The Escapist Bulletin: A square PEGI for a round hole
What was wrong with the BBFC?
The Digital Britain report was released on Tuesday, and it brought with it some things that are going to change the face of UK gaming for a very long time.
Some of these changes will be for the better - tax breaks for UK based developers, for example - but some are more difficult to fully support as it was announced that the British Board of Film Classification, or BBFC, would no longer be rating video games. Instead, that responsibility would fall on the PEGI system favoured by the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA).
The animosity between ELSPA and the BBFC is well documented, with ELSPA accusing the BBFC of causing ‘unnecessary risk’ with its ratings after disagreements last year over a number of titles that PEGI rated 18+ that were ‘downgraded’ by the BBFC.
The BBFC in turn pointed to the section in last year’s Byron report that suggested that the more strict criteria used in PEGI ratings could lead to the whole system being devalued if ratings were out of step with what the UK public thought was appropriate.
Mass Effect is an example of where the two organisations disagreed, with the BBFC giving the game a ‘12’ rating, while PEGI rated it 18+, apparently for all the violence the game contained.
Of course, that whole debate is now academic, as ELSPA have been successful in their efforts to install PEGI as the de facto rating system for the UK, making it one of the few countries where the system is legally enforceable. At the most basic level, very little has changed: games are still going to get rated, so does it really matter who does it?
Well, it might matter a great deal. Ignoring for a moment that dropping highly recognisable symbols in favour of something new seems like a questionable decision, PEGI is pan-European (which is what the ‘PE’ stands for, incidentally) and so must take a wider view than just the UK.
Do you know what the prevailing attitude towards sex is in Iceland, or how Cyprus feels about violence? It sounds nonsensical, but those attitudes will affect the rating that games are given in the UK. The BBFC was intended to rate films, not games, but it had a sense of local perspective that PEGI lacks.
According to PEGI, Mass Effect is a more adult work than movies like Pretty Woman or 300, both of which carry 15 ratings from the BBFC. By being responsible for rating all UK media, the BBFC could make its ratings consistent across the board, and as an organisation it seemed to resist the hysteria over sexual content that its counterparts at the ESRB often succumbed to.
Its liberal attitude allowed the UK to enjoy games like Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy and The Witcher as the developers intended, without the self-censorship imposed upon them in the US.
This decision means that the ratings that videogames receive in the UK are no longer based on the sensibilities of the people of the UK, but instead on the conflicted interests of 32 different countries.
The UK games market is the second largest in the world, and the industry generates billions of pounds every year. If the UK government really wants to help this industry develop further, adding another layer of bureaucracy seems to be counter-productive.
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