Is the ESRB Broken?

Prompted by Senator's Brownback's legislation, an interesting discussion is taking place on the ESRB, and gaming related politics. Next Generation offers up a damning look at the ESRB, wherein author Aaron Ruby says that the organization is 'incapable of effectively communicating with consumers, nor of fending off attacks from the industry's many critics.' At the Sony Online 'Station Blog', SOE's John Smedley retorts, saying that an industry-wide mentality is to blame for the ESRB's precarious position. Meanwhile, EGM's editor Shoe has some choice words on claims the organization shouldn't have to 'play through' every game that comes to market. From this last piece: "Sure, you usually can't see 100% of a game on an average playthrough. But I guarantee if you get three guys to sit down and finish every product, you can learn a lot more about what these games contain than from watching a bunch of highlight reels, which, remember, are edited by companies who have huge stakes in what the ratings turn out to be -- talk about conflict of interest!"

Completely unnecessary.

[RingDev]

Let the industry and market correct itself. The industry is demanding accurate game ratings. There is too much money at risk for producers and investors to allow another hot coffee.

The holy shrine of game sales is Walmart. If you can't get into Walmart, you're going to have a hell of a time making it big. (I'm purposefully excluding online content delivery systems for now!)

In order to get on the shelf at Walmart, you NEED to have an ESRB rating. Not only that, you need to have a M rating or below.

If your rating is changed after the release, and Walmart pulls every single copy of your game off their shelves and sends them all back to you (at your expense), your company (or the producers) will likely take a huge financial blow.

Investors see this. They know that the game has to meet the ESRB's bar for M rated and below games, and that any deviation from that bar will result in a loss of potential revenue. So the Investors are telling the producers that the game has to be spot on for the ESRB review. The Producers work hard on the developers making sure there is nothing questionable that is on the disk.

I recently got to sit in on a presentation by the project lead for the Human Head game 'Prey'. And he accounted how they presented to the ESRB, and the similar groups in other countries. They put all of the worst parts of the game in a demo. Blood, guts, egg crapping rectums and all. They had backup material ready to replace anything that the ESRB thought was out of line for their rating. They worked hard to make sure that they were in the clear.

There is really no incentive to poorly represent a game to the ESRB if the game is for mainstream sales. And the retailers are putting a lot of pressure on the ESRB to accurately rate those games. There is nothing in this process that requires government intervention.

-Rick