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WASHINGTON – The video game industry needs to toughen its standards for rating violent games, a group of senators including Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., said Monday.
Reacting to the “mature” rating of “Manhunt 2” – an upgrade from “adult only” after the game’s publisher blurred some of the violent parts – the lawmakers said it’s time to review the “robustness” of the ratings process.
A spokesman for the Entertainment Software Ratings Board would not confirm Monday that the original rating of the game was “adults only,” but a statement from the agency in August said the “mature” rating was issued after the game was modified. The board said the revised “Manhunt 2” has “intense violence, blood and gore, strong language, strong sexual content and use of drugs.”
The video game industry created the board to evaluate video games based on their levels of violence, gore, sexual content and strong language. Ratings range from “early childhood” to “adults only.” The system is voluntary, and courts have ruled that it is not legal to ban the sale of video games to children.
After the original version of “Manhunt 2” was leaked over the Internet, the senators said it’s time for the industry to rethink its procedures.
“We have consistently urged parents to pay attention to the (board’s) rating system. We must ensure that parents can rely on the consistency and accuracy of those ratings,” they wrote to the president of the Entertainment Software Ratings Board.
The lawmakers complained that the game lets children act out “each of the many graphic torture scenes and murders.”
Eliot Mizrachi, spokesman for the ratings board, said the group had received the letter and would respond to it. He said the board had no other comment.
Bayh and Sens. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and Sam Brownback, R-Kan., quoted a psychologist who said that because “Manhunt 2” players use realistic motions to act out the torture and murder scenes of the game, “you’re basically teaching a child the behavioral sequence of killing.”
The lawmakers said the ratings board should take the acting-out aspect of games into account when issuing ratings.
They also complained that “there appears to be a lack of information, to the public and developers, why a particular rating is given or changed. … Why is information regarding rating changes or reasons for decisions unavailable, except for content descriptors, to the public?”
When it gave “Manhunt 2” a “mature” rating, board President Patricia Vance said “publishers submit game content to the ESRB on a confidential basis. It is simply not our place to reveal specific details about the content we have reviewed, particularly when it involves a product yet to be released, let alone when it involves one that likely never will be. What can be said is that the changes that were made to the game, including the depictions themselves and the context in which those depictions were presented, were sufficient to warrant the assignment of an M (Mature 17+) rating by our raters.”
In their letter to Vance, the senators said the need for confidentiality after the game shows up on store shelves “is no longer compelling.”
They said some people have speculated that video game publishers submit a version to the board, get an “adults only” rating and the publicity that comes with that, then modify the game to win a “mature” rating so the game can be sold to teens. They said a more transparent process “might protect the ESRB from being used in this manner.”
In her August statement about the “Manhunt 2” rating, Vance said that “rather than publicly second-guessing what is unmistakably a strong warning to parents about the suitability of a particular game for children, … we feel a more productive tack would be to join us, as many other elected officials have, in encouraging parents to take the ratings seriously when buying games for their children.”
sylviasmith@jg.net
