Project Development

My project did not come along easily. My question went through many iterations until it was refined into the question I have today: Is the Rating System the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) uses When Rating Video Games Accurate When Analyzed as a Whole?

I started my project where any good project should start. Brainstorming. After pulling from previous projects and interests I decided that I would try to pursue a project analyzing the fallacies of science in film. The previous year in English I had taken on a similar project in which I calculated whether or not the wingsuit scene from The Batman was plausible. This question quickly fell apart due to the prospect of actually creating a project off of it. There was almost no gap as there was extensive research on the topic. Without a gap, I had to redirect my question shifting from film to video games.

When shifting over to video games I was able to find a great gap. Aside from the occasional article and the journal Game Studies there was almost no research on the topic. With this change, I began researching gaming and literary analysis in an attempt to create a project where I could analyze the themes of freedom in indie games which are games made by smaller developers rather than large companies such as Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony. With this, I presented my question so it would be peer-reviewed. My project was ripped to shreds. I was asked what would I be comparing, why is this important, what themes, is this too broad, and how can you narrow your question. However out of all of these critiques, one stood out. Could you look into the system that actually rates video games?

With this, I dove into the world of video game rating systems primarily focusing on the ESRB as they rate games for North American countries including the US. during this research, I came upon a particular bit of information. The ESRB does not play any of the games they are rating before releasing them to the public. I began researching this fact hoping to find more on the topic. I found next to nothing. Other than a couple of journal articles from the early 2000s determining if the ESRB's content descriptors, descriptors that inform consumers what is in the game such as blood and violence, were accurate or not. Nothing actually looked at whether or not the ESRB's practices were actually effective for rating games. I decided I would take this prospect into my own hands by analyzing the system myself.

Code for research Project

Code for my project.

Information found on the ESRB's website about the rating system (Ratings Guide)

I wanted to analyze the games the same way the ESRB does. I reached out to the ESRB in hopes of obtaining the questionnaire they send to developers to create my methods. They denied my request. I then went to create a code that would use the ESRB's content descriptors to assign ratings to games. After some research, I was unable to find anything credible on how the ESRB's content descriptors actually related to a game's rating. With this, I turned to the Pan European Game Information or PEGI, the organization that rates games for most of Europe, system to create my code. This worked wonderfully as the PEGI site had content descriptors similar to that of the ESRB and the minimum age rating for said descriptor. This did not come without limitations. Europe and the US have very different cultures resulting in differing opinions on what is appropriate for children of different ages. This may end up creating discrepancies between my ratings and that of the ESRB.

The end of the approval process was near. Confident I attended my first approval meeting. During this meeting, I was approved. Kind of. I was approved with modifications. I needed to narrow my research from all ratings to that of the younger ratings allowing me to play more games as well as relate my project's importance to that of what is appropriate for young children and what content may be hiding in a child's game. Finally, with these changes, I was approved to start my research.

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