An ERSB Analysis

Everyone knows in the bottom corner of a game they see a letter that means what rating the game is.  So if a 12-year-old walks up to a counter at K-Mart and tries to buy one that has a big, black "M" on it, you should know better not to sell that game unless they have a parent that confirms that it is OK.  The ESRB stands for the Entertainment Software Rating Board.

http://elmhurst.patch.com/groups/politics-and-elections/p/group-vows-to-keep-fighting-m-rated-games-at-elmhurst-library

If you are not familiar with the rating system, there are six ratings: Ec, E, E10+, T, M and A.

http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.jsp

Ec is Early Childhood.  Any game where the content is intended for young children.

http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.jsp

E is for Everyone, containing mild violence and not very much use of mild language.

http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.jsp

E10+ is for children age 10 and up and may contain more mild language and violence.

http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.jsp

T is intended for ages 13 and up and contains a range of violence, crude humor, minimal blood and some use of strong language.

http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.jsp

M is for mature audiences ages 17 and up and contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and strong language.

http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.jsp

A is for adults ages 18 and up.  This contains the same things as an M rated game but for prolonged times.

http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.jsp

RP stands for Rating Pending, this is only used in advertising for a video game while it is in review for a rating.

A content analysis was done on video games across the rating boards, looking and coding for violence in each game.  They deemed each unit of analysis as any time there is an aggressive exchange that occurs between a Perpetrator engaging in a particular Act against a Target.  The Perpetrator would be the player or the NPC (Non-Playing Character).  The Act could be anything from punching, to kicking, to stabbing or even shooting.  They found that among all ratings of games, up to 89% of them contained violence.  That means that even the first three, E rated games, contained some type of violence.

I think that the ESRB are doing as good of job as they can to separate the 6 ratings. They have a large coding system and it takes hours upon hours of game play and coding per game to pass a rating test. This may cost a lot of money to do, but to stay within the law, game developers and companies have to go through it and hope that their game is successful.

Next up we will talk about PRESENCE in a game.....What is presence anyway???






Vorderer, P., & Bryant, J. (2006). Playing Video Games: Motives, Responses, and Consequences. New York, NY: Taylor and Francis Group.

Entertainment Software Rating Board (2014). ESRB Rating Guide. Retrieved from http://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings_guide.jsp.