Clearly I’m not keeping on top of news postings, falling just a mere four days behind on this news. But it does mean that I can wait for the details to shake out a little.

TV psychologist Tanya Byron delivered her report on the effects of violence in videogames and on the Internet on Children. It’s a fairly comprehensive report coming in at almost 229 pages. Calling for many changes its most significant undertaking is to move from PEGI ratings on anything 12+ or above and move over to a BBFC rating. This would be coupled with parental education campaigns and stricter reinforcement of the ratings system at the retail level.

As a user of PEGI, the systems great, it’s accessible and almost Europe wide making the process much easier when you’re trying to get a game onto shelves as well as being cost effective. As the Byron report points out though, parents just don’t treat it with the same sense of respect that they do BBFC film ratings, the report puts it down to confusion and lack of tech savvy amongst this generation. You’d be hard pressed to deny this, on average most kids have a much better understanding of the digital elements of this world compared to their parents and use this to advantage whenever they can. That said, plenty of parents still buy 18 rated video games and give it to their kids, citing it as ‘just a video game’. Are we the industry to be held accountable for poor parenting of that degree? Is it not the parents responsibility to educate themselves on what they are putting into their children’s hands, especially something that has a big, fat 18 sticker on it?

Where do you draw the line? The industry makes games for adults and it makes games for kids, we aren’t putting parents in the position where the only game related entertainment they have to give their kids is adult. It also sets out to take responsibility for the content by rating the games and putting those ratings front and center on the box.  It’s like any form of entertainment, systems are put in place so that those preparing to engage in that entertainment form, whether it be television, film, the internet or video games know something about what they are about to do. Then it comes down the responsibility of the individual, and people have to act responsibly with these forms of media.  The report rightly identifies parental education as part of its recommendations for the future, rather than the knee jerk reaction of banning all forms of adult games.

Will a unified ratings system really make that much of a difference though?  We’ve seen examples in the past where horrendous incidents have occurred and been attributed to films, these acts where often committed by minors and in turn blamed on films rated 18 that they shouldn’t really have been watching. Often the outcome of these events is some form censorship on the piece of media in question rather than looking at deeper more route causes. Essentially the BBFC suffers from the same problems as any other ratings board, and I’m really not sure unity will make that much of a difference. That said, coupled with the proposed adult education and more emphasis on the retail end then it might be enough to placate those calling for more strenuous measures and, more importantly, do the job of protecting minors that we all want it to.

The reports actually fairly well balanced and certainly not as knee-jerk as I feared it might be. It would have been to easy to get caught up in the emotion of the subject rather than addressing the real issues. It’s going to be a confusing time, especially as I’m not far off having to go through the ratings process myself, but once we make it out the other side it’ll be interesting to see what effect this really has long term, Especially when its not full unity, BBFC will only need to rate 12+ games leaving PEGI to handle the 3+ & 7+ games…surely that still leaves us with two systems and the much derided two sets of symbols? The theory perhaps being it’s less important on these games as they’ll be ‘mostly harmless’?

From a user point of view it’ll be interesting to see how they communicate the change and deliver on the full window for change. Gamesindustry.biz has a breakdown of the timetable, I await further instructions with baited breath.