The Recreational Software Advisory Council (RSAC) was an independent, non-profit organization founded in the U.S. in 1994 by the
Software Publishers Association
The Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) is a trade association dedicated to the entertainment, consumer and business software industries. Established in 1984 as the Software Publishers Association (SPA), the SIIA took its new na ...
as well as six other industry leaders in response to
video game controversy
Video game controversies refers to a wide range of debates on the social effects of video games on players and video game culture, broader society, as well as debates within the video game industry. Since the early 2000s, advocates of video gam ...
and threats of government regulation.
The goal of the council was to provide objective content ratings for
computer games, similar to the earlier formed
Videogame Rating Council
The Videogame Rating Council (V.R.C.) was introduced by Sega of America in 1993 to rate all video games that were released for sale in the United States and Canada on the Sega Master System, Genesis, Game Gear, Sega CD, 32X, and Pico. The rating h ...
(VRC) and later
Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB). The RSAC ratings were based on the research of Dr.
Donald F. Roberts
Donald F. Roberts (born March 30, 1939) is the Thomas More Storke Professor Emeritus in Communication at Stanford University.
Roberts studied at Columbia University, where he received his B.A. in 1961, at the University of California, Berkeley, wh ...
of
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
who studied media and its effect on children.
In 1993, senators
Herb Kohl
Herbert H. Kohl (born February 7, 1935) is an American businessman and politician. Alongside his brother and father, the Kohl family created the Kohl's department stores chain, of which Kohl went on to be president and CEO. Kohl also served as a ...
and
Joseph Lieberman
Joseph Isadore Lieberman (; born February 24, 1942) is an American politician, lobbyist, and attorney who served as a United States senator from Connecticut from 1989 to 2013. A former member of the Democratic Party, he was its nominee for V ...
raised concerns over the levels of violence and other adult material appearing in video games which were available to children. Under threat of government regulation, industry groups like the Software Publishers Association (SPA), the
Association of Shareware Professionals
The Association of Software Professionals (ASP), formerly Association of Shareware Professionals, was a professional association for authors and developers of freeware, commercial, and shareware computer software. It was formed in April 1987, and ...
(ASP), and others had concerns about the intrusion of the government, and the costs, delays and subjective judgments of a review-committee-based system.
At the time, the largest trade group, the SPA had few members in the gaming field, but the ASP had many, and the two organizations decided to work together. Mark Traphagen (an attorney with the SPA) and Rosemary West (ASP board member) appeared before Congress in the summer of 1994 in support of the SPA representation.
The SPA and ASP (and other industry groups) were opposed to an age-based rating system operated by a review committee as developed by the ESRB, which was proposed by several multi-national console game manufacturers and distributors. The groups preferred a content labeling system that would allow parents to know what was in the games and then make their own judgments about what their children would see.
An ASP-sponsored committee, led by Jim Green of Software Testing Labs, and staffed by Karen Crowther of Redwood Games, and Randy MacLean of FormGen, developed the initial version of what would become the RSAC ratings. The committee identified the elements most likely to be of concern to parents and developed specific descriptions of the levels of such content that would define the levels reported. The system would be self-administered by game publishers who could use the system to label their games.
The entire system was turned over to the SPA for its newly formed Recreational Software Advisory Council in 1994. The council formed RSACi in 1995, which was a branch which rated websites.
The organization was closed in 1999 and reformed into the
Internet Content Rating Association
Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) was an international non-profit organization with offices in the United States and the United Kingdom. In October 2010, the ICRA rating system, and the organization, was discontinued.
Its mission was to h ...
(ICRA).
Software labels
Internet ratings
These RSACi ratings are included and used in the "Content Advisor" feature of
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems (in W ...
.
See also
*
Mobile software content rating system
References
Archived RSAC website (April 14, 1997)- Software and internet content rating charts and the introduction.
- Pictures of the RSAC content symbols, as these pictures were unavailable at the RSAC site listed above.
External links
*
{{Video game content rating systems
Video game organizations
Video game content ratings systems
Technology trade associations
Entertainment rating organizations
Self-censorship
Organizations established in 1994