It may have been a long time coming, but as of today, the 30th of July, it's been made official - the multi-coloured game ratings, PEGI, have now become law. After a long and winding process, which has entailed several official reviews, and numerous delays, setbacks, and parliamentary debates, from today, all games sold in the UK must carry a PEGI rating, which have now become legally enforceable. That means that if an eleven year old tries to buy a game rated as a PEGI 12, the retailer is legally not allowed to sell them it - with a prison sentence, and a £5,000 fine awaiting anyone found breaking the rules.
As may have been expected, this is a move that many within the games industry are phenomenally happy about, as it's seen as one more step on the road to safer games - a clearer, legally enforceable way to help make sure parents know exactly what a game's all about before they buy it. The games industry already gets a rather unfair amount of criticism regarding the amount of "violent" games it produces, while the media are always quick to blame games as the sole cause of many tragic events - so any chance the industry gets to blow its horn, and show it's being as responsible as humanly possible, it'll obviously take. But when it comes to this new legislation... Well, things aren't quite as simple as they may seem. In our opinion, PEGI is a system that has several major flaws, which may take quite a while to be ironed out.
For some games, ultra violence is a real selling point. We're still not sure why.
Before we get started, we ought to say that we do agree with the principals behind what the Government are doing. Without a doubt, we should be doing all we can to make sure parents are aware of what the games their children are playing are actually like (and that's a large part of what this website's all about), as many would undoubtedly be uncomfortable with the idea of letting their young children play games like Modern Warfare 3, Skyrim, and Grand Theft Auto, no matter how popular they may be with their friends. But it's the method, rather than the idea that's causing the problem.
To find out how we got to where we are today, we'll have to turn the clock back to 2007, with the commissioning of the Byron report, "Safer Children in a Digital World", a wide reaching document which looked into every aspect of keeping children safe online - from social networks, and the possibility for grooming or bullying, to the issue we're the most interested in - games age ratings. At the time the report was written, games were rated by two separate bodies - the BBFC (which also do the age ratings for films), and the less well known PEGI. The report, quite rightly, suggested that having two age ratings can be confusing for parents when it comes to buying games, and that having a single, universally identified ratings scheme would be for the best - which is undoubtedly true, especially as the ratings games received from the BBFC and PEGI were often substantially different.
This then went to a full public consultation, during which the Government backed the BBFC to become to sole ratings system, whilst the industry, for reasons that we're still unsure about, backed PEGI, as a European standard (PEGI actually stands for Pan European Game Information). Although we're not entirely sure why the games industry chose to back PEGI over the BBFC, we can only assume that money had something to do with it, as having to submit a game to a single ratings body, which would then apply for the whole of Europe, would be much cheaper than submitting it to each country's board individually. Prof Tanya Byron, the author of the initial Byron report, recommended a hybrid approach of having the BBFC ratings on the front, and the PEGI ratings on the back - but in the end, PEGI won the right to be the sole ratings system of choice. And so we find ourselves here today. But was this the right decision to make? Is PEGI the best ratings system to protect children from inappropriate games? Well, it's a little bit more complex than it may originally seem.
The main purpose of the brightly coloured PEGI age ratings is to give parents a quick, easy, at-a-glance description of how suitable the content of a specific game is - which is the first place where PEGI falls down. The BBFC logos have been long established in this country, and were recognised almost unanimously by parents, who in turn also understood that the ratings were intended to apply to a game's suitability in terms of content, not its difficulty. PEGI, on the other hand, has always been a lot less clear. From personal experience, we know that parents can be unsure as to exactly what PEGI ratings are passing judgement about - on several occasions, we've seen friends and family go to buy games rated as a PEGI 3+ for their 4 year old, believing that the PEGI logos are effectively difficulty ratings, only to discover the game's full of reams of text, which their child could only dream of handling. The BBFC ratings were subject to none of this confusion. Because they were also found on films, parents knew they were rating the suitability of the content, not the game itself - and PEGI will have several hurdles to conquer before it establishes itself similarly.
Duke Nukem's always courted controversy. This is one of those games that's certain to get an 18 from whatever ratings board it goes in front of.
Similarly to the BBFC, PEGI also divides itself into categories, but perhaps not as logically as you may think. While BBFC has U, PG, 12, 15 and 18 ratings, PEGI instead opts for 3, 7, 12, 16 and 18 - and it's only the 12 and upwards ratings that are legally enforceable. Oddly, in other countries in Europe, these age brackets differ slightly (some countries have a 4+ rating, rather than 3+), but bar the smaller gap between the final two age categories when compared to the BBFC (rendering it somewhat less useful), there's actually not too much difference on the surface. It's when you delve under the covers, and see how PEGI works, that the problems start to reveal themselves.
Having been established for longer, most parents have a good idea of what to expect from a film rated as a BBFC U, PG, and so on, and could judge, without necessarily knowing much about the film, how "bad" or otherwise it was going to be, and whether they were happy with their child watching it, as they were familiar with the standardisation used. On the contrary, PEGI ratings, partially due to being less established, and partially due to the different ratings system, can tend to be a little bit hit and miss. Were we to show you footage of several games, without telling you what age rating they were, the chances are it'd be hard to guess all the PEGI ratings correctly, as they can often be really, really harsh.
If you own any games that have been rated by both the BBFC and PEGI, it's pretty much guaranteed that the PEGI rating will be - at least - a category higher. Just scanning through our collection reveals a whole host of mismatches. Rhythm action game Guitar Hero 5 is rated a PEGI 12, and BBFC PG. As such, it would now be illegal for an 11 year old to buy it. Historical stealth game Assassin's Creed Revelations is a PEGI 18, yet a BBFC 15. Wrestle-fest WWE 12 is a BBFC 12, but a PEGI 16, a decision which is all the more confusing when you consider the TV show is rated a PG. Even more strangely, ice hockey sim NHL 12 is rated a PEGI 16 - which, along with WWE 12, brings it into the same territory as gritty, military shooters like Battlefield 3 - despite the fact that one is obviously a lot more violent than the other. Unless players have started shooting each other at ice hockey games now.
We're sure many parents would class a game that revolves solely around shooting people to be much more violent than WWE or NHL. But under PEGI's bizarre regulations, they're all lumped into the same category.
The difference in ratings becomes even more apparent when you compare DVDs to games. A Wii game based on kids TV show Batman: The Brave and the Bold gets a PEGI 12, while the DVD of the TV series gets a PG. Toy Story 3 is a U on film, but a 7 in terms of the game. The same goes for Disney Channel's Phineas and Ferb - a PEGI 7, while the film is a BBFC U.
Batman: The Brave and the Bold. Does this look like it deserves a PEGI 12?
As the years have gone by, fewer and fewer games have been being rated by the BBFC as it's been phased out, so comparisons such as the above have become harder to come by. However, one of the best examples of the difference between the two systems comes with sci-fi role playing game, Mass Effect. Rated at a BBFC 12, the game's description says it contains "Mild violence, and one moderate sex scene." PEGI, meanwhile, saw fit to rate the game as a PEGI 18, citing what they described as "Extreme violence", "sexual activity without visible genitalia", and "nudity of a sexual nature". With this in mind, and the confusion it would undoubtedly bring seeing a box with two vastly different age ratings on, it's easy to see why the Government chose to go with a single system of regulation - but, to you, which rating rings closer to home? Does Mass Effect "feel" like a BBFC 12, or a PEGI 18? Which one more accurately reflects what parents think? The violence in Mass Effect certainly is anything but extreme - there's very little in the way of blood, guts and gore - no decapitations, dismemberments, or anything else you may expect from a game labelled with "extreme" violence - and it's certainly less violent than Battlefield 3, which is odd, seeing as it has a higher rating. As for the sex scene - well, it's probably best explaining the context first. As you play through the game, you'll often find yourself casually chatting to your crewmates aboard your spaceship, the Normandy. Depending on what you choose to say to them, and how you treat them during missions, your relationship with each of the crew members will change - but should you choose to be nice to certain characters, and say the right things, eventually, they may choose to reciprocate your affection, in an attempt to become "more than just friends". There are several characters it's possible to romance, but the actual "scene" ends up pretty much the same. As for whether it's closer to a 12 or an 18? Well, it's probably best if you judge for yourself.
This is a scene featuring a male player character, and an alien, called Liara. It's also possible for a female character to romance Liara (as she's an alien, she's sort of asexual), but the scene is essentially the same. Out of the three romance scenes in the game, this is arguably the most "explicit" scene of them all. But where would you judge it? Would you say it's a 12, or an 18? Would you make your child wait until they're 18 before you deemed them ready to play through a game with a scene like that? If not, how old would you say they'd need to be?
And if anything, this is primarily the failing of PEGI. By being so much harsher than the BBFC, and in turn, by giving games an age rating that's undoubtedly a lot higher than many parents would deem reasonable, PEGI runs a very real risk of pulling the rug out from under its own feet. If you want parents to pay attention to, and trust your age ratings, they have to be accurate, transparent, and adhere to a standard that parents agree with. An ice hockey game is nowhere near as violent Battlefield - a game which revolves around stabbing, shooting, and otherwise killing other people - yet in the distorted eyes of PEGI, they're every bit as violent as each other. In fact, all it takes to get a game pushed from a 7 to a 12 is a single utterance of the words "God", "Hell" or "damn". And how many parents would stop their child playing a game because of that?
At the end of the day, for ratings to be taken seriously by parents, they need credibility - and with its rather harsh up-ranking of games, that's one thing PEGI seems to be lacking. In almost every area, it seems to us as if BBFC was the better option. As we mentioned earlier, PEGI ratings aren't as recognisable as the BBFC, so there's an uphill struggle to get parents to understand that they're a rating of the suitability, not the difficulty of the game - and that job's going to be made even harder when you consider how strict, and sometimes out of touch PEGI's ratings feel. At the end of the day, an age rating's soul purpose is to help a parent distinguish between the good and the bad, the suitable and the unsuitable, and that's exactly what the PEGI system struggles to do.
In fact, a large part of the reason we started Everybody Plays was because we'd grown all too aware of the limitations with how games are rated - and we wanted to do something about it. Games can be a great thing - but only if they're games your kids can enjoy, and so we do our best to help parents find games they, their children, and their entire family will love. Each and every one of our reviews features a "Parental Perspective", which details exactly what the game's about, what your child will be doing when they're playing it, and provides detailed information about any questionable content that can be found in the game, going far beyond a generic age rating, so parents can decide for themselves whether the game is something they'd be happy with their child playing. After all, every child, and every family's different - what one parent may be OK with their child seeing may be completely different for another - so we provide parents with the information they need to make the decisions for themselves.
While the Government may have set out to do the right thing, it remains to be seen what effect the new ratings will have in the long term. With a campaign being aimed at parents, to inform them about the ratings changes, it's possible some of the confusion may start to clear up (although admittedly, this wouldn't have been a problem if they'd stuck with BBFC), but the problem that remains that a strange, overly cautious, and often brazenly harsh ratings system has now become legally enforceable. Now, any 15 year old trying to buy NHL 12, or WWE 12, will be prevented from doing so - and with many kids and/or family games being slapped with age ratings that are much higher than they really should be, this is something that could harm sales in the near future, as parents are dissuaded from buying games due to an age rating that makes the game seem a lot harsher than it really is. As we said, a single mention of the word "God" is enough to make a game a 12 - and that's not something it'll mention on the box.
In the end, it's somewhat inevitable that some children will likely still end up playing inappropriate games, but while there are undoubtedly some parents who turn a blind eye to age ratings, it's unfair of the industry in general to blame parents for all of their problems, as they seem to have attempted today. With the rules change being so newsworthy (and we've been interviewed for radio stations about the changes, too), senior figures from the games industry, and many hardcore websites have put up commentary that attacks parents for not taking responsibility, including one main site, which patronisingly described parents as "clueless", putting the blame firmly at the wrong party's feet. The fact of the matter remains that parents can't be expected to make a decision without having the correct information at hand - and when it comes to buying a game, PEGI certainly leaves a lot to be desired.
