NEWS
PEGI widens remit with mobile ratings
Microsoft helps launch age rating for smartphone games – but European body hopes Apple and Android take note
LEADER GREAT XP-ECTATIONS
LOOK AT screenshots, videos or even packshots for Battlefield 3 and Modern Warfare 3, and you’d be hard-pressed to tell them apart. Shadowy men stood in urban landscapes besieged by war. On the cutting edge of video games, it seems the year’s hot ticket titles are fighting a battle to become the most generic, not sell the most. But in the end, despite all the bluster from EA, Call of Dutywill remain as victor.
The Call of Duty XP event last week may have been for American fans but it was a global reminder from Activision that this is the modern market’s top dog. If the publisher is feeling any pressure at all from Battlefield, it certainly wasn’t showing it in Los Angeles. Call of Dutyis not just your average games franchise. As Activision and many of the series’ developers proudly declare, the brand has moved beyond ‘just’ games. Now it’s a lifestyle. It’s a social network and online service. It’s a mobile app. It’s a weekend away for paintball, off-road Jeep rides and a Kanye West concert. In all, it has every part of the industry covered. Retail, DLC, social, mobile, and live events. Brand managers, take note. It’s not just about quality, it’s about quantity – have you got everything covered to fully engage your most passionate fans for every single day of the year?
by Michael French
RATINGS body PEGI has introduced a new system for mobile games – and it wants the likes of Apple and Android to start using them. Last week PEGI unveiled PEGI Express with Microsoft. The classifications and ratings seen on all PC and console games will now be included in all Windows Phone games. In fact Microsoft enforces the classifications into all Windows Phone games, but has pledged to pay for the administration costs developers incur. However, PEGI wants it to be part of all mobile stores, not just Microsoft’s. Apple’s App Store and the Android Market currently use their own proprietary age ratings. “We hope that other platforms offering mobile games see the advantages of PEGI Express,” PEGI MD Simon Little told MCV. “During development we realised that, in order to be successful, it had to be a win- win-win situation: European consumers should get reliable
www.mcvuk.com
and recognisable age ratings, developers should get an affordable solution that is in sync with the pace of the mobile games industry and platform holders should be able to use a system that builds on experience and is easier and more efficient than an in-house solution.”
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SQUARE PEGI IN A ROUND HOLE? ONLINE AND mobile games are no longer the new world – they are established territory in gaming’s daily evolution. Sure, there’s lots to explore, but the few rules have been written. I’m not sure those rules include age ratings
like the ones PEGI and UKIE have so keenly built and enforced so well.
We hope that other mobile platforms see the advantages of PEGI express. Simon Little, PEGI
He added that PEGI Express has been designed for the fast-moving mobile games sector: “PEGI Express uses a post-release audit system to verify the ratings, allowing for very high volumes of ratings to be issued with a quick turnover time. If a rating needs to be changed at some point, it can be done immediately.”
www.pegi.info
Adding PEGI to Windows Phone games provides consistency between smartphone and console. It even, you could argue, give mobile games some cred. A PEGI rating offers the halo effect of ‘proper’ content found in-store. But Windows Phone is a minority platform right now. iOS and Android are the big leagues, and they have their own systems for this stuff.
In the way nature abhors a vacuum,
marketplaces led by creativity and quick- thinking business abhors red tape. PEGI, no matter how Express, is another layer of administration. Publishers may be built for such paperwork – two-man bedroom coder teams are not. PEGI may want to see its respected ratings applied to the likes of App Store and Android Marketplace. But I’d wager the shoot-from-the-hip mobile games developers that have defined those platforms are less keen. Let alone the innovative but fiercely independent firms that run them, Apple and Google. Michael French
September 9th 2011 5
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