Why The UK’s Turn To PEGI Is Not Necessary
Earlier this week, the UK government announced that PEGI would replace the BBFC later this year, giving the European organisation control of videogame ratings in Britain. Whilst this decision has been widely supported throughout the gaming industry, I do not think it was something that needed changing.
Amongst the gaming community, the BBFC is best known for the decision to ban Manhunt 2 in 2007. The controversy that followed this has meant that for many gamers it is impossible to disassociate the BBFC’s ban from any other news involving them. You need only look through GamePolitics.com’s BBFC section to realise how often the Manhunt 2 debacle is referenced in relation to other topics involving the ratings board.
Given that the animosity directed at the BBFC stemmed from their audacity to use the powers given to them is somewhat ludicrous. Admittedly, I do have my own issues with Rockstar, but the gaming community’s outcry in defence of a game that is mindlessly violent for the sake of mindless violence is objectionable. This reaction has led many to accuse the BBFC of treating videogames differently to films or DVDs, arguing that they were not qualified to rate games and were unfairly discriminating against them. Unfortunately, it is this viewpoint that was also adopted by the gaming industry and has been reflected through their support of the PEGI system used across Europe and the recent decision to implement it within the UK.
The first point I would like to address regarding the PEGI switch are the BBFC’s rating practices and whether they were fit to handle the position they held. It is commonly argued that those in charge of rating games were not ‘˜qualified’ to do so. In reality, the people rating the games were likely to be avid gamers with a strong background in them. I have just finished an A-level in Film Studies, which for part of the course involved studying the BBFC and its role. In doing so we had to watch a documentary produced by the BBFC, part of which dealt specifically with how it approached videogames. One of the chief officers dealing with videogame ratings had a gaming history dating back to the ZX Spectrum. If having around 25 years of gaming experience doesn’t qualify you to rate games then what does?
Secondly, regarding their supposed ‘˜discrimination’ against videogames, when the board certifies a film for release in Britain, a highly detailed report will be created justifying the rating. This also occurs for games. In the case of higher ratings (specifically 18s or above) they will contact those involved with the production in case they wish to make changes. Again, this also happens with games. It is fairly common for film companies to take the board’s advice and make a number of changes to the final product before it is released. However, linking once again to the Manhunt 2 controversy, the BBFC’s request that changes be made led to a lawsuit from Rockstar and cemented gamers’ hatred for the board. Even if the majority of those protesting the BBFC’s decision had no intention of actually buying or playing the game.
To further discredit the claim that the BBFC is biased against games I will use Mass Effect as an example. The BBFC rated Mass Effect as a 12 compared to the 18 and M awarded by PEGI and the ESRB respectively. If the BBFC truly were discriminating against games wouldn’t it be more likely for them to follow suit with the other major ratings boards and prevent more people from playing it?
This brings me to my next point. When the switch is implemented all ratings in the UK will correspond with the other European countries in which PEGI operates. The problem with this is that Britain tends to differ greatly from mainland Europe both culturally and socially. For example, what may be considered an 18 rated game on the continent could well translate to a much lower classification in the UK, as seen with Mass Effect. With the BBFC in control ratings were tailored to fit the tolerances of society in Britain, not the perceived views of the entire continent.
Given that the aim of both ratings boards is to prevent children from accessing unsuitable content, why is a change needed anyway? The BBFC functions already. Considering that many parents are already confused and ignorant of game ratings, the introduction of new symbols will undoubtedly lead to greater confusion. The symbols used by the BBFC are synonymous with UK residents but the proposed PEGI symbols look much less authoritarian. It’s almost certain that children will be able to use the excuse of ‘˜it’s a difficulty rating’ with greater ease once the PEGI system comes into effect.
The switch in rating boards also brings with it an issue of cost. It will require a number of legislative measures to allow for nationwide enforcement, which will be costly for the government. There will undoubtedly be an impact for retailers, especially with regards to existing stock and used games. This is a major area that will need to be addressed before the switch. Whatever the decision, the possibility of having stickers to indicate the PEGI rating or removal of existing stock from stores will be of high cost to retailers. This will inevitably be passed on to us in the form of price increases.
In essence though, the attempts to strengthen measures to prevent children playing adult oriented games isn’t going to have an effect unless the parents are educated. Until the outdated idea that games are solely for kids is disbanded parents are going to continue buying inappropriate games for their children regardless of the rating system in place. Turning to the PEGI system won’t stop children getting hold of 18 rated games. If the government and the gaming industry really want to keep kids away from adult content then they need to educate the parents. That’s the only way I can see that will have true success in tackling the problem.
Editorial, Rant Tags: BBFC, government, PEGI, Politics, UK
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The politicians somehow seem to work around the issue of parental responsibility to prevent alienation of their voters.
I read through the comments of gameware (the austrian webshop thats going to be banned in germany) and there really are parents posting about how the government has to regulate what their kids can do.
An interesting read. I’m not a huge fan of the BBFC after Manhunt 2, i’m no fan of the game either but I object to anything being banned purely on the grounds of taste.
Still, i think you make an excellent point in terms of how PEGI may lead to a homogenised attitude to game ratings across europe. It’s easy to forget how relatively liberal British culture is.
so how do you go about educating the parents when a large percentage simply don’t care about these things.
Make al games 18+
All games featuring Al you understand ;)
Just how young are you Will? This post is rubbish. Can I write an opposing editorial? Well, my website is down, so I can’t there, so I’ll do it here.
Let’s start out with basics; ratings are there to simply do one thing: Stop underage children from being able, by themselves, to purchase material deemed unsuitable for their age range.
This has nothing to do with “making things available to the widest audience”. Adult games rated highly will sell to adults, just as much as an lowly-rated adult game – say, flight simulators, do – neither aim at the younger markets unless they want those lower ratings anyway (so Mass Effect, a mature game, typically wasn’t ever aiming for very young teenagers to play it – this is an entirely pointless thing to bring up and I can point out several cases of higher BBFC ratings then PEGI ones! they rate things differently, get over it, and it’s not to “sell more” or “sell less”).
Therefore, any capacity to not assign a rating to a game makes it unavailable to adults. This is censorship, through and through.
There is a saying “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me”, and the first major game banned by the BBFC was Carmageddon – a very, very fun and pretty good game, and also terribly tame by todays standards. Banned, 10 months of back and forth, even though at that time the BBFC didn’t need to rate it (since it had no actual video footage in it) see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmageddon#Controversy – ridiculous!
The second is, of course, Manhunt 2. This was an absolutely absurd banning. This evidence alone makes the BBFC, to me, pretty unsuitable. The film industry would balk if (now) it banned films in the same way.
Okay, going on from this: the reasons people say the BBFC rates games differently/poorly is because they do, in fact, rate games in a different way to PEGI. There are some also clear-cut facets about the organisations that are problematic:
- They are run by a board of film and TV-based people. The videogame industry is not represented here, sadly, in their management. This is a major problem; why do film and TV get to manage their own ratings but the interactive entertainment industry not do so? (when, as discussed, games are different to films since you can’t just watch a few hours and see all the content, for instance).
- The way to overturn a decision is pretty much horrible, time consuming and very much “we stand by our decision, prove us wrong”. If you’re not Rockstar, you can’t afford that kind of delay. Their cliff notes made to consumers on the reason for a non-classification is also absolutely crap.
- The BBFC’s own directors pretty much go against the whole report about videogames (Byron Review), even their own research (on their site), and state videogames need special attention and higher ratings (as noted whenever Manhunt was compared to things like Hostel etc. in canned statements). The veil of “us versus them” was pretty much underlined there.
Moving on in any case – the PEGI changes in cost would be miniscule (honestly, “enforcement costs” won’t change will they?). They already have infrastructure for putting information about the ratings out there. The ratings have already been on boxes for ages, albeit with different colours. For us in the UK, this might also mean faster releases – two systems cost more to maintain then one, so the only need for PEGI on a box will mean pan-European releases with no possible BBFC delay (yeah, Manhunt 2 got a fine European release…).
Finally, the PEGI system is, I’d say, not absolutely a ball-buster of a winner compared to the BBFC, but it doesn’t have to be – it has other good points – such as always having rated games which have lower then 15 ratings (which you fail to mention the BBFC hasn’t done until recently, where it started doing 12 ratings – 25 years of rating basically nothing is NOT a lineage), having a history of providing better information on their website (the BBFC one is pretty poor – go on have a look – at least in my opinion, and has films mixed into videogames along with trailers and all sorts of other rubbish). The PEGI system also comes with, from my perspective, better descriptors for parents to understand.
Your argument comes with a brilliant bit of utter bullshit at the end (sorry, it really is). Why bring up the argument of education into this piece at all? This has nothing to do with which would be the better rating system – something I don’t like in the first place, but if it is necessary, the best should be chosen. Saying “the attempts to strengthen measures to prevent children playing adult oriented games isn’t going to have an effect unless the parents are educated” is utterly crap, since stating the obvious is pointless when it doesn’t have anything to do with the original argument.
Please, I’d like more discourse on this, but please make it more informed. There are various reasons to see this as a good change (and yes, some potentially bad ones, but nothing that 10 years and education can’t solve, as much as the BBFC always had to and sometimes failed at). Stating such silly unrelated things onto the piece is a bit like clutching at straws.
@Andrew: Some very good points, but as with last time an issue arose similar to this, this article is a “rant”. As it states in the top left. It’s not an editorial or article, it’s an opinionated, bias rant about something the author cares about. Your misunderstanding of this likely comes down to my not making clear what these articles are or what the content of them is. Hope that’s cleared a few things up for you.
Oh, absolutely, it’s there in the title. I’m all for “rants”, but there are rants which make sense, and nearly opposite ones which just really trail off into mostly rubbish or miss the actual truth. I seek to improve the latter with mini-counter-rant about the topic. :)
Opinions are also important, but uninformed opinions are just really not worth the time. If anyone will actually get information from Will’s post, well, I’d be endorsing it if I didn’t post some counter points to the most blatant parts I take issue with. Some bits make sense, but are almost entirely different topics (the education point) almost as if it needed to reach a wordcount.
A parallel – if this was a review which stated something categorically incorrect, and noted several anecdotal things which were highly uninformed by being unfamiliar with the game (having not played it enough) it’d be wise to call them out even though these were only their opinions (or rant, or whatever).
Some of it also doesn’t fall into opinion and is flat out wrong (“25 years experience” for instance is categorically incorrect, especially with an anecdote about it backing it up), so I wanted to make sure the facts were somewhat straighter.
Since this is an opinion piece, I also hope different opinions are wanted, else what is the point in shouting to the internet? That’s like sending stuff into a black hole, haha. :D
Of course, I could just post something as literal as “No, the PEGI is actually a good choice for many reasons.”, which doesn’t really have the same ring to it, to be honest! Especially on a topic which is, actually, relatively important (in the scope of videogames, not world issues) to many, many many people (like, anyone who is 18 or over and might not be able to buy a BBFC censored game).
I won’t be doing this on everything, but I think like your “Yes/No to L4D boycott”, there is more then just the “rant” side (here, there are several sides of varying amounts of viciousness), and this is something incredibly more important then whether or not a single game has issues, so I hoped to hold up this as at least well informed (but it sadly wasn’t, thus bringing us around again).
Man, my rebuttal is mega-enormous. Hopefully rants in comments in a rant column is allowed.
Oh, if it is also meant to be a non-serious rant, there are many better topics which don’t need as many facts ;)
I’m very much about making a platform for the discussions, I was merely making sure yourself, and others reading, weren’t under the impression this was an editorial (i.e. this isn’t something where a parallel should be drawn to something like a review.)
Will was annoyed about the PEGI thing, had a rant venting his honest frustration, and the comments are here for replies such as yours. If you disagree or find flaw, then go for it. I actually found his article to be very interesting and agreed with most parts, but then I also found some stuff in your comment to be valuable and altered my opinion a bit.
I’m just trying to prevent any misconceptions from arising or getting out of control, as has happened with previous “rants” posted on NG. They are volatile things by nature, and do often lead to some interesting discussion.
Andrew – I’m going to respond briefly to each point you made in the first post:
1. I’m 18, but I don’t see what that has to do with the quality of the article.
2. Yes, ratings are there to prevent children accessing inappropriate content. The Mass Effect example was more to illustrate differences between UK and EU society given that content as ‘mature’ as the game can be accessed on TV on a daily basis by younger teenagers.
3. I didn’t mention the Carmageddon controversy because I wasn’t completely familiar with it or the game.
4. Even though the BBFC are not representative of the gaming industry, they haven’t acted in a way that negatively effects them except the Manhunt 2 ban. As I stated in the original rant though, I have my own issues with Rockstar and have little problem seeing them being reprimanded.
5. Yes, videogames are different to films. Playing a game is going to involve more psychological involvement than watching a film which can account for the ‘special attention’ required for games.
6. Not all boxes have both symbols on them, the majority of my games only have BBFC logos.
7. Maybe I was unclear in the original post but the 25 years relates to the examiner’s experience with games not the board’s and was calculated based on the release period of the ZX Spectrum.
8. I will freely admit that the BBFC’s website is pretty rubbish.
9. My closing point regarding parental education is related to the main topic. Until parents are forced to accept the fact that videogames are no longer something solely for children there are going to be problems. There should be a focus on changing the mindset of the general public, rather than overhauling a ratings system that has been working fine for a number of years.
1. Just on this, and 3 and 4 being too young to remember the earlier days of the BBFC, they were pretty atrocious with handling Carmageddon (saw that ripe old news on the web and mags back in those days), as well as other ratings which were incredibly off – or at least, certainly now are. They barely moved with the times unless shoved and pushed, sadly. Luckily they never had to rate *every* game, so keep in mind they’ve rated a few thousand (15 and 18 rated ones, might be 10,000, might be 20,000 – but a tiny fraction of all games) out of tens and hundreds of thousands of games, so we don’t have as much data to go on, heh.
2. This is variable – the BBFC rate violence more in parallel with sex, rather then ESRB which rates sex absurdly high and violence moderately. PEGI is probably mid-point between them in many instances (with odd, but explainable ratings for many games. It’s European, but Britain is the biggest maker of games in the EU, so it’ll be swayed by that majority remember, I don’t think the ratings are always that off BBFC ones usually).
5. Psychological involvement? You have read the Byron report right? worth a check out – there are no proven reports of videogames being too much more involved in negative psychological ways :D (hooray for us! and remember: it’s impossible to *disprove* something only prove it, therefore, this is as good as a dead argument).
Anyway I was more referring to the fact games involve interaction (which the BBFC never rates – it always had only a video of content from the game reviewed which had to be honest (you can see this in any online rating you look up – there is a duration). PEGI checks a form and the actual game: http://www.pegi.info/en/index/id/26#question_1 so they know what the publisher wants, and can suggest feedback I guess), meaning the BBFC is less suited in their methods then PEGI is, as I said, in my opinion :)
6. That’s true only because all games which have a BBFC rating don’t require a PEGI one. Many have both, all games rated below 15 (and some 12′s that got passed more recently) don’t need the duplicate number. They do all get rated though, for European release, under PEGI anyway.
7. Meh, sounds like bunk to me in one way. If they’ve not been rating games for 25 years (and the BBFC has had a hand in it for around 20 years I know, but not to sure how long ago) then that’s a weird claim. 25 years on film and TV rating I guess is waht they mean. A shame really :(
Agreed on the education again, although it’s a side part of the discussion, and thanks for replying, although I still think there are several points worth going over in non-rant form, it’s a pretty boring topic to most I guess :D
Wait? Years after years people complain about the UK having their own system and now abolishing it is a bad thing? You are crazy.
*sigh*
I’m going to live in Germany.
Things that went through my head as I saw that picture.
Yeah online should be its own warning.
Fear? really? FEAR!? you need to be warned about a scary game? the box wasn’t enough?
Discrimination singling out black people, there has got to be something wrong with that.