Sex, lies and videogames
Published: 23 Aug 2005 15:00 BST
...today is 30, and our industry has very strict rules about marketing, targeting marketing to children and making sure no products rated inappropriate for children are marketed to them. We enforce those guidelines very strictly and very actively, so I think that yes, there are different standards that are being applied, and I think most of the time that's based out of [people] just not being familiar with the facts and not being gamers themselves.
Are there studies about how the ratings resonate with parents?
We do nationwide research with Peter Hart, a very well-respected opinion polling company. [Hart found] that 54 percent of parents never allow their children to play Mature-rated games, while 37 percent sometimes do, which says that the overwhelming majority of parents are limiting what their kids are playing and making choices that are appropriate for their own children. Eighty-three percent of parents agree with the ratings that we assign and another 5 percent actually think we're being too strict. In a country as diverse as ours, I would say that those statistics indicate a high success rate for the rating system.
There was a study out the other day showing that there was no provable link between video games and violence. What do you think of that?
Well, if you look at the research on this subject — the surgeon general did one back in 2000; various courts have done them in the state of Washington; and the government of Australia has done similar surveys — and no organisation of any stature has concluded that there is a causal relationship between playing video games and behaviour, particularly when it comes to violent behaviour.
And yet there's this perception that video games lead to violence.
If you look at the crime statistics over the last 10 years, where you've had the largest increase in penetration of games in this country, you've seen that crime has dropped precipitously, whereas playing video games has increased exponentially. It suggests that actually there has been a drop in criminal behaviour since the introduction of video games.
So the popular perception is wrong?
Back to the political argument. If you want to create a picture that's not based on fact, you can draw that picture, but it's not based on fact. The media reports what they want to report, and the politicians say what they want to say, and people who are critics of the industry will continue to be critics of the industry.
Going back to the "GTA" situation, do you think in the aftermath, there will be changes to the way the ESRB rates games or examines them?
Well the criteria have not changed nor will they change for rating assignments. The one thing that will change is that, particularly for PC games, publishers will be required to disclose all pertinent content, whether it's playable or not, that ships with the disc. That doesn't mean that...
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3 comments
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Well, let me see if got it. If the game ONLY showe... George -
The rating was probably increased because it... Anonymous -
George: No-one has said the game would not be... Peter Manstead (a Brit)
