Among gamers, the British Board of Film Classification is best known for issuing a controversial ban on Manhunt 2 last summer.

In the wake of the Byron Review, however, the organization's game rating future is up in the air as the UK video game industry has expressed a preference for using the PEGI rating system. With that backdrop, Spong takes a look at the BBFC and how games get rated there. Press officer Sue Clark told Spong:

[Examiners] have to be good at playing games. There are no 'formal' qualifications... but you do have to have a good level of education and a good grasp of English as you are required to produce well argued written reports... Most games are played by at least two examiners and if necessary several may play the game.

Clark said that the average BBFC examiner is in his or her mid-thirties. Of the 32 employed, 19 are men and 13 are women. They are well-paid, earning from  £33.950 to £45,758 [US $66,036 - $89,003].

You also have to have an interest in film because games examiners don't just classify games. It also helps if you have an understanding of child development because the majority of the works classified are for people under the age of 18.

Are critics of the Grand Theft Auto series the same breed of culture cops who were mortified by Elvis Presley's hip shaking style of rock'n'roll in the 1950's?

Leslie Benzies (left), president of Scotland's Rockstar North, creator of GTA IV, says they are. Benzies told The Scotsman:

[GTA IV critics are] the same kind of people who complained about Elvis... There is a big fear factor here. It's [like] the coming of the railways, it's Elvis shaking his hips. It's cars going over 25 miles per hour and making people explode.

We've had such a beating over the past three years, by the US government, the British government, the Daily Mail. 'You kill prostitutes' – that's usually the objection. I ask if they've ever played the game. Invariably they haven't.

Benzies also offered his thoughts on another controversial title, Manhunt 2. The game was banned in the UK until Rockstar won an appeal earlier thus year:

We wanted to make a horror game that would scare you in the same way a film would. If it's a film or a book, you can do what you want. We seem to be in a different category. We're very careful who we market the game to, and what is in the game.

In the wake of the Byron Review, Telegraph columnist Jenny McCartney writes about what she sees as a lack of morality in violent video games:

Dr Byron seems a sensible woman, and no doubt she has done her best to contain the spread of some of the more obnoxious material on offer without incurring the ire of the games lobby. But one of her remarks in an interview last week struck me as particularly, and depressingly, modern. "My review is not about making any kind of moral pronouncements," she said, "although I do think that it is important to look at the desensitisation to violence."

...The word "moral" still has deeply unfashionable associations with... the "moral majority" protesting against the "tide of filth" in books and television in the US. How tame and inoffensive that tide looks now.

Yet the truth, surely, is that the majority of us would indeed recoil from the idea that our teenage son or daughter was upstairs playing Manhunt 2... It is insidiously corrupting to their view of themselves and other people... Perhaps if more people, including teenagers, were prepared to voice moral objections to this toxic stuff, it would no longer be possible to lampoon them for caring.

Meanwhile, the Daily Mail asked British TV personality Anne Diamond (left) to render her opinion on some popular, violent games. Not surprisingly, Diamond issued a beatdown::

After seeing them Anne said: "Just reviewing these games, made my hair stand on end. I have never got into computer games.but my sons all love them.

"I have to guard constantly that they don't use my ignorance to play games that I wouldn't allow in the house, if only I knew their content.

"Some of the games were so mindless it would be hard to see them as a destructive influence. But others were sickening in their gratuitous use of violence and bloodthirsty imagery."

Her comments include:

Call of Duty 4: Perhaps it might be OK for older teenage boys, but only in small doses.

GP: "Older teenage boys" can join the real British Army and be shipped to Afghanistan. But it's best to limit their COD4?

Resident Evil 4: This game shouldn't be allowed to be sold, even to adults... when I played I was stabbed to death with pitchforks amid fountains of my own blood. This kind of violence can only be bad for you.

GP: News flash, Anne. Everybody who plays this game at one time or another gets stabbed to death with pitchforks amid fountains of their own blood. But it's virtual blood. It's a game. Are you suggesting that zombie movies be banned, as well?

GP: The link on the Jenny McCartney column was sent in by our old pal Jack Thompson, in between threats to sue us.

While the U.K. ban on Manhunt 2 ultimately failed, it certainly wasn’t for a lack of trying on the part of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC). 

The content rating organization fought tooth and nail for the better part of a year to keep Rockstar’s game from being sold. Some say the campaign may have tarnished the organization’s credibility.

Said Darren Waters, editor of BBC News’ technology index:

The grudging nature of the BBFC’s statement, that it now has “no alternative” but to grant the title a certificate, coupled with the fact the body went to the High Court, twice rejected the game itself and tried to overturn the original judgment of the VAC leaves the organisation with its credibility bruised.

TechDigest’s Jonathan Weinberg weighs in with his thoughts:

The argument here is not whether Manhunt 2 is bloody, brutal, sick or whatever superlative people want to choose. What it shows is that the current certification system the Government can’t wait to get involved in is not worth the paper it is written on.

With the BBFC’s value under scrutiny and alleged consumer confusion over UK games that sport two rating certificates, one from the BBFC and one from the European rating body PEGI, could the British rating board’s future be in jeopardy?  Waters suspects that could be the case as early as next week:

Dr Tanya Byron is expected to deliver her report into video games, violence and children [on March 27th] and I understand she favours handing the job to PEGI.  The BBFC’s dogged fight to ban Manhunt 2, even though industry figures lined up to defend the title, might come back to haunt it.

Via: MCVUK.com

-Reporting from San Diego, GP Correspondent Andrew Eisen

As has been widely reported, the controversial Manhunt 2 was cleared for release in the U.K. last week by the Video Appeals Committee.

However, Kent Online reports that Conservative MP Julian Brazier (left) has weighed in against the decision:

This shows once again that the BBFC and its appeals system do not meet the concerns of the public. The public wants a significant tightening up in this vital area.

We need a consensus that videos and video games involving extreme violence are extremely anti-social. Watching these things happen does affect people’s behaviour.

We’ve got to recognise that there’s a strong link between what people watch and what they do.

GP: Like, if they watch their elected officials wasting time on video games while important issues go unattended they feel a bit queasy?

Brazier hopes to introduce an appeals process to overturn rating decisions made the raters at the BBFC. As GamePolitics has reported, he and MP Keith Vaz, another longtime game violence critic, met with Prime Minister Gordon Brown on the issue earlier this month.

On Friday GamePolitics reported that, following a months-long appeal process, the controversial Manhunt 2 had been cleared for sale in the U.K.

GamesIndustry.biz has added a bit to the saga, receiving word from the British government's Department for Culture, Media and Sport that it would not intervene in the Video Appeals Committee's ruling on the Manhunt 2 case. A spokesperson told GI.biz:

The classification of Manhunt 2 is a matter for the BBFC and the Video Appeals Committee. It is important to note that there is no conclusive evidence of any link between playing computer games and violent behaviour in real life...

The Prime Minister asked Dr Tanya Byron to lead a review to assess the effectiveness and adequacy of existing measures to help prevent children from being exposed to harmful or inappropriate material in videogames and on the internet, and to make recommendations for improvements or additional action. Dr Byron's review will be published shortly and Ministers will give careful consideration to any recommendations then.

British gamers with an urge to play Manhunt 2 will now have their chance.

As reported by The Guardian, a ban placed on Rockstar's gory sequel last summer has been lifted by the Video Appeals Committee (VAC). The game was originally refused classification - essentially, banned - by the British Board of Film and Literature Classification on June 19th of last year. At the same time, the ESRB slapped an Adults Only rating on Manhunt 2, negating its viability as a commercial product in the United States.

In October the BBFC also rejected a toned-down version of the game, although the edited edition was able to gain a M (17 and older) rating from the ESRB for the U.S. market.

In December, Rockstar won its appeal before the VAC, but the BBFC appealed that decision to England's High Court. The Court ruled that the VAC should reconsider the issue. That has now taken place and the VAC's decision means Manhunt 2 can be sold in the U.K. with an 18+ rating. Addressing the decision, a Rockstar statement read in part:

We are pleased that the VAC has reaffirmed its decision recognising that Manhunt 2 is well within the bounds established by other 18+ rated entertainment.

Lawrence Abramson, an attorney who represented Rockstar during the legal proceedings, added:

The [BBFC] system works in films, but the gameplaying experience is different.