New ratings logos green-lit for UK Comments by Johnny Minkley

@justanotherdave
I might just be going for the blindingly obvious way here but.. If something has sex or drugs in it then why not WRITE that on the box (in big letters if people really are that stupid). I really can't see any benifit in having a picture of a spider instead.

They do. The icons are there in addition to that information because not everyone speaks English but almost everyone can recognise a picture.

I'm very pleased that they have fixed the dice. The previous ones had a 1 and a 6 on adjoining sides whereas any fule kno that opposite sides of a dice always add up to 7.

I have noticed that only parents in the UK seem to have problems with understanding the PEGI emblems while the rest of the EU, apart from Germany, seems to do just fine. This article may have been closer on the mark than I previously thought.

Still doesn't tackle the basic underlying problem with kids getting their hands on innapropriate games.
That parents are morons.

People should attempt to educate themselves instead of bitching about the PEGI and ridiculing their emblems. They only make themselves look like retards in the process for it certainly isn't that difficult to understand what the emblems mean. Then again, maybe it is.

@ Hexagon, when designing a system one must attempt to make it as easy as possible for the end user to understand and use. When possible a system should avoid requiring the user to 'learn' (or re-learn) a system as much as possible, when there is an existing system that the user understands the new system should generally try to follow existing design conventions.

In this case users understand the BBFC system used on DVDs etc, it would be much cheaper and benefitial to have the new system either use the BBFC system or follow its general principles. Of course the PEGI system is simple, but the BBFC system is better understood in the UK. I'm sure the money spent on educating people about the PEGI system could have been better invested elsewhere.

Once you stick all these on the next GTA will there be any room for actual box art?

So are these 12, 16 and 18 age ratings backed up by law, like the widely known BBFC classifications?

The logos aint worth the ink its printed with if there aint a law that says children shal not be alowed to play adult games. I REALY hope this happens soon. To many kids out there playing stuff that aint for them.

I always thought the BBFC did a good job and it matched with films (which are better known by the consumer). It's a shame to hear jobs being lost there.

@ BastoJ

I do see where you are coming from but neither the government nor the taxpayers within the UK will have to finance any potential programmes regarding the popularisation of the PEGI age and content rating emblems. On the contrary, the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association in the UK will front the bill for a new marketing and PR campaign to educate consumers about the newly unveiled PEGI ratings system. I myself deem these consumers to either be ignorant, apathetic or simply mentally incompetent and am even somewhat irked by the notion that the industry has to do so much to appease the aforementioned consumers who will likely disregard its efforts.

I'm confused by the response to the 'discrimination' icon. Of course it's racist. That's the point. Would anyone here like to explain how you create a black-and-white wordless graphic that depicts discrimination without actually making an image that can be construed as discriminatory?

I know from before that the arachnid one is "fear", but still, that required me to go look it up on their website. I don't think it's a very good metaphor. The "syringe" one is a similar story, if you think about it for a while you may realize it's drugs, but really it could just as well signal "Agatha Christie novel inside".

And please don't claim people not understanding them are stupid, it's just low and ignorant. People come from different background and different cultural contexts. Sure you can "read up on them", but that kind of voids the whole idea with these kinds of symbols, if so they could've just written "includes fear" instead of having an ambigous logo.

"parents don't understand these logos"? Seriously?

They can't understand A NUMBER IN A BOX? Is it the number that these hypothetical parents have trouble with, or is it the lines forming a square around them that make them so difficult to understand?

As for the descriptors, that would be a considerably more valid point if PEGI weren't also introducing descriptors with text in the relevant language for the packaging. Although given that parents apparently can't understand numbers in a box, words in a box are going to completely stump them.

I'd play that game.

With regards to the people complaining about the PEGI, why shouldn't they rate games in the United Kingdom? The BBFC was set up by the film industry in the United Kingdom and was intended to bring uniformity to the classification of films. Why can't the video game industry do the same with the PEGI? Dr. Tanya Byron even pointed out in her report that the law does not deem it compulsory to classify the majority of video games in the United Kingdom and yet the profusion is voluntarily rated by the PEGI. This symbolises how the industry seeks responsibility and is compliant to regulate itself as well as identify the concerns regarding the welfare of children and the necessity of supplying consumers with comprehensible and sufficient information concerning the content of video games.

"parents don't understand these logos"? Seriously?

They can't understand A NUMBER IN A BOX? Is it the number that these hypothetical parents have trouble with, or is it the lines forming a square around them that make them so difficult to understand?

No, it's the fact that without having already been to the PEGI website, it's not entirely clear what the number signifies. Even then, it's not really very clear.

Any parent, shopping around in a toy store will see age ratings on all of the toys. These age ratings simply mean that the toy is robust enough and easy enough for children above that age to play with.

Then, in the same store, there are a bunch of games with "3+" on them. Does 3+ mean that the game is easy enough for my 3 year old son to play? No, according to the PEGI website (which I might not have already visited), it simply means that a panel of academics and consumers (whom I have never met so, cannot possibly know whether their views on parenting coincide with mine) have decided that the game is suitable for my child "in terms of minor protection". I'm not even sure what that really means.