The Age Debate: Part 2

Continuing the GamesIndustry.biz build-up to the release of the Byron Review, part two of the exclusive interview with Neil Thompson looks at the difficult task of getting the industry message out to the wider public.

Here he discusses the role of parents and mainstream media, whether or not retailers are doing a good job of age rating enforcement, and what the benefits are to a pan-European system.

Neil Thompson: I certainly think that government working with industry in a proactive campaign would be a positive step forward. I think everybody involved in this debate, everybody who takes a rational perspective on it, understands that certain elements of the press can decide to go extreme on certain issues, and radicalise it.

Whereas I think most mainstream common sense people acknowledge there are risks here, and we need to absolutely minimise as far as is completely possible all of risks, but in the context of the fact that we live in a free society where people are allowed to follow certain pastimes as this.

Government has a role to play here, industry has a role to play here, and parents have an incredibly important role to play here. We did some work on being safe online, where Microsoft as a company put a lot of employees out to schools, to talk to children and teachers, and parents if they would come along and explain the risks of being online - from the content point of view, and chat, grooming, all of the things that can happen online, that are obviously not acceptable.

We didn't get that many parents come along, but quite a lot of children and teachers.

But I think that sort of approach, and a partnering approach, is what's required going forwards. I wouldn't say the whole thing needs to sit with government, I wouldn't say the whole thing needs to sit with industry, and I wouldn't say the whole thing sits with parents to understand it - it's a combination of those three things, when put together in combination with the right amount of energy, could make a real difference.

I have high expectations that the Byron Review will possibly find some innovative ways of binding those things, to ensure that it's a balanced debate, and a balanced approach to how we solve the problems.

Just look at the technology that's in the machines today, and I can only really speak on behalf of Microsoft, but we have fairly good parental controls, both in terms of content, and time spent playing.

These are innovations that we're constantly coming up with, and we'll continue to look to improve and refine them, as we have with Vista for example. But that technology also has to be combined with practices in the home - we need to understand that when kids are on PCs, make it in environments where you can see what they're doing.

Don't let them go away into their bedrooms, quietly, on their own, and do things that you're not really aware of. It's important that parents understand how children are using the technologies that are out there.

It does, I think it's also people's perception that the technology that's being purchased today is sophisticated, clever, high definition entertainment - they're not toys as such.

Maybe the hole that some parents fall into is to regard something as technology but in a toy mentality, whereas what you have to appreciate is that you need to take an active role in understanding what it can do, and what you're prepared to let your child be involved in with regards to that technology.

It's just a piece of active parenting, and I think that's the message that we have to get out there. As technology companies we have to keep making it easier and easier for people to engage with that technology.

That's part of the challenge we have going forwards, really - or part of the opportunity, which is the other way of looking at it.

Well, I wouldn't pour all of mainstream press into one bucket, and say that's how all of them approach it. I think there are some media outlets that approach it in a reasonably balanced way, and there are others who obviously have a different sort of agenda, and do tend to sensationalise.

Usually it's on a case-by-case level - once people get to understand the complexities of each case, they realise there is no simple answer as to why these things happen, it's a mixture of things.

I think it's tough if a particular media outlet has decided that in the chase for headlines they want to take a very simple approach to something - there's not much the industry can do on those particular occasions apart from try to help people understand there's more depth.

But on a general basis I think it's important that we just do the education work, we assure enforcement on ratings at retail and online.

I don't there's a quick solution to any of this - it's just ongoing education, ongoing engagement, ongoing involvement, and we have to keep at it as an industry.

Correct, and again that's a societal thing that only education and conscience ever overcomes. I think that a lot of retail do a very good job at managing this and asking the appropriate questions.

But you'll always find the exception where inappropriate content has been sold to people, and I think we just need to keep the awareness of this in everybody's mind, and it we do that, we're doing as much as is humanly possible.

If ultimately a parent makes a decision in full knowledge of what the content is, and how old their child is, and still decides that it's appropriate, then that's a parental decision that ultimately we can't legislate against.

The really important thing is that nobody has any excuses around understanding what the content is, and as long as they fully understand it, it's then up to them as a parent as to what rules and limits they're putting on their child.

We must be seen to be doing - and do - a very good job educating people around the risks.

I think there are a lot more advantages to being part of a European system than there are to being a standalone UK system. You'll get a lot more industry momentum if it's a European-based system, I think with the emergence of online gaming and the way we're going to want to rate that, it would be more appropriate that content across Europe is labelled to a standard labelling process.

It just makes things like technology development that much easier, and therefore quicker - if you're working with one or two standards around the world, rather than 70 standards if every country decided it wanted to operate in a different way.

It's the law of scale - the more scale you have for something like this, the quicker and better you can make something, and that's why we're fairly passionate about trying to get to this unified approach.

Well, I don't think it's that difficult in terms of what the content is, and is it appropriate for certain ages. There are obviously cultural differences around Europe, but for a lot of these issues, the differences are a lot smaller than what is common.

In the system as it's been running in the last three or four years, to my knowledge there hasn't been that many difficult systems where for a rating, different countries would have expected something different.

What PEGI tends to do is rate up, rather than down - so if some quarters feel it's an 18 rating, and others think it's 16, it would tend to err on the side of caution and use an 18 rating in order to protect as many people as possible.

Maybe some countries would say it's not liberal enough, but I think the cultural difference question - but I think the reality is, if you look over the next five to ten years, cultural differences won't be as great on issues like this. I think people will become more and more used to global content, and accepting of more global standards.