Rating the Ratings

The whole debate about the relative merits of the system, however, is really just a warmup for the Byron Review, which is designed to inform the Government's policy on rating systems going forward. Unfortunately for PEGI, the review's recommendations fairly clearly fall on the side of the BBFC - or at least, on the side of a single, consistent rating system that covers all types of media, which is what the BBFC offers.

Much as the industry may dislike it, and despite the obvious advantages which PEGI offers in some regards, it's extremely difficult to disagree with that conclusion. Both rating systems are flawed, definitely - the BBFC's procedures for assessing games are arguably inappropriate to the medium, while PEGI's content icons are over-complicated, difficult to interpret, unclear and ultimately far less useful than the industry would like to believe.

However, the BBFC's ratings have a single, clear and absolutely shining advantage - namely that they apply to movies as well as videogames, thus giving the potential for a single system which parents can use to assess the suitability of all content. A second, supplementary advantage also exists - the BBFC's ratings are already enforceable in law, and while it's possible that PEGI could be given some teeth to allow it to function a bit more like America's ESRB, the BBFC's existing powers are perhaps more immediately workable.

The hope is that the best parts of both systems can, in some way, be brought together. In creating PEGI, the industry has shown a clear willingness to self-regulate and a capability to do so. If that can now be extended to working with the BBFC to create a more rigourous and appropriate ratings system for videogame content, as part of a unified rating scheme for all visual media, we may - hopefully - reach a workable solution.

The hurdles faced in protecting children from inappropriate content, though, remain broadly the same. Years of over-zealous censorship of content in Britain has created a culture where ratings systems are simply not trusted - the unintended consequence of the shrill-voiced "moral minority" of the eighties being that an entire generation has grown up to believe that 18-rated media is suited to far younger children, because frankly, for much of the 1980s, it was.

This factor, combined with society's disquieting trend towards blaming the availability of products for problems, absolving parents of their responsibilities to control their childrens' access to media, this makes for a tough struggle to educate the nation about age ratings.

Worryingly, in the face of this, there's still cause to be sceptical about this government's commitment to the freedom of creative industries and media. Talk of handing the reins of censorship to the Government remains in the air around Westminster - which, if anything, leaves the onus on both the games industry and the BBFC to work together in the wake of the Byron Review's publication, coming up with a combined strategy that eliminates the need for unwanted Government intervention in the process. Self-regulation is probably too much for the industry to hope for in the current political climate - but the opportunity exists to become a major stakeholder in the ratings process. If the alternative is Government oversight of rating and censorship, then for the sake of everyone involved - from publishers and developers down to the gamers and consumers themselves - that's an opportunity the industry must grasp.