Games' Most Wanted: The Top 10 Book of Players, Pawns, and Power-Ups

24. Guiding Games

192 24 Guiding Games Created in 1994, the Entertainment Software Rating Board has become the standard for commercially produced video games entering the marketplace. It is a voluntary industry-wide standard for age ratings and has been successful in scope while having its limits tested. Regardless of how players and consumers view the board, since inception it has changed the face and content of video games. Here are ten facts you may not know about the workings and history of the ESRB. 1. BORN FROM MORTAL KOMBAT The impetus for the ESRB originated with the popularity of the fighting game Mortal Kombat, a console port of the highly popular arcade version, developed for both the SNES and SEGA Genesis systems. The game in its original form was quite bloody and violent, with some imaginative “fatality” moves that were graphic on the new 16-bit systems. It was the hottest video game at the time and both SEGA and Nintendo had different approaches to handling the violent content. Nintendo, using its strict policies for family games, had the blood re-colored to look like sweat and the fatality moves coded out. SEGA left everything in but designed its own internal corporate rating system with roots in the motion picture industry, slapping an “MA-13” label on the box and sending it along its way. Guiding Games 193 A joint congressional hearing in December 1993, called by Senators Joe Lieberman and Herb Kohl, addressed the growing public concern regarding the irresponsible marketing of violent video games to minors. Congress deemed the actions by both companies unacceptable; the hearings asked video game publishers if they were peddling inappropriate content to their audiences. Between the panel of experts on both sides of the issue, both Nintendo and SEGA—intense competitors at the time—took swipes at each other, often resorting to name-calling. Threatened with the passage of a Video Games Ratings Act, the major game developers finally put aside their differences and came up with a solution in the Interactive Digital Software Association (later the Entertainment Software Association ), which would administer the ESRB. 2. SIX RATING CATEGORIES Initially, the ESRB began with five categories: Early Childhood (eC), Kids to Adults (K-A), Teen (T), Mature (M), and Adults Only (AO). Since then, the ESRB has redefined each category and their descriptors as the process became more polished. The ESRB did not want to mimic the Motion Picture Association ratings, since video games are more interactive in nature. The board spends a significant amount of time every year continually refining its content descriptors through consultations with parents, educators, and other experts. As such, the ESRB dumped the “Kids to Adults” rating and replaced it with Everyone (E). An additional rating came later: Everyone 10+ (E10+). There are currently just over thirty different content descriptors that refer to potentially inappropriate content such as gambling, smoking, language, sex, violence, and drug use, among others. 3. RATINGS MAY CHANGE BASED ON INTERIOR CONTENT It is important to note that the ESRB addresses only the content originally created by the publisher, not additional 194 Games’ Most Wanted™ material that is player-created or that comes from a thirdparty source. This mainly applies to those games played online with others, hence the common “Online Interactions Not Rated by the ESRB” screen during the title sequence. However, the ESRB does in fact consider content that is contained within the game, even if the code was discarded during development. If content can be unlocked and accessed through the original game, it can alter or change the game’s rating. The most famous example of this is the Hot Coffee mini game hidden within Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The sex-related mini game was released in all versions of the game, though it was inaccessible by players unless they used a third-party cheat device to unlock it. Due to Hot Coffee , the entire game, originally rated M, was re-evaluated by the ESRB and the rating changed to AO. The precedent is now set: game ratings may change due to external factors such as third-party cheat devices, so game developers have to pay more attention to any discarded code that remains within the game. Rockstar, the publisher of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas , later disabled the modification and rereleased the game under a new title, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Second Edition. The new edition was evaluated...