Extremely Suspicious Reality Bias -
November 30, 2000 - Chris Jones
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed
within this column are those of the participants and the
moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the
GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive
material afoot. Did you know the notation in a Simpsons script for "D'oh!"
is *annoyed grunt*? Sure you did. Don't say we didn't warn you.
I called yesterday's column After Midnight because so many
people said they played games at night, and yet I forgot to print any of
those letters.
D'oh!
Onward.
| A sad pathetic waste of
time |
| Columnist who can't come up with on his own topics on thusday (aka Chris
Jones),
The ESRB is a sad, pathetic waste of time. Now with that out of the way, let
me explain the mentality of the ESRB.
Jugde 1: *thinks* Hmmm, this game is about running around and killing
magical monsters...... "T-Rating. Next!"
Judge 2: *thinks* This game has a lot of reading, and there's probably some
risque content........ "T-Rating. Next!"
Get my point? Now, 10-45 minutes of a "video" is not, let me repeat, NOT
enough for *any* RPG. But, in a pitful defence of the ESRB, it is for
most/many games. A fighter could be summed up in that time, or a racer could
too, but not an RPG.
How can this be remidied? In its current form it can't, but maybe institute
a by-gamers-for-gamers kind of thing. But then again, since that won't ever
happen, our best hope is that the ESRB has someone who can translate "game to
human" or at least "game to moronic adult"
Rayeth,
The ony gamer whose parents actually look at the ESRB's ratings.... |
The problem with a by-gamers-for-gamers system is that it likely
wouldn't be sensitive to the very concerns that prompted the ESRB
getting set up in the first place. I personally don't think there's
anything "evil" about controlling a character that uses magic, and I
seriously doubt any of you do either. But there are parents out there who
feel that way, and like it or not, they're vocal, they pay taxes, and
they vote. Hence the reason we have the ESRB.
Although, incidentally, if there are any fundamentalist types out
there who think that Vivi is evil, please send in a letter, I'm
sure we'd all get a big kick out of it.
... and now my mailbox will be filled with a bunch of bored college kids
pretending to be conservative fundamentalists. Ah well, can't be
helped.
| We demand to be graded
by PhDs! |
| The current game rating system is a load of bunk. The part that irks me is
how the rating board is made up of "people of all types, randomly selected."
Regardless of what anyone says, everyone's opinion does NOT hold equal value.
With this system, an illiterate shlub's opinion holds as much weight as a
college professors. Am I the only person who sees something wrong with that?
All I ask for is intelligent people on the board. I'm sure there are some
good people on it, but the random selection process cancels out their
influence.
-end rant- |
I made the same argument once upon a time, but then I realized that
it's somewhat elitist, and in a sense it's the same problem as the
first letter from a different angle. A conservative auto worker from
Flint, Michigan may not realize that killing an angel isn't
satanic, it's just very, very Japanese (and that was hyperbole, before I
get any letters about it). But it doesn't matter.
He's got a right to raise his kids the way he wants, and opinions like
his need to be represented if the system's gonna have any validity
across the whole demographic. It'd be great if we could set it up so
that only the "right kind" of people could vote on games, but in
general attempts to have only the "right kind" of people do anything
have ended very badly, so it's probably just as well.
| The only voice of
dissent |
|
Chris,
I'm going to provide what may be one of the only voices of dissent here: I
don't see anything wrong with the way games are rated under the current
system.
The ESRB ratings have absolutely nothing to do with gamePLAY. They simply
provide a guide, for parents, of the level of "mature" content in said game.
For that reason I believe that a videotape of key scenes and examples of more
explicit game moments is fine.
In all probability, the games are getting the exact same ratings they would
if a panel of parents played all the way through every game. This way saves
a lot of time and certainly a lot of money.
The rating system as it stands now isn't going to affect you or I in any
substantial way, unless more stores start "enforcing" it. (PROTIP: Video
game ratings are merely an informational guide and therefore you have NO
business "enforcing" them, whether you are a Wal-Mart clerk or a United
States senator.)
Chris Kohler |
Chris has a definite point here in that you really don't need to
see all of the 1000+ random battles that might be fought in a
typical RPG to get a feel for the game. What I would argue is that the
whole story of the game probably should be on tape, since story
elements should be judged in context. There's a big difference between
the hero killing the villain out of self defense and the hero killing
the villain just for the heck of it, but a lone FMV might not get that
point across.
| Wait, I thought that
other guy was the only voice of dissent... |
| Chris,
I think the existing setup of the ESRB is quite reasonable. Let's face it,
while the center of gravity of the videogaming audience may be sliding
upwards, a lot of people who play games are under eighteen. That means that
their acquisition (and retention) of games is probably contingent upon Mom
and Dad. Decapitating a zombie with a shotgun in Resident Evil might
harmless fun to thirteen year old Tim (who knows its just a game) but his
anxious father might fear the zombie is a stand-in for the school bully or
something. Fearing that his son is acting out some sort of violent revenge
fantasy, dad throws Resident Evil (a murder simulator) and the Playstation
away and starts sending Tim to a psychologist on a weekly basis to mend the
damage. That is probably the biggest reason why gamemakers have to take
into account the sensibilies of non-gamers (a category which also includes
politicians) as well as gamers. Another argument for nongamers sitting on
the ESRB is that games are rated for content and a nude woman or a man being
flayed alive can be recognized as such even by nongamers. Last but not
least, a lot time in rpgs is spend fighting monsters and walking around
dungeons (particularly in rpgs with random encounters). Does an evaluator
really need to explore ten towns, talk to five hundred townspeople, wander
through thirty dungeons and kill a thousand monsters in order to have an
accurate sense of the game? Or will footage of a handful of fights, a
couple of conversations, and a cinema or two suffice? While all rating
systems are subjective, and thus inherently arbitrary to some degree, I
think the existing system is intelligently structured and works quite
well.
- Mark |
I agree with just about all of this and really have no response... I
just put it in to set up the letter title.
| You'd think they'd
notice the same damn rodent in every game... |
|
The fastest, best, fairest way to show off a game to a bunch of ignorant
non-gamers is obviously to show them clips from 'Pokémon Snap' for every game
reviewed. I can see it now...
Dr. David Walsh: "And next, we have a 10-45 minute videotape of the game...
Illbleed."
Concerned Parent #1: "Oh, what a wretched, horrible name!"
Dr. David Dalsh: "I agree. But I guess we have to be fair for some
reason."
::Puts in tape. Pictures of various Pokémon come up on the screen in a
horribly slow-moving and tedious 45-minute video::
Concerned Parent #2: "Aww... that was so CUTE! I give it an 'E' rating,
suitable for EVERYONE!"
Concerned Parent #1: "I couldn't agree more! And to think of how biased and
ignorant I was before! 'Illbleed' is a wonderful game! But.. that
name.."
And five months later I pick up my copy of the new survival-horror game
'Happy Picture Land'. See. It all works out in the end.
chris |
No response to this either, except that I'm starting to see too many
people named Chris is this column. That's it, no more Chrises!
In the end, there can be only one!
| It's a family thing,
you wouldn't understand |
|
Yeah I know this is rightly for yesterday's column, but I couldn't help but
notice that 95% of the replies you received were something like "I like to play
when no one is around," etc, etc.
I suppose my sisters and I are anomalies. We always play RPGs together.
One of us is the active player while the other two watch. Then we let someone
else play for awhile. Often we end up playing three different RPGs, which will
allow for greater variety in what the other two are watching. I suppose it seems
strange, but it's always been a tradition among us.
It all started one day when we were given a Super Famicom. Our parents must
have believed that three girls would soon lose interest in such a device, but
unfortunately for them, we were totally engrossed by Mario jumping across the
screen. Then we played Zelda, Final Fantasy, and many other titles.
Now that my sisters are older (they're 16 while I'm the eldest at 19,) and less
of the rabid gamer that I've remained, they'll still come up and sit in my room
watching me play once in awhile, ever eager to remain up to date with the plot
of my newest shiny RPG. They do still play however, and my one sister is currently
engrossed in Tactics Ogre for the fourth of fifth time. Damn that's a fine game.
~Zosia Arushan, aka Dragona Akehi |
I did have a letter set up yesterday that talked about how much
someone else enjoyed playing RPGs in particular with their close
friends, but it got cut for length reasons. So viola, here's a
replacement representation. Meantime I have noticed that when I
get letters like this about playing RPGs in a group, they're often
about families, either between siblings or as a husband and wife deal.
I guess there's nothing like building family unity like destroying a
few angel final bosses...
And continuing today's trend of trying to anticipate what letters
I'll get as a result of this column, it was probably a mistake to print
this letter, because now I'll get flooded with requests to get hooked
up with "those teenage RPG-player sister chicks".
| Synchronicity |
|
Yo, Chris!
Reading your comment about an album syncing up with FF7 like DSOTM syncs with Oz
intially made me snort with derision. "Ha!" I thought. "RPGs are non-linear!
You'd have to play the game in a specific order and do a certain number of
actions!"
Then I realized the secret I was sitting on. If we just assume that there is
such an album, and we can find some way of figuring out what parts we're
supposed to be doing when, and further refine that to get individual button
presses per lyric... it might just be that we can finally see the Leo and Aeris
marriage scene!
We'd better get started testing CDs. I'll start with my Frankie Yankovic polka
collection.
Ian |
Go to it, Ian... I'm sure it'll only take you a few centuries to find
some random convergence of Sgt. Pepper and Super Mario 3. Do let us
know how that works out, won't you?
| I got one of these |
|
You're going to get a hundred of these. I'm probably not even the first. But nobody wrote "the Chuang Tzu." Chuang Tzu was the guy. He's dead though. |
I stand corrected, tho I could have sworn I read something about the
work having just one author being in dispute. Either way, I probably
don't have to worry about a bunch of ancient Chinese philosophers, so
it's a moot point.
| The litany of
hypocrisy, AKA the oversized letter of the week |
| Chris:
I was reading an article in some magazine, probably NextGen, about the whole
Congressional hearing hoopla, and I seem to recall them mentioning that the
ESRB ratings are set by people outside the gaming industry. The idea being
that they will have less bias, and more normal standards for determining the
ratings than your average gamer.
The really obvious and amusing fact about the ESRB ratings is just how much
they don't work. And I'm not even talking about the fact that stores don't
enforce them, and parents rarely pay attention to them. For instance, if the
gamer doesn't play through the whole game, including all the secrets, the
video tape has no chance of being fair (Lunar:SSSC--chick bathing scenes).
Then, if the gamer has any bias, he could intentionally leave out the
naughtiest/nastiest bits. Next, if the portions of the video are taken out
of context, rating could be skewed (for instance, the difference between
zombie brains and the brains of little school-girls being blown to
smithereens). Finally, if the reviewers are biased, the game may receive
ratings that are inappropriate, or fail to receive appropriate ratings.
And what, after all, makes a rating appropriate? Not even the ESRB
knows.
It comes as no surprise to most that Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (PSX) nabs a
mature rating for Animated Blood & Gore and Animated Violence. The funny
thing is, Parasite Eve 2 nabs the same mature rating for the same content
descriptors, despite the fact that I only remember seeing blood in PE2 once
(and corpses melt/fade away, a la FF7), where in RE3, you leave bloody
corpses all over the place. The difference here indicates at least that the
rating system is not sensitive enough to distinguish between the bloody
deaths of obviously human-like creatures and the merely gorey disappearance
of beast-like creatures.
The system fails more obviously when you look at very similar games.
Parasite Eve 2, as I said, got a mature rating for animated blood and gore,
and animated violence. Parasite Eve, on the other hand, apparantly had no
blood and gore. Strangely, it also got a mature rating, perhaps because of
its mature sexual themes. What? You don't remember anything in PE that would
warrant the mature sexual themes descriptor? Neither do I. I do remember Aya
in the shower in PE2, and Aya in bed, wearing only a t-shirt--not obviously
sexual situations, but worth, I'd think, at least a "suggestive themes".
Nope.
And that's not all. Apparantly, Azure Dreams nabbed an E (for Everyone), for
mild animated violence and mild language, where Final Fantasy IX gets a T
(13+) for animated violence and mild language. The difference between mild
animated violence and animated violence, incidentally, is between "unsafe or
hazardous acts or violent situations" (mild) and "aggressive conflict". You
may be able to split that hair. I certainly can't. And apparantly the ESRB
raters can't either: All of the recent FF games except 7 and Anthology had
animated, rather than mild animated violence. This could suggest that the
difference between aggressive conflict and merely violent situations is one
of graphical detail, except that the Final Fantasy 7 demo disk won the more
serious "animated violence" rating. The demo contained "aggressive
conflict," where the game only had "violent situations". Huh?
On top of that, there are quite a few titles in the ESRB searchable index
that got E ratings for having animated (not mild) violence and mild
language--exactly like FF9. But FF9 is only for teens. It might turn your
12-year-old nephew into a killer.
--DarkLao, whose point is only that it doesn't matter who's doing the
ratings if the criteria are so subjective--it ain't gonna work. |
Ok, any review will be biased, and mistakes will be made. I'm not
gonna sit here and pretend that the ESRB is infallible - Metal Gear
Solid on the GBC being ranked E is enough to prove otherwise. What I
will say is that no rating can probably be totally objective, because
every game (or movie) is gonna be different. We're not testing
1,000,000 identical computer chips here, we're trying to determine if
13 year olds should be able to play Fear Effect. Which the ESRB does
moderately well, if not perfectly. I'd rate the ratings board a C+, at
this point.
And I'm pretty sure PE1 got a Mature rating for the "Eve gives
birth" scene, but it's been a while.
| Resident Evil 4,
rated... E! Yeah, that's the ticket... |
|
Hah, parents, video tape, yeah right. The easiest thing would probably just
be to have the game makers rate their own games. Just dont let magazines
publisize it. The oblivious parents will go on to believe whatever they
want, and we will get games released sooner (theoretically). Either that or
put a paper bag over someones head, spin them around for a few minutes and
tell them to pin a tail on the rating they want. It would be at least as
accurate as what we get these days.
-loserkid. |
Last time I'll defend the ESRB for a while, I swear, but it's worth
pointing out that as arbitrary as the system may seem on this end, it
does protect us from further censorship. During the
latest "violence in Hollywood" crisis, game makers were the only ones
able to point out a detailed, (somewhat) accurate, self-imposed
ranking system. Even Joe Lieberman gave an interview where he praised
the system as being well done, so if it gives the appearance of doing
what's needed, we probably shouldn't knock it too much.
| Be afraid... be very
afraid... |
|
Chris,
I don't know if you've noticed but the two year anniversary of the column
was almost two months ago, on October 30! Heck it's been two years now
for the entire site, and no one's even mentioned it. Well I would just
like to say congratulations to everyone at the site and I hope that I can
enjoy the site for many more.
In celebration of this grand event I've been trying to come up with an appropriate
way to show my gratitude. And you have given me the idea I needed. In
yesterday's column you mentioned that you thought that you had become the
longest running columnist by number of columns written . . . while I've
taken the time to compile a list of each person who's hosted and how many times.
I went into the archives and counted them all and here is the list (numbers probably
aren't exact but they are close).
10t.)Tamzen Marie Baker < 2 >
10t.)Ed McGlothlin < 2 >
9.)Andrew Vestal < 3 >
8.)Jeremy Steimel < 4 >
7.)Nich Maragos < 5 >
6.)Brian Glick < 7 >
5.)Fritz Fraundorf < 8 >
4.)Andrew Kaufmann(AK) < 91 >
3.)Drew Cosner < 142 >
2.)Allan Milligan < 154 >
And the #1 longest running host is . . .
1.)Chris Jones < 155 >
Wow! What timing! Last night's column was actually the one that put you over
the top. You deserve some kind of a award.
-e, and yes I really did count all the columns in the archives and November 2000 (which aren't in there yet) |
Er...ok. Cool. This letter is nothing but an excuse for a massive
ego trip, but what the heck. Go me, I rule! Etc.
Now all I have to worry about is Allan or Drew becoming enraged
that I've overtaken them and returning to kick my sorry ass with their
infinitely superior wit and sarcasm... but I have no regrets. It's
been a good run, whatever happens. And, to be fair,
if you factor in their columns for other sites, AK probably still has
the advantage over me and Drew and Allan certainly do.
For now.
Closing Comments:
The time has come to talk of many things, so send in whatever.
Adios.
-Chris Jones, didn't plan for
yesterday's column to work out that way. Really. |
