My thirteen-month-old daughter is now starting to toddle around the house. A bit of a latecomer to this walking thing I guess, but it’s a real joy to watch her walking (or perhaps you would call this waddling) around the house. It never ceases to amaze me how quickly my children grow up and the youngest of the three is no different.

I think of myself as a responsible parent who takes a keen interest in what my children do and enjoy. I run them to clubs, pick them up again, and generally provide (as does mum) a taxi service to their whim. They go without very little and have by most standards a decent life. The eldest daughter is now 12 and because she is at “that age” where she can go in to town with friends too see a film, and do a few more things than her younger sister (who is 9), it is starting to cause Dad to have some issues.

What worries me most is gaming. Yes, here I am, someone who makes a living from gaming, struggling with a child who wants to game more. I feel torn on several of the issues and I won’t kid you, it's a struggle working out what’s best to do without seeming like a hypocrite. In the past, I have tried to take a stance about under age gaming. I want to honor the rating system.

On the one hand, my middle daughter seems sensible and careful about what she plays, and is very world-wise when it comes to understanding the issues involved--but this still makes no sense to me when she wants to play The Simpsons™ game, but the ratings sticker tells me that only her older sister can play because it's rated as a “12.”

This makes little to no sense to the 9-year-old, and understandably because for the best part of her 9 years on the planet, our household has regularly tuned in at 6pm to the show of the very same name. The adults in the room have laughed at the adult jokes and the children enjoy the silliness of Bart, yet now I am faced with explaining how she can’t play a game with the same characters. My feeble explanation fell on deaf ears, especially as she is intelligent enough to know when I am struggling to come up with a genuine reason except “you can’t,” followed by the inevitable stock 9-year-old phrase of “why?”. The dumbest answer I can find is “just because,” which hardly goes down very well.

Even the smoothest talker in eSports can have trouble answering the age-old question, "why?"

So I went on a mission to find out a little more about this certificate on the game and it turns out that the main reason is because at one point Homer fires a laser gun. There is no swearing, no graphic nudity, no demonic connotations (unless you include the sight of Mr. Burns), and no gore or violence. And please keep in mind--this is a cartoon.

Faced with a 9-year-olds simple argument of “well you let me watch the TV show and this is no different,” and with little real reason for the game to be rated 12, I bowed to her and allowed her to play the game. Am I wrong? Am I going to hell? I am not totally convinced, but it's certainly a challenge to my principle of not allowing my own children to play games that are not rated for them.

So I make an allowance, but seriously, the way I view gaming (and I am sure its a very biased view for one who works in the industry) is that it’s just a part of everyday family life. We read to our children and help them with homework and play card games on a Saturday night (I am the current UNO World Champion in our house) and play video games with them. To me it’s just part of the modern home and gaming often leads to learning, literacy, and numerical skills, and also helps our internal bonding as a unit. It is just a modern form of entertainment for the whole family.

Alright, I am not going to be teaching them Counter Strike:Source any day soon, but generally I don’t think there is anything wrong with playing games as a family.

When I was young (yes, many moons ago) my parents were concerned about the amount of TV I watched. One of the old wives tales told back then was that watching too much TV would make my eyes go square. While they are very much still oval shaped, it was almost the same set of principles in play as today, except now its games and consoles and PCs. I don’t want my children playing 12 hours a day, so it will also teach them how to plan time, moderate what they do and enjoy it when given the chance. All of these are skills they may not have learnt had they not been interested in gaming.

With all this in mind, it was with great interest that I waited for the Byron Report, issued in the UK after months of study by Psychologist Dr. Tanya Byron and commissioned by the UK government. Initially people in the industry were skeptical that she would come up with a balanced view and set of recommendations. There were fears that the government was going for the kind of crackdown on gaming already seen in other countries like Brazil and China.

Thankfully those fears were not realised and instead, the good doctor (who also has children of her own and plays games with them) has come up with a selection of sensible and mostly practical ideas and recommendations. First, she wants the games industry to adopt a movie-style set of ratings. This can only be a good thing, especially if the people involved in rating the games can get the ratings correct. Tanya Byron also wants to see the gaming industry help parents understand the ratings better and that’s all good by me.

The point when the report moves in to more murky ground is on the subject of selling games to people under the rating age of the game being purchased. For example, should a retailer sell a 12 rated game to a person under 12, they could face a hefty fine and 5 years in prison. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for punishing the retailer for selling the wrong game to the wrong child, but to me, the most important person in all of this is the parent. I have seen it before and I am sure you have. Child walks in to a game store with Dad and wants a certain game that’s rated, say, 15. Child takes game to counter to pay for it and assistant says “you can’t buy that you are under age,” thus being a responsible retailer and following the law. Dad says “ok, it’s no problem, I will buy it.”

More parental oversight and accurate ratings are a good start for solutions.

The retailer has no way of stopping this and although technically they didn’t sell the game to the under age child, that child will almost certainly be the one playing it. Surely this has to be just as wrong, right? To my mind, the most important part of the report and something we already knew, is that it is the PARENTS who have the most responsibility in all of this, not the retailers.

You may think my gripe is unfounded because I am well over the age of the games anyway, but my concern is more to do with the future of competitive gaming and a concern for my own children that I find myself fighting internally over the best way to solve this. I don’t want my children exposed to games that they are not ready for. Sorry, Mrs. Byron, but I am the best judge of that for my children, not the BBFC (as is plainly obvious with the Simpsons game). Will the new restrictions really stop players who are under-age from playing these games?

And where do the stars of tomorrow come if the games are rated upwards of 15 or 18 and they can no longer start training when they are young?

Most of the top players in the CGS started playing at a very young age, and it would be criminal if in the fight to ensure children weren’t exposed to the wrong kind of content, we stopped them from showing their skills and competitive edge on a much bigger stage at a later date.

This weekend, our family will once again sit down for what we call “family night” and enjoy playing our cards and computer games whilst stuffing our faces with sweeties and soda. I am more concerned we are getting fat than playing the wrong kind of games.

Sources:

- BBC's analysis of the Byron Report
- General overview of the report by computerandvideogames.com.

Download the full report, commissioned by the Prime Minister of Great Britain.