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The ESA has announced a new national public awareness campaign to educate American parents further regarding the tools and info available to help manage their families’ entertainment choices.
The effort will encourage retailers to display more info on game ratings and parental controls on their websites and storefronts.
The campaign will also include a series of public service announcements touching on current hardware parental controls, as well as the ratings policies of the ESRB.
This campaign will connect with consumers in an immediate and sustained way in addition to the traditional mechanisms over TV outlets. By channeling our industry’s compelling and innovative medium, we will instantly provide proven, practical, and effective information to millions of consumers,” ESA’s president and CEO Michael D. Gallagher said.
US Senator John Thurne and Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Shultz chimed in on the initiative as well.
"No one knows better than parents when it comes to making decisions about which games their children should and should not play," Thune said. "The video game industry makes games for people of all ages, but that doesn’t mean all games are appropriate for everyone. I commend the industry for raising awareness of the tools available to parents that can help them make informed decisions about the games their children play."
"The more parents know about the wealth of dynamic tools the video game industry has developed for monitoring game play, the more empowered they will be to make informed decisions about which video games are appropriate for their family," added Schultz. "I commend the video game industry for recognizing the importance of educating and engaging parents about the ratings and other resources and for leading a national program that will ensure the decision-making power remains where it should be — with parents."
The ESA mentioned in its announcement that it’s looking into working with government policy makers to bring ESRB ratings to social and mobile titles, and plans to support organizations that use video games for educational purposes.
