… so we took the easy option
On Monday, the IPPR released a report claiming that young people are spending too much time online. The government has now responded by… announcing plans to change the video games rating system.
A government backed review carried out by psychologist, Dr Tanya Byron has recommended a new rating for games aimed at children aged 12 and over - greatly expanding the role of the BBFC in classifying games.
Living up to his name, Ed Balls the Schools secretary called the report “ground breaking” and promised to implement all of the recommendations in full.
This additional tier of regulation for the, already heavily regulated, video games industry means that they will continue to meet the BBFC guidelines for games aimed at adults, comply with the more realistic European PEGI regulatory system (the ratings for which will be moved to the back of the box) and submit ever more games aimed at older children to the BBFC to comply with the new regulations. And the government will chuck up a couple more websites to do their usual job of explaining the mess.
Confused? You will be.
Thursday 27 Mar 2008 | Paul | UK
And this is the report aimed at ‘empowering parents’ for whom information ‘concealed in a cumbersome manual’ (para. 7.101) is too problematic.