After five long years, a single age rating system for video games in the UK is about to be made law. Christopher Dring speaks to PEGI, UKIE, askaboutgames and the Video Standards Council to find out what this means
A LOT has happened since Tanya Byron first put pen to paper on her Byron Review in September 2007. We’ve had the on-set of the global recession, swine flu, Barack Obama, the volcanic ash cloud, two major earthquakes, a tsunami and the death of Michael Jackson. Elsewhere, Manchester United (twice), Chelsea and Manchester City have all won the Premier League. And MCVhas published 230 magazines. But now, five years on, and Byron’s request for a more coherent age rating system for video games has almost been answered. As of July 30th – barring any other delays – PEGI will legally become the UK’s single age rating system for video games. “Making a law is a meticulous process, there is a lot of technical work involved,” explains PEGI’s communication boss Dirk Bosmans.
16 July 20th 2012
PEGI was designed purely for video games and incorporates criteria that makes rating games straightforward.
“ Gianni Zamo, VSC
“The last six months were spent on formalities that every law must go through. Everything was ready, but you can't just skip the technical bits that make a law watertight. It can be frustrating to wait, but once everything was set in motion, we knew that there was no way back.” So, now that process is almost complete, MCVasks all the parties involved what exactly has changed, and what comes next.
Why is PEGI the best video game age rating system and not BBFC? Dirk Bosmans, Communication manager, PEGI: In order to rate 2,000 games per year in more than 30 countries, you need a robust system and broad support. That was available from the start: the industry was committed to use an efficient and reliable system and
governments were willing to support such a solution. So we were not new to this and we could show that our system was built on objective criteria with an organisation to back that up. The Netherlands, parts of Austria, Finland, Lithuania and Iceland have legislation that use PEGI – all slightly different in execution and scope, but the common part is that PEGI was seen as the best choice to rate games.
Gianni Zamo, communications officer, Video Stanards Council:PEGI was designed purely for rating games. The system incorporates a series of criteria which are objective and makes rating games straightforward. That means studios, publishers and the public will know exactly why a game has attained its particular rating and that that rating has been based on the game’s content and nothing else.