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ESRB Releases Ratings Search Widget
Posted by Brian Crecente at 3:00 AM on April 2, 2008
The Entertainment Software Rating Board teamed up with Clearspring Technologies to create this neat little widget that lets you search for video game ratings by entering a game's name.
The widget hunts through the more than 14,000 games indexed at the ESRB and spits out the answer without ever leaving the site.
"Our single most important message to consumers, particularly to parents, is that they should always check a game's ESRB rating when considering a purchase or rental for their children," said ESRB president Patricia Vance. "Parents are hungry for this information, and research shows that three-quarters of parents regularly check ESRB ratings when making purchase or rental decisions about which games to bring home. Our ratings search widget makes checking the rating that much more convenient. We're very excited to be offering this widget with the help of Clearspring."
The widget can even be customised by visiting the ESRB site so you can try and match it to your site's colours. You can even enter colour codes in Hex to match stranger site colours like, say, deep red and baby poo green.
NEW YORK, NY - The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) and Clearspring Technologies, a leading provider of widget syndication services, today announced the launch of a new ESRB ratings search widget
"Our single most important message to consumers, particularly to parents, is that they should always check a game's ESRB rating when considering a purchase or rental for their children," said ESRB president Patricia Vance. "Parents are hungry for this information, and research shows that three-quarters of parents regularly check ESRB ratings when making purchase or rental decisions about which games to bring home. Our ratings search widget makes checking the rating that much more convenient. We're very excited to be offering this widget with the help of Clearspring."
The ESRB ratings search widget, which is customizable by colour, size and language (English, Spanish and French), can be grabbed using Clearspring's sharing menu. It can be easily embedded on blogs and social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace or shared with friends via email. The widget can also be downloaded onto desktops using Microsoft Vista and Macs running OSX, as well as Windows XP machines using Yahoo! Widgets. Additionally, the widget is being made available on various web sites and widget galleries, including Google and Yahoo!, where users can grab and place the widget onto their personalised homepages.
"We're very pleased to be teaming up with ESRB to make this tool available to consumers," said Clearspring vice president of sales and client services, Steve Touhill. "The most successful widgets provide access to functionality that users genuinely need or want in an easy-to-use application. Offering a way to quickly get to ratings information for the video games they're considering buying has real value for consumers."
"Last year, the ratings search feature of our website was incredibly popular, with more than four million ratings searches having been conducted," added Vance. "There's clearly a huge appetite among consumers for ratings information, and providing this widget will make it that much easier for them to make informed purchase or rental decisions."
Since its inception in 1994, the ESRB ratings have become a trusted resource for parents when buying or renting computer and video games. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released a report last April which found that nine in ten parents of children who play video games are aware of the ESRB ratings, 87% expressed satisfaction, and nearly three- quarters use them regularly when choosing games for their children. ESRB ratings are also featured in the parental control settings of some of the latest game console hardware (i.e., Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360), and supported by all leading game retailers in the U.S. and Canada.
A complete list of ratings, content descriptors and their definitions can be found on the ESRB website at www.esrb.org
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
tei
Posted 4:17 AM 2/4/08
More fun with ratings comparations... ESBR vs PEGI
tei
Seg
Posted 4:11 AM 2/4/08
Good thing to have as it certainly doesn't hurt. However, the interface is, well, somewhat lacking. Why don't search results display the ESRB rating image, rather than the text letter? Isn't one of the key purposes of this widget to create customer awareness of the logos themselves?
I also downloaded the Mac Dashboard widget and it's too large for normal use. Since it's a 1:1 port to Mac, it doesn't take into account the limited real estate of the dashboard. It's just too big to keep up all the time.
So... nice 1.0, but I hope they improve on this quite a bit.
Seg
cdammers
Posted 3:58 AM 2/4/08
They're press releasing a search engine? Sheesh.
cdammers
tei
Posted 3:54 AM 2/4/08
[www.pegi.info]
Out of jealousment, I made one for PEGI:
Saerch on PEGI
tei
thepenguinslayer
Posted 3:46 AM 2/4/08
Yet another useful tool that part-time parents will overlook while shopping for video games to shut little Timmy up with. It's nice, but until you get the people who -need- to read the ratings on the box to use it...
well, you know, horses and water and all.
thepenguinslayer
Strange Bedfellows
Posted 3:44 AM 2/4/08
This is new? I remember having the ability to search by rating and by title years and years ago. Is this just a revamped search engine?
Strange Bedfellows
lilaliendog
Posted 3:40 AM 2/4/08
fantastic now I can find and buy the games I want that contain an Ao or M rating thx esrb for giving me the tool.
lilaliendog
dowingba
Posted 3:28 AM 2/4/08
@Mikazukinoyaiba: It was a joke, dude. But in all seriousness, if you search on Google for a game, the first result will always be the official site for the game, and that official site always has the rating displayed on it. Also, pretty much any review site or other video game website will display the rating whenever they talk about a game. This is only slightly more convenient, and I could only see it being used by someone who buys tons of games, and needs to search for like 5 games at a time before leaving the house.
And if it indeed cannot be resized (I have no working website to test this on) then it simply isn't going to get used. People aren't going to drastically change the layout of their site just to put an ESRB widget on there.
dowingba
Mikazukinoyaiba
Posted 3:27 AM 2/4/08
This needs some more repairing, I tried searching a random title like Star Fox and it is missing Star Fox 64 from it's databank.
Mikazukinoyaiba
MoogPaul
Posted 3:27 AM 2/4/08
Still seeing Earthbound up there makes me cry a little inside.... It has it's rating.... where is the game?!?!?
(note: must search for Earth Bound [two words])
MoogPaul
dowingba
Posted 3:25 AM 2/4/08
@Astrofox: Also, Grand Theft Auto 4 doesn't register. It has to be the roman numerals. Honestly, who ever types "IV" instead of "4" without being forced to?
dowingba
Mikazukinoyaiba
Posted 3:22 AM 2/4/08
@dowingba:
Clever sarcasm.
You're missing the point,this allows people to search the rating of a game without having to go to a store and picking up the box. Parents and other consumers could know ahead of time what the rating is without leaving their home.
You don't have a problem with that do you?:
Mikazukinoyaiba
Astrofox
Posted 3:18 AM 2/4/08
"gta 4" doesn't register, you have to type "Grand Theft Auto IV" ... they should fix that.
It's funny that the GTA IV list of adult content is too large to fit in the rollover balloon :)
Astrofox
MisterSleep
Posted 3:18 AM 2/4/08
@klip_twings: I'd be interesting to see how a game-oriented website like ScreenIt [screenit.com] would work (is there one like it?)... basically a site for parents detailing and rating, in detail, the quantity and severity of each bit of violence/sex/profanity in the game. I don't know what that site's like now, but I'd read a review or two a while back and from what I remember, they were fair, objective, and non-judgmental... something like that might be invaluable as far as putting knowledge into parents' hands.
MisterSleep
Woodwater
Posted 3:17 AM 2/4/08
No results for GTA 4 or Grant Theft Auto 4...
This thing is broken. :P
Woodwater
Pezdispenser
Posted 3:17 AM 2/4/08
Can we use it to search for game cakes? ;P
Seriously though, this sounds like a good idea.
Pezdispenser
Unknown-User
Posted 3:16 AM 2/4/08
This seems to be a step in the right direction. Cake will commense.
Unknown-User
dowingba
Posted 3:15 AM 2/4/08
I wonder if you can change the size of it? I think most website's sidebars are not as wide as that thing.
dowingba
ericisgreat
Posted 3:14 AM 2/4/08
Did anyone else assume from the mention of parents actually checking the ratings on their kids' games that this was an April Fool's joke?
ericisgreat
MisterSleep
Posted 3:13 AM 2/4/08
@Dmunkee: @TearsandScreams: Definitely. It's one of those "why not?" things. Making information more accessible is rarely a bad thing, especially when it gives people fewer chances to claim ignorance around topics as polar as violence in gaming. How the ESRB actually rates games is a different topic, but regardless, they're still the best weapon we've got against the politicians and lobbyists that would shut things down entirely.
MisterSleep
klip_twings
Posted 3:13 AM 2/4/08
As a gaming parent, you know what I'm hungry for? I'm hungry for the ESRB to make those video files that developers have to send them (with all the raunchiest bits of their games revealed) public access so that I can make the big decision on what is and isn't appropriate for my children.
klip_twings
Maldron
Posted 3:13 AM 2/4/08
And that would be the TECHNICAL name of our class colors, I'm sure.
Maldron
beanman101283
Posted 3:12 AM 2/4/08
Disregard that last, I didn't look hard enough.
beanman101283
beanman101283
Posted 3:11 AM 2/4/08
It would interesting if you could add it to your Facebook or Myspace profile. No one i know visits gaming sites, but they do find me on social networking sites. It'd be more accessible to them then.
beanman101283
dowingba
Posted 3:10 AM 2/4/08
I'm not sure, but you can also "search" the game's case for any ratings.
dowingba
TearsandScreams
Posted 3:09 AM 2/4/08
Agreed, does far more good than harm. Any time a kid wants a game it offers an instant place to check. It would be nice to think people are coming round to the idea that parents should exercise control over games played.
TearsandScreams
Dmunkee
Posted 3:07 AM 2/4/08
That's actually kinda neat. I wouldn't have to worry about it, but it seems useful for parents.
Dmunkee
MoogPaul
Posted 5:24 AM 2/4/08
@Mikazukinoyaiba:
you need to search for starfox (one word). The thing works, it's just real picky.
MoogPaul
Remi_Love
Posted 7:02 AM 2/4/08
I don't need a rating system to choose games. sheesh. lol
Remi_Love
The Maginomicon
Posted 7:37 AM 2/4/08
*gasp*
I had no idea there were so many AO-rated games!
[/sarcasm]
The Maginomicon
lordargent
Posted 8:50 AM 2/4/08
The Entertainment Software Rating Board teamed up with Clearspring Technologies to create this neat little widget that lets you search for video game ratings by entering a game's name.
They didn't have something like this before? Utterly amazing!
Assuming the data was already in some sort of delimited format. It would take a CGI geek (like myself) about 1 day to make that thing.
/select title, publisher, rating, content, platforms from games where rating = 'M' or rating = 'AO'
/and yet, they still screwed it up "Condemned 2: Bloodshotâ„¢" ???
lordargent