Developer claims ESRB does not take games seriously

Gamesindustry.biz reports that in his keynote address to the attendees at the Games Convention Developer's Conference in Germany, Julian Eggebrecht expressed concern that the US Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB) does not consider video games as an art form.

In a discussion about the trials of developing and publishing Lair for the PS3, Eggbrecht shared an anecdote about an Easter Egg/cheat they had to remove from the game to highlight his concern:

One of these was a satirical video of a real-life coffee maker hidden behind a cheat code in Lair - a reference to the presence of unfinished sexual content in the original release of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. "Everyone thought it was hilarious...but we couldn't call the cheat 'Hot Coffee', because that would imply we were mocking the authorities investigating Hot Coffee."

"If you cannot have satire about these things, that is approaching the realm of McCarthyism," he said.