[casual_games] ESRB Need Not Apply

[Alex St. John]

That's useful if you're buying a box, but unlike a boxed title kids may discover and try down loadable games unsupervised, hence the parental controls need to be applied at the point of online discovery, not by a parent reading a label on a box.  Vista parental controls don't interpret a "Game Content May change During Online Play" note.  The game is either blocked or not, which means that some level of ESRB rating must be defined to include the possibility of open in-game chat.  A good parental control system will allow a parent to enable or block the possibility of in-game chat in any game regardless of content rating.  In the absence of that definition and support from Vista we just apply a "T" rating to any game that includes in-game chat.  
   
  If Vista parental controls were well designed they would make a callback to any game that a user launched that parental controls apply to enabling the game to deliver it's own message to the consumer rather than having one imposed by the OS.  For example suppose Popcap made a T game and parental controls were set at E.  A popcap game could launch it's own dialog that explained the block and the reason for it, provide UI to enable somebody to change their parental control level or unblock that game, and/or recommend other popcap games that have E ratings.  If the reason for the rating was in-game chat, the game could offer to disable that specific feature.  Instead Vista trusts the game to accurately report its ESRB rating, but doesn't trust it to handle it's own messaging when somebody launches it.
   
   

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