The Byron Review
By The Byron Review was released this morning. Dr Tanya Byron's report was even handed and it's obvious that she knows what she's talking about.
The Byron Review proposes:
- Introduce a mandatory age-rating system for all games, to be handled by the BBFC
- Ensure that retailers defying the age-rating are punished appropriately
- Make age ratings on the game boxes larger and clearer
- Ensure that in situations where there is a risk of actual harm, restrictions can be adequately enforced
- PEGI will continue to rate 3+ and 7+ titles.
The final decision of any implementation is up to the government and it isn't guaranteed that they will follow the recommendations in the report.
2 Comments
Meta
There's two issues here:
- one, that the ratings aren't always clear what they're for. On some games it appears the rating is for content - i.e. 7+ for mild cartoon violence like Lego Star Wars and on others for age range suitability. 3+ is the least helpful rating imo, because most 3+ games are WAY too complicated for a 3 year old to be able to play. 12+ games (many MMORPGs) are blatantly badly rated. There are other humans they're playing with so 18+ type content is uncontrollable. Plus I know so many 12 year olds that are just not sophisticated enough to know how to communicate effectively in the game (randomly clicking on people to get groups rather than talking first... not reading the screen when people send them messages etc). They need to somehow combine these two issues, especially for younger ages.
- the other issue is that many parents still completely ignore game and film ratings with 5 year olds playing/watching 18+ cert games/films. I'm not sure that you're going to be able to do anything about that.
The big problems with the current rating system, and they are touched upon in the report, is inconsistency and lack of knowledge.
Games in the UK currently get rated by one of three bodies.
The first group, PEGI, is currently a voluntary pan-european rating system. The age rating part of the rating is very easy to understand but the content part is not particularly intuitive being just an icon rather than an icon and description.
The second option is the BBFC, who only rate a game if there is certain types of violent or sexual content. If the game has neither then it doesn't go before the BBFC.
The third system, ESRB, is North American based and entirely voluntary. Although, virtually every game in the USA and Canada gains an ESRB rating. ESRB is a non-profit, self-regulatory, independent body set up by ESA.
In my XBox 360 collection I have games rated by the BBFC, ESRB and PEGI and I also have a couple of games that haven't been rated by any of them; although, looking at the unrated games they are all ones that I've imported from Japan.
Whereas film, video and dvd ratings are well known and clearly understood and followed it would appear that game ratings are not.
As alluded to by Pewari's comment, my sister, who has 2 children, and my brother, who has 3 children, rarely show concern for the type, or age rating, of a game their kids are playing. Now, in most cases, this isn't a problem, but sometimes they play games that have ratings which would suggest they were unsuitable.
My 7 year old nephew would think nothing of playing GTA San Andreas (BBFC 18), Crackdown (BBFC 15), Sonic The Hedgehog (BBFC 12), TMNT (BBFC 12), WWE (PEGI 16+) or Bomberman (PEGI 12+). My sister, who I really think is doing a fine job of raising two well mannered kids, seems to be of the opinion that he's out of her hair and happy amusing himself, so she's not overly concerned.
As Pewari mentioned, until parents take a more active role in controlling the sort of games their children have access to, the problem is not going to go away.