Surprise! The ESRB is not psychic and we don’t expect them to be

Posted by | October 15, 2009

Right now, the ESRB is the best rating authority that we have for the video game experience but the tools that they present us do have a major flaw when it comes to rating the people’s behavior in video games…

Wait a sec. Did we actually write that? Did we actually read an article written about how the ESRB may become obsolete because they cannot rate something that their mandate can never cover? Why yes we did, in fact, The Escapist is running an article, “Obsolescence Pending: Rating the ESRB”, on precisely this subject.

“To date, this has meant that the rating given to the designed game content doesn’t cover chat and other forms of player-to-player communication.” This is unsurprising because it’s literally impossible to rate future events based on their content. It is irresponsible and silly to require the

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FCC Considers Universal Media Rating System

Posted by | September 8, 2009

You know, those little tags at the bottom of the game boxes you never look at because of the guns and boobs up at the top? Those are ESRB stickers, slapped on by the Entertainment Software Rating Board. They show the game has been rated in a voluntary process for guns and boobs, then assigned an appropriate label so kids know just how many guns and boobs they’re getting. It’s the industry regulating itself, and it works.

The FCC, who a while back totally freaked out over mixing sports and boobs during that Janet Jackson affair, is considering a single rating system for all forms of media. Games, movies, TV shows, anything the FCC can get its lustful tendrils into. This system, if it ever develops, may well be based around the one used by the ESRB and video games.

CNet has …

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