Entertainment Software Rating Board

From Saferpedia

Entertainment Software Rating Board - ESRB is an organization founded in 1994 by Entertainment Software Association (ESA). ESRB regulates and assigns classifications to the entertaining materials according to age and content, requires this type of industry to adopt certain advertising lines and ensure responsible online privacy principles for video and computer games and to other entertaining programs. ESRB activates in Canada and USA. ESRB classifies games according to their content, such as the movies classification system used in most countries. The purpose is to help consumers to determine after the type of content if the game is adequate or not for the user. Game's evaluation is shown on the cover, support, commercials and on game's site. The evaluation system is strictly volunteer, but almost all games are sent for evaluation because many magazines forbid selling unevaluated games and most game console producers does not licentiate a game unless it has the ESRB evaluation logo.

Classifications

ESRB classification logos

Actual classifications

Abbreviation	Evaluation	Year of activity	Description
eC	Early Childhood	Since 1994	Content suited for children between 2 to 10 years. Games that have this evaluation does not contain materials that teachers or parents will consider unsuited. Games in this evaluation are destined to small children and usually are educational games in nature. Examples of such games are games based on TV shows for children.
E	Everyone	Since 1998	Content considered suitable for children of any age. There may be cartoons, fantasy or light violence.
E10+	Everyone 10+	Since 2005	Content considered unsuitable for children under 10 years. They may be cartoons, fantasy, light violence, light language, animated bloody scenes or suggestive themes.
T	Teen	Since 1994	Content considered unsuitable for children under 13 years. Games in this category may contain violence, suggestive themes, thick humor, minimal bloody scenes, gambling.
M	Mature 17+	Since 1994	Content considered unsuitable for children and young under 17 years. Games may contain intense violence, bloody scenes, content and themes with sexual content, use of alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, use of a coarse language. Examples of such games are: Halo, Fallout 3 and Dead or Alive 4.
AO	Adults Only 18+	Since 1994	Content unsuitable for people under 18 years and can't be purchased by any person under 18 years. These may include video games for adults depicting sex and nudity, extreme violence, horrible bloody scenes. Since 2009 only 25 products received the "AO" evaluation, many of them available for Windows and Macintosh.
RP	Rating Pending	Since 1994	The product was presented to ESRB and still waits for the final evaluation. This symbol appears only in commercials before launching the game. Once evaluated all commercials have to contain the official logo of ESRB.

Discarded Classifications

The following evaluation logos are not being used anymore, but may appear on games published before they were discarded.

Abbreviation	Evaluation	Year of activity	Description
KA	Kids to Adults (6+)	From 1994 to 1998	Content considered unsuitable for children under 6 years. Games in this category may contain minimum violence, language partially merciless, etc. The evaluation category was replaced with E (Everyone) at the beginning of 1998.

Evaluation process

To obtain a game evaluation, a developer send to ESRB a video with the most extreme graphic content in the game. Also the developer fills a questionnaire where it describes the content of the game and pays a fee based on the developing costs. Three ESRB assessors work independently from each other at a game evaluation. If all of them reach the same result, there is added the content description and the developer is notified regarding the ESRB decision. If the assessors don't reach the same result, other additional assessors review the video and the materials and it is applied the rule of "majority wins". After the evaluation is finalized, ESRB personnel review the movie and the materials to be sure that all the information are correct and send a certificate to the developer. Although the decision is not definitive. If the developer wants, it can edit the game to fit the game in an other category.

When the game is ready to be launched, the developer sends to ESRB copies with the final version of the game. It is reviewed the game's packaging and ESRB sends the games for test to personnel, randomly chosen, to ensure that all the information and materials send during the evaluation process were complete and exact. If there are problems at the final testing or at the consumers, there may be applied sanctions.