Dr Tanya Byron has been much in the news (and much in The Guardian, including our latest netcast) following her report on video gaming... or, more accurately, Safer Children in a Digital World. GamesIndustry.biz has now published a two part interview with Dr Byron (one and two).
The second part includes her take on PEGI, the Pan-European Game Information age rating system launched in 2003.
In a separate interview with Patrice Chazerand, GamesIndustry.biz provides the PEGI View.
The basic problem is that we have two rating systems -- a British one, from the BBFC, and the pan-European PEGI -- and the games industry generally prefers the latter. It seems that, where they overlap, Byron has resolved the problem by putting one on the front of the box and one on the back.
Chazerand isn't all that pleased but concedes: "If the experts say that a five year-old PEGI had any chance to match the recognition of the decades-old BBFC symbols...well, you just have to admit that you've lost the argument on the consumer-facing element."
So that was certainly a little painful, but at the same time fair. It's the scientific approach.
He also notes that: "The UK public probably couldn't care less about the competition of two game ratings agencies -- they care about getting the right information."
True. But how many parents pay close attention to age ratings is another matter. I suspect some parents will see them as being more like "difficulty ratings" on toys, rather than being about the suitability of the content, as with movies. But I'm sure there are plenty of games rated 3+ that are too hard for me to play....
