You all know what the ESRB is. It’s that letter in the back corner of your game box you’ve been ignoring since you told your mom the M stood for “mild”. Well, you’ve probably noticed as we’ve been marching into the digital age, the ESRB has been oddly absent from the Digitally Downloaded games market: Games like Fez or… I dunno, Deathspank have gone unrated, leaving people confused on if Minecraft’s ability to craft phallic shapes out of wood (cuz you know, puns) made it an Adults-only game or not.
Well, fear no longer: The ESRB has announced that it will now provide ratings for digitally distributed games as well as traditional boxed games. All developers need to do is fill out a quick questionnaire before the game is released.
While that’s interesting, what I consider more exciting are the three new “Interactive Element” warnings each game will come with from now on. Designed specifically for the growing trend of information sharing, these warnings will tell you exactly what you can expect when you log on to play a game online. They include:
“Shares Info”: A game with this marker will take personal information you give it, like phone numbers, emails, credit card numbers, and share them with third parties. Presumably Somali Pirates.
“Shares Location”: A game marked with this will share your location with other users. Other users will probably include, at some point, Somali Pirates.
“Users Interact”: A game marked with this means that you may be exposed to “unfiltered/uncensored” user-generated content, including communication, messages, friend requests, usernames… from Somali Pirates.
They released a video that shares this new information, and you can watch it by clicking on the link below. All in all, I consider this a very nice step forward for the digital games market, and I’m especially grateful for these new “Interactive Element” warnings. Hopefully this will help me keep my credit card information safe long enough for me to finish transferring all of my life savings to that Nigerian prince.
ESRB Digital Game Ratings Video
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