- Wednesday, 25 November 2009
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The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense - Tom Clancy
Government cracks down on gaming industry
WORRY ABOUT your kids’ safety no longer, the British government has
decided to implement Dr. Tanya Byron’s recommendations.
Since Byron’s Safer Children in a Digital World caused so much of a fuss back in March the government have now decided to take Byron’s advice on board.
The report recognised the potential for learning, development and enjoyment that has come with the growth of video games, but also identified a need to protect children and young people from harmful or inappropriate material.
A consultation with Culture Minister Margaret Hodge on how video game classification could be improved, revealed that more should be done to make the system more effective.
"The current system of classification comes from a time when video games were in their infancy. In recent years there have been extraordinary developments in technology, with increasingly realistic gameplay and highly evolved storylines. At the same time more and more games are now accessed on line.”
A new, legally enforceable system of age classification will help parents, retailers and other consumers to fully understand which games are age restricted, and ensure that the appropriate games are played by the correct age group.
Byron says, "I welcome this period of public consultation. While my recommendations centred on the issue of child safety, I emphasised in my report the important contribution that all stakeholders have to make to this debate."
The consultation flagged up four options for the new system:
* a hybrid of the current BBFC and PEGI systems, with a legal requirement for
the BBFC to rate all games suitable for players over the age of 12, with PEGI
continuing to rate all 3+ and 7+ games.
* a system based solely on PEGI ratings, but enforceable by law
* a system using only BBFC ratings
* a continuation of the current arrangement, (BBFC and PEGI) backed up by a code
of practice to ensure that retailers and suppliers comply with the system.
Now all that needs to be done is to decide which one to choose - that might be easier said than done, knowing this government. µ
See Also
Interweb
could send your kids bananas
Internet cannot be sanitised for kids
Rabid press declares war on games
Video game industry wants BBFC banned
Video game violence to be bagged and tagged
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None of the rating systems proposed will ever accurately reflect the true content of the games in the context that they are portrayed. 

The only time parents will be able to make an informed decision is if they are gamers themselves.

I think the PEGI system is weak, and given that so many parents don't play games and don't understand them, I think the BBFC system is the easiest for them to understand.

The issue of child safety (w/ games)shouldn't be a burden entirely for the developers or the regulators, but something that ultimately parents should be responsible for.

I'm sure children will also appreciate that their parents take an interest in their interests.
You're assuming the government will pick one? The most likely scenario is that they'll look at the presented options, then decide to make up their own, spend 50 million on consultants, come up with a clunky system that needs a "national IT project" to verify the age of purchasers and record various other innocent statistics, with all sorts of odd definitions of content like "violence against children whilst sitting in small boxes" and "nudity on the side of a television packing box in the open air", implement a half-arsed version of it, have it arrive 20 years late and half a billion over budget and then say "If you'd let us give you all ID cards this would be so much easier..."

Err are you sure it's the English, Welsh and the Scottish Government all doing this or is it just in fact the English one?

is such a load of bull all this about computer games, there just looking for an excuse to hide from the real problems of society instrad of sorting it outright but there are too mant doo gooders going around that they wont let people with common sense to sort the problems out how they should be dealt with.

ive always thought the game rating system has been adequate the way it is.
that the current system is just too clear, and that we need to develop a more complicated system so that parents will buy anything for their kids.
i mean 18+ isn't very clear at all we need to subdivide it into obscure categories that even die-hard gamers wont comprehend

3 cheers for another bleeding heart liberal that suffers from an intellectual superiority complex yay!!


* a hybrid of the current BBFC and PEGI systems, with a legal requirement for the BBFC to rate all games suitable for players over the age of 12, with PEGI continuing to rate all 3+ and 7+ games.
* a system based solely on PEGI ratings, but enforceable by law 
* a system using only BBFC ratings 
* a continuation of the current arrangement, (BBFC and PEGI) backed up by a code of practice to ensure that retailers and suppliers comply with the system.

clear as molasses...

and who gives a shit anyways lol....
You can give a game any rating you want but it still comes down to the idiot parents that buy the games for their kiddies who then kick up a stink when they find their son slicing and dicing people with swords in GTA...does the big red 18 logo on the front not say it enough?

It's not the ratings that are broken but the ignorant parents who buy their kids things without thinking to keep them out of their way so they can avoid being a caring parent just that little bit more.I'd waver that they're the same parents who don't realise when small kitchen knives dissapear out of their drawers and think nothing of it when their kid walks out of the house looking like ninjas.
Have to laugh PEGi is fine and most retailers stick to them, but then parents couldn't care less as their kids scream i want this game and then the developers get the blame.
Why doesn't someone teach parents how to be parents instead of letting them blame everything else as to why their kids are bullies holligans etc