Will Apple get into the game rating biz?
After what has been a fairly shaky start in the acceptance or rejection of apps for the Apple App Store, there is now some talk of instituting a rating system for games sold via the store.
It is doubtful that Apple envisioned getting into the business of deciding which apps are appropriate for which groups of customers when it rolled out the Apple Apple store. That is a task that falls somewhere between making difficult moral judgments and invoking censorship, depending on who you talk to. Apple has already had problems with apps that involved shaking babies to death and allowing users to become the iPhone Jesus, plus problems with R-rated lyrics in songs involved in some apps.
Those problems may be set to multiply many times. A large percentage of the apps in the App Store are games. In many venues, computer games are rated, according to standards published by the Electronic Software Ratings Board. The president of that group, Patricia Vance, believes that the games sold in the App Store should fall under the same rating system. Those ratings include:
“C” for young children
“E” for everyone
“E 10+” for ages 10 and up
“T” for those 13 and up
“M” for ages 17 and older
“AO” for adults only
Vance has said that she can see no reason why Apple should not use the ESRB rating system, according to a CNET article. Her stand is, “ESRB ratings empower parents to do their job. Considering the fact that the vast majority of parents are already aware of and regularly using ESRB ratings, Apple’s adoption of them for iPhone games seems like a no-brainer. … Adding ESRB ratings to the controls (Apple) already plans to offer would give parents the ability to exert control over the games their children play as well.” Not to mention that it increases the power of Vance and her organization.
In almost all cases, the legislation or policing of public morals is a practice that should have left the societal scene when Queen Victoria did. If nothing else, issues like this are personal and private, meaning that their application will vary widely among people. Vance and her organization are attempting to co-opt the rights of individuals to make these decisions on their own, and in the process telling us what we should think. These are decisions that should be made by parents for children and for adults by themselves. Read the reviews, preview the games, play them before your kids do. Do the work and make up your own minds rather than taking the lazy way out.
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July 30th, 2009
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