Rating a video game is a time-intensive, expensive process. People need to watch the content in question, assess context, take into account the realism of a game, and then use all the data at their disposal to assign the game a rating that will determine who will be able to buy the game at retail. The problem is one of scale: more games are being released via various online stores, and keeping up with that onslaught is a tricky problem.

The Entertainment Software Ratings Board thinks it has a solution, and it's a bold step forward for game ratings: what if there was a form that developers and publishers themselves could fill out that allowed a rating to be assigned in a timely and accurate way? "Starting today, publishers of these downloadable games will complete a different submission form than is used for all other games," the ESRB announced. "The new form contains a series of multiple choice questions designed to assess content across all relevant categories, such as violence, sexual content, and language, among others." I've spent a few minutes playing with this form, filling out the questions about a fictional game, and to my surprise it allowed for a certain amount of subtlety. Welcome to the future of automated game ratings.

This is only for digital releases

The form is only available for games that are available via purely digital means, so if a game has a boxed edition at retail it will need to go through the traditional process of having a human assigning the rating. For digital-only releases the upsides to this process are many, as it's faster to rate the games, and costs are lower for both the publisher and the ESRB. For now the form will only be used with games sold via the digital distribution platforms on current consoles, and each game will be checked by a person within 48 hours of release to ensure the accuracy of the rating. If the developer or publisher was less than forthcoming with the questions on the form, the rating can quickly be adjusted online, or in dire cases, the game can be removed from sale completely.

The electronic form begins with eight basic questions, and if you answer that your game has a certain kind of content, more specific questions will be revealed, allowing you to give specifics about the sort of thing gamers will see in your release. If there's no sexual content, you only have one question to answer, but if you say that yes, there is nudity or sexual content in your game, there will be a further series of questions that allow you to detail exactly what kind of sexual content gamers will see. Certain answers will unlock new layers of questions, drilling down to very specific details about the game.

We spoke with ESRB President Patricia Vance about the form, and she stressed that they spent a significant amount of time making sure the automated process allowed for context. "We're looking at things like incentives. Is the incentive to avoid a particular violent act or is to pursue it?" she told Ars. "Are there innocents involved in the violence in any way? Also, perspective is extremely important when rating a game," she pointed out.

Shooting someone may feel slightly violent in a top-down strategy game, but it gains a new level of impact if you're playing a first-person shooter that shows the violence up close and personal. All these things will have to be disclosed when filling out the questions about your game.

The questions can become very detailed very quickly; under "profanity" it lists a slang term for female genitalia and allows you to select if the word was used to mean "wimp" or to refer to... well, female genitalia.

Vance said that in both internal testing and working with developers' real games, the level of success has been high. "It's assigning ratings close to how we would assign them if we had human raters involved," she said.

Where this is going

For now the system will only be used with downloadable console games, but in the future it could move to other digital distribution platforms, as well as casual gaming environments. The idea is to get a low-cost way to rate a high volume of games in a variety of marketplaces. That said, Vance stressed that boxed games will continue to be rated in the traditional way: "We have no plans to use this for retail, for packaged product."

Vance also assured us that publishers can't game the form for a specific rating, as you have to fill out each question to completion and then submit your responses along with payment and a DVD with your game's content. Only then is the rating assigned. Publishers unhappy with the rating will be able to appeal the decision.

This is something of an experiment at this point, but the form I used and the way the questions were laid out made sense. If publishers and developers are forthcoming—and with the ESRB's power to yank games from their respective marketplaces they have a high incentive to be truthful—and if the ESRB keeps everyone honest with spot checks, this could be an efficient, low-cost way to handle game ratings.