"Truth in Video Game Rating Act" Bill Sponsored

[Shawn Andrich]

"Truth in Video Game Rating Act" Bill Sponsored

Congressman Cliff Stearns has introduced HR 5912, also known as the "Truth in Video Game Rating Act" to place more pressure on the ESRB to give accurate game ratings and determine their effectiveness. The Act [http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.R.+5912:] includes terms which would make rating games without playing them to completion unlawful. This would be a radical change from the current ESRB system [http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_process.jsp] which relies heavily on developer disclosure rather than hands-on experience. Neglecting to disclose all content in a game or rating a game lower than it should be would also become illegal. If enacted, the bill would require the Government Accountability Office (GAO [http://www.gao.gov/index.html]) to report on several aspects of the ESRB's practices. Under the microscope would be the ESRB's effectiveness, the validity of peer review and advertisements targeted toward ages younger than a game's recommended audience. Less specific to the ESRB, the bill would also require research on "the efficacy of a universal ratings system for visual content, including films, broadcast and cable TV, and video and computer games."

Game Politics notes [http://gamepolitics.livejournal.com/333899.html#cutid1] that Co-Sponsors Rep. Jim Matheson (D-UT) and Rep. Mike McIntyre (D-NC) are up for re-election this November along with Congressman Cliff Stearns.

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[Demiurge [deprecated]]

On the one hand, this could go a long way towards avoiding another "Hot Coffee" scandal. But I'm not sure I like the idea of the U.S. government wading knee-deep into the regulation of media.

I don't think it'll go anywhere. The moment the ESRB gets a govermental Godfather watching over the operation, there will be a precident for the goverment to step into regulating everything else, and there's a lot of very vocal people who will take issue with that. Maybe I'm being naive, but I'm way okay with that.

 

[Russ Pitts]

Recent history would point to a relative lack of "vocal people" in America today. Or at least those with any ability to effect change. Perhaps I'm balancing your naiveté with cynicism.

Still, the very idea of enacting legislation to hold an entertainment industry accountable for - not their product - the rating of a product is fantastically ludicrous considering the amount of tomfoolery going on in other industries, and the United States Congress itself.

 

[Adam LaMosca]

Ironically, it seems that the proposed study (if conducted without bias) would likely reveal the gaping holes in the bill's logic.

 

[Joe]

Mixed feelings. Part of me likes the idea of making these ratings systems actually, you know, consistent. It's really not a bad thing to let that happen.

The other part of me likes the idea of red tape clogging up an already ill-conceived system that will either be forced to spend itself out of existence or will drive off the people who've voluntarily agreed to be a part of it.

Really, it's win/win. Either gaming's Comic Code does its job better, or it goes away and anti-expressionism suffers a blow, albeit an inconsequential one.

This duality brought to you by the letter Monday.

 

[roc ingersol]

"The Act includes terms which would make rating games without playing them to completion unlawful."

Good luck with that.
At what point is a game like Oblivion 'complete'? Animal Crossing? WoW?
Not surprisingly, this vote-pandering is impractical as well as unnecessary and ineffective.

Also, Joe, I think it intellectually dishonest to conflate the ESRB with the Comic's Code. An analogue to the MPAA is an entirely different sport than out-and-out industry crippling self-censorship.

 

[Pantechnician [deprecated]]

It's sort of interesting that the "universal ratings system" wouldn't include music, given all the fuss raised about explicit lyrics and such in the late eighties/early nineties.

 

[Demiurge [deprecated]]

Musicians aren't Satanists anymore, video game developers are.

 

[Demiurge [deprecated]]

Can't we get our Dead Rising, and by we I mean we here on this forum, we adults, and keep kids from it at the same time?

No, because kids are going to get it one way or another. Just like kids are seeing the R rated movies, or listening to the explicit lyrics in mainstream music. But the goal really isn't keeping questionable material out of kids' hands, it's making it look like we are.

Look at that, from naive to jaded in less than a day. I'm like the wind.

 

[Goofonian]

Can't we get our Dead Rising, and by we I mean we here on this forum, we adults, and keep kids from it at the same time?

No, because kids are going to get it one way or another. Just like kids are seeing the R rated movies, or listening to the explicit lyrics in mainstream music. But the goal really isn't keeping questionable material out of kids' hands, it's making it look like we are.

Look at that, from naive to jaded in less than a day. I'm like the wind.

I'll agree whole heartedly to that. I have very few friends that weren't drinking and watching violent movies (and porn) by the ripe old age of 15, but we did it behind closed doors and what our parents didn't know didn't hurt them.

Once it gets to the point where the kids are playing their pirated copies of GTA when mum and dad go out to the shop, rather than having it bought for them for christmas and playing it under their noses, then we won't have to put up with so much bad press.

 

[jimmy king [deprecated]]

While I realize what this bill is trying to fix, I'm not quite sure why anyone would think it would fix anything. Things like Hot Coffee and the nudity "in" Oblivion would not have been caught by the ESRB playing the games all the way through since they required third party modifications to the games to access. On top of that, there's no reason (outside of trying to avoid being hassled by politicians who don't know what they're talking about) for the developers to disclose this stuff as it's not part of the game.

Want to know a secret? The newspaper is dirty, dirty, porn. All those pictures? Every single one of them contains genitals and/or boobs underneath the clothes and the editors know it.

 

[jimmy king [deprecated]]

Mixed feelings. Part of me likes the idea of making these ratings systems actually, you know, consistent. It's really not a bad thing to let that happen.

The other part of me likes the idea of red tape clogging up an already ill-conceived system that will either be forced to spend itself out of existence or will drive off the people who've voluntarily agreed to be a part of it.

Really, it's win/win. Either gaming's Comic Code does its job better, or it goes away and anti-expressionism suffers a blow, albeit an inconsequential one.

This duality brought to you by the letter Monday.

I don't like it at all. The government should have no part of a media rating system. if it's not censorship, it runs damned close, and the way our government works will be used for censorship in short order. On top of that, is "Mature: 17+" really that hard to understand?

 

[Joe]

Don't get me wrong. I think it's dangerous that the government felt the need to get involved, here, but really, who rates anything on a video the publisher sends? The fact is, the ESRB is a weak organization that relies on the honesty of people who exist solely to make money, which is never a good thing to do. If it takes a governmental arm to actually make them take a thorough look at the content they're supposedly rating, so be it.

And again, if this kills off the ESRB in favor of a better system (or, if we revert back to my dream world, no system at all), so be it. I mean, if the bill actually singles out the ESRB, what's to stop another board from forming and taking over in the ESRB's stead? During the transition, the ESA could get lobbyists on-hand to break up some of the momentum the anti-game folks have.

And while I'm on that particular train of thought, how hard is it to get a somewhat vocal politician to get on C-Span or whatever and say, "We're fighting a two-front war, and one of our closest allies is getting ready to engage in a massive conflict that could end thousands of lives. While what our children see and experience in their entertainment media is something that demands attention, perhaps it'd be in the Legislative branch's best interest to ensure our children have a future where they're free to debate the merits of such media."

And, Doug Lowenstein, if you want to feed that to a Senator, go ahead. You don't even need to quote me.

 

[Russ Pitts]

My point regarding the perceived similarities between the subject of videogame ratings and legal drinking ages has been made quite well by others at this point, so I'll leave that where it lies.

But the desired effect of both legal drinking/smoking/nudity-viewing ages and a "ratings" system for entertainment products like video games is the same: political leverage. None of these things actually affect the consumption of the products so labeled in any significant way (beyond dissuading those who would be unlikely to break any laws to begin with), but passing these kinds of laws does tend to make politicians more popular among their child-rearing constituents.

 

[jimmy king [deprecated]]

Don't get me wrong. I think it's dangerous that the government felt the need to get involved, here, but really, who rates anything on a video the publisher sends? The fact is, the ESRB is a weak organization that relies on the honesty of people who exist solely to make money, which is never a good thing to do. If it takes a governmental arm to actually make them take a thorough look at the content they're supposedly rating, so be it.

Yeah, I understand your thinking on it, I just believe we'd be trading a pretty minor evil for a much worse one.

On top of that, I don't believe it would actually fix anything. I feel that the ratings are pretty accurate as things currently stand. The two major changes in recent history, GTA and Oblivion, would never have been caught by the ESRB playing through the full game even though I'd bet my life that these are what prompted this bill. Not to mention that the changes were total BS due to the exact reason playing the full game wouldn't have caught them... they weren't in the game as it was released and required 3rd party modifications.

So, we'd be trading the quite minor evil of the ESRB potentially not doing the parent's job for them well enough in exchange for more government regulation over something they don't understand and have strong potential to abuse for the sake of fixing something that won't be fixed. I just can't get behind it.