Over at about.com, has written a pretty interesting piece regarding the testimony of Dr. Kimberley Thompson on the effectiveness of the rating system.
Dr. Thompson cited a 2001 study on the violence in E-rated video games which, if most of us were to look at it rationally, would make absolutely no sense. In that study, is 62% violent and Centipede, 92.
6% violent. Amazing, no? Even more amazing is that it was taken seriously, and that said research was done by observing how often the average player engaged in violent activity in the game within a 90 minute period.
According to Stanton, applying that same measuring system "to 15 minutes of , an M rated game, you find Stanton says that such a study was flawed simply because, while the research method seemed sound, violence in itself is subjective and, thus, fails to pass today's standards of common sense. He writes, Asking around you find quite a range of what is considered "violence". Thompson's study is not particularly note-worthy because it has a measurement of violence that doesn't match the average American family.
If you were to label the arcade version of Pac-Man as 62% violent instead of the ESRB rating E it wouldn't be more informative for consumers. In fact, it would be using a scale that most consumers disagree with.
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