ESRB Now Provides Ratings Summaries

The Entertainment Software Ratings Board has announced that it is offering all new “ratings summaries” in an effort to make sure that in the run up to the highly expected Christmas shopping season, buyers are correctly informed about the goods they are about to pick up.

The idea is to provide explanations related to the rating and to the factors which are taken into account before a rating is given to a videogame. These will be formulated in “objective terms” and will be added to the already existing ratings information available on the ESRB web site.

Patricia Vance, who is the president of the ESRB, explained that “Research shows that the vast majority of parents who purchase games for their kids are aware of and regularly check ESRB ratings, but parents can always use more help when making choices as to which games are right for their children” before adding that “With our new rating summaries, which provide exclusive and unprecedented insight into the nature of the content that triggered a given rating assignment, parents will be that much more empowered in making those choices”.

Politicians like Democrat Hillary Clinton and Independent Joe Lieberman, who have supported more regulations for the gaming industry, indorse the measure, juat as many NGOs.

The best thing parents could do before buying theirs kids something like Fallout 3, Red Alert 3 or Gears of War 2 would be to play a bit of the game to get an idea of what the offspring might see and experience. Some might find the gratuitous innuendo in the latest Red Alert more troubling than the violence in the wastelands of Fallout 3. The idea is that a rating system, no matter how objective and well built, is not a substitute for actually knowing what a game is about.