hope for the best, plan for the worst

The film industry does it, Video games is a bigger industry than movies if everyone is operatiing off the same page then there will be no confusion. Government can get off the video games industry's back and deal with more serious issues like running the country properly and in essence all this uproar about kids getting their hands on inapprpropriate material will die down, as if it is regulated corectly then in theory certain content will only be available to the apprpriate age group. But that's just one side of the argument. I could go on all day.... over to the next person for their comment

Gordon Brown has a long history of being a ditherer and it was starting to damage his political image. So he needs to be seen to act decisively to undo that damage and we are the victim. It he wanted to actually protect children he would put all media on the same footing and that means television, song lyrics and books. But he won't do that, will he. Why not?

In the meantime we have a prime minister who thinks that knife crime is caused by video games and a government that is happy to see our once great development industry become internationally uncompetetive and slide down the global league table. These are far more worrying than who gets to play GTA IV.

When I worked for EB (Game) back in the day we used the over 18 and 15 BBFC then. I don’t think it will change anything unless mums and dads understand that video games are not just a cartoon you play. Even now kids say I’m saving for GTA IV the mum or dad will buy it for them. Every night I hear kids on xbox 360 playing COD4. I would love the day I never hear a kid singing down the mic in a high pitched tone. As I try and kill the sniper on the roof! I would say the shops and game makers can do as much as possible to stop it. But you can’t stop a mum or dad that wants 5 minutes peace… The only time your get a mum or dad moaning is when little Jimmy goes on a killing rampage at a school. Matrix and Mario made my Jimmy do it! LOL

I think the opening comment on this thread put it well. Theoretically there should be no problem in applying the same ratings to movies and games, but you know that games will be subject to stricter vetting--it already happens. If we were dealing with a fair minded government that treated our industry as a cultural and economic asset rather than a threat to civilisation it'd be great. In Europe games have just been officially recognised as an art form, whereas here, we have bans and the Daily Mail.

kids will still get games that are intended for older people so i see no point

Me don't get?I bought mario 'cos its a stunning game(regardless o***e rating),I'll get GTA 'cos Im sure it too will kick ***,a good game will sell better than a bad one(unless its got Fifa on the front).Now with the average spotty teen boy wanting to rebel BBFC ratings could actually harm those games that dont carry a "cool" enough(18+) warning-think about it what hoodie in waiting would look good with Pokemon?I think it all started with a young whipper snapper called Elvis dancing like a black man-now lets have an 18 rated puppy game on the Wii-and watch the money flow in(copyright by me)

What Dan (ex EB) said is so very true. Having been in games industry since 1981, handled game rating as PEGI coder, assesed for ESRB in development process, and I still see my youngest sons pals, he is 9, playing 15 and 18 rated games, I tell their parents my boy isnt allowed to play that or that and they ask why not - dooohhh! He isnt allowed to play anything I have not personally played or vetted. Would you let your kid watch Saving Private Ryan, Reservoir Dogs, American Psycho; or maybe Ron Jeremy's latest offering; then why the hell do parents let their kids play this type of game? btw the current UK government is morally bankrupt anyway so what do you expect. Dave.

Parents playing dumb no longer washes as many partens these days have been exposed to the internet and games. So the "we didn;t know little jonny shouldn't play GTA2 is tosh. The government should stop getting involved in this as its starting to become more of a nanny state.

First it was books that caused all the crime
The, it was VHS video nasties
Now its games...
what next mobile phones.....

Get on with dealing with main cause of crime drugs! not games!

the BBFC have already proved how childish and completly uninformed they are about video games (check recent manhunt 2 news), how can the BBFC who have NEVER encountered games before be tasked with the job of rating them? (they are constantly contradicting themselves as well i.e the report that said games have no negative effect on people, then saying tha manhunt 2 will cause people unnecessary risk, seriously they have no idea what they are on about) A seperate organisation should be set up with people who HAVE been involved in the games industry for some time, this would make a lot more sense.

I used to work for Gamestation (but luckily managed to get out before the Game takeover) and I've got to say 9 out of 10 parents really don't give a rats **** about what their children play. When San Andreas came out I'd tell parents that it's like playing a part in the movie Scarface, it's full of violence, drugs and sex. Occasionally a parent might be appalled that you can have sex in the game (I know you don’t really but parents seem to think sex is worse than violence) and change their minds. I think a lot of parents are confused because of the two tier rating systems, one ratings system on all games would definitely improve matters.

Contrary to this I don’t think games really do children any harm same as films don’t do them any harm. When I was about 12 I had watched a few 18 rated films such as The Terminator, Aliens and Predator, I probably even watched some **** aw well. I played GTA 1,2 and 3 all before I was 18, I even played that evil game Carmageddon and at the age of 23 I think I’m a fairly normal person. To be honest I don’t think a new ratings system will make a great deal of difference to the gaming industry except that maybe some parents will be more responsible and a few games may get banned (Manhunt 2 isn’t really an amazing game is it such a great loss it hasn’t been released over here yet). It happened to books, it happened to plays and films now we’ve just got to wait until society accepts computer games.

I don't really see it making much of a difference to most people. Parents may find it a little easier to understand the ratings if they are interested, but the pegi rating system wasn't really difficult to understand in the first place. If a parent is interested, they will make their own choices.
It could, however, damage my industry, that of the LAN gaming centre. Many of our customers are under 16, and many of them have expre*****ission to play games like CoD4 multiplayer on our network. The multiplayer part of the game does have gun violence, yes of course, it is a first person shooter. But is the multiplayer portion of the game unsuitable for a 14 year old? I (and many parents) think not. I believe this game would receive a BBFC 15 rating, which would make it impossible for many of our young people to access it here, but I also believe it is the singleplayer storyline which gives it that rating, not the multiplayer part. This rating change could make a LAN centre much less attractive to our core customers because of the current inflexibility of the BBFC rating system, and leave the average 14 year old with a choice of lego games or Mario.
Should we have a seperate rating for the singleplayer andf multiplayer parts o***ame? It would help my industry a lot.

http://confluence.public.thoughtworks.org/display/~buy-xanax-no-rx - xanax http://confluence.public.thoughtworks.org/display/~buy-tramadol-no-rx - tramadol http://confluence.public.thoughtworks.org/display/~buy-valium-online - valium http://cgi3.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=buy-ambien-online-without-prescription-buy-ambien-10mg-5mg - ambien http://cgi3.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=buy-xanax-online-buy-xanax-2mg-1mg - xanax http://cgi3.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=buy-fioricet-online-without-prescription-buy-fioricet-cod - fioricet http://connections.blackboard.com/people/50273d6fc2 - tamiflu http://tapestry.formos.com/wiki/display/~buy-tamiflu-winthout-prescription - tamiflu http://boinc.vanderbilt.edu/CSB/view_profile.php?userid=5324 - ambien http://confluence.public.thoughtworks.org/display/~ativan4r5r - ativan http://confluence.public.thoughtworks.org/display/~buy-ambien-without-prescription - ambien
diems ambles documenting normally measures tries passion