By Andrew SheivachmanThe Daily Northwestern
Do you spend all day indoors staring at your television and computer screen, jaw open and a controller at hand? Do you also have experience with children? The Electronic Software Ratings Board might just have the job for you.
The ESRB is looking for full-time video game raters to help them discern the content and age-appropriateness of new titles. In a job posting on Gamerdad.com, a website aimed towards older gamers with families and children, the ESRB asks for “parents and those with video game playing abilities…though these are not requirements.”This is probably in response to last week’s return of Senator Sam Brownback’s Truth in Video Game Ratings Act, which was rejected last fall. Brownback’s resolution has the potential to turn the ESRB into nothing but an ineffective organization controlled by Uncle Sam.
ESRB ratings have been in place since 1994, ever since the Electronic Software Association was forced to self-regulate by politicians appalled by the gore and sex present in mid-90’s games. It isn’t illegal for a child to play a mature rated game, much like it isn’t illegal for a kid to watch an R-rated DVD. But according to a Brownback press release, change is needed since “the current video game ratings system is not as accurate as it could be because reviewers do not see the full content of games and do not even play the games they rate.”
Brownback is partially correct. Reviewers watch a portion of game video supplied by the game’s developer and publisher and cast their decision based on that.But gamers play through games the same way a game would be represented in a video; usually a gamer will only encounter certain selected things in a game, not the “full content” that Brownback seems ultimately concerned with.
According to the Entertainment Software Association, both male and female gamers only play video games around 7.5 hours a week, so it is doubtful that any except the most extreme gamers have the time to experience the “full content” of a title.
The ESRB wants middle-aged people, preferably gamers, to work as reviewers. This shouldn’t seem odd, given the common perception that game ratings are meant to keep smutty titles out of the mitts of children. With all the media coverage of games corrupting the young and impressionable, it is easy to forget that the average gamer is 33 years old. The only way a person could possibly “see the full content of games” is by being a full-time gamer, which would completely trivialize ESRB ratings. Currently, reviewers aren’t required to be gamers since their job is only to evaluate the age-appropriateness of a game.
Unfortunately for gamers, the board is moving backwards. Instead of fighting government influence and standing strong as a self-regulatory commission, it is letting governmental pressure change practices. Gamers are less likely to view game content as derisive or dangerous. Others may not react the same way to the same gaming footage.
Consider Hillary Clinton’s outrage after watching a video of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. A gamer would just shrug.
When it matters, “full content” really isn’t necessary – the current standards do a pretty good job.
Reach Andrew Sheivachman at [email protected].
