There is something deeply wrong with the ESRB rating system

[Palademon]

I like the system in England. PEGI is good, at 12, 16 and 18, but I prefer the increments in BBFC - 12, 15, and 18. That 15 rating is a godsend.

Plus, it removes the lettering system that only serves to make life harder.

I love the Pegi-style rating system. So much easier. I feel like the idea of there being numbers rather than letters would actually make parents pay more attention. At least a little.

... A man can dream...

Nope.avi
I've seen 8 year old beg for Gears of War 2 in GAME shops and get it. Clearly an 18.

 

[mad825]

I love the Pegi-style rating system. So much easier. I feel like the idea of there being numbers rather than letters would actually make parents pay more attention. At least a little.

... A man can dream...

The PEGI system is actually much much more harder to understand especially for parents who don't' "game".

Seriously.

Wtf does this image mean? To the average person in the UK, nothing, a spider? The BBFC system at least explained the content in black and white. The majority of UK adults are not illiterate.n Not even to mention the censor bias that PEGI can inflict on us.

In fact, Dr Tanya Byron is against this system for this very reason.

 

[Ruwrak]

I love the Pegi-style rating system. So much easier. I feel like the idea of there being numbers rather than letters would actually make parents pay more attention. At least a little.

... A man can dream...

The PEGI system is actually much much more harder to understand especially for parents who don't' "game".

Seriously.

Wtf does this image mean? To the average person in the UK, nothing, a spider? The BBFC system at least explained the content in black and white. The majority of UK adults are not illiterate.

Means it's scary content. I.e. children can get scared by the images and or scarred for life. [/tired sarcasm]

 

[mad825]

Means it's scary content. I.e. children can get scared by the images and or scarred for life. [/tired sarcasm]

No shit, it was rhetorical. Not everyone knows this and "we" are at an advantage because we have a general interest for games.

 

[Ruwrak]

Means it's scary content. I.e. children can get scared by the images and or scarred for life. [/tired sarcasm]

No shit, it was rhetorical. Not everyone knows this and "we" are at an advantage because we have a general interest for games.

The tired sarcasm was ment for the PEGI system in general, don't take it personal.

'sides, I see no retheroical qusetion in there It could be 'not for arachnaphobics' for all anyone can tell.

 

[Amnestic]

I love the Pegi-style rating system. So much easier. I feel like the idea of there being numbers rather than letters would actually make parents pay more attention. At least a little.

... A man can dream...

The PEGI system is actually much much more harder to understand especially for parents who don't' "game".

Seriously.

Wtf does this image mean? To the average person in the UK, nothing, a spider? The BBFC system at least explained the content in black and white. The majority of UK adults are not illiterate.n Not even to mention the censor bias that PEGI can inflict on us.

In fact, Dr Tanya Byron is against this system for this very reason.

I just looked over a selection of various PS3 and 360 titles on my shelves, only two of my games that I looked at had a symbol (a fist, likely indicating violence) on them: Valkyria Chronicles and Dynasty Warriors 6. Both for the PS3. None of my other games seemed to have this system attached to it, including new releases like Deus Ex: HR and Saints Row the Third. Considering that many game still profess violence - in text no less, beside the age stamp - I have to wonder if the system you're describing has become antiquated and replaced already.

Because if not, it implies that they only use it for certain games, despite said games having the same violent content as other titles which lack said symbols and instead have text. Which I will grant is pretty damn stupid.

 

[Therumancer]

There is something deeply wrong with the way the ESRB rates the content of games. Theoretically the more violent and mind-warpingly twisted a game is, the higher its rating should be, but that doesn't seem to be the case as of late. Here's 3 recent examples, Modern Warfare 3, Halo Reach, Batman Arkham City. All 3 of these games ratings seem incorrect to me, both Halo Reach and Modern Warfare 3 are M rated games that I think should be rated T, and Batman Arkham City is a T rated game that seems to me to have the makings of an M.

Lets compare the 3 games:

Halo Reach:
Enemies - Aliens
Gore content - Minimal. the aliens bleed Blue, Orange, and Purple blood, and the blood sprays aren't that noticeable or frequent. If you examine the bodies on the ground the models have no damage.
Language - Minimal. I think a couple of the characters say "shit" once in a while. Not noticeable.
Most graphic moment - One of the team members gets shot in the head, and there is a small spray of red blood.

Modern Warfare 3:
Enemies - Human Soldiers (mostly Russian)
Gore Content - Minimal. Every time you shoot someone you get a little spray of blood for a fraction of a second, then they ragdoll. If you examine the bodies on the ground the models have no damage.
Language - Moderate. There is some cursing, and the word "bastard" is thrown around fairly frequently.
Most graphic moment -

Spoiler

When the player kills Makarov he punches him in the face a number of times before wrapping a wire around his neck and hanging him.

Batman Arkham City
Enemies - Human inmates and guards, plus a number of super villains.
Gore Content - Minimal. Batman doesn't kill people, and while the villains do, the most you ever see is someone's clothing soaked in blood from a wound that isn't clearly visible.
Language - Very frequent graphic descriptions of brutal murders and torture. Much of the language implies forcible rape scenarios.
Most graphic moment -

Spoiler

Raz Al Ghul stabs himself through the chest with his own sword before being impaled on an iron fence. Batman makes a joke about it.

So which of these has the most egregious content? From my point of view it's definitely Batman Arkham City. The descriptions of violence are absolutely gut wrenching (and brilliant), and even though you can never see them occurring they are described so frequently, and in such lucid detail that you can't help imagine them in more complete ways than they ever could be physically shown. Compared to that, the content of Halo Reach and Black Ops isn't nearly as violent. Out of the 3 Batman Arkham City also had the most graphic moment, I feel (although MW3 got pretty close). Halo Reach wasn't even in the running.

It's pretty obvious that Halo and MW3 don't have the chops to be rated M, so they either need to be bumped down to T, or Batman Arkham City should have been an M, otherwise the rating system seems completely useless and ineffective.

Actually, none of these games should be rated "M", none of them push much further than the PG-13 rating and are thus would be "T" level. In general you can see just about everything any of these games offer in shows like say "Alias" or "Nikita" or other gritty action shows on TV (which admittedly people complain about too). Understand that fairly graphic violence, most nudity, and even a lot of sexual situations are permissible at the "T" rating. You even had jokes made about it during self-aware horror movies like "Scream" where the Heroine's boyfriend wanted to have sex, she said "no, but you can settle for the PG-13 version" or something like that before flashing her breasts.

The issue that confuses things is that right now the guys making the games rarely take the time to push for an appropriate rating, they would rather OVER rate their game to quickly get it through the ESRB and also hopefully avoid a lot of criticism from a public that isn't ready for accurate ratings (prudes and such, who don't think things through in the context of other media), and it really does a lot of damage because it becomes very inconsistant.

Really to hit an "M" rating fairly you'd have to have incredible, bloody violence, and/or tons of pretty graphic sex. Basically an "R" or "M" rating is "anything goes except for sexual penetration" so unless you actually show a "money shot" of one part going into another which warrents an X-rating there is no issue here. To ban something you need to prove it obscene AND without any redeeming value which is the actual legal definition of pornography and reasonably hard to do in most cases, and I don't think I've ever seen a game where it could have been done and maintained effectively (porn is by definition illegal, most of what people call porn is actually "adult art films" officiall, but slang-wise people just call it porn because it's easy and stuff that is non-stop sex and similar to it is what tends to get marked as porn).


If you look back through the years at various teen experience movies, horror movies, and various science fiction movies you'll get a pretty good idea of what can be done with a PG-rating and the point at which it goes from pushing PG and actually becomes R rated. None of these games step over that line.

I believe the reason why Batman got a lower rating is largely because it's not presented a bit more beleivably, and also the shooters in question are both games that sre under fire and the highest rating reduces the amount of criticisms that can be leveled. The fact that Batman has some more intense content kind of demonstrates how the other games are over-rated.

In the end the other games are about soldiers fighting wars in settings that try and present their worlds as if they could happen and go for some serious suspension of disbelief to suck you in, and that's why they are under more fire even if nothing there is terrible. I mean you can see the whol "soldier fighting a war" going on as one war is based on actual reality, and the other one (Halo) is sci-fi but trying to seem like it could happen in a few centuries. In the case of Batman you've got a totally surreal world blending elements of modern day and the 1930s, a guy who dresses up like a Bat and shoots around on a zipline, a gallery of villains that might be murderous but are also fairly silly in the way they go about it when you get down to it, and a premise behind "Arkham City" that has even Batman fans going "that is really... really dumb" even if the game is fun. I mean walling off part of a city to turn it into a giant prison, filling it with private military contractors, and then grabbing a couple of upstanding citizens off the street and lobbing them into it without trial is kind of... beyond belief even for comic books. The fact that they then try and be gritty and realistic about this set up, actually makes it a lollercaust. Nobody is going to look at that think it's anything but fairly mindless fun. You can't even criticize it like other mindless fun games like Saint's Row, because the guys you play (even Catwoman) are good guys, nothing really that sociopathic about them at all even if they are totally off their rockets. I mean you literally don't kill anyone in this game, even those who really, really deserve and and are tying to kill you (Batman and his guys simply do not kill... even when as like 99% of fans will point out that they really should have killed some of these villains in the context of this univese long, long ago).

 

[mad825]

I just looked over a selection of various PS3 and 360 titles on my shelves, only two of my games that I looked at had a symbol (a fist, likely indicating violence) on them: Valkyria Chronicles and Dynasty Warriors 6. Both for the PS3. None of my other games seemed to have this system attached to it, including new releases like Deus Ex: HR and Saints Row the Third. Considering that many game still profess violence - in text no less, beside the age stamp - I have to wonder if the system you're describing has become antiquated and replaced already.

Because if not, it implies that they only use it for certain games, despite said games having the same violent content as other titles which lack said symbols and instead have text. Which I will grant is pretty damn stupid.

The PEGI "take-over" is still on-going however in the near future it will replace the entire gaming rating system as it's being pushed forth by parliament.

Also, I was taught about the PEGI system for an assignment on game design in uni, 5 weeks ago.

 

[Amnestic]

I just looked over a selection of various PS3 and 360 titles on my shelves, only two of my games that I looked at had a symbol (a fist, likely indicating violence) on them: Valkyria Chronicles and Dynasty Warriors 6. Both for the PS3. None of my other games seemed to have this system attached to it, including new releases like Deus Ex: HR and Saints Row the Third. Considering that many game still profess violence - in text no less, beside the age stamp - I have to wonder if the system you're describing has become antiquated and replaced already.

Because if not, it implies that they only use it for certain games, despite said games having the same violent content as other titles which lack said symbols and instead have text. Which I will grant is pretty damn stupid.

The PEGI "take-over" is still on-going however in the near future it will replace the entire gaming rating system as it's being pushed forth by parliament.

Weird. How come the only games to have them (that I looked at, admittedly I didn't look at all my titles since I should really be doing my dissertation work right now) were older titles when newer titles lacked it then? If the take-over was ongoing, I'd have thought they'd be more prevalent as time went on, not less.

 

[tharglet]

BBFC actually has a PG rating

Yeah, but it's sort of supposed to be phased out with the 12A rating - which means if a child is under 12, the content may not be suitable and adult guidance is recommended.

 

[dfphetteplace]

In Halo and CoD, you kill things. In Batman, you don't. Pretty simple really.

 

[jimahaff]

Realism, for instance, or context. Halo and CoD are realistic and Batman is stylized.

I fail to see how Halo is more realistic than Batman. At least in batman you are punching people, whereas in halo you are firing lasers at aliens....

And if you ask me COD isn't all that realistic either (what with the regenerating health, and your refrigerator like ability to take bullets). So let's just that CoD and Halo are "more" realistic, and leave it at that. I can accept that.