Look out kids, your access to videogame violence is on the decline!
New The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) recently held a summit to discuss whether or not they were damaging your delicate brains.
The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) recently held a summit to discuss whether or not they were damaging your delicate brains. At present the committee is in the process of forming a council to promote greater awareness of age ratings for videogames (ESRB and ELSPA)
This issue will crop up more and more frequently as the years go on and games become more realistic. Back in the good old days, when 8-Bits ruled the earth, the only moral concern in gaming was the small amount of poor quality pornographic parody titles around, such as Sex Tetris on the Spectrum. Violence was so poorly portrayed, it didn’t warrant a mention.
These days, videogame developers have to consider whether headshots should produce brain-splatter, and balance the blood to guts ratio emitted from bazooka’d members of the undead.
There are wider issues surrounding the conference that seem to have been overlooked. If you think back to Perfect Dark on the Nintendo 64, the game carried a BBFC 18 rating, meaning that in the UK it was illegal to supply it to anyone below that age. The game’s predecessor, GoldenEye, came with an ELSPA rating of 15+ meaning that, although it was recommended for this age group, anyone could buy or rent it. Perfect Dark was also advertised in all the same publications as GoldenEye. What are we to think?
Raising the public’s awareness of age suitability ratings is welcomed by everyone in the industry but a good starting point would be arranging some kind of consistency between publishers and people like ELSPA and the BBFC.
This issue will crop up more and more frequently as the years go on and games become more realistic. Back in the good old days, when 8-Bits ruled the earth, the only moral concern in gaming was the small amount of poor quality pornographic parody titles around, such as Sex Tetris on the Spectrum. Violence was so poorly portrayed, it didn’t warrant a mention.
These days, videogame developers have to consider whether headshots should produce brain-splatter, and balance the blood to guts ratio emitted from bazooka’d members of the undead.
There are wider issues surrounding the conference that seem to have been overlooked. If you think back to Perfect Dark on the Nintendo 64, the game carried a BBFC 18 rating, meaning that in the UK it was illegal to supply it to anyone below that age. The game’s predecessor, GoldenEye, came with an ELSPA rating of 15+ meaning that, although it was recommended for this age group, anyone could buy or rent it. Perfect Dark was also advertised in all the same publications as GoldenEye. What are we to think?
Raising the public’s awareness of age suitability ratings is welcomed by everyone in the industry but a good starting point would be arranging some kind of consistency between publishers and people like ELSPA and the BBFC.
Games:
Perfect Dark
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