December Reading List; “E for Everyone?” (Patreon)

“Immersive Entertainment Industry Report Update for 2022”

Sarah A.S. Elger & Ricky Brigante

In this first of first of a series of updates to their 2020 report, Elger and Brigante present their proposed “Audience Advisory Badge” system, which builds on and expands on similar ratings systems from the ESRB to provide more information about both the content and modes of interactivity audiences will encounter. As someone who has built intentional vagueness into the way I present my work and invite my participants, this is a really interesting discussion for me, and one I look forward to jumping into.

RELATED READING

“The 2020 report”

By Sarah A.S. Elger & Ricky Brigante, Edited by Noah Nelson

This report is huge, and very detailed. While the group polled is moderately sized and rather homogenous, the most striking thing for me in the report is the breadth of the variety in experiences surveyed, in terms of content but more so in terms of form and production size. The term “Immersive” here is really shown to be a staggeringly wide tent, and any attempt to address a single topic beneath it (funding, profitability, marketing, etc.) is strained by how different the realities are for each of the occupants of this grouping. This report is also where the authors first propose their rating system, so if you’d like to see how that thinking in particular has evolved, you can jump to page 83 of the report.

“The Motion Picture Association of America introduces the film-rating"

This Day in History Class (podcast)

I wanted some background on the rating system we are referring to, and dug around a bit for some background. Here’s the short version of the story - the next podcast is the LONG version. In a seeming nod to the moviegoing experience this episode begins with A LOT of ads (I had to skip at least 100 seconds in), but the story of how film ratings came to be in America actually has a few surprising twists and turns, including an official position term-limited by your children’s age(?!!). All in all, some interesting stuff.

“The Movie Rating System with Karina Longworth”

“You’re Wrong About,” Host Sarah Marshall

Marshal and Longworth take a long, meandering walk through the ratings system’s history, providing a lot more social and political context and unmasking the real usual suspects, Scooby-Doo style. If you’re into tracking the history of our particularly American blend of moral panic and baldfaced capitalism, you’ll enjoy these folks, who do it well.

~


To Quote a Great Sage of the Silver Screen—‘That’s All, Folks’

Yannick Trapman-O’Brien