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back to article Byron Review will create videogame delays, warns EA

If changes to the classification of videogames in the UK - as proposed by the Byron Review - get the go-ahead, then gamers will be forced to wait longer for titles to hit the shops, Electronic Arts has warned. In a report by Gamesindustry.biz, Keith Ramsdale, general manager for EA in the UK, Ireland and Nordic regions, said …

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  1. Andraž Levstik

    What about

    What about all the Free Software games one can get without actually buying them...

    This horse bolted a long time ago.

    I agree that there should be some advisory on games but the people to

    rely on this is the PARENTS(say what? what's that a magic word?) not the people

    who sell this.

    I'm opposed to parents monitoring their child' PC in any way since that just gives the

    child the idea that it is OK to give up their privacy and such like a child like an adult like any human being has the right to privacy.

    But if little Timmy wants a video game chances are:

    a) parents will need to buy it for them

    In which case they should actually do the PARENTing(there's that magic word again)

    thing and verify that said game is actually okay for 'lil Timmy

    b) Timmy will save for it through allowance

    Can't really do much here unless you actually take your PARENTing(ow looky... magic word) responsibilities seriously and actually have a DIALOG(NOT a MONOLOGUE) with your child about things and he might actually tell you about such things.

    c) Timmy will get it from "other" sources

    Same as step (b) though Timmy should be informed about what he is doing:

    infringing copyright(NOT STEALING) and what this MIGHT(there's no say he will buy it and keep even if he likes it) mean.

    So yes... PARENTS(magic word!) should be doing PARENTing(magic word!) and

    work WITH their children to make them productive NON-SHEEP-LIKE creatures of

    society. Anything else would be gross incompetence on their part.

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  2. alistair millington
    Thumb Down

    kettle, pot...

    Given the rate of EA games to number of bugs found in EA games at the time of release, perhaps they should delay their own games to do some QA testing before churning out badly coded, bug ridden nonsense ahead of time.

    Given EA have bought up and destroyed all the good software houses, (westwood, DICE) only EA really sell games anymore, so no wonder they are crying foul.

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  3. Paul

    free software

    Why do I have the nagging feeling there's going to be no way to get compliant with age labelling without handing hefty chunks of cash to PEGI and/or BBFC? Even the obvious 'slap a 18+ rating on' will fall foul of their symbol copyrights.

    Given the taxing nature of our government and the natural desire of fee charging leeches to feed it seems inevitable they'll plug any loop holes by making distribution illegal if you don't pay the tax. As usual the government find a new way to create criminals instead of fixing real problems.

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  4. Adrian Jackson

    Can't see this being a real problem...

    Given how ridiculous EA's delays and price hikes bringing titles to the UK can be *cough*rockband*cough* this shouldn't have much more of an impact.

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  5. Simon Ball
    Stop

    @ Andraž Levstik

    You have an odd view of parenting if you think that serious, deep, meaningful heart-to-heart talks are all that it takes to keep children on the straight and narrow. Even if they respond to reasoned argument (which is a rare response even among adults), there’s no guarantee that they will agree with your reasons.

    Regular supervision is equally necessary, as are consequences for misbehaviour, both of which are inhibited by too much privacy. Children in general, and especially young children, have no legal or moral right to privacy from their parents. If you allow your children to keep secrets from you, effective parenting becomes virtually impossible.

    Responsible parents may choose to grant their children a degree of privacy, but only after they have earned that trust.

    Parents who think that they can treat their children like small adults usually come unstuck fairly quickly.

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  6. BoldMan
    Thumb Down

    Aww diddums, so we'll have to wait a bit longer... boo hoo

    I am devastated... no, wait I'm not. I frankly couldn't care less! I refuse to buy EA games anyway as they are usually a big crock of shite, bug-riddled and overpriced.

    I gave up playing Dark Age of Camelot when EA bought Mythic simply to get their hands on the Warhammer Age of Reckoning IP.

    EA can go forth and multiply!

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  7. shaun
    Paris Hilton

    ha ha ha

    if it's so easy for kids to get weapons here that we have had a spree of teenage murders, what makes anyone think putting an 18 rating on games will make any difference at all. Tasers will have more effect.

    Paris, because someone should enforce her 18 rating too.

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  8. MattW

    Byron Review will create videogame delays, warns EA

    And this matters?

    Get a life.

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  9. Andrew Kirkpatrick

    Import instead?

    I've been importing games on PC for a while from various places (USA, Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan...) and since my PS3 is also region-free if they delay anything for the UK then I'm just going to get it from somewhere else!

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  10. amanfromMars Silver badge
    Alien

    Ministry of Silly Talks ...... PerlyGatesPython Full Monty.

    Do EA Produce an InterReactive Real Game for QuITe Manic HyperRadioProActivity. Moves played Virtually and Mirrored and Paralleled in MultiCored Reality which ARGonauts BetaTesting CyberSpace Command and Control Parameters in Earthed Live Environments.

    amfM would find that a Generosity deserved of Certain Rights and Privileges.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/24/games_up_memo/ ..... You cannot be serious?

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  11. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    Its not about EA

    See past the EA-ness of this announcement. What he is saying is true and will affect all games for sale here. And I'll bet delay will equate to 'additional cost' which of course will also be passed along to the consumer in rip-off UK.

    We simply don't need this. There is an existing system, there are existing laws. And most of the fuss is storm-in-a-teacup concerns anyways. The UK needs to seriously get a grip on reality. Drug addiction and alcohol abuse and a loss of direction of UK society are more pressing problems. But like Videos, Metal, Comics and Rock'n'Roll before them, video games are today's misunderstood scapegoat.

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  12. thagrol

    It won't work

    Rating games like movies won't work, and here's why:

    Most parents think "games are for kids".

    Most board games are age rated based on the difficulty of the game rather than it's content. "Ages 8 to adult", for example means a seven year old will have difficulty understanding the game and it's rules, not that it has content inappropriate for a seven year old.

    Put the two together and when a parent is being pestered by their 12 year old to buy them a 15 rated game their most likely thought (other than "buying this will shut my kid up") is "my kid is smart for a 12 year old so can handle a game with a 15 year difficulty level.

    An entirely new rating system is needed.

    Of course, if someone's idea of parenting is to sit the kid in front of the TV/Computer/Games Console so they're occupied and out of the way, no rating system is going to help.

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  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @ Free Games

    All you would need to do is to either publish it abroad or send it to someone else to publish abroad. Then the BBFC can go away.

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  14. Sooty

    @Thagrol

    Exactly right, we don't need a new ratings system, the govenrment simply need to raise the visibility to parents of the existing rating system.

    If you make parents aware that, games are not just for kids*, and then tell them about penelties, ie adverts saying buying an 18+ game for your child is against the law and you could face high fines etc. it would go a long way towards this.

    This just needs one parent shouting up in the news about how the latest 18+ rated game caused their innocent little johnny, who wouldn't hurt a fly obviously, to go on a killing spee. To then be arrested and fined for letting him get hold of it in the first place. Harsh, but a few cases like that in the Sun, etc, will soon have parents scrutinising what they buy for their kids. I have a strange feeling that the giant 18+ logo slapped on the front of every game, being a slightly different colour to the ones on films, won't be an issue for long. (Most 18's are voluntarily submitted to the BBFC for rating anyway, have the same style ratings as dvd's, come in dvd cases, and are displayed in exactly the same places as dvd's would have them, ie front, back and spine)

    *I'm not sure where this idea comes from really, there are by far, more 15+ & 18+ rated games out there than there are games suitable for kids. I've even seen something recently where a parent was complaining that there were few, if any, games available that were suitable for 10-14 year olds so what did people expect they were going to buy for them. I was particularly impressed with this parent's common sense of actually researching the 15+ games themselves, to see if they were suitable, before buying them for the child.

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  15. Elmer Phud
    IT Angle

    Parents

    So - it's O.K. to buy your nippers things like the Lego games where they thrash around killing things but it's something else when a 12 year old bored of Lego light-sabers wants a copy of (hugely edited but still rated 16+) No More Heroes.

    As very young girls my daughters loved building rooms for Sims - filling them with soft furnishings and fireplaces then taking the doors away once the characters were in the room. Oh how they laughed as the Sims got more and more frantic and eventually burnt to a crisp. how much fun they had building swimming pools, filling them with Sims children then taking the steps away. More laughs as the small Sims got weaker and weaker then drowned. For a milder diversion they'd build a house, get the Sims to drink loads and loads then remove the toilets.

    A few reminders that if they were on the web and they saw something they didn't like they could tell me or go leave the website or both. They developed a keen web-sense of what was dodgy and what wasn't, occasionally asking my advice about messages coming in from M$Messenger they weren't sure about.

    Not blind trust - which is just leaving them to it but trust in them to learn about games and the web, that it's part of life that some things can be dodgy. Protection from things that would severely embarrass a parent is what a lot of these complainers are really on about.

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  16. Lukin Brewer

    How about after sale?

    As I recall from primary school, none of the kids who were that way inclined had any problem getting to see X-cert videos. They just went through their parents' stashes, when said parents were out or not paying attention.

    So it must be with 18 cert games, unless the installation disks are kept under lock and key along with the PCs on which they are installed.

    Could this be enforced? Do we even want to know? Will it stop anyone from trying?

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