Can we influence the ESRB rating of B&S?

[Mr. Wentworth]

I had just added a comment to another thread suggesting folks could still log in to submit a support request after Nov 30th by logging in at http://ncsoft.com. I went to the site and tried my login to verify I was able to do so myself. So, while I was on the NCsoft site I hit the B&S link to see if there was anything new I could dislike. I hadn't been on that site before and it prompted me for my date of birth...

Not caring to provide real info, I put in 01/01/2000 and was declined. I figured, Okay, that was dumb. I'd be 12 and I could imagine that there would be a 13+ requirement like Facebook which isn't all that surprising to see on the web these days. I persisted and entered 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, 1995 and finally 1994 before it granted me permission to view the B&S website. 18 YEARS OLD! That's how old you have to be to view the game's WEBSITE. So, clearly this is not a family friendly game, nor is it a game intended for non-adults. What other kinds of websites are out there which require you to declare that you are 18 or older before proceeding to view their content? . . . I'm sure you catch my meaning.

Next, I went to the FAQ section on the B&S site and scrolled to the bottom to find this.

What ESRB rating does NCSOFT anticipate for Blade & Soul? Some of the content seems fairly mature. Will this impact sales forecasts?
The content rating of Blade & Soul is still pending. For more information about ESRB ratings, please visit the ESRB website.

Conveniently, the ESRB website was linked here. And they have a handy contact form available as well.

I know the ESRB has their own process for reviewing and rating games, but perhaps this is another pain point we can irritate. It seems apparent that the content of the B&S website is adult-only, so why would we expect the game content to be any different? We should let the ESRB know that we firmly believe B&S must only be considered for the ADULTS ONLY rating.

Have at it!

[Surelle]

Problem being that the ESRB already has quite stringent rules that dictate the lines between ratings.  And unless the actual game play is even worse than Grand Theft Auto 4's (you can do things like rape a hooker, stab her to death and then throw her in the brink, or run around with your character's arm blown off, etc.) then you're never going to get them to go beyond M for Mature, which in fact is what Grand Theft Auto's rating is.  Heck, you can run around buck naked in Age of Conan, with a ton of gore and decapitations going on to boot, and it's still got an M rating.

And B & S just seems like another cheesy Korean grind fest with sleazily dressed characters. 

In the long run I think we're better off putting our efforts into continuing to spread the word to the gaming public at large via public blogs, forums and twitters/facebooks about what NCSoft is really like to deal with as a service provider, how poorly they support their titles in the west and EU, and how often they shut them down.  Why invest money and time into a company that will pull the rug out from under you when you least expect it? 

And that info made public will do them a lot more long-term (or never ending) damage than any attempts to derail one game will.

[TimtheEnchanter]

Isn't B&S a gore-fest anyhow, earning it Mature even without the gratuitous displays?

How many Adults Only games have there been? Besides the obvious genre of games I mean.

[Valjean]

The ESRB tends to be more prudish than not, so I'm confident that they'll make NCsoft jump through hoops to get even an M rating.

[Xieveral]

That could backfire and attract sales because of the rating. People will buy it to see if it lives up to the hype. Sure, they might drop the game soon after but that's still money in NCSoft's pocket.

It is better to call attention to the game's other flaws and illustrate it as something so lacking and mundane that it isn't even worth wasting disk space to play a free trial.

Rating systems are useless anyway. Few people actually abide by its suggested audience. Who here hasn't played M rated games and watched R rated movies well before they were the acceptable age to do so?

[P51mus]

Not caring to provide real info, I put in 01/01/2000 and was declined. I figured, Okay, that was dumb. I'd be 12 and I could imagine that there would be a 13+ requirement like Facebook which isn't all that surprising to see on the web these days. I persisted and entered 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, 1995 and finally 1994 before it granted me permission to view the B&S website. 18 YEARS OLD! That's how old you have to be to view the game's WEBSITE. So, clearly this is not a family friendly game, nor is it a game intended for non-adults. What other kinds of websites are out there which require you to declare that you are 18 or older before proceeding to view their content? . . . I'm sure you catch my meaning.

There are games on steam that have required me to do the age thing before looking at the store page.  One of those games is Borderlands 2.  All it really means is the game has a rating of mature, for one reason or another.

[Xieveral]

For the US? Not all that many to be honest.

I have heard that the "big name stores" (Walmart and BestBuy, and also possibly GameStop as well) will refuse to carry *any* title that gets the AO rating.

They might have it available for download though and from there all it takes is asking mom for her card and say you're buying "Hello Kitty Island Adventure DLC" >_<

I'd like to note that The Secret World is an MMO with a mature rating but mainly because of violence, language and an occult theme (and nude zombies, but that's to be expected of rotted corpses tossed around at sea, certainly nothing pinup worthy)

[dwturducken]

From the ESRB.org FAQ page:

Are all games and apps required to have a rating?

The rating system is voluntary, although virtually all video games that are sold at retail in the U.S. and Canada are rated by the ESRB. Many U.S. retailers, including most major chains, have policies to only stock or sell games that carry an ESRB rating, and console manufacturers require games that are published on their systems in the U.S. and Canada to be rated by ESRB.

Also, to paraphrase Ginger Lynn, if a movie shows a breast being sliced off, it garners an R rating, while someone shown kissing one garners an X. (Bearing in mind that she said this sometime in the 80s, and I wasn't supposed to be reading that magazine, then. :))

[JaguarX]

I think drawing attenton to their more mature rating will help them for free rather than have people stay away. Remember when GTA San Andreas when word got out about that secret scene, the sales skyrocketed. More people went out to buy the game to see what the fuss about when at the time they probably wasnt even going to bother purchasing it if no one mentioned that scene. I think it will inflate the population of the target and  hand money over to them when the intention was to keep people from spending money on it. And that console game where they added bounce to female chest and word got out, I think Dead or Alive and or Soul Calibur. When someone made a fuss, the sales once again for both game rose.

To tell you the truth I think COX was borderline for little kids online. While the boxed said teen, alot of stuff in game community was far from family friendly and I wouldnt have let my kid play not because of content but because of the environment created by players.

[TimtheEnchanter]

I think drawing attenton to their more mature rating will help them for free rather than have people stay away. Remember when GTA San Andreas when word got out about that secret scene, the sales skyrocketed. More people went out to buy the game to see what the fuss about when at the time they probably wasnt even going to bother purchasing it if no one mentioned that scene. I think it will inflate the population of the target and  hand money over to them when the intention was to keep people from spending money on it. And that console game where they added bounce to female chest and word got out, I think Dead or Alive and or Soul Calibur. When someone made a fuss, the sales once again for both game rose.

Though to its credit, DOA, or DOA3 specifically, had what I think were the best mechanics and game play of any fighter game I've ever seen. Soul Calibur was pretty innovative as well, though not quite as good as DOA.

On the free advertising though... 2 Girls 1 Cup, The Human Centipede, Paris Hilton...

[Osborn]

I had just added a comment to another thread suggesting folks could still log in to submit a support request after Nov 30th by logging in at http://ncsoft.com. I went to the site and tried my login to verify I was able to do so myself. So, while I was on the NCsoft site I hit the B&S link to see if there was anything new I could dislike. I hadn't been on that site before and it prompted me for my date of birth...

Not caring to provide real info, I put in 01/01/2000 and was declined. I figured, Okay, that was dumb. I'd be 12 and I could imagine that there would be a 13+ requirement like Facebook which isn't all that surprising to see on the web these days. I persisted and entered 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, 1995 and finally 1994 before it granted me permission to view the B&S website. 18 YEARS OLD! That's how old you have to be to view the game's WEBSITE. So, clearly this is not a family friendly game, nor is it a game intended for non-adults. What other kinds of websites are out there which require you to declare that you are 18 or older before proceeding to view their content? . . . I'm sure you catch my meaning.

Next, I went to the FAQ section on the B&S site and scrolled to the bottom to find this.

What ESRB rating does NCSOFT anticipate for Blade & Soul? Some of the content seems fairly mature. Will this impact sales forecasts?
The content rating of Blade & Soul is still pending. For more information about ESRB ratings, please visit the ESRB website.

Conveniently, the ESRB website was linked here. And they have a handy contact form available as well.

I know the ESRB has their own process for reviewing and rating games, but perhaps this is another pain point we can irritate. It seems apparent that the content of the B&S website is adult-only, so why would we expect the game content to be any different? We should let the ESRB know that we firmly believe B&S must only be considered for the ADULTS ONLY rating.

Have at it!

I'm actually against this sort of thing. If we want to hurt them economically through not buying and telling others not to buy because we believe either the game is bad, or the company does bad things or what not, fine. If we want to boycott and get others to do the same because they  treat their employees badly or their customers badly, fine.

But I'm not really interested in this idea that we should use government censorship to (effectively) ban a game. This game might not necessarily be considered good taste for you personally. I understand that. But to try to get the government to ban it just strikes a sort of nerve with me I dislike.

If you're not a fan of the sexualized costumes in the game, then by all means don't purchase the game. Ask your friends who otherwise do not like this sort of content to not buy it. But please don't call for censorship.

We don't need to be the nagging mothers that complained about gaming since it's inception.

[Sekoia]

But I'm not really interested in this idea that we should use government censorship to (effectively) ban a game. This game might not necessarily be considered good taste for you personally. I understand that. But to try to get the government to ban it just strikes a sort of nerve with me I dislike.

The ESRB is not in any way linked to the government. They are an independent organization, and in fact they operate in both the US and Canada. The US government does not require games to be rated by the ESRB; rather, the industry itself effectively mandates that (though it's still technically voluntary).

[avelworldcreator]

List of ESRB AO rated games:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AO-rated_products

How many? And why? That many. And those are the reasons given. :)

[Aggelakis]

But I'm not really interested in this idea that we should use government censorship to (effectively) ban a game. This game might not necessarily be considered good taste for you personally. I understand that. But to try to get the government to ban it just strikes a sort of nerve with me I dislike.

Aside from erroneously linking the government like Sekoia mentions, it's not even "effectively" a ban. ESRB is 100% voluntary for PC games (most [all?] console companies require ESRB ratings). All an AO rating would do is remove it from sale at Walmart (who is not likely to carry it anyway, its PC game section is vanishingly small) and BestBuy (who may not carry it anyway, its PC game section is bigger than Walmart but is dominated by WoW and casual games). It wouldn't do anything about getting it online (kids lie about their ages all the time - I know I did when I was on the internet in 1995).

[The Fifth Horseman]

Monitor whether or not the actual game installation requires age verification... if it doesn't, you have something more to go to the media with. This is far more adult content than Mass Effect. :)

[Cinnder]

The Secret World gets a PEGI 16 rating, which it shares with Star Wars The Old Republic, City of Heroes,

I was never able to figure out what constituted the "suggestive themes" listed on the CoH rating description.  Pardon the pun, but does anyone have any ...suggestions... as to what they were?

[DWRoelands]

I don't really see the point of such an action, except as a petulant temper tantrum.

I love COH.  I preordered, I played since launch, and I'm sorry to see it go.  But turning that into some sort of pointless vendetta against NCSoft is really not a good use of anyone's time or energy.

[Cinnder]

You have to remember that *originally* CoH was PEGI 12, whilst City of Villains was PEGI 16. So when they merged the two titles together, NCsoft HAD to apply the higher rating.

According to my GF (I barely played CoV to be honest), Dr Creeds story arc is a good example (kidnapping homeless people for experimentation). There are others laying around in City of Villains that are definitely *not* PEGI 12 suitable.

Ah...that's a good example of content requiring higher rating.  I suppose the dearth of arcs in CoV that felt really villainous could be down to worries about what such stories would do to the ratings.

But does that qualify as "suggestive"?  I thought "suggestive" meant content of a sexual nature.  I don't recall ever seeing anything like that either on red or blue.

Your example does now have me wondering what the category would be for content like Creed's arc...  Moral terpitude?  Here in the UK the movie ratings system has a category called "mild peril".  That one always makes me laugh.  :)

[avelworldcreator]

ESRB: Suggestive Themes - Mild provocative references or materials

The narrowest definition of "provocative" suggests something sexual.
I guess the dress style of some cartoon characters is the closest it comes to that.  I really haven't seen anything even closer in CoV/CoH.

[Aggelakis]

Silver Mantis and her BDSM bent is SERIOUSLY provocative. lol