dadoo Games:

Every now and then a discussion comes along that starts as "What do you think of this idea ..." and ends with "OMG, we need to do this for the betterment of the community - it will save community/indie games". Welcome to that thread.

If it has become that, it's only because you're taking it there with your post. Nobody has been implying that this is going to increase sales or "save" anything. Some of us just think the current way ratings are displayed is not sufficient for the portion of the market that likes seeing ratings on games.

Nick Gravelyn:

If it has become that, it's only because you're taking it there with your post.

You probably believe that too.

Nick Gravelyn:

Some of us just think the current way ratings are displayed is not sufficient for the portion of the market that likes seeing ratings on games.

I'm pretty sure I agreed on that point. We obviously disagree on others.

I am glad that everyone here wants to better the community, we all understand that commitment to change and positive action can do some good. Glad that people don't just poke fun at people trying to improve the Community's image. /Sarcasm


But, really dadoo games why not commit to bettering yourself... or if you are glad keeping everything how it is (including the bottom line: sales) then keep producing unstandardized bad sellers.

Community Games is not a place that a developer wants to release his game. If someone knows they have something of quality they will fight to get an XBLA deal. Why not make the service more approachable (with standards!) and then we can prove ourselves worthy of an investment.

Bradleat:

dadoo games why not commit to bettering yourself

I'll work on that and let you know how it turns out.

Bradleat:

or if you are glad keeping everything how it is (including the bottom line: sales) then keep producing unstandardized bad sellers.

This was my original point. I'm not against changing anything - change the accessibility of CG games in NXE, change the name, change the way ratings are displayed, change everything. I am against the beliefs that CG is horribly broken, that CG is all about money, and that changing the ratings from text to an image will somehow be it's savior.

Bradleat:

Community Games is not a place that a developer wants to release his game.

I think you meant "Community Games is not a place that a business person wants to release his game". That I can agree with at the moment.

The bottom line is we're not all here for the same reason. The more regulations and rules you add on to the system in order to "fix" it from a business POV the less accessible it becomes for regular developers and hobbyists. Could less restrictions mean potentially more (what you would classify as) crap on the service? Sure. Make a good game, and rise above it.

dadoo Games:

The more regulations and rules you add on to the system in order to "fix" it from a business POV the less accessible it becomes for regular developers and hobbyists.

That's why this is an idea for a completely voluntary thing. Nobody here is saying this should be required at all. 

I think Nick wrapped it up very nicely. I would like an interface to use the TIGRS system instead of the other rating system. I am not of the belief that "If it aint broken, dont fix it". It isn't broken, but there are ways to make it more accessible. And yea, I wouldn't mind making a buck while doing it, but I also wouldn't want the bad rep of releasing a game on the CG channel. The creativity and indie spirt is corrupted by people who are afraid of some change. Standards don't have to be forced on everyone, but perhaps a comprehensive and easy way of doing it will help developers. I would love to see a Standard for things like dealing with controller disconnects, etc. Easy, and the developer can spend more time looking at the creative aspects.

And reaching more people doesn't seem like a bad thing. I never said CG is broken, but it aint pristine. It can be improved... and we should do our best to.

We can have all the developers on the system that we want, but the one dead on way to rate successfulness of a product is sales. Business, Advertising, etc are all part of being a developer. There is more to it than the art, there always is. A painter doesn't create a master piece and show it off in a run down house (unless that is a style he is going for). I would rather release a game that can make some money. Maybe you find it noble, but I would like some people to actually see a game I release.

So yea, like it or not, but the process, is not just the finished game and release. You can if you want, but your artform (if we are agreeing that this is an artform) will not be noticed without some accessibility to people.


You get accessibility by using some 'Business' and 'Marketing' skills. And I think it is a good idea to be able to OPT IN to replace the text ratings with TIGRS... Sorry if i am being a greedy Businessman.

Bradleat:

1st: ESRB doesn't go out and make commericals promoting its standard, they have a website and a reviewing board.

You must not live in USA.  The ESRB takes out numerous print, online and television advertisements.

Here is a relevant quote from their website.
"The ESRB engages in ratings education utilizing a wide variety of media outlets. On this page you'll find examples of our most recent ads, which are currently appearing in magazines, on websites and on TV and radio stations nationwide."

Commericial games have a front and a back. We have all that space Microsoft gives us.

We may be arguing diferent things. I was answering the original question of the thread and explaining why I did not see any incentive to using the TIGRS ratings on top of the CURRENT SYSTEM.
If microsoft waves their magic wand and stands fully behind the TIGRS system, then that changes things, obviously.

I simply don't know if that kind of change would be a good thing or a bad thing.

Incidentally, the industry didn't just one day decide to start putting ESRB squares on their boxes as you seem to be implying. Some of them were in favor of it, but it didn't become usefull until it became a universal (to the USA) standard. They became the de facto ratings standard in the USA through an act of congress.
It remains voluntary, of course, but that doesn't mean that it didn't come into existence in a top-down way.

Without that sort of top-down endorsement (Congress, or Microsoft, or whatever) it just suffers from a chicken/egg problem.

When a gamer sees a system that lacks a standard, good looking rating system it turns them off.

One day I'd like to meet that gamer. He sounds like a very unique individual.

I have never seen an ESRB advertisement, youtube has seen three. They don't take our numerous advertisements, but very few. And yes i live in the USA.

We have more space than a game company does on the box. I am also support and OPT IN system from Microsoft, or another tab on our game for ratings alone.


The gamer that I referred to is everyone, would you buy a car from a run down dealership with sketchy looking cars around, or the pristine dealership with nice people greeting you. And dealerships have standards... standards for layouts. Go into a dealership that doesn't adhere to those standards... you will be weirded out. So in short he is not a unique individual, but you like to nit pick at people's comments whilst you don't think about what I am saying. If you would read my post instead of firing away with the quote and tear down statement formula, you would know that I support some framework to make more things possible from Microsoft.

Such As:

Background Art
Screenshots with Captions
Trailers
MISC. Game Media
And other things that Arcade and other games have on XBL


But, I don't intend to wait around like a bump on a log, I will try to get TIGRS on all games that I release. AND AS I HAVE SAID BEFORE: Maybe if we take some action to standardize Community Games, Microsoft can justify additional investment into our service, such as ads on TV, like the Standardized App Store has...

On the TIGRS webpage it says that their second iteration had a breakdown of different content categories with numbers assigned to them. This was changed due to too many complaints of miscategorization. While the current XBLCG rating system suffers from the same problem, I still feel it's more informative than the three-rating third iteration, which is more nebulous. While I think we can easily agree on the difference between Family and Adult, Teen is where things get difficult. First of all, the word 'teen' can refer to a 19 year old, which most people would agree is also an adult. The implication is 'young teen', but even then there's very little I would consider inappropriate for a young teen, and 90% of that is considered prohibited content for Community Games.

While we can play anecdote wars all day long and get nowhere, I have one to share that might dispel someone's assumptions. A friend's mom who is very strict and doesn't play video games at all prohibited her 11 year old son from playing Final Fantasy 7 because it was rated Teen. Some parents really will decide against a game based solely on the rating. Another game (Twisted Metal 2 I think) had a girl in skimpy clothing in the manual, so she banned the game from the house even though the gameplay doesn't show revealing attire. An older brother purchased the games for himself, incidentally.

I like the independent additional testing idea; I dunno if this goes too far into legal territory, but this is my idea:
An individual/group owns some trademarked ratings images, and licenses them out for specific games if the game goes thru their independent content testing.
The same idea could be used for quality, some kind of 'seal of approval', or this could just be a requirement to get a rating:
the game receives testing by the group which shows it to be best practices compliant
the game contains some additional stuff that's just user-friendly (menu option to quit, button remapping etc.)
the game is considered 'not worse than Shaq-Fu'

Since the images are trademarked and only the appropriate one is licensed out, intentional abuse would involve trademark infringement, not something a commercial entity would be likely to do 'just for the lulz' or a couple more sales. To encourage people taking part in this program (which should aid game quality and help make the ratings system more familiar to consumers) the group would advertise the rating system and Community Games. Of course, this would probably require a nominal fee (~$25) from each submitter in order to fund. If the xbox had some integration with this program, then there'd be even more interesting options of sorting/filtering/new channels. That said, if such a system were able to catch on and were able to be trusted by consumers, why hasn't such a thing sprung up for the rest of the indie game scene? Maybe they're too disorganized to collaborate and pull it off, which would give us an advantage.

If someone could come up with a system that does all of that (check for quality, rate it, etc), that would be a huge boon for customers and developers alike *IF* Microsoft supports it. Otherwise, as has been discussed in several of the "seals of quality" threads, the system would break down and confuse customers even more as everyone Photoshops their own "Seals of Awesomeness" to slap on their cruddy game. I think the idea could work, if a dedicated group of impartial individuals would actually DO it instead of just talk about how nice it would be if someone else did it for them. All of this should probably be continued in another thread though, so please start one since I would really like to see where this idea goes. (and while somewhat relevant to this thread it's getting off topic very fast.)

UberGeekGames:

If someone could come up with a system that does all of that (check for quality, rate it, etc), that would be a huge boon for customers and developers alike *IF* Microsoft supports it. Otherwise, as has been discussed in several of the "seals of quality" threads, the system would break down and confuse customers even more as everyone Photoshops their own "Seals of Awesomeness" to slap on their cruddy game. I think the idea could work, if a dedicated group of impartial individuals would actually DO it instead of just talk about how nice it would be if someone else did it for them. All of this should probably be continued in another thread though, so please start one since I would really like to see where this idea goes. (and while somewhat relevant to this thread it's getting off topic very fast.)

I am going to be designing a system of standard ways of dealing with common UI things, ways to present your game, etc. I will get work done on it when I have time, but where would I create the new forum?

Mentil:

A friend's mom who is very strict and doesn't play video games at all prohibited her 11 year old son from playing Final Fantasy 7 because it was rated Teen. Some parents really will decide against a game based solely on the rating. Another game (Twisted Metal 2 I think) had a girl in skimpy clothing in the manual, so she banned the game from the house even though the gameplay doesn't show revealing attire.

This is simply laziness on her part. There's not much a developer can do to fix that.

When we originally looked at peer review and classifications, TIGRIS was one of the many rating systems that the team investigated, so it is interesting that it is mentioned here.
A lot of considerations and thought process went into determining the current classification system :)

IdaWW:

When we originally looked at peer review and classifications, TIGRIS was one of the many rating systems that the team investigated, so it is interesting that it is mentioned here.
A lot of considerations and thought process went into determining the current classification system :)

I love posts like this.  I wish I knew more about what the XNA team goes through in their decisions.  Sometimes knowing the process helps respect the decision.  It's really too bad that we cannot know more, but at the same time I completely understand why this will probably never change.

I don't like how the ratings are shown. The text takes away from the description space and it looks kinda bad. I also wish that we had more options on the market place, closer to that of what Big Games get.

-Bradleat