February 21, 2007
Yesterday, GamePolitics reported that the ESRB would break with tradition and hire full-time content reviewers to evaluate the games rated by the agency.The first ad for this new class of reviewers appeared on the GamerDad website. Naturally, GP requested the ESRB's comment on the decision. President Patricia Vance sent us this:
After months of careful consideration, the ESRB will be switching from part-time to full-time raters in April 2007.
Having full-time raters will allow for each one to have greater experience actually reviewing content and recommending ratings, given the increased amount of time each one would spend doing it. This would provide each rater with a greater sense of historical parity for ratings, not to mention helping them to be more attuned to pertinent content and how it should be considered from a ratings standpoint.
The full-time raters would also be responsible for play-testing final versions of the game, time-permitting, which would allow for ESRB to play-test a greater number of games than it currently does. We'll have more information available about these changes at a later date.
Comments
i would also hope that they flesh out some of thier definitions more. for some reason they find sexual scenes or innuendos more "mature" than highly violent acts and rate them higher for it....would kind of like to see that leveled out a bit
Either way this will not be enough for David Walsh and the PTC.
The ESRB already has a joint effort with EBgames and gamestop to inform the public about the ratings, just look at the new rules gamestop has put in place for employees who sell an M rated game to a child.
But we all know the people hell bent on banning games will not allow themselves to be satisfied. They'll find some sort of minute problem and bitch at the mto fix it whilesuggestign no solutions.
The best way to dissolve this whole dispute, in my opinion, would be a joint effort between the ESRB and retailers to actually -inform- all those buying these games what the ratings are, and what they mean. I could see something along the lines of a form that outlines the ratings, what the potential content would be, and the buyer would have to acknowledge that they know what the rating means -before- buying the game. That would probably let most of the steam out of these anti-game arguments, because people would no longer be able to claim ignorance.
Now, back to what I was saying:
I still have to say that this could wind up being a problem for the ESRB down the road. Hiring gamers to rate games, though the most qualified, would be seen as rating games too lightly, and we'll have you know who using that as ammo against the games industry. But then, there's concerned parents working for the ESRB, who might rate games too harshly, and force a backlash in the gaming community, who will be outraged over the new M-rated Pokemon, rated for intense violence, slave owning, devil worshiping, and use of creatures featured in religions other than Christianity.
There might even be a problem with getting objective, neutral parties to rate games, because they dont know what the standards are, and might get it wrong too.
Last time I heard, the ESRB rates by video, so there will still be a large bridge of trust between them and the Industry itself, so that makes it all the more important that gamers do the ratings, that way both consumer AND producer are responsible for making sure the product gets a fair and acceptable rating and that all neccesary content has been seen.