Owing to the abundance of hardcore violence in the video games of today, a government report has recently recommended the replacement of the existing hybrid model for rating with a single system. Currently, the method involves putting together a rating from the British Board of Film Classification with one from the video-game industry, which is actually a voluntary rating system. The House of Commons committee said that this was causing much confusion amongst parents.

The Culture, Media and Sport Committee said that both the systems would be “workable in principle”. But the BBFC’s classification system of 18, 15 and 12 and above has “significant advantages”. The recommendations made by the committee are part of a report which looked into the harmful content in video games and on the internet these days. The committee went on to accuse YouTube, a video-sharing website of being lax in their approach and asked that they do more to filter out the abusive content. At present, the BBFC rates all video games with violent content as per film classifications. Out of 1,231 games released in UK in 2007, 101 got some kind of rating while 29 of them were deemed to be fit only for those above the age of 18. 

The Pan-European Game Information (PEGI) may also be used for game assessment. It carries a ‘pictogram’ that illustrates the games content. There are seven such pictograms-drugs, violence, sex/nudity, bad language, material that is “scary for young children”, gambling, or one that encourages discrimination.

The need for a more sophisticated rating system has become necessary with the exponential growth in violent video games.