Rating Video Game Violence

Ratings of video game violence have developed as an extension of ratings of television violence. Among those organizations that have attempted to rate television violence, the National Coalition on Television Violence (NCTV) has also developed a system to rate the violent content of video games. The NCTV system contains ratings that range from XUnfit and XV (highly violent) to PG and G ratings. Between summer and Christmas of 1989, NCTV surveyed 176 Nintendo video games. Among the games surveyed, 11.4% received the XUnfit rating. Another 44.3% and 15.3% received the other violent ratings of XV and RV, respectively. A total of 20% of games received a PG or G rating (NCTV, 1990).

The Sega company, which manufactures video games, has developed a system for rating its own games as appropriate for general, mature, or adult audiences, which it would like to see adopted by the video game industry as a whole. The Nintendo company, in rating its games, follows standards modeled on the system used by the Motion Picture Association of America.

A problem shared by those who rate violence in television and video games is that the definition of violence is necessarily subjective. Given this subjectivity, raters have attempted to assess antisocial violence more accurately by ranking violent acts according to severity, noting the context in which violent acts occur, and considering the overall message as pro- or anti- violence. However, the factor of context is typically missing in video games. There are no grey areas in the behavior of game characters, and players are rarely required to reflect or make contextual judgments (Provenzo, 1992).

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