[casual_games] ESRB Need Not Apply

[Alex St. John]

One of the problems with Vista's parental controls is that any application can "Claim" an ESRB rating to the Game Explorer.  So your game can just register itself as ESRB rated "E", but Windows will associate an ESRB logo to your game in the explorer if you do this.  The question in this case is who is violating the ESRB trademark?  Microsoft or the game developer  that registered itself as having a rating.  Thus Windows "trusts" your game to be honest about it's rating, but does NOT trust it to enforce the rating itself.  Wacky.  
   
  Another problem is that the ESRB system does not provide a clear way of dealing with games that include in-game chat, or games that can adapt themselves to patental controls dynamically.  When we package a game that includes in-game chat at WT, we apply for a rating of no less than T because OEM's and consumers are very sensitive to the "pedophile" problem of children meeting and chatting with adults in a game environment. We're increasingly making games that include community that self adapt to our parental control system.  Thus if a parent sets an ESRB level of "E" our games will turn off chat or provide a "child safe" alternative to chat. 
   
  -Alex 

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