titles in front of me with the sales associate just as ignorant.

That used to be the case around here, but recently, I have been amazed at the diligence of ID checking. I was carded for the last 3 M titles I bought from Circuit City or Best Buy, and I'm 23...I don't even get carded for alcohol anymore!

 

[L0ki]

The ERSB is a great rating system to those who think they over look violence forget that the ERSB was made because of a violent video game (does mortal kombat sound familiar) and it doesnt judge a game on just the term violence it has a broad range of what violence is so that a kidding game that has some violence isnt given a higher rating then it disserves or a extremely violent game does get held in the same regard as the violence in the kiddy game. The ERSB system is also independent of the game designers so they arent biased to the extent they can be. With a good range of ratings to a scale similar to movie ratings E (g) E10+ (pg)
T (PG13) M (R) NC17 (AO). The only flaw in the ERSB is the fact that the parents who buy the games dont even look at the score on the box then they accuse the ERSB for not doing their job because the parent just bought the game to get their kid to shut up and stop whining.

 

[Logan Westbrook]

The bottom line as far as I'm concerned, is a parent should be the ONLY censorship a child gets. Things like the MPAA and ESRB are fine when they're a suggestive guideline, but the second they have authority higher than a child's parent, it goes from handy safety system to peanut decorated shitpickle.

You'd hate it in the UK then. It's illegal for retailers to sell games to people younger than their rating; it carries a very hefty fine I believe.

 

[HSIAMetalKing]

I dislike the ESRB. Game designers are frequently forced to cut content or alter parts of their design in order to squish their product into a desirable rating.

This is just me, though-- I know that the rating system is extremely helpful for parents and other people who want to avoid mature content. I just don't like it. Phooie.

 

[Aries_Split]

I find it rather strange sometimes, but I guess it does what it should. At least they are smart enough to have a Mature 17+ label. Unlike poor Australia

 

[Kikosemmek]

I neither love nor hate the ESRB. I consider this agency irrelevant.

If my ten year-old wants to play an M-rated game, I'll buy him a copy and play it with him.

 

[HSIAMetalKing]

If my ten year-old wants to play an M-rated game, I'll buy him a copy and play it with him.

That's grade-A parenting right there.

 

[Logan Westbrook]

If my ten year-old wants to play an M-rated game, I'll buy him a copy and play it with him.

That's grade-A parenting right there.

Hang on a second, let's not get this thread locked by making personal attacks shall we?