For the age rating to be trustworthy, someone actually has to play your game, in full, paying extra attention to all dialogue and content. Paying that someone 1337 USD (200k JPY) for this seems fair to me. While some ports may be created by a single checkbox in Unity, many of them have differences, sometimes exclusive content, sometimes completely separate codebases. Someone needs to check if the Xbox version doesn't have a hidden porn scene.
Besides, Japan isn't unique in this. The German USK also charges similar fees (1200 EUR for new games, 300 EUR for ports) [0]. ESRB and PEGI don't publish their prices, but I wouldn't expect them to be significantly lower.
> For the age rating to be trustworthy, someone actually has to play your game, in full
This is both unrealistic and impossible in 2024. There's an almost infinite number of choice combinations that a player can make, some of which can enable access to unique / hidden content, and there's no way to test them all.
Imagine e.g. an easter-egg side quest that involves the player going into a brothel, but that only activates if some NPC notices you're wearing a specific piece of armor, which has a 30% chance of dropping from a monster that you don't strictly need to kill to finish the entire game.
Not to mention content patches, intentional easter eggs, scenes which should technically be inaccessible to players but can still be accessed due to bugs[1] and so on.
> For the age rating to be trustworthy, someone actually has to play your game, in full..
If you think about that for ten seconds you'll realize how absurd it is, and if you google it for ten more you'll find out that they actually just watch a short video (which the game maker must prepare, and sign a contract promising that it shows all the necessary elements of the game).
> Unfortunately, IARC age ratings can only be used for digital games and apps. Those who want to release a physical game in Japan must obtain an age rating from CERO – making it potentially cost prohibitive to give smaller titles a physical release in the country.
What’s the point of doing a physical release if you won’t even recoup ~$1300 + $400/port?
Japan still uses a lot of physical games media. Lots of little game stores still exist (or at least a lot existed before COVID, I know a lot of specialty stores closed up during that) and doujin circles have historically made the bulk of their game sales (and generally gained their fame) from physical sales made during large events like comiket in their doujinsoft sections.
And while in the west this sounds kind of like a niche thing, a substantial number of the bigger games that have come out of Japan (excluding those from the AAA studios) either started their distribution with physical sales at conventions or their developers started off that way before they got enough of a following to just publish digitally and avoid the hassle.
So there's not really a clear cutoff between "studios" small enough to avoid the ire of the law and those large enough to afford getting all the ratings fees, etc paid for.
I can respect why CERO might want extra for ports. Ports can be different, and it will take manhours to check through that possibility which means more money on the payroll.
I also find the per-port fee to be a nothingburger: 20,000 JPY or 60,000 JPY per platform for members and non-members respectively. That's ~$133 USD or ~$400 USD assuming 150 JPY to $1 USD exchange rate, or ~$200 USD or ~$600 USD assuming 100 JPY to $1 USD. That is honestly nothing assuming it's a one-time fee to review.
For the age rating to be trustworthy, someone actually has to play your game, in full, paying extra attention to all dialogue and content. Paying that someone 1337 USD (200k JPY) for this seems fair to me. While some ports may be created by a single checkbox in Unity, many of them have differences, sometimes exclusive content, sometimes completely separate codebases. Someone needs to check if the Xbox version doesn't have a hidden porn scene.
Besides, Japan isn't unique in this. The German USK also charges similar fees (1200 EUR for new games, 300 EUR for ports) [0]. ESRB and PEGI don't publish their prices, but I wouldn't expect them to be significantly lower.
[0] https://usk.de/en/home/cost-overview/
> For the age rating to be trustworthy, someone actually has to play your game, in full
This is both unrealistic and impossible in 2024. There's an almost infinite number of choice combinations that a player can make, some of which can enable access to unique / hidden content, and there's no way to test them all.
Imagine e.g. an easter-egg side quest that involves the player going into a brothel, but that only activates if some NPC notices you're wearing a specific piece of armor, which has a 30% chance of dropping from a monster that you don't strictly need to kill to finish the entire game.
Not to mention content patches, intentional easter eggs, scenes which should technically be inaccessible to players but can still be accessed due to bugs[1] and so on.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_Coffee_(minigame)
> For the age rating to be trustworthy, someone actually has to play your game, in full..
If you think about that for ten seconds you'll realize how absurd it is, and if you google it for ten more you'll find out that they actually just watch a short video (which the game maker must prepare, and sign a contract promising that it shows all the necessary elements of the game).
Random search result that describes the process: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/how-to-get-an-age-rat...
While the Japanese organisation might only watch videos, other rating boards do play the games:
https://usk.de/en/home/age-classification-for-games-and-apps...
https://gamesratingauthority.org.uk/RatingBoard/ratings-proc... (which provides PEGI ratings for 12+ games)
> other rating boards do play the games...
...to check whether the video they watched was representative, sure. Not in full, or to view "all dialogue and content".
1337 seems like a suspicious dollar amount.
> 1337 seems like a suspicious dollar amount.
Do you think 31337 would be more apropiate ?
I thought it worked by you sending a video of a walkthrough, not have them play through the whole game.
I thought that ESRB people don't actually play your game, and that they just ask some questions and watch some videos.
https://www.esrb.org/ratings/ratings-process/
> Unfortunately, IARC age ratings can only be used for digital games and apps. Those who want to release a physical game in Japan must obtain an age rating from CERO – making it potentially cost prohibitive to give smaller titles a physical release in the country.
What’s the point of doing a physical release if you won’t even recoup ~$1300 + $400/port?
Japan still uses a lot of physical games media. Lots of little game stores still exist (or at least a lot existed before COVID, I know a lot of specialty stores closed up during that) and doujin circles have historically made the bulk of their game sales (and generally gained their fame) from physical sales made during large events like comiket in their doujinsoft sections.
And while in the west this sounds kind of like a niche thing, a substantial number of the bigger games that have come out of Japan (excluding those from the AAA studios) either started their distribution with physical sales at conventions or their developers started off that way before they got enough of a following to just publish digitally and avoid the hassle.
So there's not really a clear cutoff between "studios" small enough to avoid the ire of the law and those large enough to afford getting all the ratings fees, etc paid for.
I can respect why CERO might want extra for ports. Ports can be different, and it will take manhours to check through that possibility which means more money on the payroll.
I also find the per-port fee to be a nothingburger: 20,000 JPY or 60,000 JPY per platform for members and non-members respectively. That's ~$133 USD or ~$400 USD assuming 150 JPY to $1 USD exchange rate, or ~$200 USD or ~$600 USD assuming 100 JPY to $1 USD. That is honestly nothing assuming it's a one-time fee to review.
Back in the day it wasn't uncommon that "ports" were just outright remakes done by a completely different team.