I love gaming. I love playing games, I love learning about games, I love interpreting the stories and messages behind games. I love sharing games with new people. I also love playing games with my kids. I have no idea if my kids will love playing games as much as I do, but frankly, that’s none of my business what they end up liking.
However, being a parent, it is my responsibility to make sure that they are playing games that are appropriate for their development. This doesn’t mean that I’m going to be forcing games like Pajama Sam on them, but I definitely don’t them playing Grand Theft Auto V until they can understand the differences between fantasy and reality when it comes to what they see on the screen.
Why not just ESRB?
Now, obviously, I recognize that the ESRB exists (for the United States), but using this singular letter with sometimes a number can be problematic for a number of reasons.
Reason 1
I grew up in a time period where all our games were physical. Digital downloadable games were not a possibility until I was well into high school. The ratings were super easy to find right on the packaging and the disk case.
But ever since the Playstation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, gaming is very rapidly shifting towards an all digital future. I personally play most of my games on Steam, the most popular digital storefront for video games made for computers. One glaring issue I have come across with Steam as a store for video games is that it can be difficult to find this ESRB rating. For example, Below is a screenshot if the wonderful game It Takes Two.
You may notice that there is a distinct lack of any sort of indication as to what this game is rated at the top of the page. in fact, you have to scroll down a bunch of metadata and links to buy the game before it shows you the age rating.
Objectively, this isn’t a huge problem, however, if you’re not looking for it, it can actually be very hard to miss. If we compare the same game’s store page on Epic Games, we see the age rating much higher in the page much more visible to a potential buyer.
This steam store problem can be made worse if once we are talking about indie games that haven’t gotten big enough to release on other platforms like consoles or phones. An example of this is one of my favorite games TUNIC. This page does not have any indication of an ESRB Rating. Likewise, their itch.io pages does not show any ratings either. However, I assume they must have gotten some rating at some point by the ESRB because the store page for the Nintendo Switch indicates “Everyone 10+”, but once again, when using the website, it falls close to the bottom of the page, after you scroll down past the purchase link and description of the game.
Reason 2
A secondary point here simply that these broad categories do not specify what exactly is happening within the content of the game. A wide variety of descriptors are included in the back of the physical box, but they do not take center stage, and therefore will be easily missed. To bring back our example with It Takes Two, this is the rating given in the steam page. Something similar should be found on all physical boxes.
This is definitely helpful. Descriptors like “Language” and “Animated Blood” absolutely make sense and can give a good enough idea for what you should expect in the game. However, what exactly does “Comic Mischief” mean? Or “Fantasy Violence”?
According to the ESRB’s website, Comic Mischief is described as
Depictions or dialogue involving slapstick or suggestive humor
and Fantasy Violence is
Violent actions of a fantasy nature, involving human or non-human characters in situations easily distinguishable from real life
These descriptions and definitions definitely help, but how many people know that this resource exists? I only found out that these descriptions existed today (Feb 2025). Taking it one step further, the game has a full entry on the ESRB website, which goes into a bit more description on the specific game and why it got it’s rating and description. But once again, if we are not able to find the rating, and we don’t understand the ratings, or don’t know that further explanation exists, how are we going to make good decisions?
To make matters worse, over the course of time, the meaning or the severity of these ratings seem to change, even if the content doesn’t change that much. Frankly, we see a similar shift in ratings for similar content over the years in our movies. For an example, Halo: Combat Evolved was given a “M - Mature 17+” rating back in 2001, and twenty years later, Halo Infinite was given a “T - Teen” even though the gameplay more or less remains the exact same. Now, to be fair, I have not played Halo Infinity, so there might very well be some dramatic shift in the single player story line that be the reason for the “lowered” age rating, but I can absolutely see how a person with not much experience might not know why a game was given an “M” rating or what the “E” on the side of the box even means.
Getting to the point
This long-winded rant aims to drive home two points:
- Age ratings can be difficult to find in a digital gaming landscape.
- Age ratings can be difficult to understand even if you can find them.
In my opinion, the only way to realistically fix these problems is
- to play the game,
- watch the entire game play out in a gameplay video, or
- to talk to someone who has actually played the game.
Each of these options presents a problem.
First Solution
We cannot expect everyone to play every game to find the ones that are right for their families. Gaming can be difficult for people who don’t already play a lot of games. Gaming can have a very high barrier to entry. Most games have been build on assumptions and conventions that the artform has iterated on over the course of 40+ years. Things like first person perspective controls being split across the two joysticks of a controller, left for movement, and right or looking or the use of the bottom button of the controller (A on Xbox, B on Nintendo, X on Playstation) for jumping in most 2D and 3D games were not standardized for a long time. Understanding where you should be going and where you should not be going (running into literal invisible walls) takes time to learn. For a wonderful discussion on the typic, check out the YouTube Series Gaming For A Non-Gamer by Razbuten.
Second Solution
Watching is extremely time-consuming. Taking a look at list of popular games (according to How Long to Beat) as of writing (Feb 2025), the average number of hours to complete just the story a game is trying to tell can easily creep up into more than 50 hours.
If you’re not playing the game, or very invested in the story of a game, these gameplay videos will be hundreds of hours to try to watch the entire game. There’s no way anyone would actually do that for anything more than something like Portal 2, but even then, watching for the purpose of understanding the content likely wouldn’t be engaging. Our brain rotted attention span will be itching for our phones, and we’d lose the purpose of what we’re trying to do.
Third Solution
Gaming Is a growing hobby that has grown out of being a super nerdy thing that is saved for the “lower rungs“ of the social latter. However, a huge portion of the games being played are the huge “AAA” like Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed or the live service games like Fortnite and Overwatch. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with these games, there are mountains of retro games and indie darlings that still deserve attention. Given the lack of huge investments and profit chasing capitalists, indie titles will often tell more impactful stories while also spanning across a very wide range of ages and content preferences, rather than hyper-focusing on collage-aged men that have disposable income. They can take bigger risks in story telling that may not pay off as much as what the huge companies are expecting of make back on their titles. People that are really deep into the hobby are aware of these indie and retro titles that don’t typically have the massive marketing budgets or legacy of companies like Blizzard, Activision, EA, and Ubisoft.
Knowing someone in the hobby of gaming is likely going to give you the best chance to find out about these lesser known games, and will give you the chance to talk about what is in these games. You will be able to ask them questions about what a game talks about, what the story tries to each, what type of events will happen and shape the player’s experience. You will be able to ask follow up question that discuss what ages would be appropriate for what the game will expose you to. This last sentence is what I believe is most important.
Why am I writing this blog?
I am writing this blog in hopes of being a friend who plays gaming. I love to dissect the narrative of all stories I consume. I try to draw parallels to real life event. I love discussing themes, ideas, content. I also have children. I want to show the world to my children. I want to show them the stories that have impacted me, the stories that have taught me the most important things about life. Will they understand them in the same way that I do? Obviously not, they’re different people. But that’s what I find beautiful about art. The story means something different to each person.
That said, there is a certain age that people should be interacting with different stories. Not all stories should be viewed at the same age. Just like you would never show your 8 year old The Godfather, and how I probably shouldn’t have shown my 3 year old Jurassic Park, I definitely don’t think I should be showing my children Grand Theft Auto (any entry in the series to be honest) and I don’t think they’re ready to engage with the deep and fast pasted mechanics of an RPG like CrossCode. There are is a level of skill and maturity that is required for each game.
Let me be your friend, and let me help you find which games are appropriate for you and your children.