Interviews// Michael Rawlinson: General Manager ELSPA

Michael Rawlinson: All of these things can be explained and laid out to the consumer so that they can then decide whether that is an appropriate world, (an) appropriate game, to allow their child to enter into. The combination of PEGI and PEGI Online that enables that to happen, that we believe is the absolute right solution for child safety.

We do recognise that currently consumer – some consumers – don't know enough about gaming to be able to look at the box, read the reviews, understand what's happening within games and therefore make an informed decision.

I guess an example of that might be (that) I don't buy a washing machine every day of the week. I hopefully buy one that'll last me for 15 years. If I want to know which washing machine to buy I go into the shop and I ask the sales assistant, or I go and read up reviews or whatever else it might be and make my choice.

But parents say, “I'm under time pressure. I'm being pressurised to buy this or that or the other for my child, they want the latest game. How can you help me know whether that game is suitable?”

And we say, “Well we provide age rating information and you can follow that.” In an ideal world that would be advisory and the parent would decide whether that's suitable for their child or not and everything in the garden would be rosy.

Unfortunately they want the shop to be able to refuse that sale. In order for all shops to comply with that the retailer wants that to be legally enforceable. They want legal backing to be able to refuse that product to the child. So, we recognise that and we can have PEGI legally enforceable, we can ask the government to make PEGI legally enforceable.

SPOnG: There are two separate things there. There's the statement, “We can have PEGI made legally enforceable” and then there's the statement, “We can ask the government to make PEGI legally enforceable.” That second one is a problem?

Mike Rawlinson: Well, we'd need to ask the government to make PEGI legally enforceable. I'm not sure that is a problem because that is exactly what they've written into option three (of the Byron Review – which was not written by the government – but which the government has endorsed. Ed).

I think if we turn the clock back to when Tanya Byron was doing her review, she was not talking to the government as she did her review, she did her review completely independent of the government so she couldn't go back to the government and say, “Oh, what I'd really like to do is to make PEGI legally enforceable. Can you do that for me?” She wasn't able to have that conversation so she was working with the elements she had.

I'm guessing, but I guess she thought, “Well, if it's to be legally enforceable it needs to be BBFC and if it's not to be legally enforceable then it can be PEGI.” That's what I'm guessing. But actually there is no reason why the government can't make PEGI legally enforceable and it to be rolled out in the shops.

That brings me to my next point from a consumer perspective. I think many non-playing parents – many non-gaming parents – think that games are like films. Therefore they think that if they see a BBFC logo on the box that helps them. Actually I think it's really important, particularly as games in the shops are in DVD cases... you walk in and it's sometimes difficult to differentiate between the film and the game.

I think we need to start giving visual clues to parents to say, “Hold on a minute, this is a different product. “If you see the PEGI logo on a box that's your first clue that this is interactive. This maybe interactive with the artificial intelligence of the machine, and if you play it locally you play it on the local machine.

Or it might have online elements and there'll be a logo on the box to say you go online and you can interact with other players around Europe, around your country, whatever. So, we can start to give visual clues and we can start to educate the parents if we've got one clear system, one clear route to follow we can be absolutely clear to the consumer.

Byron was saying, “Well, let's have BBFC and PEGI logos on the box”, I don't understand how I can communicate that clearly to a consumer, I really don't understand...

I don't know how I can clearly communicate to a consumer that if we were to go to Option 2, which is BBFC only, how I can communicate to a consumer that this has a film logo on it but actually it's a game. I'm on the back foot straight away. So, I don't understand how that works either.