Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 31, 1994 TAG: 9408100038
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Industry officials said Friday that parents trying to keep objectionable material out of their children's hands can expect to see games labeled with rating icons, which will explain whether certain video games are appropriate for different age groups, on store shelves in time for this year's holiday shopping season. Text describing the game's content will also be printed on each package or cartridge.
However, parents buying personal computer software will likely have to face a second set of ratings, which were also unveiled Friday by computer-game makers, who plan to label their products with different symbols and textual warnings of violence, nudity and profanity.
Lawmakers and child-development experts cheered the release of the ratings but said development of a single set of labels would serve consumers best.
``With a rating system, parents will have at least a fighting chance to control what comes into their homes,'' said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., who has spearheaded the drive for video-game ratings since the release of controversial games such as ``Mortal Kombat,'' which contains scenes showing a martial-arts fighter tearing the spine out of an opponent.
The video-game labeling system will affect titles scheduled for release this holiday season and afterward, including ``Doom,'' in which a player wielding weapons from a handgun to a chain saw attacks opponents, and possibly ``Mortal Kombat II.''
Industry officials projected that 40 percent of the games sold this Christmas season and virtually all games sold next fall will carry the ratings.
The ratings announcement comes as a crucial step for an industry that is struggling to maintain credibility with parents and a responsible public image.
Lieberman and Sen. Herbert Kohl, D-Wis., introduced legislation earlier this year to set up a national commission to regulate the industry, but said they would withdraw the plan if game makers policed themselves.
The threat of federal regulation sent Sega, Nintendo and other game makers scrambling to develop their own warning labels, but industry officials said they now plan to fold the individual rating plans into one.
However, officials from the Interactive Digital Software Association, which represents Nintendo, Sega, Acclaim and other video-game publishers, have been unable to reach an accord with the Software Publishers Association, which represents computer-game makers, on how the ratings should work.
Under the IDSA-backed system, game makers would submit videotapes, story boards, scripts and other material detailing the most extreme content of their games to panels of three ``demographically diverse'' people, each of whom must be at least 21 years old, at the newly created Entertainment Software Rating Board in New York.
Before games are shipped, they will be classified for five age groups: early childhood, which includes games for children age 3 and older; children to adults, for age 6 and older; teen, for age 13 and older; mature, for age 17 and older; and adults only, for age 18 and older.
In the SPA-designed plan, reviewers would not view videotapes of game content and would not label the games according to age groups. Instead, computer-game makers would respond to questionnaires about their products from a new Recreational Software Advisory Council and attest that they answered honestly.
by CNB