After the recent news that several UK tabloids and pressure groups, have shown their outrage at the levels of (cartoon) violence in MADWORLD, plus the news that Germany is to ban the game outright, Sega has revealed that they are in talks with the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) and Pan-European Gaming Information system (PEGI), in a bid to ensure that the game does see it’s release.
Sega’s David Corless, had this to say on the matter:
“Yes, it’s violent. We don’t try to hide that, but as publishers, we see it as a fantasy game - it’s fantasy violence. It’s over the top. It’s cartoony. We also take the violence very seriously. We are working with the age rating boards, with PEGI and with BBFC.
“We’re not at the end of the game’s development, but we’re working with them now to make sure that we don’t go over the top. The game has been banned in Germany; there’s no getting around that unfortunately. But we are taking it seriously and we’re going to make sure that this game is rated for the appropriate audience.”
While the argument of “violence in games corrupts children” won’t go away for a while, I hope that the BBFC looks at this subjectively.
As Sega points out, the game may be bloody but it is over the top, cartoon violence which is aimed at a mature audience. Personally I think that a game like MADWORLD is less corrupted than something like GTA IV - which got through the ratings happily enough.
Just to clarify the above point, GTA is set with a real world location in mind, and players can do things that are physically possible in real life. Which would no doubt be more encouraging for children to copy, compared to ripping a sign out of the ground and stabbing someone with it. Or picking someone up, holding them above your head and hurling them into a wall full of spikes.
The only place you can physically do those things would be in a game, whereas car jackings, gun crime and drug abuse is all part of our society these days, unfortunately.
Well I’m sure we will all hear the decision on the matter soon enough. I just hope Platinum Games doesn’t need to dumb down the game too much to get it past the ratings system.
[Source: Nintendic] [Image from Sega]
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