FTC Survey: 20% Success Rate for Kids Buying Mature Games
Covert government-recruited shoppers prowled 253 stores to buy Mature-rated games and were turned down a remarkable 80% of the time according to a just-released FTC survey. That's up dramatically from a 58% turn-away rate in the FTC's 2007 "undercover shopper" survey, according to game trade site Gamasutra. Apparently the rate was as low as 16% in 2000. That's a 64% improvement with zero formal federal involvement in less than a decade. I'd say a round of applause for independent self-regulation is in order, wouldn't you?
I hardly need to add that all the industry trade groups including the ESRB are trumpeting the results of the survey (well they are), I'll just let that number and its source speak for itself.
Now give yourself a respectable clap on the back, independent games industry, but don't dally. We hit lows like 16% because we didn't take ourselves seriously enough eight years ago, and it shouldn't take the threat of government imposed sanctions and/or criminal prosecution laws to live up to self-imposed standards. Put another way, our game's improved at least 64% since we started playing (1994 if you want to gauge by the establishment of the ESRB), but we're still 20% shy of par for the course.
And par is what pushes marginal types like Jack Thompson off the page altogether.
Re-Play
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yay, keep on truckin'
I have to wonder how this compares to the rate in which kids can purchase 'R' Rated movies or music? I doubt it would be as low as 20%
I don't know steveo, but it's a great question.
"The FTC's operation found that more than 50 percent of the undercover shoppers were able to buy unrated movies and PAL-rated CDs, and 47 percent were able to buy R-rated movies. In each of those cases, the percentages have gone down since 2006."
Quoted from: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/145654/ftc_kids_finding_it_harder_to_buy_mrated_video_games.html