Proposed legislation: ESRB must complete every game

by Zack Stern { Sep 28th 2006 at 3:55PM }

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) has proposed a bill that would require the ESRB to play games in their entirety before providing a rating. This, like so much other legislation, establishes how little the government knows about games, making us concerned when it tries to legislate gaming.

The punch-line, as you've guessed, is that there's not enough time for the ESRB to play every game. That's like asking a chef to make every possible meal before rating a restaurant. And how do you decide when an MMO, or even a repetitive game like Tetris, is complete?

Under the current rating system, publishers provide the ESRB with video of the gameplay and detailed information about a game's content. The ESRB may also play the game, but the group relies most on publishers' full disclosure. If the publisher lies about the game, that company faces fines and the possibility that the ESRB won't rate its future releases. (Most major chains won't stock unrated titles.)

Legislation like this, where our representatives don't understand the subject of their bills, makes us uncomfortable. We hope that logic will end this proposal, but logic seems to evaporate the closer we get to Congressional elections.

[Via: Digg]

Tags: bill, congress, ESRB, government, rate, rating, Sam Brownback, SamBrownback, senate

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

dish @ Sep 28th 2006 4:02PM

that means even more and longer delays..

GlitchCog @ Sep 28th 2006 4:15PM

Did you know that if you make it to level 31396 in the NES classic Tetris there's whores everywhere?

Andrew @ Sep 28th 2006 4:04PM

Grown ass men playing Barbie's Horse Adventures in its entirity. Hilarity at its finest.

Andrew @ Sep 28th 2006 4:05PM

This proposed system still wouldn't have "protected our children" from Hot Coffee. You could have played the game for 200 hours and still not found that little gem.

Matt @ Sep 28th 2006 4:38PM

Is there anyone working at ESRB who could have beaten Ikaruga? I doubt it. I guess "professional" video game players who wash out from the circuit could end up with a job at the ESRB.

Brook @ Sep 28th 2006 4:15PM

And that's not even getting into the fact that the ESRB tries to hire non-gamers in order to keep the ratings relatively non-biased. Can you imagine how long it would take a non-gamer to get through some games today? Not to mention the fact that unless they're given some sort of list, they're likely to miss out on lots of hidden content. And, of course, the ESRB would need to constantly get new raters as the old raters, after judging a few games, wouldn't really qualify as non-gamers anymore.

Player1 @ Sep 28th 2006 4:11PM

Can a person even play pong in it's entirety? Beep boop beep.

32_Footsteps @ Sep 28th 2006 4:12PM

The reason they push for that is at least somewhat sound, though.

Quite simply, the ESRB is hoping that the manufacturer will catch everything in the game. And either via malfeasance or incompetence, that's bound to result in a slipup.

Moreover, is it really all that unrealistic to expect someone to see everything in a game in less time? Most games can be cleared in under a single workday. The ESRB can certainly afford to hire multiple players for these purposes - and they can easily work off of late betas to get the rating done well in advance of the street date. Yeah, the ESRB would have to enlarge its budget, but it's perfectly reasonable for the board to play through the games and not affect release dates.

With that said, this bill is a completely bad idea and should be shot down. We are basically talking about governmental interference with a private industry. Moreover, it's a private industry that has never been shown to demonstrably impact society at large in a negative way. It's blatant governmental interventionism that's unlikely to improve anything except the electoral chances of those voting for the bill. And even with that, it's quite likely to be shot down in courts.

To be honest, I've always believed the ESRB should play through every game. But this is not the way to get it done.

badgrammer @ Sep 28th 2006 4:16PM

Wait, did the House of Representives even bother to investigate how the ESRB does their business; did they even call them? Or are they too busy trying to inflate their approval rating to even care?

All the questions the House of Representives keep on asking themselves (How games are rated? Who does it? etc.) are pretty much answered within the house of ESRB and, if you ask me, they run a pretty tight ship.

Allen @ Sep 28th 2006 4:14PM

If you live in Kansas, make sure you don't vote for Sam Brownback.

HotShotX @ Sep 28th 2006 4:14PM

Here's a little disclosure as to Senator Brownback's current record in the Senate. It's two minutes into the video.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=51Fw306JGtQ

~HotShotX

Matt Paprocki @ Sep 28th 2006 4:17PM

#6: Yes, MOST games could be beaten in eight hours. What about games that don't end? MMOs? Madden? Puzzle titles? At what point is an MMO completed? Is Madden finished when playing through one game, the entire franchise mode, or the Superstar mode? It's completely unreasonable to suggest they play it all. It's not feasibly possible no matter how many people they hire.

Dario @ Sep 28th 2006 4:19PM

SWEET!!! NO I CAN PLAY GAMES AND WORK.... I WONDER IF THERES ANY JOB OPENINGS!!!

Rootbeer @ Sep 28th 2006 4:20PM

What will happen if this bill passes:

Game publishers will see a backlog as ESRB is unable to play through, and therefore rate, games quickly enough. They will withdraw from the voluntary ESRB rating program and sell games unrated.

Or, a second rating board will be established which is NOT subject to the regulations of this law (since it is not the ESRB) and all game publishers will switch over to having their games rated by them.

Effectively, the system that's worked mostly well for the past twelve years gets gutted and replaced with an unknown.

JBoyer @ Sep 28th 2006 4:20PM

This bill needs to be passed. Can you imagine working for the government as a "Electronic Game Completer". Give me that fat government paycheck!

Brook @ Sep 28th 2006 4:20PM

@ 32 Footsteps
I disagree. Yeah, some games only take 8-10 hours, although for someone with no gaming experience, it would probably take a while longer. Most games are more in the range of 16-20, though, with a few more hours if you go for 100% completion (which often unlocks content, so the reviewers would have to do it). How about RPG's? 60+ hours, not including side-quests. And I know people who have played over 800 hours in World of Warcraft and still haven't seen everything.
More importantly, this would increase the cost to get a game rated, which would be bad news for small or independent game studios that want to try to get their games into retail store.
However, on the most important aspect of this, we're in complete agreement. The government has no right to dictate how the ESRB handles itself.

Can Dulgar @ Sep 28th 2006 4:25PM

Good luck rating Ninja Gaiden ESRB..............................................

Probot @ Sep 28th 2006 4:21PM

How about the ESRB and Gamespot/IGN/1up/etc work together. They play every game completely, give it a review and a rating. Problem solved.

I'm not sure how sarcastic I'm being.

Brian @ Sep 28th 2006 4:26PM

ridiculous...

...no, that's all.

aceregan @ Sep 28th 2006 4:22PM

The bill sounds reasonable until you recall ESRB is a private organization, and the government should have absolutely no power as to how they conduct business(exclusing fraud).

crono141 @ Sep 28th 2006 4:23PM

Sounds like a dream job....

Till you have to play Barbie horse adventures, or any of those other stupid games for 6 yr old girls.

chaoticmagus @ Sep 28th 2006 4:23PM

I used to work as a tester for a videogame publisher, and I remember wondering why the ESRB didn't play through whatever games were submitted to them when we would splice footage to send to them.

It just seems like that's the only way to assure that the agency does the job they're supposed to do. Are we supposed to trust videogame developers/publishers to highlight the most sordid portions of their game in the name of protecting the children? Guess what... these companies want to make money, and if a more child friendly rating on their game will enable them to push more copies, I'm certain they'd do whatever is necessary to assuage any images of their games being harmful to kids, including witholding information from the ESRB.

I think, practicality aside and if the ESRB MUST exist (I'm more of a proponent of personal responsibility), this is something that should be done.

The Intangible Fact @ Sep 28th 2006 4:25PM

This is a stupid bill! So this is suppost to stop violents in America? Play a game all the way through to give it a harsher rating. BS! So what about TV, movies, & comicbooks?

playclever @ Sep 28th 2006 4:25PM

It makes sense for ratings boards to play the games they rate, but a requirement to complete a game is just plain silly, not least because the definition of whether a game is "complete" varies hugely from person to person.

The BBFC has it about right, I think - they usually play for a few hours, using cheat codes etc. to get a good representative coverage. That has to be better than allowing publishers to hand-pick the material to demonstrate, and it's certainly better than the rather fruitless exercise of playing a game to "completion".

crono141 @ Sep 28th 2006 4:27PM

You guys seem to be forgetting something about games.

Cheat Codes.

So called "cheat codes" aren't there so that stupid kids who suck at the game can beat it, they are there so beta testers don't have to play through the entire damn game just to check and see if the "plasma gun" on level 35 works or not.

ESRB could just as easily use the cheat codes to get to all the end game unlockables up front/get the character to level 60 to check out those raid dungeons, etc.

This bill is still a dumb idea, though. If you are tired of old ass politicians who picked up "pong" once, start voting for younger people.

I'll just be glad that in 10 to 20 years we won't have game (or internet) illiterate people in congress because they will all have been born after these things had come about.

Brook @ Sep 28th 2006 4:29PM

@ chaoticmagus
Yes, I will trust the developers and publishers to show the ESRB the most sordid parts of the game. Because if they don't, the ESRB will find out pretty quickly. The ESRB has the ability to give fines. And if that's not a good enough deterrent, they can refuse to rate a game, which means most retail stores won't carry it.

Chris @ Sep 28th 2006 4:30PM

So 25 guys for Burning Crusade have to level a chracter from 1-70, do each isntance, and get all the gear?

OtakuCODE @ Sep 28th 2006 4:36PM

Exactly how does the federal government purport to regulate a private institution? Are they going to claim that they're committing fraud by claiming to be releasing a rating as representative of the whole game when it is not?

You sign yourself up for some nutty things when you consent to the ridiculous idea that games should be rated in the first place. We'd be facing similar weirdness if books were rated, but when there was big controversy over book, no one was fascist enough in the government to push for ratings, and the public itself was nowhere near as apathetic about freedom to bend over and take it like most of you guys do today.

Mythin @ Sep 28th 2006 4:37PM

Can someone show any examples of a game rated by the ESRB that was later rerated that could have been prevented by playing the game in its entirety?

The only two reratings I can even think of, Hot Coffee and Oblivion, were both due to third party mods.

Let's be honest here. The ESRB is a good indicator right now of a games approximate maturity. This is just more election year blunder to garner votes.

playclever @ Sep 28th 2006 4:34PM

I would like to see Mr. Brownback play a few games to completion himself, before mindlessly legislating...

Todd @ Sep 28th 2006 4:35PM

As it is, the ESRB is doing a horrible job of rating games. Games which should be labeled as mature are being scooted right along to young kids even though they contain adult content or adult themes.

Brook @ Sep 28th 2006 4:37PM

@ Todd
Which games, in your opinion, should be rated M, but are recieving a T rating or less?

32_Footsteps @ Sep 28th 2006 4:38PM

You know, it's funny to throw out Tetris as an example of a game that would take too long. It took me about 4 days to see everything Tetris DS had to offer, and that's with just about 3 hours per day of play.

Moreover, the timing issue is moot because games are often ready to be rated well before they're ready for release. I say this as a reviewer, and many others can back me up - playable betas that show the game's content quite clearly are often available at least a month before the street date. You might not be able to account for everything in some games (like WoW), but you can hit a huge amount in that time. You would still have to rely on disclosure for those, but MMOs are such a small percentage of the games out there that it's still quite feasible.

Also, seriously, how long does it take to clear all of Madden's modes once? Do things become appreciably different if you beat the hardest difficulty with all 32 teams? Let's be realistic - the number of video games (outside of MMOs) that won't show you everything in the game after a week's worth of dedicated play is absurdly small, maybe a dozen per year.

As for the cost this would entail... let's be serious, the ESRB would just farm this out to college students who'd play video games for pennies on the dollar. And we get overcharged for video games as is - companies could afford to sacrifice the sliver of profits funding this would require. If games did go up in price as a consequence of such a move, it would be because the companies used it as an excuse to jack up prices and not because the price of business shot up dramatically.

OtakuCODE @ Sep 28th 2006 4:41PM

Todd: Give one example.

Brook @ Sep 28th 2006 4:48PM

@ 32 Footsteps
The ESRB couldn't just hire college students. First of all, they'd have to pay them minimum wage, or the goverment WOULD have a reason to interfere. Secondly, the ESRB tries to have non-gamers do the ratings.

WedgeTalon @ Sep 28th 2006 4:42PM

One of the oddities of this bill that, IMO, is worth pointing out: the senator wants the Governemt Accountability Office to ensure the ESRB is doing its job.

For those not familiar with the GAO (from: http://www.gao.gov/about/what.html):
Congress asks GAO to study the programs and expenditures OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.

chaoticmagus @ Sep 28th 2006 4:45PM

@Brook
ESRB will find out pretty quickly.

Really? What guarentee do you have of that?

And what does the ESRB refusing to rate a game have to do with a company hiding key aspects of the game's content? I assume you're suggessting that in order for the ESRB to offically give the game a rating, the company and the board both have to reach an agreement on the rating the ESRB wants to give the game (Otherwise, the objectionable content is removed in another version, or the ESRB doesn't rate/endorse the game). This is outside of a company shipping a game without the ESRB having found the content. Entirely different issues.

Player1 @ Sep 28th 2006 4:46PM

I think it makes pefect sense for them to do all this over a couple of games that were rated M instead of AO and that year difference of age-appropriateness.

OtakuCODE @ Sep 28th 2006 4:47PM

Wedge_Talon: And if the ESRB cooperates, they'll manage to get federal funding. And once they get federal funding, all games might be required to include an abstinence-only message or a Say No To Drugs splash screen, and they certainly won't be allowed to express any unsavory political ideas. That much is pretty much inevitable. Witness movies with copyright notices and no penetration shots and the inevitable banning of the movie in which Bush is assassinated.

Stop consenting to rating! Content labelling is as far as it should ever go! Books don't need ratings, and neither do games! (Please, any argument you present in the context of rating games, apply it to books first and see if it still stands up.)

Zack Stern @ Sep 28th 2006 4:51PM

32 Footsteps: I threw out Tetris as an example to raise the question: When is a game completed? The guys asking about Madden raise it in a different way. Is Tetris completed after a round of play? Since it has no end, do you take the publisher's word for it that nothing else happens? And if you trust the publisher in that case, how do you decide that you can't trust the publisher in other situations?

J.Goodwin @ Sep 28th 2006 4:52PM

Sure. In this case, "fat government paycheck" is going to be a GS-4 Office Automation Clerk, base pay $10.79 per hour (note that because of locality adjustments, the real base pay is at least $12.14 per hour).

Better than MacDonalds, but it's hard to feed a family on 25k per year.

Brook @ Sep 28th 2006 4:56PM

@ chaoticmagus
All right, thinking about it, the ESRB might not be able to find out all that quickly. However, if a company is deliberately hiding content to get a lower rating, the ESRB is probably going to find out sooner or later. Like I said, they can fine the company involved. As for the ESRB refusing to rate a game... let me explain it like this. A company makes a game with M-level content, but when they present it to the ESRB, they only show T-level content. The ESRB gives the game a T rating and the company starts making another game. The ESRB finds out about this, through various possible means. Assuming this is not the company's first infraction, the ESRB may decide that they will not give the second game a rating. As a result, the game will not be sold by EB, GameStop, Best Buy, WalMart, or any other store that's part of the ESA. The company will lose boatloads of money on what could have been a profitable game, because they lied to the ESRB.

get over it @ Sep 28th 2006 4:56PM

it's easy to say the ESRB is a private organization, and the government should have absolutely no power as to how they conduct business.

that makes sense to the average person but politicians apparently think differently than the average person.

check out this excerpt from an AP story for example:

The NYC city health department unveiled a proposal Tuesday that would bar cooks at any of the city's 24,600 food service establishments from using ingredients that contain partially hydrogenated oil.

A similar ban on trans fats in restaurant food has been proposed in Chicago and is still under consideration.

the government obviously believes that it knows what is best for us and is more than willing to legislate anything we smoke, eat, drink or even play in order to protect us from ourselves... whether we want them to or not.

logic and legislation don't always coincide with some of these political morons looking for re-election by giving parents the perception that they don't have to be responsible for what their children consume or interact with, because they will make the laws to protect them.

Philip Wesley @ Sep 28th 2006 4:58PM

Honestly, the ESRB should be actually playing games to begin with.

Here's how the ESRB has worked since inception: The game developer sends a demo tape/DVD highlighting possibly offensive content and the ESRB has a board that sits down and watches the 5 to 10 minute tape before making a rating choice.

Anything that actually involves picking up a damn controller would be better than that. When the MPAA rates a movie, they watch the entire movie. When a book is rated, the entire book is read. When music is presented for rating, the entire album is listened to. When a game review magazine is reviewing a game, they try to log in a certain amount of time or finish the game before reviewing it. Well, they used to. Now EGM and IGN play five minutes of a game and slap an 8 on it.

I think picking up and actually playing a game would be great for the ESRB, especially when it omes to PORTABLE GAMES, which they do not know how to rate worth a damn. Example: Metal Gear Solid for the Game Boy Color. In this E rated game, there is profanity, drug use, no graphic violence, but you do get to hear one of the main villans talking about peeling the skin off of people to build his Geisha dolls out of their body parts, and other fun stuff like that. Should have at least gotten a T rating, right? Nope. E rated all the way.

Psaakyrn @ Sep 28th 2006 4:59PM

Would it be easier to just put at least one ERSB employee into every demo test/beta since those are generally used to judge the effectiveness of the game anyway (though granted demo tests still do take up a LOT of time.. it might be easier for demo testers to sign up with ERSB as a temp employee instead).

Judd @ Sep 28th 2006 5:13PM

The interesting thing is that the two times I can think of when a game rating was changed(Elder Scrolls: IV, and GTA: San Adreas), they both involved hackers breaking into the system finding things that wouldn't have been available to 99% of the gaming public. In that regard, if they had people play through every single video game since the ESRB was established, every rating would be exactly the same. So if this bill were to pass it would be completely arbitrary, and only accomplish the wasting of tax dollars.

But the good thing is if this bill were to pass there would be hundreds of job openings. Think about it, even these editors for video game magazines don't beat the game before they review it, and they only review MAYBE half the games that come out that month. Take into account the fact that game journalists need to write a few paragraphs, while people at the ESRB need to write papers dozens of pages long summarizing every instance of language, drugs, violence, and sex. Senator Brownback if you'd like I do have almost 20 years of video game playing experience.

chaoticmagus @ Sep 28th 2006 5:08PM

@ Brook

Thanks for clarifying. I know what you're saying now.

I think the only issue I have at this point with the notion of the ESRB refusing to rate a game is that this is a private entity whose clients are million dollar corporations. Money talks... I don't think it's unthinkable that ratings can't be "bought". Don't get me wrong.... this isn't to say that a government run agency would be any less corrupt. I just think that when things are privately run, there is less oversight, and so there is an increased possibility for such dealings.

Guess I'm just a cynic.

J.Goodwin @ Sep 28th 2006 5:09PM

Personally, I think the ban on trans fats is a good idea.

Use lard, use vegetable oil, but for gods sakes, what the fuck is vegetable lard? It's unnatural. Partial hydrogenation is the work of the devil. Or god, depending on which one you think is the bad one.