This week, we talked about the new ratings summaries that will be available for games on the ESRB's website. We thought the system was sound, with much more detailed information about why the games were rated the way they were. Others agree, as Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman, and PTA President Jan Harp Domene have offered their support for the new summaries. Gamers should be careful about looking up their favorites games, however. Here there be spoilers.

"Consumers using the content descriptors to make decisions about games they will play themselves should be wary, however. The ESRB write-ups can also include details of plot twists and other spoilers," GameSpot reported. "One line from the Resistance 2 write-up omitted in the quote above reveals a significant plot detail from a climactic moment of the game. Fallout 3 is another title with a key revelation included in the summary."

I didn't look up the offending sections to see how bad the spoilers are, and I hope you'll forgive me. I'm still playing both games, and what am I going to do... print the spoilers? The fact that they're out there at all is depressing, as no information pertaining to ratings should contain any kind of plot information that could even potentially hurt the game playing experience.

While I doubt many gamers will be using this service—it seems much more likely parents will constitute the majority of the readers—we can only hope the ESRB is a little more careful next time. We contacted the ESRB for comment, but as of this writing we have not heard anything back.

Update: the ESRB has just responded, and had the following to say: "The primary goal of our new rating summaries is to give further aid to parents in making informed game choices for their children. The summaries highlight content that factored into to the rating assignment, and the intent is always to have them do so without needlessly revealing spoilers."

Image courtesy of XKCD.