NIMF Video Game Report Card -A year in review

Yesterday, the National Institute on Media and the Family released their yearly report card evaluating the videogame industry and family interaction with it.

The big news? Everybody fails, especially videogame retailers who failed to educate parents about the ESRB rating system.

Well, not everybody failed, but very few categories passed with flying colors. Here's the main breakdown:

• Parental Involvement: C
• ESRB Rating Education: B-
• Retailer Policies: C-
• Retailer Ratings Enforcement
• National Retailers: D
• Specialty Stores: B
• Rental Stores: F
• The Gaming Industry: C
• ESRB Ratings: C+
  

One out of three retailers fails to educate customers about the ESRB ratings system. NIMF also critiqued national retailer and rental stores, which tend to be chain stores for the most part (i.e. Gamestop, GameCrazy), for not enforcing ESRB ratings and selling M-rated games (for age 17+) to underage children.

While this isn't the main focus, many younger employees at retailers are more likely to allow underage kids to purchase games, the report card said. The report went on to recommend that employees are better educated about ratings in order to fix this problem. But, trust me, even if these "younger employees" are "more educated about ratings" they're still probably not going to disallow the sale of M-rated games to underage kids. It's simply not the cool thing to do at that age, and it never will be.

However, retailers selling to underage kids does undermine the ratings system, which, according to the report card, a lot of parents don't understand.

An ABC Report on NIMF's report card interviewed a mom in a game store.

"I don't understand any of this," she said with a shrug. "I just come here because it's on the wish list."

The NIMF report card recommends a universal ratings system that can apply to games, movies, TV, etc. to remedy this because parents understand the TV and movie rating system more. Hm, maybe they understand that more because the movie system because they grew up with it and the TV ratings because they actually watch TV, as opposed to playing videogames. Just a thought.

It makes me wonder whether a universal rating system would be practical. Is violence really the same across all media?

The report also said parental involvement should be higher and, on that point, I agree. I always wonder if it's credible for me to be talking about being a parent when I am not. I know some parents are involved in the games their kids play and I think that's awesome. I know some parents don't give an effin' Tetris block about what their kids play, and that's sad. But the current ESRB system depends on parents to be conscientous of what they and their kids are purchasing, especially because of the report's findings on retailers.

Here's some interesting data from the survey about kids purchasing M-rated games and parental involvement. I knew it would be bad, but I didn't think I would see these numbers:
I think the statistic that surprised me the most was the percentage of how many kids purchased an M-rated game with their parents' money while their parent was with them. Seriously, this is why games like Manhunt 2 get made into such a big deal because we need to "protect the children" who are bypassing rules and ratings to get games not meant for them.

I was hoping I'd never have to hear about the accursed Manhunt 2 again, but the report talked about it for a pretty good deal, scolding ESRB for leaving loopholes and game developers for exploiting them.

Here's a Manhunt 2 refresher: Manhunt 2, made by the same company who made Grand Theft Auto games, first received an Adults-Only rating from ESRB. The AO rating is the retail kiss-of-death because game stores will not carry AO titles (it's morally unacceptable, again, because of the children). So, Manhunt 2 was edited and re-submitted to ESRB. It got its Mature rating. The day of the release, hackers found you could still access the supposedly edited content by hacking the game code (which is no easy feat; not terribly hard to figure out, but it definitely takes some effort. Chaos ensued, ESRB took a bad rap, and Manhunt 2 made the games industry look really bad.

This is what the report had to say about it:

Sadly, the problem of hidden or blurred content which is inappropriate for kids is not a new issue and undermines the ESRB rating.

Well, they're right--it's not a new issue (remember Hot Coffee?). But that's not the interesting part of this quote. This is:

the problem of hidden or blurred content which is inappropriate for kids

Whether this content is inappropriate for kids is a moot point. The Manhunt 2 and Hot Coffee incidents mentioned in the report dealt with games on the super-fine line between Mature and Adults-Only ratings. Kids should not be playing these games anyway--the Mature rating is 17+ and the Adults-Only rating is 18+. And what does the one-year difference matter between Mature content and AO content? When I turned 18 and legally became an adult, I was hardly any different from when I was 17. I rest my rant and my case.

I found the NIMF report card makes a few morally-charged mountains out of molehills. True, the Manhunt 2 fiasco wasn't good for any party involved (except for Take 2, the game's publisher, who undoubtedly benefited from free advertising generated by controversy).

But they picked on "the supposedly family-friendly" Nintendo Wii for offering a special edition, blood-splatted, Manhunt 2 Wii in one promotional contest. Is it really such a crime for Nintendo to step out of their happy, sugar-coated, 5-year-old friendly box? Nintendo does have older gamer fans (i.e. me). And the contest was hosted by the game's creator, Rockstar (R*). I'm not exactly sure, but because it was on R*'s official site and R* is listed as the official sponsor, Nintendo probably had nothing to do with it.

In NIMF's assessment of the videogame industry, they commend Microsoft for more family-oriented parental control options, shame Nintendo for the blood-spattered special edition Wii, but make no mention of Sony.

Lastly, there was something that scared me in the report card. In the ESRB Rating Education section, NIMF applauded and further encouraged the involvement of state government officials in spreading the word about ESRB. Doling out public service announcements for ESRB is no big deal, but anytime government involvement gets near videogames, I still cringe. I don't want any regulations on games from the government that correct problems that could have been solved by parenting.

All-in-all the report card found some pretty evident flaws in the game industry. But there are also a few flaws in the report card. To see the report card yourself, see the links below.

You can download the report card here. (PDF format)
The official website of NIMF can be found here.