Reflection and The Future

Through my research, I learned many things about the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB). I learned that not only does the ESRB have a pretty minimalist system of applying age ratings to games, there were discrepancies between the types of games and how they were rated, as well as very limited information about the ESRB on their own website. On the ESRB’s website, they state that in order for games to be rated developers must fill out a questionnaire, and then games being released physically must then also submit a 10-minute video clip as well (Ratings Process). Upon the completion of my research, I found the extent of the ESRB’s inaccuracy. With 44.44% of the games having higher ratings due to my research than assigned by the ESRB and with the majority of those games rated inaccurately being released digitally I came to the conclusion that watching gameplay leads to more accurate ratings as well as a bias towards rating games made by larger companies more accurately. Using this information I would suggest that the ESRB, at the very least, reformat its rating system to include the 10-minute gameplay clip in games released digitally as well as physically and at most play through the entirety of all games they rate to increase accuracy.

My academic paper and oral defense presentations taught me how to organize and schedule a large research project as well as how to write and structure a large research paper. This project forced me to plan a large project over the course of multiple months while also having to learn how to adapt to hiccups in my project. The writing portion taught me how to break down a wringing project larger than anything I had written before. These skills will be important for my future, especially in college. The ability to write long research papers will be important in my college career as I will have a better grasp on how to write long papers for my classes. My experience conducting research will give me expense in research allowing me to pursue research in college with greater ability.

Through this process, I learned that I can make even the most daunting tasks seem manageable by breaking them up. Before large writing assignments always intimidated me. However, I learned through this project that the best way to work on them is slowly rather than in big chunks. I learned this through the blog posts we completed for our research as we slowly turned them into our papers. I will be able to use this skill moving forward throughout my life working on papers in smaller chunks rather than all at once will not only reduce my stress level but allow me to complete them in shorter time frames as well. Overall this project really showed me what I was capable of and how I can reach my potential.

I would like to thank Nikki Dobos for guiding me in my research and helping me understand the research process so I could conduct this research.

Abstract:

The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) assigns age ratings to all video games in North America. The ESRB does not actually play the games they rate. Instead, they ask developers to fill out a questionnaire while games released physically also have to submit a 10-minute gameplay clip. This research was conducted by playing through 9 games that were nominated for game awards in 2022 while using a code derived from the ESRB and the Pan European Game Information (PEGI) systems to assign age ratings to the games. This research found that the rating system was inaccurate as 44.44% of the games played had an increase in rating after the research was conducted compared to the rating assigned by the ESRB. It can also be noted that the games that had more accurate ratings were required to submit a 10-minute gameplay clip while the ones that were more commonly less accurate did not. This shows that the accuracy of the ESRB's ratings is increased when the raters interact with the material they are rating. The importance of this study comes from the fact that because many of the games studied were of lower age ratings and had increases in age ratings it means that children are being exposed to games that have content that may be too mature for them.

Thank you for reading about my research. After Highschool I plan on going to college at the University of Colorado Boulder to study aerospace engineering.