Wednesday,
November 29,
The
ANNOTICO Report
Industry,
parents, schools and government were all in agreement that action was needed to
prevent children from turning feral after too many hours hacking one another to
pieces in cyberspace.
The ban on Violent material would require the
cooperation of Producers, Retailers, and Parents, and operate similar to the
ban against Adult material.
The
Register,
By
Mark Ballard
Tuesday
28th November 2006
Italian MPs today
debated if computer games featuring sex and violence are sending their
country's children berserk.
The meeting was
convened after the proposed release of Rule of Rose, a computer game some fear
will corrupt Italian children, erupted into an international tizz - within the computer games industry and some
corridors in
Speeches made at
a meeting convened today by Anna Serafini the president of the Italian
Commission on Children, were mostly in agreement that industry, parents,
schools and government should all act to prevent children turning feral after
too many hours hacking one another to pieces in cyberspace.
A consensus
emerged that retailers should be made legally answerable to PEGI, the European
ratings system for computer games, set up in 2003. Even retailers are warming
to the idea.
Of course it
should be illegal to sell adult-rated computer games to children, Michela Teribile, a lawyer for Italian retailers' association Conf Comercio, told The
Register after the meeting.
However, she said
that producers should take more responsibility. Conf Comercio's
800,000 members should not alone be held responsible: "The most important
thing for retailers is that they must be [just] one of the subjects of this
legal framework - not the scapegoat."
Retailers have
been quick to say producers should do more to prevent children from playing
games, but today's meeting left participants feeling that everyone should be
shouldering responsibility. That should please games producers, who after
setting up PEGI, feel they could do with more help from all quarters,
especially retailers.
Thalita Malago,
secretary general of the Italian Entertainment Software Publishers Association
(AESVI), asked the meeting why - if
The debate in
Italy is so broad, however, that the issue of what might be done to prevent
kids from obtaining access to adult computer games, just as adult movies are kept
from them, is in danger of being drowned.
Unione Nazionale Consumatori, a consumers association that takes a liberal
view of censorship, said it was not sufficient to make it illegal to sell adult
games to children. Parents and society have to educate children about the adult
world, said Elana Venditti,
who represented the association at the meeting.
Minors are likely
to get access to adult material through other medium anyway, she said, so
prepare them properly for the adult so they get a shock when it lands on them.
This, from the screen shots at least, sounds like it might be one of the themes
of Rule of Rose, a game PEGI directed should not be sold to anyone below the
age of 16.
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