TechStuff Classic: TechStuff Gets an ESRB Rating

too long ago. But in this episode, Chris Palette and I actually talk about the e s r B rating system, where it came from, how it's used, and to get a deeper understanding of what it's for and you know why it exists. I hope you guys enjoy we're doing an episode about the e s RB. Okay, so are you okay? I am okay. It's the Entertainment Software Rating Board and this this is actually a request that was sent to us by a couple of different listeners who

wanted to know more about this system. It's history, why do we have it, does it work? What's it all about? So in general, the E s r B. Sorry Alfie, he has r V. What's it all about Alfie. The E s r V is a it's a rating system for video games, and it's it's a rating system not for the quality of the game, but what is the content, how the content of the game shapes the game, and whether or not that content is um uh suitable for different age groups. So just running through the different ratings

really quickly. Uh. The E s r B has ratings for e C, which is early childhood. That's games that are suitable for ages three and older. Younger than three, we just typically say these are people who probably can't process what the heck is going on anyway, so it really doesn't matter what it is, but not really appropriate in any case. Get that two year old off my Xbox. Uh, E is for everyone, which is actually not everyone. It's

really content that's suitable for ages six and older. Keeping in mind that content that's EC early childhood probably has gameplay elements that most people all over the age of six wouldn't be terribly interested in. Um. I say most because there are exceptions. I mean, I'm not going to pass judgment on Chris if he wants to play lots

of e C games. There's eight ten, ten plus, which is everyone ten and older, so against slightly more restrictive than just the E T four teen uh M for mature meaning people who are seventeen or older uh and AO AO which is adults only, which has content in it that should only be played by people of eighteen years of age or older according to their rating according to the rating A and each of these each of these ratings have their own criteria as to you know,

what what constitutes a T rate rating as opposed to an M rating. And in general, what we're talking about here are types of content that might include things like gambling that that will up a E. S R B rating on a game to a higher one to like M or whatever. H violence, blood, gore, sexual content, strong language, drug use, this kind of stuff sort of the same things that you would see with the Motion Picture Association of America with their rating system for movies. In fact,

there are a lot of parallels. And you might say, all right, so we have this rating system, Uh, how

did that get started? And really to to understand that, you have to go back into the history of video games, I would argue in a way that you'd have to go back into the history of entertainment content because I think e s RB is, well, it's a consortium really, and and the thing is, I think they we're paying attention to what had happened to people in other industries as well, right It just before the before the early nineties, it was kind of a moot point only because video

games were fairly primitive as far as graphics are concerned. So it was not easy to graphically represent something that would be objectionable. Uh, not that people didn't try, and not that there aren't exceptions, because there are, I'm thinking of one right off the top of my head for the Atari Twenty Days, but you could not realistically represent things like uh, graphic violence or sexual content before the

sixteen bit era. It was just really the consideration was that the eight bit era and earlier, everything was so blocky and so pixelated that it didn't really resemble reality. It was more like seeing something in a cartoon. So uh, you know, you might watch a cartoon as a kid of Wildly Coyote and the roadrunner, and the road runner does something and Wildly Coyote suffers a terrible injury, and there are some people who would argue that that could be harmful to kids, uh, seeing how it shaped me

and who I am. Well that's anecdotal anyway. And Chris, uh, you know, don't worry. I'm not going to do anything with this enormous mallet behind me. Um he he he. Well, yes, I and you know that there were some exceptions. I do bear a striking resemblance to my character from Adventure on the right. Just a block, because I am a block, just a just a block, just one pixel block, but

a giant pixel. Uh. Once we got into the sixteen bit era, we started to have more realistic, more fluid graphics, and there was you know, the the population that was playing video games was beginning to grow older. You know, you were you had people who had started playing video games as kids on systems like the Atari or the Ninteno Entertainment System or whatever, and so they were continuing to play video games as they got older, and their interests began to um go into more what we call

mature subjects. So just like people who watched movies, you know, they might want to go see an R rated movie or something, uh, same sort of thing. And so the video game publishers began to cater to that audience. I mean, you've got to remember also the people who were developing video games. They were video game players, you know, when they were kids. And we're talking about the early nineties here.

The people who played video games in the very early eighties were now the people who were making video games in the nineties. Their tastes had matured, and so you started to see video games that were depicting violence in a more realistic and graphic way than ever before, and that began to raise some concerns in the minds of certain people. UH. Some of those people held quite a bit of influence, people like UH, the Senator Joe Lieberman

UH and Senator Herb Herb Cole. They both were concerned and they had hearings in the United States Senate about video game violence and how that affected children and whether or not in fact, video games were contributing to the corruption of society. This is not a new thing at all. We have had politicians worry about various forms of entertainment corrupting the youth and ruining everything. And that's why apple pie doesn't taste as sweet. It's why you can't walk

down the street at night. It's why you have to lock your doors when you leave in the evening. It's it's why you you never have the paper because your neighbor always steals it. It's it's it's the perp. It's actually the reason why everything is terrible. Now I'm exaggerating for effect. I didn't know if you were you were, you know, well no, but um but yeah, I mean. And then it's not just politicians, of course, their parents associations.

There are just concerned citizens who draw conclusions that a form of entertainment and the its popularity among a certain group might in fact influence that certain group to behave in a negative way or to be desensitized against violence for example. Exactly. Yes, so not necessarily they'll go out and hit somebody over the head with a mallet, But if they see someone else hit someone over the head with a mallet, they won't necessarily spring to action. Um yeah.

There there are concerns, and there have been lots of different studies with very different outcomes about whether or not violence in media affects people in a real way beyond you know, beyond like a visceral reaction. Does it have a lasting impact on a person's personality. Those are questions that still have not been fully answered because there are a lot of studies out there with conflicting results. I know what I believe, but but there are results the

conflict with what I believe. So well, as it turns out, it may be one of those frustrating situation where it may depend on the individual person, right, Well, in which case I would argue that that's a person that's a person issue, not a not an industry issue, right because it's it's one of those things you can make the argument of, well, if this one person who was affected by this one type of media were to instead have fixated upon another type of media, we'd be having the

same discussion, but we'd be having it about music. And this discussion has been about music. It has been about television, it has been about film, it's been about novels. It's been about classical music. I mean, any form of entertainment. You can imagine. It's gone through this experience of people talking about, you know, that novel, that new fangled way of putting words together and creating fanciful fictional stories is ruining everything. Oh yeah, that that Actually there were people

who said that novels we're bringing about the downfall of society. Well, hey, I recently read that that Plato I think it was, had rebelled against the written words. He said, no, it's because writing things down means that you are sapping your own ability to think that was the idea. It's it's the same argument about Google making us stupid, because everything that we need to know is on the web now, so we don't need to remember it in our our

meat space heads. Um. So yeah, I mean, anyway, like we the point of that whole thing is just to say video games are not unique in this situation. This has gone through multiple venues, multiple forms of media. But in this case you had a lot of pressure coming from the United States government for something to be done in the video game industry. Within the industry itself or the ultimatum was, if you guys don't get together and figure out a way of taking care of this, then

we're gonna do it. We being the United States government, and the industry was like, did not want that to happen. They did not want to have some sort of federal regulation in place over the video game industry, and so it was imperative to come up with some sort of industry based ratings system that could be demonstrably proven to be as objective as possible, so it's not you know, it's not pulling the wool over anyone's eyes or anything. Uh.

And to have some sort of enforceable policy. Yeah, those were all important issues. Yeah. And and again they're they're taking their their their cues from other similar or other entertainment industries, like the Motion Picture Association of America with with movie ratings several decades prior, and of course the Comics Code from comic books after Frederick Wortham's uh um Seduction of the Innocent um. Wow. But yeah, I mean, these these industries self regulated. They said, okay, okay, you

know what, we'll get together. We'll form a group, and we will come up with a rating system that helps people identify what kind of content to you know, will be in the package when you when you do this. And yeah, I mean there were there were certain games in particular, I think some you know, like Mortal Kombats. That's the one. The Mortal Kombat, I think more than any other video game, has been cited as the the

genesis of this discussion. I mean there are other ones to like Doom that was another big one, domm Night Trap for home games, Lethal Enforcers, which was, as I recall, a light gun based game. So I mean, yeah, these these were games that had a lot of violence in them. Of course, by today's games standards, if you're talking about a truly, truly violent game in today's standards, they might

seem quaint in comparison. Yeah, but but you know, that was what caused these conversations to happen, and as a result, the games industry are actually different. Companies within the industry all began to suggest ratings systems, and in fact, there were quite a few. In the earliest days. There were several competing One. Sega came out with one, the Video Game Rating Council. Uh. Yep, Video Game Rating Council was

from Sega. There was the three D O suggested one. Uh. They they had the Recreational Software Advisory Council formed by Software Publishers Association, and then there was one called the Interactive Digital Software Association, which again was a uh it's a collection, it's a collection of software companies that were uh advocating for a particular rating system, and that I D s A. It's eventually became the Entertainment Software Rating Board e s r B. As we now know it,

that got present it to Congress, and in uh Congress approved the form the formation of the s E s R B, and they you know, it was formally made the rating system for American video games. So if you pick up a video game in America, a video game case, there's a very good chance, in fact, an overwhelmingly good chance, that you will see a little black box with white white inside, and then there's a black letter that indicates what the rating for that particular game is UM and

and that's become the standard essentially. And here's the thing is that there's there's no The reason for this again is so that the consumer has an idea of what type of content is going to be in that game. Uh, it's it's not specifically meant to dictate two retailers what they need to do with each type of game. Like in other words, there's no rule that says, okay, anything that is rated T or or higher in the on the maturity scale like T or M or a O cannot be three feet off the floor. It has to

be higher up than that. Like, there's no rule about that. There's no there's no specific policy in place or law in place that says you have to be a certain age to be able to buy a game. The rating is there as a guide to say this is what, this is who the game is intended. You know, we mean this for people who are seventeen or older or eighteen or older. Chris and I have more to say about the s r B rating system, but before we

get to that, let's take a quick break. There was the United States Supreme Court found that that you cannot restrict mature or adults only titles to specific age groups to be cause video game content falls under the realm of free speech, which cannot be infringed upon by the government. Now that doesn't mean that the stores can't have policies,

because the stores are not the government. In fact, that was the whole reason why this board was formed, was so that they could keep that separation between government and business. So a an actual retailer, if you were to go to a video game store, they might have a policy that says, we do not sell uh any game that is ranked M or AO to anyone under the age of seventeen, and we will ask for I D. And

that's their policy, and it's perfectly fine. The government can't restrict it, but a store can and UH also go ahead and say it. AO games very rarely get carried in stores because it's kind of the same thing as the n C seventeen rating for films. Films that get an NC seventeen rating very very rarely get any sort of relief in most theaters. You might have a few independent theaters that will run in C seventeen movies, but in general they do not get any sort of wide

release at all. It's very rare when that happens. So the same sort of thing with AO games. So getting an AO rating. If you are a game publisher and you develop a game and you submit it to the e s r B and you get an A O rating, your first reaction might be, we need to change this because no one's going to carry our game in stores and we're not going to make any money. Yeah. Yeah, Now, they don't They don't necessarily play all of the games.

Actually they don't. They don't play the games at all. Well, they do have in house testers, according to the s r B, who do go through it um and as a result of UH the whole hot Coffee incident, they are supposed to at least disclose everything that's in the in the package that you could get even if it's hidden. Okay, So in order to in order to understand what Chris has just said, you know, we have to have some

background here. First of all, the general way that a game manufacturer submits a game to the s r B E s RBS UH general way of testing a game doesn't necessarily involve playing it. It can involve playing it, but to play a game and to really get a sense of what the content is all about can take hours and hours and hours of gameplay, so they don't play every single game that comes into them all the way through. What they do tend to do, though, is

part of the E s r B ratings processes. They require a game manufacturer to submit a DVD that has on it the examples of the most extreme types of content that game has. So, in other words, you're watching like a clip compilation of the worst of this game, worst being in the sense of like the most intense content.

So if if it has any sort of violent content, or uh, sexually graphic content, or or foul language, anything like that, anything that would affect the rating, the most intense examples of that are supposed to be included on the DVD so that the ratings experts who are trained in UH the the processes that the E s r B uses to determine the rating for a game, so

that they can determine what rating applies here. And if you were to release a game that turned out to contain content that went beyond what you showed the DVD in the DVD, you could suffer some pretty stiff fines industry. UH the industry itself would find you and you could face a recall which could be very expensive to recall

all the copies of the game. Now that is the case when when Christmas talking about the hot Coffee incident, that's specifically talking about it was Grand Theft Auto four right, I want to say, or Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. Grand Theft Auto s Andreas was specifically what it was.

Uh I owned that game. So this was something that was originally included in the game, and it was a mini game, and it was it was a sexual encounter and it was Ultimately the game designers decided not to include it in the game, but they didn't remove it so much as they kind of the code was still there, but it was inactive. It was sort of like an

Easter egg. Well, yeah, you could get to it if you if you knew how to either uh, if you knew how to either alter an Xbox console or if you're using the PC version, if you were able to use some software to activate the code, you could get access to this game. But it was this mini game within the game, but it was not intended for public consumption,

at least that's what the publisher said. And the problem was that went outside what they had submitted to the ratings board, and they had their original rating for that game was M for mature. That mini game pushed it over to adults only, and so they ended up doing a recall and republishing the game without the code in

at all so they could regain that M mature rating. Ah, if you were to uh submit your game again, you would send this DVD to the e s r B. They would have up to well at least three people looking at it. Those three people would have experience with kids.

That's actually one of the requirements is that they would have to have some sort of experience, either professional or personal, with children in order to be able to view the content and then judge at what age level is this appropriate, and so it's not just you know, some scientists with beakers and uh, not that kind of beaker, but with a like electronic device is saying, well, scientifically, we've determined that sixteen is exactly the age at which this game

can be sold, and no one under sixteen should ever play it. It's not that it's uh, it's a little more subjective than that. In fact, so is in fact the film rating system. It's not there's no rating system that I know of that is truly objective, so that you may find examples of games on the market where you're thinking, this game is rated T for team, this game is rated M for mature, and I cannot see a significant difference in content between the two games. That's

entirely possible. Same with M and A O. You might say, well, why did this incredibly violent game get a mature rating? But this game which has a brief UH scene, that's that's part of the game that has some sort of sexuality to it that got AO. And again it also brings into question things like the cultural values like which this gets discussions all the time. Why do we think of violence being more acceptable than uh scenes that depicts sexuality?

For example. And I mean there's that's a complicated cultural question that goes well beyond the scope of UH this podcast. I mean that it would be a fascinating discussion but doesn't really play into here. But yeah, if you take a look, there's there's a list that they maintained that the s r B maintains of all the games that have received an AO rating. It's a tiny, tiny list.

There's not many, and almost all of them, in fact, all of them that I can think of, UH have strong sexual content as one of the components of the game, and except for one, was gambling and it was actual gambling and that's what got it an AO rating, and the rest were strong sexual content which gave it the A O rating, Whereas there was I think only one game that I can think of that merited and initially merited an AO rating based solely upon violence, which was

The Punisher, as I recall, and it was it just it had such graphic depictions of violence and and torture scenes that the game publisher ended up going back and in order to avoid an AO rating, they changed. There was there was like some interrogation scene I think that was so intense that that was what was the real problem. That was the crux of it. So they changed it from color to a black and white uh image for that particular sequence, and that was enough to knock it

back down to mature, which is kind of interesting. I mean again, that's a philosophical discussion that I think needs to happen and has happened in the past, but needs to continue to happen. But as outside the scope of our our show, Yeah, but there aren't There aren't many for AO and they're almost all PC games. WHOA. I have to interrupt the episode here because Chris was about to say something that was going to make this m for mature. We're gonna take a time out so he

can think about what he did. Well. The according to the the E s RB, there were one thousand, thirty two ratings given them were rated E for everyone, um were everyone ten and older? Were Team were mature. That actually really surprises me. But maybe it's because it's the type of games I play which tend to be in that mature range, because they tend to have a lot of violence in them, so that that knocks it up

to mature pretty quickly. Um then, and games have gone a lot more complicated with a big hammer and knocks it right or up there. But games have got a lot more complicated than when when the e s RB first launched these these ratings, games were somewhat less complex in the sense that not only only were they graphically more simple, but you didn't have to worry about things like online components so much. You know, the this was the era where online gaming was starting to be I'm

a thing, but it was it was pretty rare. Today, of course, it's common for games to have online components. So now you will also have other elements included with your basic rating, which includes the content descriptors, which tell you why in a very broad sense, the game is rated a particular way. So I might say, you know, M for strong, for for violence and blood and gore, something like that. But there's also what they call interactive elements.

These are features that a game might have that could uh change the experience of playing that game, but it's outside the scope of the content itself. This is stuff like the game has some sort of social element to it, like it might share personal information about you when you play this game. Well, that's something that you would want

to know. It doesn't have anything to do with the content of the game, but because it could share your personal information, you probably want to know that before you buy the game, or that it may also allow for or online play with other gamers. And now again, uh, an online game might be the least objectionable thing in the world. It might be a simple puzzle game that has no objectionable content and would be rated E for

everyone based on the the gameplay itself. But if it has that online component, then again, adults kind of need to know because you go online and people do not necessarily behave the same way that the content would suggest. So you might have the most foul mouthed, awful person playing a puzzle game with you, and uh. And you know, you can't blame it on the game. It's the person

who's doing it. But you know, by including that interactive element on the box, the person buying the games, like, Okay, if I play it this way, I can't expect that sometimes I'm going to encounter material that could be objectionable. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's all subjective, which is that's the and that's

the trickiest art. You know. You you, like I said, you can have two different you could submit the same game to two different fully trained groups of people who that's their job is to uh to put a rating to a game and get two different results. And it's because it is subjective. There's you know, it's not like you count up the number of times someone gets punched in the face and that determines whether it goes to

from T to M or or whatever. Um. Yeah, so it's it's a little I mean, but again, this this is all about the software industry monitoring themselves so that there's not some sort of government agency doing it for them. Yeah. Ultimately it's it's in the industry's best interest to do its own policing so that they can avoid any imperial entanglement, right right, right, I thought I detected your stench as sin as I came on board. Um they yes that

no more chili. Uh yeah, it's it's one of those things where where you know, if the industry didn't do it, it was gonna get done to them. And again, these these ratings are guidelines so a store can develop certain policies. But ultimately, like you know, you could buy games online.

That's another issue. Downloadable content that can change a game because what comes in the package when you buy it from the store, could be very simple and yeah, like you could have a game where it's fairly violent but not terrible, you know. So so let's say get a mature ratings, so it's it's bad enough, so they say, all right, seventeen and older. They that we're gonna limit it to seventeen or older. And then you have downloadable

content that has much more intense content in it. Then you might have people say, way, now this really needs to be adults only. Now that that causes problems. That makes it more complicated. So yeah, I mean, it's it's it's a complex issue. I also kind of it does make me wonder at what level do they say we

need to put this as adults only? It goes beyond mature because I've played some games that have had some pretty intense content in it, and you know, not that I'm advocating that those games get reassigned a different rating, but it just makes me wonder, really, where where is the where's the line? You know? And again I suspect that's the strong sexual content that's really the line. Um that's just a based on anecdotal experience, So it's not you know, don't take it to the bank or anything.

But based on some of the incredibly violent games I've played, where you can do some pretty awful stuff, it does make me wonder, all right, where's the limit. I don't I don't understand where the this divider is. Yeah, it's it's understandable because it's you know, there's with it being subjective, there's no clear cut book of stuff that people are

judging it by. Now, I would say, if you are a parent and you're listening to this podcast, pay attention to those ratings on the video game covers and think about that, you know, and think about the influence that might have on a kid, or just think if that's if that's really something that you think your your kids

should be getting into. I mean, I think I think parents do need to take a lot of responsibility for this and pay attention to what their kids are getting into, because, um, you know, it's better to know upfront than to be surprised later on. And uh, I mean, if you're cool with your kid playing mature games, then that's a personal decision and I'm not going to argue with you one

way or the other. I don't have kids, so I don't feel like I have any groundstand on when it comes to that sort of discussion, but just be aware. As vilified as it is in some circles, I do think that having the ratings available to people makes it a little easier to tell sort of the situation you're

getting into when you when you pick up a game. Um, and there are I'm sure there are quite a few adults who who are buying games for themselves who's sort of like, you know, you just see you can glance at the game, you go, oh, that looks interesting, and then you see the thing and you might say, you know what, if this is mature, there's probably a lot of violence the word, or if you're an adult, you might look in and say, oh, you look at the

team that's not gonna Yeah. It goes the other way too, right, like if you have people who want to play really intense games, they're like, oh, this looks cool, and then you're like, oh, it's t for teen that's not intense enough.

Just like you know, I hear this all the time from people who are fans of horror movies and a horror movie comes out and it's rated PG or PG thirteen and they think, oh, well, then it's not worth seeing because it's not gonna you know, personally, I think that you can do a lot within that rating by

cranking up tension and terror. Uh you know, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's an inferior movie just because it has that rating, but that's that's one of those things like you know, you go out and you buy a game, or you're going to buy a game. You see it's

ray for everyone. You're like, yeah, I could get that, or I could get blood, guts and gore or seven the torturing, which is him, let's get that one instead, and has nothing to do with the quality of the content in a sense of whether it's a fun game to play. It just has to do with the actual content. So um, yeah, don't treat these ratings as uh as as a statement of the actual quality of the game itself.

That would be a mistake as well, because you could have a game that's rated imflemature that's nearly unplayable, just terrible, and another game that's E for everyone that might seem like it's just a very you know, kind of simple, silly game, but be really genuinely fun to play. So don't take the ratings as any sort of comment on what the gameplay experience will be like. Alright, guys, that

wraps up this classic episode of tech Stuff. Hope you enjoyed it, and if you have any suggestions for future episodes of the show, why why don't you just write me let me know what is email addresses tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com or pop on over to our website that's tech stuff podcast dot com. You're gonna find an archive of every single episode we've ever published.

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