Comments on: Byron Report published

By: Tiger Walts

Tiger Walts — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 13:04:54 +0000

5 hours is enough for linear games and just enough for the open ended stuff but there is a trend of increasingly larger game-worlds. There’s nothing right now that is too big but there’s going to be a time when they will.

Anyways, I feel sorry for the poor bastards that had to sit through all the MGS Codecs.

By: deftangel

deftangel — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 10:57:46 +0000

Tiger, that’s not true. Along with the cutscenes and gameplay footage, the BBFC actually spend about 5 hours or longer playing most of the games they rate with the developers enabling them to access parts of it quickly with dev modes/cheats/saves etc.

By: Tiger Walts

Tiger Walts — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 10:11:33 +0000

The BBFC system for rating games isn’t thorough enough at the moment. The material submitted is typically all the cut-scenes and about an hour of selected game-play footage. With games getting bigger and more open ended, there is no way all the content in a game to be reviewed and content that could change a rating may be overlooked.

One solution is for the BBFC to be involved in content revision early on in large projects. Developers will have the option of submitting material as they create it. The content can then be changed if necessary long before the final submission. Content already rated will not be needed for a final submission and will make the final review process shorter. The extra cost will be covered by the developer paying for each content submission, so it is up to them whether they choose to have lots of reviews or a few larger ones.

This also means that the reviewing costs scale to size of the project so that very small games can be rated at minimal cost. A lot of the XBLA titles would only take a few hours to deliberate on all it’s content.

By: TJ

TJ — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 09:44:23 +0000

I see no problem with adopting a rating system in the UK consistent with that used for film.

However, I do see a problem with the BBFC being in control of it. They’ll need to ramp up considerably to handle it, so perhaps they will also need to bring on people who know something about games for the first time, but it’s still concerning.

Could add unneeded red tape to the release process, and endanger the production of adult games if the ratings are too strict.

By: Tonka

Tonka — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 09:43:56 +0000

It’s not the fact that they let their kids play GTA that is the problem.

By: Harry

Harry — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 09:36:44 +0000

This is mad. Games are very well rated in the UK already. It’s just the chavscum parents that let their kids play GTA that cause the problems.

By: Blerk

Blerk — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 09:16:21 +0000

That seems like a mistake. Yes, the BBFC-style film ratings are more recognisable, but the PEGI system already included the ‘12′ rating that she recommends and all those ‘bad language’, ‘drug references’, ‘full frontal nudity’ icons too which the BBFC doesn’t do. Bizarre.

By: patlike

patlike — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 09:10:08 +0000

Yep.

By: Blerk

Blerk — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 09:08:53 +0000

Oh. Looking at that Beeb report, it seems ‘over’ for PEGI.