May 15, 2007
Game scribe Mike Antonucci at the San Jose Mercury-News has penned a thoughtful piece on the debate surrounding video game violence and ESRB ratings:Not all the hot-button games referred to as "shooters" are interchangeable... Consider, for example, [GRAW2] a Teen-rated, Xbox 360... "tactical shooter," emphasizing coordination... It's easy to define this game - and its sale appeal - by elements of violence... It has many of the ingredients that are flash points for game critics, including a practice mode for taking head shots.
But that's not the only perspective... I find myself concentrating so hard on managing my tactics that the combat is just an emotionless task...
How can a ratings system even begin to cope with that kind of context? GRAW 2 comes with an advisory for "blood, language (and) violence," which is supposed to represent a different league from advisories such as "blood and gore, intense violence (and) strong language." The latter is attached to Microsoft's "Gears of War"...
Those advisories aren't different enough to signal how radically dissimilar the two games are... In general, we need a lot more dialogue and much less shouting.
Comments
yea you shoot stuff, but isn't it better to shoot something in virtual reality rather than in real life?
i have GOW, GRAW and many, many shooters but do i want to kill people?
answer: NO
i dont get "if you play GRAW2 you will become violent" i'v been playing shooters all my life, and i am not violent
and ive shot real guns, but dont like them as much
Guns are heavy and have recoil, any lunatic who played a game and decided to go nuts would do as much damage as another who just decides to lose it one day.
On this Article: Adding in tactics does not change the fact that there is violent content not suitable for certain audiences. Graw 2 is nothing a kid could not learn from a book, or glean from a few days of watching the military channel. I get the idea that this author wants the ESRB to put reviews on every game which would be an absurd practice.
Sorry it took so long to get back at you. Kingdom Hearts and DBZ Buduki 2 were most likely rated before expanding the ratings descriptors. They were an example of confusing content descriptors. To me and most people out there the content descriptors explain why a game receives a rating. If two different ratings have the same content descriptor, then it seems hypocritical or double standardish. If the two were rated today, KH would get a Fantasy Violence descriptor and DBZ would get maybe an Intense Violence descriptor.
The reason I think expanding the rating system beyond what you pointed out could be redundant is for certain types of violence. Say they decide to start listing 'Gang Violence', 'War Violence' and 'Gun Violence' GTA would most likely receive a 'Gang Violence' Descriptor, but would also need a 'Gun Violence' descriptor in order to appease the masses, even though gang violence would convey the use of guns. Same with CoD or other war games, would need both 'War Violence' and 'Gun Violence'. So that would be redundant but might appeal to the masses. It also gets into what the game is about, which is the back of the box's job. So you have three things telling the consumer about the use of guns in a game. Is that not the definition of redundancy? Using 'Gang Violence' or 'War Violence' could work as an addition, considering how many games of those genres are circulating. But 'Gun Violence is too broad to be of any use.
I do agree with you. The scale system that the ESRB works well. It is not the ESRB's job to describe the game to you. That is marketing's job.
The ESRB is doing just fine, and to ask them to shoulder all, or even most of the responsibility is grossly unfair.
1) It's not the ESRB's job. They determine the suitability of a game for younger audiences, mainly, and a game with a heavier tactical emphasis is not inherently more dangerous than one more action oriented. I don't buy his argument that by emphasizing elements other than violence the violence becomes less significant.
2) If the ESRB said it would do as this guy suggests, how much tactics are needed to earn the descriptor? The ESRB gets a lot of flak for having descriptors like, "Violence", "Intense Violence", or "Cartoon Violence," but while the criteria for these isn't spelled out very clearly you can usually agree with which violence descriptor a game gets. Rating a gameplay element, though, becomes trickier.
3) What about elements that are recommended but optional? MGS3 emphasizes stealth, which would place emphasis on something other than violence. I sucked at sneaking in that game, however, and instead preferred to tranq every guard I saw, which placed less emphasis on sneaking and more on marksmanship. If something isn't required and isn't necessarily going to come up, should you be warned about it?
So, to sum up, interesting idea, but not the ESRB's job - I agree with Hayabusa, most game store clerks know their games and if you're unsure of something ask them.
But the box art definitely could.
I don't really like Antonucci's description of Ghost Recon. I get attached to my teammates in the game, it's mostly anger if they fail something or relief that they succeeded in something I planned out. The destruction of the mindless enemies is what I think is the emotionless part, and developers won't be able to rid this until they actually make it a goal in their game design.
Then again, the ratings were never designed to tell you everything about the game, but rather to give you a cautionary warning about content you might be concerned about, which would then (if you cared to) allow you to further investigate.
PG-13 - NC-17 movies can be rated due to violence, only after investigation into things like reviews, movie info, etc, do you find out how much, how often, and the degree.
I know it's a bad comparison, but media ratings are like MSDS warning labels. The label on the bottle is just enough info to warn you about the main concerns. If you have more questions, you go fetch the MSDS binder and read more detail.
I mean, really... gore is defined by m-w.com as "gruesomeness depicted in vivid detail". I think even uninformed parents could extrapolate the difference between that and "violence".
And if not, as others have already suggested, they could read reviews and such. The Internet makes this very easy.
It's that pesky responsibility thing again. Grr.
Categorization can't define with any specificity; it can only organize by similarities and differences. The story-telling element of any game -- that is, the content which is rated by the ESRB -- is unique to that game. By definition, no set of standardized descriptors or categories, no matter how complex, could ever account for the particular narrative contexts of each game.
Furthermore, interpretation is also unique, and different players will understand the narrative of same game in their own individual ways. There is no "universal narrative interpretation" and it would be misguided (if not pretentious) to try to categorize such a thing.
It is not the job of the ESRB to tell us how we should feel about a story. It can't be. I'm not sure the article completely realizes this point, but I believe there will be a lot less "shouting" about standardization and descriptor display once all interested parties realize that the very content we're all worried about is exactly what gives each game its unique creative expression and defies definition by categorization.
What he is suggesting is to expand on the type of violence in the game. Its not a bad idea. It would be a bit redundant though because of all the types of violence there is out there.
It IS a bad idea, unless he can explain beyond doubt exactly how far to "expand on the type of violence," whose interpretation of "violence types," we're going to use, and why.
It is far beyond the scope of the ESRB, or any system of categorization that relies on standardization, to define the unique elements of a narrative.
To me at least, the idea of a "blood and gore, but you probably won't notice so much as in other games because you'll be so busy giving orders to your squad mates" descriptor is patently ridiculous.
Perhaps you did not read the next sentence. It would be redundant, and difficult to do right.
As for the Kingdom Hearts, DragonBall thing, I believe that they have taken care of that sort of thing with ratings of Fantasy Violence and Martial Arts Violence, or something similar.
The ESRB is an ever adapting body. They will change when they need to. If something needs more clarity they will give it. If not they will focus on other issues.
I've always considered those stickers to be the in-your-face *warnings* - "This game contains strong bloody violence" - with the unwritten suggestion that you read the rest of the box to find out what sort of violence it is and how/if it is justified. The stickers are reasonably descriptive as they are. If you don't want your kid playing violent games and it says violence on the big advisory sticker, then Bob's your uncle. If you want to know more about the game, read the box.
The movies Lesbian Spank Inferno and Shooting People In The Face III can quite happily carry the same 18 sticker without confusing people, can't they?
I'm sorry, I'm not trying to cause trouble with you, but I did read your post and I don't understand why you think descriptors for more particular types of violence would be "redundant," considering this is the solution your prescribe for denoting the Kingdom Hearts/DBZ dissimilarities. On the other hand, I also don't understand why such redundancy is not a bad idea, or how it could be "done right.".
My main point is that the ESRB's descriptor system is designed to note various elements in a game's content. It is not designed to describe the underlying narrative context in which these elements exist.
In its 13 year history, the ESRB has used at least 11 variations of its "Violence" descriptor: "Animated Violence," "Mild Animated Violence," "Mild Realistic Violence," "Realistic Violence," "Graphic Violence," "Mild Violence," "Violence," "Cartoon Violence," "Fantasy Violence," "Intense Violence," and "Sexual Violence."
So my rhetorical question is this: If the ESRB were to "adjust" for the sake of "clarity," how many more "Violence" descriptors will be needed before this system of standardized descriptors could be used to convey the contextual narrative differences between Gears of War and Ghost Recon that the article describes?
One other general comment: I don't think the real point of the article was that content descriptors should be expected to define contextual differences. I think the point of the article was that they can't, so we need to avoid treating all games that happen to have a particular descriptor as if they present the same narrative context.