The Byron Report and what it means for the industry

If you have been anywhere near a television over the past few days, you will have likely happened to gaze upon a story concerning the video games industry and government calls for overhauling the age classification system in the UK.

It's unclear exactly who decided that a change was necessary, but I'll bet my murderous disposition that it was some ill-informed MP who perceives that all games are Columbine simulators. Keith Vaz then, probably. But a study was carried out nonetheless by Psychologist Tanya Byron, and the resulting changes are, shock horror, actually... not damaging at all to the industry. If one reads the report, they'd be pleasantly surprised to know that this shrink isn't actually a female Jack Thompson, and has put in place a plan that doesn't banish adult games to the point where anyone seen buying one would be ousted from British society as a middle-aged paedophile who lives with his mother.

Basically, before you know the changes, one has to understand how games are currently classified in the UK. Well the company who decides the age rating is an independent organisation called PEGI. Their age labels consist of:

3+
7+
12+
16+
18+

Now, some gamers may notice in their library that some of their more "mature" games have "that film logo on", IE, a BBFC rating of either 15 or 18. The BBFC are an "official" classification company who rate films in the UK, and regularly rate some of the more fruity games (like all Resident Evil games as 15 or Manhunt 2 as 18).

After this report, all video games will pass through PEGI as per usual, but if they feel the game is deserving of a !2 or above rating, they must be approved by the BBFC, who will then classify the games themselves. It isn't totally clear why this will avoid the illegal transaction of video games to minors, but the strength of an official (and familiar) logo may be enough to get the message across to parents that not all games are for children. A responsible parent wouldn't let little Timmy see a 15 rated film, so why would mummy buy him Grand Theft Auto. So technically, this shuffle shouldn't actually affect anything, but the subtleties of the the change might. To that degree, it's a well though-out plan. So kudos to Ms Byron for that .

But most importantly, this move may spell an end to the whinging of scores of MPs the industry has faced these past years.