The Film and Publications Board (FPB) has released updated its classification of video games and the legalities involved in playing them.<\/p>\n
The most notable of these changes is that children who are 10 years old and younger are not legally allowed to play video games without supervision.<\/p>\n
The FPB also determined that up to 16-year-olds are allowed to see nudity, violence, and sexual violence in games – but not prejudice.<\/p>\n
While there is nothing inherently wrong with ensuring that children are protected, and games are age-restricted based upon content, some have argued that these new laws from the FPB are not practical.<\/p>\n
As it currently stands, age restrictions in gaming are regarded as suggestions rather than rules – parents choose whether to stop their younger children from playing 16 and 18+ rated games.<\/p>\n
This is particularly true given how easy it is for children to access titles through online sites like Steam and Epic Games.<\/p>\n
In the case of the 10-year-old gamer supervision regulation, it will also be almost impossible to enforce in any meaningful way – so the more interesting topic is how the new regulations regard prejudice as more harmful than violence, nudity and sexual violence in gaming for players 16 or younger.<\/p>\n
This premise would rule out many fantasy and RPG games that explore prejudicial sentiments in harmless fictional settings.<\/p>\n
Additionally, while the FPB regarding prejudice being more harmful to younger audiences than nudity and violence is a thought-provoking stance, it will be impractical to enforce.<\/p>\n
While new games will receive new local age restrictions based on these new regulations, young gamers will no doubt continue to purchase whichever games they like – or their parents permit – regardless of the age requirement.<\/p>\n
They will do this by faking their age on their profile – as was a common trend in the earlier days of social media platforms like Facebook – or using their parents\u2019 details to get access to their favourite games.<\/p>\n
The more problematic aspect of this change to regulations, therefore, is the potential implications of it for future updates.<\/p>\n
A prime example of how a more aggressive stance against certain types of games could be a problem in the future is Australia, where its stringent regulations have seen numerous games banned – many of which seem very harsh.<\/p>\n
For example, top-down base-builder Rimworld was banned in Australia due to some of the less-than-moral things players could do – all of which were highly pixelated to avoid visual gratuity.<\/p>\n
Rimworld has since been legalised after the Australian Classification Board overturned its initial ruling, but the fact that the game was banned in the first place is a major concern.<\/p>\n
While it is doubtful that South Africa will get to that point, this update from the FPD means the chance is still there.<\/p>\n
Should such rigid laws like those in Australia be instituted locally, it would be interesting to see how the government would try to enforce them.<\/p>\n
For now,, this new update from the FPD for gamers is nothing more than a meaningless guideline that most will almost certainly ignore.<\/p>\n
The new regulations from The Film and Publications Board on gaming are interesting. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":250,"featured_media":125737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_enabled":true,"_sma_x_custom_text":"","_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[2664,2163,26353],"class_list":["post-125733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-entertainment","tag-gaming","tag-south-africa","tag-the-film-and-publications-board"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}