Re: My Game

[Steve Baker <sjbaker1@airmail.net>]

Mark Collins wrote:
 
> If we are going to do this, we do need to come up with the rating system
> itself. It can't just be a case of 'select the rating you deem appropriate'.

So, do you want the job of reviewing every game against the standard?  Do
you want to spend the rest of your life arguing with people who think that
a cartoon penguin getting bloodily hacked to bits *isn't* violence and want's
an E rating instead of a T?  Are you going to be the one to field all the
calls from angry parents who let their child play the E==Everyone game that
contained mildly violent content?  What about a game where it was a clear E rating
when you reviewed it - but since it's OpenSource and changes daily - gradually
turns more nasty and becomes something more worthy of an M rating - are you
going to re-run every game every day?

Presuming the answer is "No", then the only reasonable alternatives are:

  1) Let the author label the game - then it's all his fault if it's
     mis-labelled.

  2) Have some kind of a voting system...maybe something along the lines
     of HappyPenguin - only let people rate the game both for quality and
     for suitability.

(1) is attractive because we can just create the system and walk away and
let it run itself.  However, it's obviously open to abuse.  You have to ask
yourself what people's motives to abuse the system would be...in the
commercial world, you clearly want to get a T or preferably an E rating
so you can increase your market share...unless you want to titillate people
into buying the game and hence actually *want* an M rating.  But if you
aren't making money at your game, what's your motive in giving it a wildly
wrong rating?  I think peer pressure would be enough to bring people into
line if they do something stoopid.

(2) is mildly attractive - but most games on HappyPenguin never get rated
and those that do are rarely rated by more than a couple of people.  Also,
(as my XTux experience shows), you don't know how to rate the game until
you've played it all the way through.  How do you know if the 'cutesy-cutesy'
training level is followed by a graphically depicted gang rape scene in
level ten?   The author knows - and can signal this with an M rating - but
reviewers may not find the nasty parts.

I think we just need to write a CLEAR set of guidelines for authors to
use in rating their games - and perhaps suggest that people who don't
know what rating they should apply should email to this list (or somewhere
else) where they can get advice.

I don't think we need to get complicated about this.

All we really need to solve 90% of the problem is to provide a one page
web site with six icons and six paragraphs of description that we simply
paraphrase from the ESRB definition.  At the bottom of the page there should
be a disclaimer that explains that the owners of the web page are not responsible
for how game authors apply the ratings and that parents who are concerned about game
content should always play the game before they let their kids use it because
people often disagree about what is appropriate for children of various
ages and therefore the ratings system is only a guideline.

We should copyright the icon artworks and say that they are licensed under the
sole condition that the icon is linked back to the website so that end-users
can read the descriptions of what they mean.

With enough publicity, that is all that's needed.  Six pretty pictures and
one page of text.

----------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------------
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