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Age-rated books
Books are now a mass-market leisure activity, with millions of readers throughout Europe. In the last few years the age group of those reading has increased, and the average age of readers now exceeds 23 years. To cater for the older reader, publishers have responded by publishing books for this more mature market, many of whom are over 18 years old. The trend towards more mature books being available has not yet been identified by the average consumer who still believes that most books are made for young children, and may not be aware of the change when purchasing books for children. To that end, all books will now contain an age rating.
Thankfully the previous paragraph is complete and total bollocks. I know, if I was reading that I’d be in a cold sweat by the end. Why is it, then, that no fuss is made about the fact that there are video game age ratings? A new European body has been created that does video game ratings called PEGI - Pan European Game Information. Do people really need to have their hands held when deciding video games? It all strikes me as being rather like those twatty Plugged In Online nobs (interestingly, they did consult many religious groups, so the comparison may not be that far off). And, no doubt, the reasons are because of the nonsensical hypodermic needle model of media consumption (the “It’s been rejected by almost every key media academic, but the tabloids still find that one that disagrees” model).
Why are computer games and interactive media treated so differently from books? They can both be intricate texts with systematic taxonomies of genre, stylistic elements of film and other elements. But the interactive media text is still much maligned. We still have no significant organs of reviewing. Interactive media and computer games have elicited a few dank theorisers at ex-polytechnics, but we have yet to create an interactive media and computer game equivalent of the Times Literary Supplement or the London Review of Books. Newspapers that review computer games still consign them to the technical pages (the Guardian’s Online and the Telegraph’s Connected are two good examples) rather than highlight them alongside the books and movies. If you review Busted on the arts and music page, there is no reason not to review computer games - most of which are far, far, far better than Busted could ever hope for. Call me populist, if you like, but give me Final Fantasy over fat people singing in languages I don’t understand. I’d do Baldur’s Gate too, but I don’t really do the whole PC thing (although Boo the Hamster sounds like a good reason to splash out my life savings on one and I’d certainly get more from it than I’m currently getting from my tuition fees).
Game reviewing has fallen in to a terrible trap. Just like PEGI’s categorisation of games in to a ticklist of violence, drugs, fear, sex, discrimination and swearing, many reviewers use a similar ticklist framework - ‘graphics’, ‘sound’, ‘gameplay’, ‘story’. I’m sure anyone who has read any novel worth it’s salt would challenge the idea that you can rate a story out of ten. Computer game reviewing, along with much of music, film and other ‘entertainment’ reviews rely on stars, percentages, rankings (how many more “Top 100” lists can we, as a nation, bear?) and numerical scores. This implies some kind of objectivity, some kind of scientific method that can justify taking a creative work and putting a number on it.
But that is patently absurd. We have no way to objectively categorise computer games. If it were only a small coterie of AOLers (the same “ppl” who frequently use the interrogative “sup?”) who were doing this it would be acceptable. But this is precisely the technique used by a wide range of magazines - both console and computer. They use this method only masking it with some style. If well done criticism could be performed on computer games, not only would it raise the art of the video game makers in the eyes of the public, it would also provide a feedback loop. Which, in short, means: NO MORE SIMS GAMES!!! Currently game makers get it pretty sweet from video game reviewers. They aren’t asked much - graphics are the main priority, ‘gameplay’ (an ever flexible definition) second and storyline is a bonus. And unless they’ve used the greatest hits of Jason Donovan as the soundtrack, not a great deal of criticism takes place of that. If game makers had to please pickier people, although I can’t promise less Sims games (although it’s a nice fantasy), giving makers at the top-end of the bell curve a feedback loop would possibly encourage more intelligent RPG’s and other story-telling games. Which would certainly make a change from the never-ending cycle of “We’ve slightly changed the player names and the sponsors, gimme yer money” sports games.
