Holiday Tip: Understanding Video Game Ratings

According to the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board), more than half of the video games sold all year get sold at the holidays. So it's a good time to be thinking about how games get rated. Most of you have probably seen the six ratings that adorn gaming packaging. Like the motion picture ratings, there's a scale ranging from things appropriate for young children through adults only.

• EC is for Early Childhood (ages 3 and older)
• E is for Everyone (ages 6 and older)
• E+10 is for tweeners ages 10 and older
• T is for Teen (ages 13 and older)
• M is Mature (ages 17 and older)
• AO is for Adults Only
• RP is Rating Pending

As you go up in age ratings, the games may contain incremental increases in the doses of anything from violence and foul language to nudity, gambling, drug references, and more.

Who assigns these ratings? The ESRB, a not-for-profit, self-regulating group, oversees the process, which involves multiple steps. First, a game publisher fills out a questionnaire detailing any content that is pertinent to receiving a rating. The publisher submits the questionnaire along with a videotape that contains selected scenes from the game.

The questionaire and video are then compared for completeness. Next, a pool of part-time reviewers reviews the video. At least three raters look at each video submitted. When a publisher receives a rating it disagrees with, it can appeal or revise the game and resubmit the application. Once the game is completely coded, the ESRB does some spot checks, on some but not all, to confirm packaging and plays the final version to verify the information.

The ESRB cautions that the game ratings are meant as a guide. Every family has its own standards for what is inappropriate content, and different children are capable of handling things differently at the same age. Based on research it does each year, the ESRB says that 82 percent of the time, parents agree with the ratings the games receive. Five percent of the time, the parents actually think the ratings are too strict.

Two important things to remember: The online/interactive components of games are not part of the rating. So, for example, if your kids are playing the Sims and have the ability to go online and chat, the rating does not apply to the chat. Also, the rating is only one component. Parents who want more details about why a game gets a specific rating can read a descriptive label on the package that sheds some light on why the game received the rating it did.