In an overdue modification to their rating policy, ESRB now includes summaries of games' content along with the standard ratings and descriptors. The first of the summaries are now available on their website to help you parents determine what new games your kids should or shouldn't play.

To give you an example, here's the summary provided with Mirror's Edge, a Teen-rated game released yesterday: "Mirror's Edge(TM) is an action game set in a futuristic world of 'runners,' 'Big Brother' surveillance, and adventure. Players control Faith, a courier who runs along rooftops, up pipes and around every kind of obstacle to get from point A to point B. Paramilitary forces called the "PK" are dispatched to eradicate runners like Faith, and they shoot at the player's character with various handguns, tazers, and machine guns. Players can also engage in firefights and hand-to-hand combat with the PK, and a slight red blood effect is emitted from wounded enemies. In addition, a cutscene depicts a dead man slumped over on his desk with his head lying in a small pool of red blood. Characters sometimes use profanity (e.g., "sh*t," "damn," and "bastard") during cutscenes and gameplay."

This is a lot more informative than just slapping "T" on a game box and saying the game has "blood, violence, and [foul] language." For a while now, the ESRB system has been ignoring the fact that not every parent thinks every "T" game is acceptable for every teen. This sort of issue comes down to individual judgment and these new ratings facilitate that judgment. It should make holiday shopping a lot easier.

How do they get this information on games? We incorrectly assumed that the ESRB was now required to play through games but someone at the Communications Department at ESRB set the record straight. They pointed us toward a summary of the ESRB rating process on their website, which states that publishers send the ESRB a write-up of their games' explicit content and a DVD with video footage of said content. The process "may also involve ESRB staff members playing a beta or alpha version of the game", but not always.