ESRB clarifies rating for Dead or Alive: Paradise

• by John Davison
• February 03, 2010 10:29 AM PST

A number of outlets picked up on an ESRB rating summary for Tecmo's PSP title Dead or Alive: Paradise this morning in which the game was described as being "creepy" and "cheesy." This has since been changed. An ESRB representative explains what happened.

The ESRB has been making huge efforts in the past year to provide much more information about the games that it rates. This began with the inclusion of content descriptors a few years ago, and expanded last year with much more detailed rating summaries and greater access to the ESRB database including web widgets and mobile applications. These summaries, as a matter of ESRB policy, are both objective and descriptive rather than including any opinion. This morning, a number of news outlets picked up on the fact that the raters had seemingly broken with convention for their summary of Tecmo's upcoming PSP title, Dead or Alive: Paradise - noting that the game contains "cheesy" and "creepy" content and criticizing it for highlighting "bizarre, misguided notions of what women really want."

Given the unusual shift in direction for the ratings board, we spoke with ESRB spokesman Eliot Mizarachi for clarification. "The rating summary for Dead or Alive: Paradise was posted to our website in error," he told us. "We have since replaced that version with the corrected one. We recognize that the initial version improperly contained subjective language and that issue has been addressed. Our intention with rating summaries is to provide useful, detailed descriptions of game content that are as objective and informative as possible. However they are ultimately written by people and, in this case, we mistakenly posted a rating summary that included what some could rightfully take to be subjective statements. We sincerely regret the error and will work to prevent this from happening again in the future.”

Here is the new summary for Dead or Alive: Paradise.

This is a collection of mini-games, based on the Dead or Alive game series, in which players assume the role of a bikini-clad female character on vacation on a tropical island. Players engage in daily activities that can include hopping across floating pads on a pool and beach volleyball. Players earn credits after each activity that can be used to purchase new outfits, accessories, and gifts to give other female characters on the island. Players can earn additional credits at the island casino as they wager credit in slot machines and in games of poker and black jack. Some purchasable outfits include string bikinis, one-piece thongs, and sling bikinis. Sling bikinis and thongs often provide very little coverage of breast and bare buttocks. Throughout the game players can view characters engaging in variety of activities—pole dancing, stretching, gyrating to music, and climbing trees. Characters are frequently displayed in compromising position (e.g., buttocks up in the air, legs splayed open, straddling tree trucks, etc.) during these activities. These scenes can often feel voyeuristic as players control the camera to rotate, pan, and zoom in on various body parts as they photograph the characters in different poses.

Here is how it appeared earlier today.

This is a video game in which users watch grown women dressed in G-string bikinis jiggle their breasts while on a two-week vacation. Women's breasts and butts will sway while playing volleyball, while hopping across cushions, while pole dancing, while posing on the ground, by the pool, on the beach, in front of the camera. There are other activities: Users can gamble inside a casino to win credits for shopping; they can purchase bathing suits, sunglasses, hats, clothing at an island shop; they can "gift" these items to eight other women in hopes of winning their friendship, in hopes of playing more volleyball. And as relationships blossom from the gift-giving and volleyball, users may get closer to the women, having earned their trust and confidence: users will then be prompted to zoom-in on their friends' nearly-naked bodies, snap dozens of photos, and view them in the hotel later that night. Parents and consumers should know that the game contains a fair amount of "cheesy," and at times, creepy voyeurism—especially when users have complete rotate-pan-zoom control; but the game also contains bizarre, misguided notions of what women really want (if given two weeks, paid vacation, island resort)—Paradise cannot mean straddling felled tree trunks in dental-floss thongs.

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