2. Reduce their fees.  This means that they have to run a more efficient company.  It costs thousands and thousands of dollars to have a game rated by the ESRB.  This is a little silly when you consider that the rating official spends all of 10 minutes watching a short video sent in by the publisher.  Where is the money going?  Like many nonprofits, the ESRB doesn't bother controlling costs because they aren't legally allowed to collect profits.  However, their extremely high fees are not good for the industry.  Not only are many independent developers shut out, but some big developers are affected too -- I've heard it suggested that the decreasing number of Virtual Console games is related it the exorbitant fees involved with getting a rating for the game (in order to cover a $10,000 investment to collect a rating, your Super Turricans and R-Type 3s have to sell thousands of copies).

I think the article said that the ESRB as a company is just around 30 people.  Even if they offer payroll it can't be that expensive so as you said.. where is the money going?  I had no idea it was that expensive for someone to get a rating (thanks for that).

I was reading through an EGM article on the ESRB where the writer commented on changes to the rating system, and was wondering what changes you guys feel would be best to improve the rating system. I’ll quickly outline what was mentioned and then state my opinions..

-The rating categories are not flexible enough and nobody cares to support the Adults Only rating. Proposed solution was to have the Mature rating be the top of the scale, which is recommended to anyone 18 or older, and would include everything that was AO previously.
-There are only six full-time raters and they don’t even play the games they rate, just watch videos of other people playing them. Proposed solution was to have all raters play games from start to finish in completion and take notes along the way, as well as hire more raters so the pool is larger.
-Sequels and game series sometimes carry on the same rating as the previous game, where they should be judged individually.
-After the raters decide on a rating the officials would sometimes change the rating without feedback from the raters, where their work should be trusted that they are doing their job correctly and providing accurate ratings.

My opinion:

Maybe I haven’t paying attention but the fact that only six raters are coming up with these ratings was somewhat shocking to me, but I don’t think simply beefing up the crew with more raters is enough. Their backgrounds should be taken into account, more than just their gender, to ensure a diverse group of raters that will provide perspectives from many different angles. I’m talking about getting people with different cultural backgrounds from various countries, for applications such as.. what may be offensive to a parent from one cultural background may not be offensive to a parent from a different one.

The last part about the final rating getting modified by the officials bothers me the most but it’s nothing that I didn’t think was going on already. This part of the process is where the media and political crap gets it’s shot at making their decisions about what they think games should be rated.

Looking forward to hearing some more opinions on the subject..

New Zealand, Costa Rica, Australia, Madagascar.

jumpin jacks

the two i like best so far..

A - Lock the milk up
B - they drink the milk they need to drink yours

You'll love the coolermaster.. or at least I'm happy with mine.

I have a Samsung SyncMaster 932bw 19" widescreen LCD monitor.  It runs natively at 1440x900 at 75hz.  LCDs have come a long way.  This baby displays even the fastest games with no blurring or ghosting.  I bought mine for 232usd.

When shopping for a monitor, look at the contrast ratio, and the response time.  My Samsung has a very fast response time at 2ms, and a very good contrast ratio at 3000:1.  A standard Dell or Gateway monitor, for example, usually has a 6ms response time and a 600:1 contrast ratio, so it's slower and has lower color range (But it's still better than the LCDs of yesteryear.)

Every LCD you will find these days will be widescreen.  It's hard to avoid it, so you might as well get one.

Good advice.

I'd expect better for that price, but I guess he didn't spend it all in one shot.

You know, Michigan and Florida should have known this would happen. It's their fault (legislatures, not citizens). Things should remain as they are, with their delegates not being counted. They broke the rules, now they take the consequences.

Yuup.

The wait still isn't as bad as some places like Canada where it's all dependent on the government system.

Lincoln.. hands down.

Have never heard of this until now.. wow this is some great stuff.

Mad Season - Above

Jerry Cantrell - Boggy Depot

Massive Attack - Mezzanine

Radiohead - OK Computer

Emiliana Torrini - Love In Time Of Science

Was never big on Portishead but definitely worth checking out! thanks for the links.

Sigur Ros, love these guys.

Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam
Radiohead - In Rainbows
Battles - Mirrored
Porcupine Tree - Fear of a Blank Planet
Arcade Fire - Neon Bible