Last year former Entertainment Software Association (the industry group the ESRB was created by) President Doug Lowenstein opined that videogames shouldn't be rated by gamers. By implication, this would include GamerParents. You can imagine how I felt about such a remark and so, with a great deal of pride and pleasure, I'm very pleased to announce that the ESRB has taken it upon themselves to recruit some full-time GamerParents to help them rate games!

The result is on your left. Click that box and, if you live in the New York area, YOU... a GamerDad reader and GamerParent yourself could become one of the ESRB raters.

I'm really excited about this, and honored the ESRB chose GamerDad.com to help them. We're getting the opportunity to make sure GamerParents have a say and guarantee that gamers and GamerParents will be better represented by the rating you find on the box. Will this change the ratings? No. GamerParents love their kids just as much as any parent but it will help the ESRB make more sense to gamers. The MPAA movie ratings keep their judges secret but guess what? They're all movie fans. It's absurd to not have people familiar with games do the ratings.

Nobody knows games better than Gamers. There's no substitute for hands on experience. So, get your resume together and click that link!

Good luck! We're pulling for you. And we'd like to thank the ESRB for their foresight in this matter.

Yours,
-GamerDad

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