The long awaited Byron Review has been published. This report has been carried out by Dr Tanya Byron and was commissioned by the UK Government.
The report is entitled ‘Safer Children in a Digital World’ and takes a look at the internet and video games and their impact on society and children today.
Dr Byron has presented a string of recommendations to the government on both the internet and video games.
Random Bob Dylan song reference aside, are the days of the BBFC soon to be up in regards to games classification in the UK? According to MCV it is! Following the Manhunt 2 affair which saw the BBFC refuse the game classification, but then get overruled by its own appeals body it seems that the BBFC is facing an uncertain future in games rating here in the UK.
The MCV article mentions that some commentators think that following this disaster for the BBFC it has lost credibility and that DR Tanya Byron is due to give her support to PEGI, the European rating board in her report due to be published soon.
It will certainly be interesting to see if the BBFC can recover from the Manhunt 2 affair and regain credibility. The PEGI rating system which currently rates games accross Europe is, in my eyes the better system offering clearer advice to parents on what different games contain.
However the PEGI ratings are not currently enforceable under law at the moment in the UK and it will be interesting to see what happens if the BBFC is forced out of the games rating scene.
PEGI is better than the BBFC when it comes to games classification according to Microsoft’s head of corporate affairs in the UK, Matt Lambert. GamesIndustry.biz reports that Matt was at a recent Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee which is focusing on the effect of violence in videogames and is running parallel to the Byron Report.
“If there’s going to be one ratings system, it should be PEGI,” he said. “With PEGI, they think very carefully about age appropriacy…but the BBFC is set up to rate films, and it takes that approach for games when a different approach is required.
“PEGI breaks it down to a different level. If there’s bad language it will give you a specific symbol, if there’s gambling there’s another symbol, and some games will have a whole raft of symbols on the back. It’s a different depth, it’s more sensible, and it also has a European aspect to it.”
This is a very interesting story, read the whole thing here.