Sony, Nintendo & Microsoft unite to educate the media

[Angry the Clown]

There was a fairly interesting article yesterday at MVC here regarding the coming together of the three majors, government officials and other executives of the games industry in a want to further highlight and enhance the ratings on videogame releases here in the UK in the hope to educate buyers, or more specifically the parents of some buyers, as to who a game is aimed in offering more detailed descriptions of a title's content.

 

This will apparently involve doubling the size of space dedicated to the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) certificates, with a description panel on the back of the box (as all UK Region 2 DVDs feature) outlining sex, violence, language and drug use content should a game feature any.

 

Whether it will make much difference remains to be seen, it?s certainly one way of developers covering themselves a bit better in their defence when some right wing media nut takes them to task. One can still imagine hoards of fourteen year old chavs lining up in stores to buy the next GTA however... Educating parents is one thing, sometimes I feel they need to educate the retailers too. The article does state part of the aim is to indeed educate retail staff that little bit better too, but the terms 'educated' and 'retail staff in videogames stores' in this country rarely seem to make good bedfellows.

 

Daniel