@Daniel: Didn't realize that the BBFC was only for certain games.
In light of that I'd say that a rating on all games wouldn't be bad - if for no other reason than the line for 'blatantly for children' is a kind of blurry one. The ambiguity probably hasn't caused any problems yet, but in theory it could and in general policies should be as clear as possible.

Daniel:

"@ Benji, we do, but only for certain games. Games blatantly for children aren’t rated."

I dont believe that is quite true. A little investigation shows that all films, dvds and games have to be assessed to be released in the UK. The rating for games means that 12 is the lowest they can be given - there is no U rating for games. They are still assessed though, just no warning stickers required. Most will use a PEGI 3+ rating instead in those instances.

I'm looking forward to this report, hopefully it'll be... oh I don't know... SCIENTIFIC

Don't forget that all along she has been talking about the fact that the most important thing is educating parents, which I am not against. I am also not against age ratings by the BBFC (or I wouldn't at least, if they could be a little less two faced about it when it comes to games and films). I don't know that rating games such as My Little Pony is a good idea however as it takes time away from an already over stretched resource. I also think it is important for the BBFC to play games fully. Working at a test centre for a certain console, we used teams of four plus one lead minimum, and gave each game 6 days (3 on emulation 3 on disk) to play through. This is more than enough time to play most games through twice.

She's always struck me as a level headed person and I hope that her report will be similarly so.

I am looking forward to this review. I plan on reading it as soon as it comes available.

I don't support legislating games in any way. So hopefully it does not come to that conclusion.

My hope is that the Byron report will come out and the likes of Vaz and that idiot from yesterday will finally shut up. But more likely they will try to cause people to question the validity of the review if it does not support their preconceived notions.

Also, since Daniel mentioned the concept of games being played through entirely - the main arguments against this are that (1) it's prohibitively time-consuming (since you'd have to play entirely through EVERY game, which is a lot, and since some games are theoretically 'endless'), (2) that the process of playing through doesn't yield any more information than does the ESRB process of viewing a video of the most objectionable material, and (3) that it would require that professional gamers be used, which could bias the ratings or at least present the illusion of pro-gaming bias.
I actually wonder if a good compromise on Point 1 would be to spend X number of hours on a game (say, 40 - 4 playtesters play 10 hours each) along with the video of most objectionable content. It means the game's being played but avoids the problem of playing through massive or endless games, and for most games the first 10 hours bears a pretty good resemblance to the rest of it.

@ Benji and Daniel

My problem with making people play the game is that you most often will not reveal anything that is not already in a video submitted by the developer. More often than that, you will miss more things than if you watch a video.

Think of it this way. You are supposed to play a game looking for objectional content. The problem is that you can easily get preoccupied with trying to get through the current level or boss fight that you don't notice the stripper in the background.

So what good is playing through a game if it does not reveal anything new and possible obscures some stuff? If you are already watching a video of the most objectional content, there is nothing to gain except maybe pacing, but that should not be really considered with any weight in my mind.

No matter what happens or what anyone says about Videogames,

it is important that we, as gamers understand that no matter WHO says WHAT about Videogames, we still enjoy our videogames regardless of what other people think.

Also to understand that the older generation (a large group where a few minority of anti-gamers belong to but most of the anti-gamers are within that large group) had never really grew up with videogames so they can't understand videogames on the same level as we do.

That is my view, and with that in my mind I know that I will enjoy reading her report no matter what she says.

[...] The report is going to come out on March 27th. It’s been a long wait since we first heard about this report, and among the details it is highly expected that Byron will push for mandatory ratings on all UK games, and, as we talked about yesterday, possibly propose ditching the BBFC in favor of PEGI. All in all though, it is hoped that Byron will produce and a fair and intelligent report that focuses on educating parents, rather than forcing legislation down our throats. [...]

[...] The report is going to come out on March 27th. It’s been a long wait since we first heard about this report, and among the details it is highly expected that Byron will push for mandatory ratings on all UK games, and, as we talked about yesterday, possibly propose ditching the BBFC in favor of PEGI. All in all though, it is hoped that Byron will produce and a fair and intelligent report that focuses on educating parents, rather than forcing legislation down our throats. [...]

@Daniel: The ESRB can re-rate a game if they find out that content was left out of the original evaluation - see also GTA:SA. I've heard that they also have the authority to fine publishers that try to abuse the ratings process, though they have not done so to date.
As for biasing things the other way - so raters think the objectionable content is more prominent than it really is - that is I imagine partially negated by the information supplied by the game company. I suspect Bioware was able to say somewhere in the application materials that there are only two or three sex scenes in the game, and this is what they look like. I'm also not sure if that matters very much - I don't know if Mass Effect would have received a harsher rating if it had ten or twenty sex scenes instead of just two or three, provided they all showed no more skin than the ones that actually are in the game. (Although context becomes an issue at this point - if the entire game is about trying to sleep with alien chicks, the game runs dangerously close to softcore porn, but Mass Effect frames its romance within a greater narrative which helps its rating.)

I'd be really interested to see a package of stuff that developers submit to ratings boards, how do you think we could go about getting one? Just email bioware & ask?

[...] The report is going to come out on March 27th. It’s been a enlarged wait since we first heard about that report, and among the details it is highly expected that Byron will push for mandatory ratings on all UK games, and, as we talked about yesterday, possibly propose ditching the BBFC in favor of PEGI. All in all though, it is hoped that Byron will produce and a fair and intelligent report that focuses on educating parents, rather than forcing legislation down our throats. [...]

While that is a good point, it still gives anti game activists ammunition, claiming that the games industry is dishonest with its submissions (as has been the case with GTA:SA and Oblivion in the US). If only the most gory parts of a game are shown it gives an bias overview of the game.

It isn't ammunition that is given, it is created. They'll never be satisfied even if they played through the entire game, b/c a person will still miss something as is only human, and thus they'll blame them for overlooking something. They create their own ammunition, even if given 3 days to play as you said, that won't be enough to satisfy them, and goes against what you stated previously about only needing a certain amount of time. Oh yeah, and not everyone can complete games in 3 days even if forced to play it 72 hours straight.



If all they’d shown of Mass Effect was the ’sex scene’ it might be thought that this happened a lot during the game, where actually it _may_ happen just once. Also, as I understand it, a written document containing information on all the content in the game is also submitted and I personally think this preferable to a short video.

I say the video along with a transcript is best.


Regardless, all we can do is speculate and offer suggestions, hopefully we will get a better idea of what’s going to happen when we see the report.


I'm not liking the idea of this report, it won't change anything, and likely will prove to be a waste of time. If it comes out in favor of legislation then this will just have them pushing more money to restrict more or whatever doesn't fit in Kaz's wild fantasies.

If it favors gamers' point of view, then this'll be written off as "a waste of time" by Vaz and he'll claim Byron didn't research well enough or that the report doesn't fit with facts and will need to be redone or some other BS.

@ Loudspeaker

John Bruce is the Faux News poster child. They will never dump him.

I too am wary of the motivations behind the report. hopefully the UK government did not interfere with her work once it began, but that is only a hope.

Well I'm reserving judgement until I see what the report contains. With a little luck it'll draw sensible conclusions but who knows? We'll certainly find out soon enough.

Gift.

# Aliasalpha Says:
March 21st, 2008 at 9:24 am

I’m looking forward to this report, hopefully it’ll be… oh I don’t know… SCIENTIFIC
-------------

^^^^^ What they said.....

Bill, I am not British, but I am from America where just as much BS goes on in a similar fashion. So I can appreciate your sentiment. There are just as many government shills running about waving supposed "scientific" studies around screaming "Think of The Children!!!!". It is patently disgusting to say the least.

@Bill

Oh yeah, right here. I've got a fiver says that's exactly what happens.

Still, it's better than what the tories can come up with..

@GRIZZAM 512

Yeah, think of the children. Think of the 12 year old spammers who put dirtier content in their screaming and teabagging than most entire games! If they played online for a couple days, parents would know just how much mature content their precious little babies are familiar with from tv alone.

@Ebonheart

Not to mention Bambie(Moma deer gets shot), Land Before Time(Moma dinosaur gets eaten) ,and Dumbo(Depicts animal cruelty), to name a few.

@ Cheater87

I pulled Rocko because I remember when my parents laughed at a lot of the jokes that I didn't get and when I went back and watched a few a fw years back I was going "Haha! I get the monkey joke now!"

@ AliasAlpha

What is this "science" you speak of? Is it blasphamy?! Blasphemer!