News
ESRB Asleep at the Wheel
Cordova, TN; July 7, in the year of our Lord 2014--Family
Friendly Gaming, the industry leader in covering the family
friendly video games is addressing the ever increasing problem
of the ESRB’s failures. Is the ESRB broken? Yes. Does the ESRB
need to be reformed and fixed? Yes. Can you make it happen? Yes.
The video game industry continues to move towards the digital
downloads. Companies like this because families no longer own a
physical copy of the game. With physical copies you can sell,
trade, and give them away. That can not be done with a digital
download. Family Friendly Gaming has denoted a rise in download
only video games. Want to know a dirty video game industry
secret? Download video games are reviewed with a different
standard at the ESRB.
In fact the ESRB is completely asleep at the wheel when it comes
to digital download video games. From the ESRB’s own website on
their rating process:
“Digitally-Delivered Games and Apps
Games that will be made available
solely via download or will be otherwise accessible only online
(like web browser games or PC-based and mobile apps, for
example) are rated using a "Short Form" rating process.
Publishers of these digitally
delivered games and apps complete a series of multiple-choice
questions that address content across relevant categories (as
described above). The questionnaire also asks questions related
to a game's interactive components, such as the enabling of user
interactions or the sharing of a user's physical location or
personal information. Finally the developer indicates whether
the game has a minimum age requirement. The responses to these
questions automatically determine the game's Rating Category,
Content Descriptors and Interactive Elements, which are issued
immediately upon completion of the questionnaire. Because these
products are rated by an automated process they do not receive
Rating Summaries.
A portion of games rated in this
manner are tested by ESRB shortly after they become publicly
available to ensure that appropriate ratings have been assigned.
In the event content was not fully or accurately disclosed by
the developer, either the rating displayed will be promptly
corrected or, in egregious cases, the game may be removed from
the store and/or its rating revoked.”1
The ESRB is letting these companies decide what ratings to
assign their own games. Where is the oversight? The ESRB is
letting these companies decide what descriptors to put on their
games. No wonder Family Friendly Gaming is finding so many
missing descriptors in downloadable video games. The ESRB is not
even doing their job. They are running advertisements that they
call PSA (Public Service Announcements) claiming they are all
that and a bag of chips. Yet they are not even doing their jobs.
Their ads ring hollow.
A portion of the games are checked on. The ESRB refuses to
disclose what that portion is. Is it 1%? Is it 10%? We do not
know. What we do know is the percentage of games with wrong
ratings, and missing descriptors has reached epidemic
proportions. The ESRB is asleep at the wheel. How can they
expect families to trust them, when they are not even doing
their jobs? I love the comment about the game may be removed
from the store. Digital games are not in stores. They are in the
online arenas. Obviously this applies more to their mistakes
made reviewing physical copies of games. Or maybe they are
referencing places like the Nintendo eShop as a store.
One of the reasons the video game industry has such a bad image
is the lengthy list of mistakes made by the ESRB over the years.
The ESRB itself has a horrible image. I talk to parents all the
time that have a major distrust of the ESRB. Family Friendly
Gaming has tried over the years to get them to acknowledge their
mistakes, implement transparency, and fix the issues. Instead
the ESRB has been hostile, rude, and hateful. Now with digital
downloads we can add lazy, and absolutely worthless. The ESRB
needs to wake up if they want to improve their abysmal image.
Family Friendly Gaming hopes they wake up at the wheel before
they crash - yet again.
God bless,
Paul Bury
Family Friendly Gaming
1
http://www.esrb.org/search/ratings/ratings_process.jsp