Gamesindustry.biz reports today from the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee hearing on the effects of videogame and internet violence. There was some strange stuff including evidence given by John Carr, executive secretary at the Children's Charities Coalition for Internet Safety. From the article:
He raised the argument that there were a number of concerns over videogames, other than the issue of violence - including reports of children "dying at their consoles" - that need to be addressed.
I'm really not sure what he's referring to here. Was it this story of the Russian schoolboy who died in 2005 after an alleged ten-hour gaming session? Was it one of the many stories - like this one - from the PC gaming scene in South Korea? These stories are rare, isolated cases of extreme addictive behaviour - surely they cannot form the basis of videogame classification decisions in the UK?
He later made a more a more grounded comment, suggesting that parents often misunderstand age ratings, believing them to signify the difficulty or suggested skill level of the game rather than a warning of unsuitable content. I hadn't really considered this before, but it makes sense - childrens games often come with skill-based age ratings, and if you're not familiar with the PEGI system, or with videogames in general, you could easily make this error. But surely, when there's a BBFC 18 certificate on the box, even the most Luddite of parents must twig that it means adults only?
So what else was achieved during this session, which will contribute toward a report by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport due for release later this year?
Much of the rest of the session was taken up with discussion of what actually constitutes harmful material, and how such content could be kept out of the way of children on the Internet.
This doesn't fill me with a huge amount of confidence.
