How the ESRB Works

In recent years the video game industry has come under fire from parents and legislators, largely because of the possible connection between game violence and real violence committed by children. This controversy has sparked a lot of discussion around placing legal restrictions on video game content.

The creation of the ESRB was in part an attempt to avoid these legal restrictions by adopting voluntary, industry-sanctioned controls. This follows several precedents in other media industries.

The Motion Picture Association of America followed the same course when it adopted its own ratings system in 1968 (administered by the Classification and Ratings System, or CARA). In the 1980s, the music industry began voluntarily placing "Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics" stickers on CDs containing strong or violent language. In 1954 the publication "Seduction of the Innocent" proclaimed that comic books were twisting the minds of America's youth. A Congressional committee investigated, threatened legal control, and the comic book industry quickly formed the Comics Code Authority. The CCA had a long list of elements that could not be included in comic books, such as drug use, nudity, negative portrayals of authority figures, and poor grammar. Since the 1990s, CCA guidelines have been generally abandoned by major comic publishers. Marvel Comics adopted its own ratings system in 2001.

Have ESRB ratings actually helped shield the video game industry from laws that restrict game sales? Not entirely. At the state and county levels, legislators have proposed and even passed laws that require parental warning labels on certain games and result in fines or jail time for retailers who sell games to children. These laws have been repeatedly overturned by the court system, however. The rules defining which games can't be sold to minors are so hard to decipher that retailers have a difficult time determining if they're breaking the law. Courts have also concluded that the laws violate the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. In 2003, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that video games are on par with other forms of literature, including music, books, and television shows, and are therefore protected by the First Amendment [ref].

Next, we'll see if ratings have any effect on sales.

The most effective regulator of video game content has been the ESRB itself. According to its Web site, "The ESRB is empowered to compel corrective actions and impose a wide range of sanctions, including monetary fines. Corrective actions can include pulling advertising until ratings information can be corrected, re-stickering packaging with correct ratings information, recalling the product, and other steps the publisher must take" [ref].

A game publisher could circumvent the ESRB system entirely by releasing a game without submitting it to the rating process. They could not place a false rating on the game, since the ESRB's rating symbols are trademarked. The game box would simply have no rating symbol, unless the publisher decided to place their own rating on it. However, most major retailers refuse to carry games that don't have official ESRB ratings.

Games that receive an Adults Only rating face a similar problem. But these games are not usually marketed to the general public, and are rarely distributed through major retailers. If some stores stop carrying games with M ratings, more publishers would take notice, and there could be a noticeable effect on the content of future games. When Congress pressured the film industry to stop marketing R-rated movies to teens and children, studios went to great lengths to get a PG-13 rating for films they would otherwise have released with an R because they feared losing an entire segment of their audience.

In the absence of such drastic measures, it seems that a game's rating has little effect on overall sales. In 2004, the ESRB rated 1,036 games. Most of them were rated E or T:

2004 sales figures for video games are very similar -- in fact, games rated M seem to sell slightly better than other games, when compared to the percentage of games released:

The ESA reports that the average game buyer was 39 years old, which indicates that parents are usually purchasing games for their children. They also state: "Game players under the age of 18 report that they get their parent's permission 83 percent of the time before purchasing a computer or video game" [ref].

Next, we'll discuss a recent video game controversy.

In early 2005 it was revealed that the game "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" contained a graphic sexual mini-game (dubbed "hot coffee") not considered in the game's M rating. The mini-game was apparently part of some preliminary work done for the game, but was not intended to be viewable by consumers. Such work is often partially completed and then left out of the game's final release, much like deleted scenes in a movie. For some reason this content was left on the game disk, although normally players couldn't access it.

Originally Rockstar Games, developer of "Grand Theft Auto," claimed that the scenes were created by a third-party. But some fans of the game soon discovered that the explicit content could be unlocked by downloading a special modification from the Internet. With this modification, the main character could engage in sex with a girlfriend. The "hot coffee" nickname comes from her opening line, in which she asks if he'd like to come in for coffee. Rockstar Games had to admit that they'd created the content.

When the news of this hidden mini-game became public knowledge, publisher Take-Two Software was taken to task. The ESRB re-evaluated the game and changed the rating to AO, the most high-profile game ever to receive that rating. Take-Two also released patches so that players with older versions of the game could no longer access "hot coffee." Although the details were not made public, the ESRB probably sanctioned the company for violating the terms of the rating system.

In June 2006, Take-Two Software and "Grand Theft Auto" developer Rockstar Games settled with the Federal Trade Commission over the scenes. The FTC ordered the companies to notify consumers of sexual content in future games and not to misrepresent rating or content descriptions. If the companies violate this order, they face fines of up to $11,000 per violation.Civil cases are still pending.

The ESRB also received criticism. California state assembly member Leland Yee said in a press release, "Clearly the ESRB has a conflict of interest in rating these games, plain and simple, parents cannot trust the ESRB to rate games appropriately or the industry to look out for our children's best interests" [ref]. Since the ESRB depends on video footage of the game sent to them by Rockstar, and Rockstar obviously did not include the hidden footage, the raters could only assign a rating based on the information they had.

For more information on the ESRB and related topics, check out the links on the next page.