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This is a cut 'n' paste of a post I made on another board. It doesn't address the issue of how the Mail decided to try and stir up an anti-games (and anti-gamers) frenzy, because I didn't think I could say anything about that that wouldn't be stating the bleeding obvious.
The problem is that whenever this sort of thing happens, we - as gamers - go onto automatic pilot about how ridiculous the suggestion that the game might have influenced the killer's behaviour is.
And I don't think that should be a given. Gamers bury their heads in the sand wrt the effects of video games just as much as the tabloid press do, which is part of the reason why the press can get away with it.
Could there be an argument for a legally-enforced set of age restrictions that actually works in favour of the inustry? I think so. Right now we've got a complete mish-mash of a system. Some games get sent to the BBFC for evaluation. Most don't. Instead of the BBFC's (theoretically) enforcable ratings, the majority of titles end up with ELSPA ones (or PEGI now, unless it's changed again). These are quite obviously an absolute joke. I've got Pokemon Ruby sitting in front of me, and on the box is a 3+ PEGI stamp. Why? What kid under the age of 3 is going to be able to read the text in a game, let alone play the damn thing?
Here's where the industry really screws things up: no one standard. Like I say, go into any games shop and you'll see at least three different types of rating system in use, and that's without taking into consideration the import GBA titles that a lot of indie stores stock. The unwitting consumer can claim that this leads to confusion: what are the ratings? What do they mean? Is the PEGI system a sign of how difficult a game's going to be? Even if it's not true, it's still an excuse that can be - and is - used. And yeah, everyone should be able to tell a BBFC stamp from one of the others, but the point is that a standardised system would at least prevent them from being able to use confusion as an excuse.
I'd also like to see prosecutions brought against stores that sell BBFC 18 games to people under that age. You get undercover officers going into supermarkets and the like to make sure that other age-restricted items aren't sold illegally, but I've never heard of a clamp-down on places like Game, where it happens regularly. Everyone here's been in a shop when a parent's asked an assistant what the latest game is and if Little Johnny will enjoy it, only for the assistant to grab a copy of Vice City and say that Little Johnny's Christmas won't be complete without it. If not, then everyone must have seen Little Johnny poring over the box for Silent Hill 3, only for mum to tell him that he can't have it because he's not finished the previous one yet.
It's way past time that video games publishers showed some kind of responsibility. If it's left much later, I can see us ending up in a similar situation to that in other countries, where certain titles are removed from sale because of tabloid outcry. Especially given the current government's obsession with pleasing the Daily Mail.
I just think that a unified system of certification, while not stopping games from getting into the hands of people likely to be adversely affected by them, would remove the option of blaming the games industry from the tabloids' Big Book of Scaring Middle England. Maybe - as they have with videos - they'd start looking at the responsibilities of parents and those at point of sale instead of going for the easy blame. |
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