byron.jpgEarlier this afternoon, games industry newspaper MCV reported that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is likely to use the results of a forthcoming study to “introduce an aggressive ‘crackdown’ on the games industry“.

The report in question is being carried out by Dr Tanya Byron, known in the UK for her QA columns in The Times newspaper and the TV show, House of Tiny Tearaways.

The results of the Byron report aim to help children and families get the best from new technologies, while protecting them from harmful images, a remit that, quite naturally, will cover videogames.

As the report nears publication next month, a leak from Whitehall suggests that it’s likely Brown will act on its recommendation that all videogames released in the UK carry a BBFC rating – the system used on films to denote age suitability of the content.

While the MCV headline does its best to make things seems more dramatic (‘crush’, indeed), it appears as though members of the games industry who have contributed to the report are simply afraid that Brown spin the announcement to look like the decision wasn’t reached with their full cooperation.

This is a reasonable worry. If Brown decides to present this as a political victory, as though the Labour party has finally brought the games industry to account for crimes against children, it would be grossly unfair in the light of the way the industry has been open and forthright with Byron.

However, the story was subsequently picked up by various other outlets, its meaning and subtlety diminished and hysterical undertones augmented with each and every copy/ paste, until it read as though the games industry is mainly furious that Brown intends to ‘crush’ videogames with a compulsory age-rating.

This is certainly the way gamers reading the articles have taken it.

“They can bluster all they want, so long as all they achieve is headlines rather than legislation.” offers one commentator at GamePolitics.

“This is just Gordon Brown spreading Moral Panic to obscure the fact that as Chancellor and then as Prime Minister he’s been running the country into the sh*tter.” says another, helpfully, at The Escapist, despite the fact there’s only been speculation from a single journalist thus far.

Indeed, while GamePolitcs is a helpful site for monitoring mainstream reporting and debates surrounding videogames (principally in the American system) I’m frustrated with their constant implication that introducing a compulsory age-rating for videogames (whereby it would be illegal for a store to sell, for example, a 15-rated game to a 14-year-old) would spell the death of freedom.

This viewpoint is to confuse censorship with growing-the-hell-up. A legally-enforceable BBFC rating for all games (or whatever the equivalent in the US is) would not strike a blow to liberty. It’s simply about recognising that videogames now come in all manner of shapes and sizes and that, as a result, some aren’t suitable for certain audiences. It’s about saying that videogames are now a wide, diverse and serious business.

More than anything, gamers who object to this kind of legalisation are being grossly hypocritical.

20+ hobbyists are constantly moaning that everybody thinks games are just for children. But as soon as somebody agrees with them and, quite sensibly suggests that if some games are for adults then they should probably be marked as such, they complain still more, reinforcing the appearance that the games industry is principally supported by petulant man-children.

You can’t have it both ways. The games industry and its consumers have to get off the back foot if they’re to move forward.