We’ll be keeping this story high on the front page for a bit simply because it contains such an excellent set of thought-provoking questions. – JB
Today concludes our week-long look at video game violence and content. Originally we hoped to include comments from other voices, and efforts were made to hear from Florida Attorney Jack Thompson and Senator Joseph Lieberman. But neither gentleman was able to meet our deadline. In the case of the distinguished U.S. Senator we can understand, he has a government job after all. Repeated calls were made to Mr. Thompson, in response to his posted offer to talk to us. At press time calls were not returned.
So instead we’ve decided to conclude this round-table on video game violence by posting a series of questions and asking you to tell us what you think.
For a recap of this week’s discussion on “Game Content Under the Microscope”, we spoke to the following individuals:
Monday: ESRB spokesman Eliot Mizrachi
ESRB Ratings
Tuesday: Author and game reviewer Steven L. Kent
An Insider Speaks
Wednesday: Jason Dell Rocca, executive director of the International Game Developers Association
View From the Game Developer
Thursday: Doctor David Walsh, president of the National Institute on Media and the Family
Watch What Our Kids Watch
Now we open the floor.
Question: The evolution of video game technology has changed the playing field, making for games that are far more realistic today. Should the ESRB ratings be refined to meet these changes?
Question: Should a greater emphasis be placed on the content, beyond whether there is blood or gore? Should the role the player takes in the game (whether hero or villain, upholder of the law or criminal) be considered when ratings are given out?
Question: Can open-ended games, such as Grand Theft Auto, be accurately judged by the ESRB enough to garner a M-mature rating, especially in the wake of the Hot Coffee mod?
A screenshot of the infamous “Hot Coffee Mod” from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. This resulted the game’s Mature rating being revoked by the ESRB.
Question: Do the content descriptors provide enough information to parents and/or other buyers of video games?
Question: Should the AO (Adults Only) rating be used more to ensure that games are not marketed or otherwise sold to underage buyers?
Question: Do game developers have a responsibility when it comes to what they’re making?
Question: Retailer Best Buy has developed their own rating system with Common Sense Media, which will appear on all games sold at the chain store. Does this add confusion for the buyer, or will it help customers in deciding if the game is appropriate for a particular audience?
Question: Can the video game industry honestly say that they are not marketing mature content to minors?
Question: Is it fair to blame video games – or really any form of entertainment – when tragic events, such as the recent shooting at Virginia Tech, occur? And can games really “train” people to prepare for such events?
Nobody conctacted me.
You were probably too busy chasing ambulances and tragedies to notice, Jack. How can anybody miss you anyway, you put your personal information on EVERY e-mail you send.
1. The rating system is good where it is, methinks. You rarely get much out of TV ratings, which usually consist of numbers and letters that are not easy to make sense of if you’re not familiar with them- games tend to be different in that they have the rating, plus a brief description of the potentially offensive material within the game to the consumer. It is STILL up to the consumer to educate themselves about the rating itself. Ignorance should not, nor should it ever, be an excuse.
2. The role within the game shouldn’t fully dictate the terms of which it is rated, but it should have a significant role in helping to determine such a thing. You might remember that Lord of the Rings got a PG-13 rating in the movies, despite the fact that there were several instances of dismemberment, but the context of the violence was set in that of a fantasy setting with non-human evildoers bent on the genocide of those upholding good. It may not be sufficient enough to persuade others from giving lower ratings (Doom 3 was set in a futuristic era, on Mars, dealing with demons from hell, but the content was still strong enough to garner an ‘M’ rating), but it should have a hand in the rating nevertheless.
3. The 3rd question is tricky. You begin by referencing the term “open-ended”, which means the player can do things the way they’d like, but then end on a reference to Hot Coffee, which is two separate things.
Open-endedness within games should have a say in how the game is rated, but only to a minimal degree. What SHOULD be tested is the average potential maximum the player can achieve- for example, you could go throughout the entire game of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, without killing anybody except those that are necessary in order to progress. But it would still not change the rating, in my opinion- what should be rated is what CAN be done, so if a player is able to take a submachinegun and indiscriminately fire upon the public, then that should be taken into consideration, even if the average player refrains from doing so.
But the Hot-Coffee nature of the question is a different thing- you refer to a mod, user-created or user-accessed programs, scripts and material. No matter what steps are taken, mods will be made, even if they portray things that others find offensive. The fact of the matter was that the content was never supposed to be accessible in the first place- yet it was exposed, and Rockstar’s fault lies in that they vehemently denied having connection to it when it later became evident that they were responsible for creating the content, then cutting off access to it.
Nevertheless, it will not stop a person from accessing the content if they so choose, or adding in content that others might find inappropriate. Besides, some of the things modders create do end up being creative and beneficial to the game- such as an entirely new area to explore in a fantasy-adventure game.
4. As I said earlier, TV ratings tend to be a bit light on info. You look at the rating when it shows up at the beginning, where it’ll remain for 10 seconds to half a minute, with numbers and letters that some people may not find informative on any level. Take a DVD. Looking for the rating and its descriptors. If one compares it to a game, one might find similarities and differences. Both seem to employ a system that lists offensive materials in much the same way. Both use a letter system. But if one looks on a DVD, and looks in another, they may not be in the same area, or be immediately veiwable. I took a look at my DVD of Predator 2- it had the rating, but absolutely no description as to what content it had (not that I needed it, I know it has violence, gore, nudity and strong sexuality in once particular scene). But if you look at games, all ratings and content advisors are located in the same general area, on the back and bottom-left or bottom-right – and the ESRB goes as far as adding the rating on the FRONT of the packaging, something that not all DVDs will do.
In short, I think games provide consistent and sufficient information for those that bother to look down as see the obvious black-and-white rating.
5. The question here is whether AO should be use more often to prevent sales from reaching children. But that in itself implies giving a rating to a game that may not even deserve it, and is used or even abused to the point that certain games that DON’T fall under the rating are given it simply to avoid speculation and controversy from special-interest groups that have little-to-no information on the game they’re currently whining about. Many would agree that Kill Bill was an intensely violent film- to a ludicrous degree, to be sure, but would it garner an NC-17 or X rating simply because some people found it too offensive? If one could say “well, GTA has the potential for alot of killing, and I find this far too offensive for an ‘M’ rating, so it should be AO”, then I could easily say “Kill Bill had alot of blood and violence that many people found offensive, and it was rated ‘R’, but by your logic, it’d be rated X.” The ratings should be what they are in truth, not by outrage. If they don’t like it, they don’t have to watch/play it, and they can prevent anybody under their care from doing the same.
6. Yes- game developers DO have a responsibility for what they make. Part of the reason the industry is taking hits is because much of the industry is reduced to ignoring the problem until it goes away, which we know doesn’t work. If a developer comes out with a controversial game, and later a tragedy happens involving a psychopath with access to drugs and guns, and Jack comes up saying “Oh, well THIS game made him do it”, the industry should up and say “No, we’re not responsible for what some nutjob did, even if it imitates a scene from a game, which imitates a scene from a TV show, which imitates a scene from LIFE.” They should be responsible enough to stand up and defend what they put out, rather than have people suspect they are responsible for a tragedy they have no connection to.
7. The idea behind CSM is sound, and chock with good intentions, but the system has to be careful not to overstep their bounds and reiterate what the ESRB has already provided as a rating. It could be potentially confusing, this is true, but if done correctly, it could add a further, albiet unneccessary tool that parents could use to great effect. But what needs to happen more is parents taking actual initiative to decipher the rating system, which isn’t all that hard if given 30 minutes TOPS, to stem what their children are seeing. The fact is that this new system, while well-meaning, wouldn’t even be necessary if parents took the time to educate themselves on the ratings.
8. The answer is yes. They can clearly say that and mean it. I was 19 when San Andreas was released. I’m 22 now. I’m still a gamer, and I probably will be. And not all people that we’re gamers in the 80’s are going to stop being gamers later in life. If only 12% of all games made for consoles and PCs are Mature-rated, and if a significant portion of the gaming community is now in their 20’s, 30’s, even 40’s, then it’s reasonable to assume that the industry caters to the tastes of those that are old enough to handle the content. That doesn’t mean that the games can’t fall into a child’s hands by ignorance from a parent or retailer, but the responsibility to look over a child does not fall on the industry if the products they’re creating are not meant for them in the first place.
9. I’ll start with the second question first.
No.
Plain and simple. You cannot learn how to correctly adjust a sniper rifle in a game, nor can you learn to desensitize yourself fully from killing virtual people. You may be more aggressive in-game, with a faster heart-rate, but who’s to say it isn’t a drive to come out on top in a multiplayer game in Halo 2?
And no media of ANY kind should be held responsible for tragic, senseless events when there are many factors as to the catalyst for which such crimes are committed. There are other underlying factors when someone goes out and does something completely irrational- a reason for what they’re doing, why they’re doing it. Completely abandoning the idea that something else was a heavier factor in favor of easily blaming the media for content that most people don’t understand because they don’t take the few minutes necessary to understand it at all, is to ignore the problem and abandon solutions that could be used to prevent other tragedies with similar circumstances from ocurring again- we learn nothing but to find a scapegoat as soon as possible and hound it until we are thoroughly and unrealistically convinced that they are to blame.
Yeah, yeah, nobody asked me. But someone had to answer, right?
They are games. Most people recognise the difference between games and reality.
The people whio are affected by games have deeper problems that are their problems. Taking games away from the people who can’t tell the difference between the game and reality is not the solution to their problem as they will likely be affected by other outside influences as well, do we want to keep these people from watching Saw the movie as well. No the solution is to help the invidual recognise their problem and give them the tools to mitigate that problem.
The big problem that this society has is that it attempts to adjust the society as a whole to fit the few. Why else would we have Danger labels on gasoline and Drano. Why is this? Because I think we have been taught that it is unacceptable to stigmitize individuals who have issues. Rather than say that Ralph has an issue with not knowing the difference between a Game and reality, we must all bend to some sort of uniform system. It does not fix Ralphs problem, it only makes nice.
I’ve been a gamer now for close to 30 years, I figure I’m as capable of answering these questions as much as anyone else:
1) If anything I feel the ESRB ratings are too strict compared to, say, the MPAA ratings for films. As far as violence goes, I haven’t seen anything that compares to, say, the films “Saw” or “Hostel”. In terms of sexuality there’s nothing that touches the films “Bound” or “Basic Instinct”. If a game had the same level of violence or sex of those films it would be rated adults only. The E10+ rating makes no sense to have whatsoever.
2) Absolutely. Context is pretty paramount. Video games are essentially the modern version of medieval morality plays. Faust may deal with the devil, but in the end he is horribly punished for his actions. A player may be allowed to go on a rampage in Grand Theft Auto, but you will be penalized for doing so.
3) The problem with the Hot Coffee mod wasn’t a result of GTA being open ended, it was a result of two things. First – Rockstar failed to remove code from the program that wasn’t being used. They didn’t figure on gamers being smart enough to uncover it despite the fact that this sort of thing has been done literally dozens of times. Some folks are even taking it upon themselves to “finish” Knights of the Old Republic II because the publisher wasn’t able to meet shipping deadlines and removed large portions of the game. The content is still there, just not accessible to users without a high level of knowledge.
The second problem with Hot Coffee was completely unrelated to anything Rockstar did. End users swapped out textures in the game with nude textures made by other end users. Even with the Hot Coffee mod enabled there is STILL no nudity in the game, that is a patch that has to be enabled by the person playing the game.
In the end, Rockstar was penalized for the behavior of their customers, not anything they did wrong themselves. A company can’t predict how their product will be used (or abused) by their end users and they shouldn’t be penalized for it. It would be like rating Internet Explorer an Adults Only program because some people use it to access porn sites.
4) It depends on which content descriptor you’re talking about. The one on the front that just has a letter grade, probably not. The one on the back of the box goes in to much more detail and I find it to be pretty acceptable, although I have noticed where they miss an item from time to time (no mention of alcohol use in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for example.)
Should the AO (Adults Only) rating be used more to ensure that games are not marketed or otherwise sold to underage buyers?
5) As I mentioned above, the problem isn’t that the ratings are too lenient, the problem is that they are too strict. I don’t believe that San Andreas should have been re-rated AO for content the end user has to enable and I can’t think of a single game that, were it a film, would be rated R much less NC-17.
6) I wish developers felt the responsibility to not make the gaming equivalent of junk food. I realize that’s something of an oxymoron for folks who feel that all gaming is junk food to begin with. But when you see the market flooded with low quality licensed games it really drags the industry down. At the same time, the perception that games are for children makes it more difficult to venture into edgier adult areas. If you look at the furor that happened in Europe over the Playstation 2 title “Rule of Rose” you’ll see what I’m talking about. A film like Guillermo Del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth” is hailed as one of the best pictures of last year, but a game with the same sorts of themes and creepy feel is banned for sale.
7) I think it adds confusion because it simply says if a game is “age appropriate” or not. The problem is that it doesn’t define what age the game is appropriate for. The last surveys I saw said that the average game buyer is in their mid 30s and the average game player is in their late 20s. Obviously Best Buy doesn’t mean to say the game is “inappropriate” for those age groups.
8) How do you define “marketing to minors”? Product placement in television shows like “Heroes”? Advertising during wrestling programs? The problem is that minors are much more sophisticated than the general public is willing to give them credit for and they are going to seek out mature content. In my own case I saw my first theatrical R rated film (Blade Runner) at the age of 12, it took a lot of work to get there but I did manage it. Was it because the producers of the film were actively targeting 12 year olds? Nonsense. It had to do with the film relating to a genre and production values that I was interested in.
9) Disturbed minds will find inspiration and/or justification for their actions just about anywhere. Blaming games for the events at Columbine or Virginia Tech is the equivalent of blaming the Beatles for the Manson family murders or dog ownership for the Son of Sam. You didn’t see anyone running around attempting to ban “Taxi Driver” because of the actions of John Hinkley or remove “The Catcher in the Rye” from bookstore shelves because of Mark David Chapman.
As a culture I think it’s comforting to blame an outside influence for horrific actions for the simple reason that we would like to believe that these sorts of events aren’t the product of human invention alone. They are so horrible they had to have had some “evil influence” behind them. When in reality human beings are capable of more atrocities (Auschwitz, Rwanda, Darfur) than contemporary media will ever allow.
Much of the pro-gamer community makes this discussion too difficult because their too quick bumpersticker shouts about free speech and censorship obscure the fact that yes, games have content and therefore can have impacts for good or ill. It’s not necessarily training physical skills, its training the brain for unintuitive things like how to process the complex environment associated with combat shooting. I love GoW and shooters and played GTA back in the day, but I wouldn’t give them to kids. It’s sort of like the movie system, rather than release an NC17 or even R they aim for PG-13 and try to make it as “hard” as they can thus winding up with no truly delivered “adult” content (because that has the stigma of porn) and more questionable material made available to audiences too young to handle it. Thoe are marketing decisions, not artistic ones. No one should be saying these games ought to be illegal, but they shouldn’t be pretending they are perfectly and universally neutral either.
I think the ESRB ratings are hilariously close together in age. 3, 6, 10, 13, 17, and 18? Come on! Especially that last distinction between 17 and 18 year olds…
It makes it difficult for kids or adults to take these ratings seriously.
MPAA ratings make more sense to me in terms of age range (G, PG-13, R, NC-17)… basically: all ages, 13, 17 or w/ adult, 17 period.
Either way, though, ratings can only go so far. Just like you could get your older friends to buy beer when you were underage, you can ask older kids to get you games too. And I’ve seen a few parents bring home mature-rated games for their underage kids — because the parents themselves want to play too.
As far as whether violent video games encourage violent behavior… violent tendencies are extremely likely to be in place already within the kid who buys/plays violent games…
When the tendency to confuse reality with gaming environments is there too (and it’s not likely that games foster this, no matter how realistic), then the chances of the kid going mental and reenacting the game in real life skyrocket.
Perhaps a psych eval should be required for some games. Ummm… or how about for real-life lethal weapons instead. Don’t forget, that VA Tech nutjob walked into a store somewhere and bought a handgun and ammo, probably with almost no questions asked.
I think it is all very simple. Certain story lines / actions / events, and their intensity and repetition, require certain levels of maturity by viewers to keep things in appropriate context. A rating system’s purpose is to allow people to learn beforehand what level of maturity is required. People can choose to use the ratings or ignore them… power to the consumer. And yes, parents will (and should) use the ratings to manage what their kids can see.
We should have a single, simple, very intiutively understandable rating system that covers all entertainment – TV, cable, movies, games, DVDs, CDs, books, etc. (The TV designations are a great example of what fails the simplicity test.) The only argument against this is the fear by the publishers that they won’t make as much money.
@ Scott
I can’t see how that would be a valid fear. Publishers of particular material cater to specific people, and it seems unreasonable to assume that a new rating system would decrease sales- the only ones that should be buying said material are the ones it’s being catered to. Do they fear that a child will be unable to buy it, thus giving them more money? Most businesses know that it’s better to lose money because kids can’t buy it, than to lose ALOT of money because a kid WAS able to buy it and they were sued for it.
Second, a universal rating system would mean that all content would have to be under the same heading, as entertainment media, without regards to the context of the content. Example- Halo 2 is ‘M’-rated, but most people don’t mind that because it’s a science-fiction game with aliens and purple blood along with the red. CSI has a large array of violent and even sexual material. How hard would it be to label something like that in a universal rating system? You’d have to have alot to tell between the two.
I think games like Halo shouldn”t be rated in the same way games which simulate reality are rated, when everyone was a baby and they saw something red on them they”ll probably associate it with blood, if its purple they might say it was ink or paint and won”t have psycological impact on them. Just the same with games like Halo its not red it can”t be blood no sudden conclusion.Games like halo should be rated by genre and mental impact assessed by psycologists it should also be rated down or up by the majority within certain age groups and how they”ll handle it.Because of the mentally week the strong is been disadvantaged and held back from the good stuff because of some nutcases who thinks its real life and immitates it.