>.>; She's kinda good looking.

hello video games are also meant to be for adult gamers, duh.

she demands more money for beauty face in which make up is not needed on her face. sure its out of the question, but ill tell her about it.

Wait til we actually get to read the review before jumping to conclusions. It's not available for download right now, and she's just been on radio 4, acknowledging there's no conclusive link between violent video games and behaviour, but speculating that developmental psychology specifies stages of development where particular content is dangerous.

I don't know the dev psych literature, but it did makes me wonder what's the point of a call for evidence when you can just speculate.

Jayne Seymour is that you? I loved her in Dancing with the Stars!

I just have to say one last thing, Why is she trying to show her boobs its wide open? button that shirt

Hurray. A bit of common sense for a change.

Especially after the whole Rockstar/BBFC saga nearly threw the baby out with the bathwater... In the BBFC's defence they did what they thought was right, err-ed on the side of caution, and under review were found to be wrong. The appeals committee safeguard for the BBFC worked and Rockstar got their release (although I wish they didn't...)

People think that this somehow makes the BBFC less weak. It's just spin on a situation where the BBFC did their job properly. Hopefully the Byron report will further cement the use of the BBFC for ratings - no-one wants government to do it!

Her interview on the BBC was actually pretty positive. She said she didn't want to change the content inside games, she just thinks that the outside on the boxes need to be labeled clearer on what's for kids and what's for adults.
She said the present system of some games getting 2 ratings (Europes PEGI and the UK's BBFC) just confuses parents on what's suitable. She said parents need to know exactly what's in the games as most kids already know, but won't actually tell their parents the full truth.
Good interview, kinda ruined by the BBC overcut her interview with screens from Manhunt and GTA.

GMTV on the other channel was funny, their "journalist" pointed to a Wiimote and nunchuck and said games are getting to complicated for adults :0

wow, what a crappy time to be named byron.

i feel like it's all my fault.

God, I'd love to pound that into a fine paste.

I'm sorry... were we talking about the deleterious effect of modern media on impressionable minds?

@deathbunny: Your figure of speech disturbs me.

Yet I highly antcipate the scandalous story of said pasting.

I think that the ESRB ratings should be swapped with movie ratings in the USA as well. If R rated content in movies is acceptable for sale, the same content in video-games must be similarly acceptable. A game with mild softcore nudity is AO, but a movie is simply R, a game with realistic or overblown violence is similarly harshly rated.

If people are more aware of the content that way, bonus points. I just want people to think of the two forms of media as analogous, though.

@Balius: Well, Australia uses the same ratings across film, TV AND games, and it works a treat. Every parent knows the movie ratings since they use it for the cinema, so they can apply it to other stuff no problems.

Forget the article! Who is this sexy beast? ;o

What a surprise! An article about a female psychiatrist who happens to be good looking, and most of the readers reveal themselves to be teenagers. "Look, a Woman! Gasp! Lets all make comments about what we'd like to do to her, if only she'd let us"...

You want to... 'pound her??' Yeah, I'm sure you get into a lot of relationships that way. "You look so good. Can I pound you?"

What a bunch of pathetic wankers you really are. Now I know why I may play games, but I never think of myself as a "gamer".

As far as I can tell, they're just recommending the adoption of the movie rating system for games too. Makes sense to me, since everyone except the most slack-jawed dribbling cow-person understands those ratings, and the offspring of said cow-people are pretty much doomed anyway.

The sky actually was falling this morning, but it turned out just to be snow.

@dexterr: How is that so? Video games are for children too; that's even the stereotype.

I never understood why they didn't use the film rating system (clear concise numbers in a well recognised format that has been used for as long as I can remember) the film rating system is right in the public consciousness, people know how to use it and can easily identify it on the box.

It seems to me like a bit of a waste of public money to have a review to decide something that really should have been common sense, but then again if it hadn't have gone on this then we'd have only bought the speaker of the house another water feature.

The impressive bit is that the BBC article (here: [news.bbc.co.uk]) has still managed to report the story in a relatively negative way that places the blame on games companies for website content while poor, helpless parents are simply being assaulted on all sides by multiple ratings systems. It then finishes abruptly on the line that more than 50% of kids have come across porn online.

Still, I suppose I should be happy that the review shouldn't feasibly support the 'murder simulators' line of thinking. I might remain cautiously optimistic, however, until the full report has come out and politicians have had their chance to spin it then feed it to the press.

Er... We have a BBFC rating in the bottom left hand corner on the front of the game, and next to the barcode on the back, with a brief description of WHY it got that rating. And if it's not BBFC, it's a PEGI rating which is picture coded (quite obvious as to what each one is, and if not, there's a key).

We already /have/ movie-style ratings.

@kPod: You do for SOME games. CHeck your shelf and see how many though.

@Luke Plunkett:

Except in Aus the movies have an R 18 plus whereas games don't. If it's not acceptable for fifteen year olds here no one is allowed to play it.

@Luke Plunkett: Er... Just had a look at my OHSOMASSIVE COLLECTION (Like... eleven games or so), and the only one that doesn't have either a BBFC or a PEGI rating in the bottom left hand corner, is an asian import copy of Orange Box from PlayAsia. Lemme get a photo.

My Mass Effect copy tells me that there is already a 12 rating.

@kPod: Really? can you send it to tips? I was under the impression only SOME british games carried a BBFC rating. Then again, it might just be the game you're playing :)

@kPod: Here we go

[www.mcvuk.com]

If a game's extreme (violent, for example), it's rated by the BBFC. Other games CAN be rated, but thats at the publisher's discretion.

@Luke Plunkett:

[s5.largeimagehost.com]

There. The problem was more prevalent way back when, with the PSone and the old PC games not being rated, as well as GBA games and such.

@kPod: Also sent it to tips.

@Luke Plunkett: kPod is confused, and possibly you are too.

The current situation is that all games have either a PEGI rating or a BBFC one.

This report appears to be recommending that all games have a BBFC rating.

In other words the report says that parents have trouble understanding what a '16' in a box means, and will find it much easier to understand when it's a '15' in a circle. I find that pretty unlikely personally but it does sort of make sense to use the same system for everything so whatever. The only issue is that it could potentially cause increased costs and/or delays in game release, however as most games sell in large quantities, I doubt BBFC fees will be that much of an issue.

IIRC it said on the radio that the report also recommends tougher penalties for shops that sell games to children. Again, yeah, like whatever.

I was pleasantly surprised when reading the report, various gaming sites and blogs were expecting the 'Censor everything to protect our children' approach, instead we get the sensible ideas of educating parents and applying the current rating system to all games (I could never understand why this wasn't previously the case).

The other suggestions were a bit pointless though as the current consoles all have parental controls (although I've never used them so am unsure how effective they are) and retailers can already be fined for selling rated products to under age children (you can even get a prison sentence as I recall).

Unfortunately this country has a problem with some atrociously bad parenting and even a 'massive campaign' won't persuade some parents to care what their children watch and play (although in these situations its unlikely that the child will grow to be a model citizen regardless of what games they are allowed to play).

@quen: No, that's what I thought, only a few British games I've ever seen(GTA, Halo, etc) had BBFC ratings while the rest all had PEGI.

I agree, seems odd on the surface, since they're both clearly age ratings, but I guess she felt that BBFC ratings would not only standardise things, they'd also be more recognisable and more likely to be acknowledged as a "serious" classification.

Again, as an Australian - where we use film ratings for games - it certainly helps. Parents KNOW that an M15 movie is unsuitable for kids, so they can instantly see that an M15 game would be as well.

@Luke Plunkett: The only reason they want BBFC ratings is because BBFC is exclusive to the UK, whereas PEGI is a European standard. Sorry, but I'd rather have PEGI myself, because they specialise in games, and I'm not having (on the offchance) A manhunt2-esque situation with, for example, Mass Effect 2. It's an island mentality, and needs to end. Going political here; the government want us in the EU, yet they want a load of stuff to remain Britain specific.

I trust PEGI more than BBFC, simply because of that.

OK who is the woman and why is her picture on here?

@kPod: Nothing to do with it being a European standard, they want the BBFC rating as everyone already recognises it from films.

@nxp3: That's Byron, I'm guessing.

@Geckosan: Island mentality. Trust me, I'm in the middle of it. ;] As a gamer and retailer, I know both sides, and I know that PEGI is legally binding over here just as much as BBFC is. Just because it has a white ring around it (or triangle, depending on the rating itself) doesn't make it look more official.

Once again, people aren't looking into the matter as a whole. They don't do impartial research, and then come out with this. BBFC. British board of FILM classification. PEGI. Pan-European GAME information. I thought it would be obvious to the people that deal with this to let PEGI be the main body. PEGI actually have a stricter criterion for ratings than the BBFC, because they deal with Germany. Hence why Carmageddon 2 and House of the Dead had green blood, and you ran over zombies instead of real people.

I can't believe nobody has commented on this yet but she kinda looks like Kari Byron from Mythbusters on this pic. Too bad my comment won't show yet. Damn. :)

hey wow. my comment did appear!!! woo!

@dexterr: huh? (to your second comment); to your third comment, don't ask why, just be glad that it is so

"more effort on the part of parents in monitoring and controlling their children's gaming and online habits"

What? Make the parents responsible for what their kids do? Why the hell would we want to do that, when it's so much easier to blame video games?

I would like to review Byron.

I would totally input my statistics into her spreadsheet.

I'd hit that

Nothing in this report will change the mentality of parents who buy 15/18 rated games for underage kids because "they want it" or "its just a game". So what a waste of money its been!

"I'm asking the prime minister to change legislation so that from 12 upwards children or parents can't buy games unless it's for the right age of the child."

This quote is a little worrisome. Why would they prohibit parents from buying 18+ games for their kids? If I had a kid, I would let them play whatever they wanted after they turned 10, so this would piss me off. Then again, how the hell would they enforce something like this?

Wow! A Hot brit with nice teeth.

@TheEngineer: Rocking the Goggles: They wouldn't but it is illegal to supply your child with a film in the UK that isn't their age rating. Nothing would happen, it would just be identical to film laws.

But.. we already have a 12 rating for games in the UK. I worked in GAME for a while and it's not like parents aren't aware that games are adult rated. Most of them just shrug and say "yeah you can sell it to them". It's not the games that need rebranding, it's the parents that need to be more in control of what their kids play.

I'd do her