Gamertell

The average gamer age is higher than it was when most of us started gaming. Content is much more mature than when the older gamers started as well. Parents, who are often gamers as well, still want to insure that their kids play age-appropriate games.

If you don’t want your kids to have exposure to inappropriate content, the only place you can really limit their exposure is in the home. Even then your control over inappropriate content in your house is still lacking to an extent. Unless your child is home schooled, has no friends, doesn’t watch TV, never goes online and doesn’t flip through magazines or the newspaper; sooner or later there’s going to be exposure to content deemed inappropriate for a child.

So with the general availability of information there’s a couple of ways to deal with the rise in mature content…

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Censoring video games has been an issue since Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil. If parents don’t want their children to play violent games, that should be up to them and no one else. However this isn’t the case in Australia where censoring laws are so strict, not even a forty-year-old man can play Grand Theft Auto.

Australia uses the rating R18+ for their mature games. With censoring laws as they are, however, it is very unlikely to ever see a game on a shelf with that rating. Australia bans any game that is deemed too violent, includes sexual content or has too many drug references. Apparently the government is full of old fogies who think video games are only for kids. Not only is this not true but it is ridiculous…

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Two things are important with video game ratings: who rates games and who pays attention to them. The “who rates games” is the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) and similar boards across the world. Quite simply, they are there to think of the children so you don’t have to.

If the ESRB and similar rating companies think that user-generated content would be enough to change a game’s rating, those organizations negate their own credibility by flip-flopping a rating for content not even made by the game company. That could hinder both some gamers and all developers in fulfilling their purpose in the industry.

The other problem with the ratings is that no one pays attention to them. If someone is too young to get a popular game, they end up running to the parents. The parents quite often don’t check things out before buying them, then start complaining when violence or sexuality pops up in a game. Even with full bans…

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According to the European Commission survey, Ireland is now banning violent video games.

The reason for banning violent games, according to the EU’s study of the implementation of Pan European Game Information ratings, is that many of the EU nations are not enforcing the age limits on the games identified by PEGI.

The only game currently known to be banned in Ireland is…

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Adults Only-rated games have been despised by major retailers and console manufacturers. But there is a very distant possibility of console manufacturers giving the green signal to AO-rated games if they see any merit in the argument that AO-rated games are a form of free speech. Adam Thierer, director of The Progress & Freedom Foundation and a proponent of free speech, has addressed the possibility of AO games appearing on consoles on his blog.

Thierer feels that AO games should be accommodated into the mainstream but disagrees with a suggestion that…

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Last month the Australian Home Affairs Ministry declared that the country’s attorneys-general would mull over whether games with an R rating should be allowed in the country or not. The attorneys-general met recently in Barossa Valley in South Australia and reached a consensus that the final decision can only be reached after taking into account the public opinion.

Australia doesn’t have a R rating for video games which means that…

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The UK is all set to revamp the videogame rating system according to the recommendations made by Dr. Tanya Byron, who is heading a review into the ill effects of games and the internet in the U.K. Byron told Next-Gen that the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has assured her that the government will adopt her recommendations in full.

Byron also talked about the appreciation her report has drawn from British parents but her suggestions might be…

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The Australian Federal government is contemplating the introduction of the R-18 certification for video games that contain highly explicit content not deemed fit for minors. The absence of such a certification means that titles which exceed the MA certification (only for sale to persons 15 and above) are altogether denied an Australian release…

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The blaring calls for tighter videogame regulations coming from lawmakers and activists around the world threaten the creative liberty that game developers enjoy. The games industry remains in favor of the advisory system currently in place instead of outright government censorship.

WhatTheyPlay is essentially a videogames review website from a parent’s perspective, offering an honest account of various in-game sequences (if any) that parents might find too obnoxious for their kids. The website is…

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Scottish newspaper Scotland on Sunday has claimed that the British government is set to introduce stringent video game regulations based on the Byron Review, a study on the subject by Dr. Tanya Bryon. Contrary to the paper’s claim, the Department for Children, Schools & Families - the government department conducting the review - has denied any leak of the Byron Review.

The report claims that video games will be regulated just like movies using an age based rating system. Also, according to the British industry journal Market for Home Computing and Video Games (MCV), its anonymous source was present at…

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