[Kwpolska]

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/

[miki123211]

> 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)

[fenomas]

> 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...

[Kwpolska]

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)

[fenomas]

> 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".

[m463]

1337 seems like a suspicious dollar amount.

[hulitu]

> 1337 seems like a suspicious dollar amount.

Do you think 31337 would be more apropiate ?

[Keyframe]

I thought it worked by you sending a video of a walkthrough, not have them play through the whole game.

[Hamuko]

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/