Think Tank Issues Study on Video Game Ratings

Corduroy1982

Admittedly, I'm one of the guys at the think tank that wrote this paper, but everyone who's been following the presidential debates and recent announcements by Congressmen Baca and Wolf pressuring the ESRB to change its rating system, should enjoy this study. The message needs to be loud and clear to Capitol Hill, "Keep your hands off our games!"

You can read it at the Competitive Enterprise Institute website.

Or check out the write-up at GamePolitics.com, where they have a pretty good discussion going in the comments section.

If you like it, please digg it.

YodaTuna

Less site whoring, more OP please.

Salvation122

It's an interesting read. The fact that ESRB ratings very clearly mark why the game recieved its rating is often overlooked, and I find it kind of amusing that the CARA system has adopted the idea in the past couple years.

electricitylikesme

YodaTuna wrote: »

Less site whoring, more OP please.

Yeah I'm going to need a tl;dr before I read any sort of study on videogames.

Corduroy1982

Salvation122,

The CARA system is amusing because they don't use a list of possible descriptions like the ESRB, but instead seem to write them anew for every movie that they rate, simply describing it.

One of the comments on GamePolitics.com mentioned that the rating for Twister was accompanied with a descirption that read:

Violent depictions of really bad weather.

Absolutely silly. It would be hilarious, however, if this did go into some giant lexicon of ratings tags and was trotted back out for Twister II or a new thriller called Hail. I could see it being a Kevin Bacon vehicle.