ESA President Douglas Lowenstein has replied to the recently announced ‘Truth in Video Game Rating Act’ which would require the ESRB to play to entire games before applying a rating.
GameDaily BIZ contacted Entertainment Software Association President Doug Lowenstein for comment about the latest bill to hit congress. He does not feel that the current proposal would serve families, saying that, “For example, the proposal that every video game be played through in its entirety before a rating is issued means that the only people rating games will be professional gamers with the skills necessary to play through games that can take more than 100 hours and who are not likely to be representative of the mainstream American parent.
“According to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, parents said that among all entertainment rating systems (TV, movies, music and games), the ESRB ratings are the most useful. It is not broken. Neither is it perfect and we are always exploring ways to ensure it retains the respect it has earned from American families.”
The survey Mr.Lowenstein references was published in 2002, here are the findings of the survey at the time.
A national survey of 800 parents of children ages 2-17 conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, asked whether parents “ever” used the ratings system for videos games to help guide their families’ choices. The survey found that 59% of parents said they did use the system, while 39 percent said they did not. The survey also found that 52 percent of those who had used the system found it “very useful” while 41 percent said it was “somewhat useful,” with 3 percent responding “not too useful,” and 3 percent found the system “not all all useful.”
No specific mention could be found of the survey claiming the ESRB’s system was the “most useful” of the bunch.
