![]() ![]() Speaking as a former Electronics Boutique employee, I can say that parents found it useful in determining the appropriateness of a title for their kids. Ratings on retail games makes a kind of sense. Making the leap from digital to physical just got that much harder, though, because each of the three hardware makers now have it as a requirement that any game getting a physical release on their system has to have the rating in its usual spot taking up valuable cover-art real estate, explaining to an audience that has no use for it the minimum recommended age group to enjoy their purchase.Įven ignoring the lack of perspective correction on the ESRB rating, that’s still no kind of improvement to the box design. The difference between the two processes, of course, means the digital rating doesn’t carry over when a game gets printed. They sell directly to the enthusiast market and paying for an ESRB rating was a retail store requirement, so why would they go to the expense? While digital ratings are free, and easily gotten with a streamlined form, physical ratings take longer to get and require a fair amount of paperwork. ![]() Small-press publishers like Limited Run Games, Special Reserve Games, iam8bit, etc all printed up titles you could only get by ordering online without the hassle of ratings. It’s a strange thing to come out of the blue. ![]() As of now, though, if you want to publish on console it’s a requirement set by the manufacturer. The key word on that sentence was “retail”, though, with the rating being optional if the game wasn’t sold through a storefront. Ratings on retail games are helpful for parents deciding what to buy for their kids, and ignored by everyone else. Now the world is a very different place, with content that would have exploded the eyeballs clear out of the faces of the watchdogs of the time appearing regularly on both console and PC. Slapping the now familiar labels on games allowed them to avoid the possibility of regulations, and while there were still plenty of controversies over the silliest of things (GTA:San Andreas’ Hot Coffee kerfuffle was dumb back then and the passing of time hasn’t made it look any less like a big fat nothing) the gaming industry marched on, getting bigger and stronger year after year. Way back in the ’90s there was a furor over the content in games, which gave rise to the ESRB and its rating system. ![]()
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