PEGI ratings and BBFC ratings, what's the difference?

[anephric]

Fantasy violence of the kind you'd get in Prey or Gears of War is obviously no reflection on reality and it's not intended to be. Unfortunately there are people out there who believe the hype and are convinced (and from reading some of the reviews it seems many journalists are among them) that CoD4 is somehow 'authentic' and 'realistic'.

It's a game - of course it's not going to be authentic. It has to be entertaining. It DOES try to show that soldiers get killed a lot (how many other games let you stagger about just preparatory to death purely to show that) and that "good" guys do pretty nasty things (without resorting to completely puerile, allegedly "incendiary" depictions like Shellshock). It's never going to be All Quiet on the Western Front or Pretty Flame, Pretty Village, but would you really want to play that?

Call of Duty, as a series, has always been willing to dally with things that other populist war titles shy away from (the endless anti-martial literary quotations, the famous Stalingrad recreation with friendly machine guns on your back if you don't charge) which might be considered, hey, a bit of a downer.

[gossi the dog]

I know this is an old thread but in a recent ShopTo thread ratings were being discussed and I just noticed something that it probably best suited here.

One of the things mentioned in the ShopTo thread was why does the BBFC rate some games while PEGI rates others and it was suggested the game's content determines this, especially the closer we get to real looking graphics when violence towards humans is involved, but today I noticed the PAL Assassin's Creed carries a BBFC 15 while CoD4 is a PEGI 16+. Due to its content, why didn't the BBFC rate CoD4?

Basically the game publisher fills in the PEGI self assessment form. This includes a number of questions, some of which if answered 'yes' require the game to be submitted to the BBFC for classification. The Video Standards Council review a sample of the self ratings the publisher gives their games and if it disagrees will make them change the rating and possibly make them submit the game to the BBFC.

Per the BBFC a game will require a BBFC rating if it 'depicts, to any significant extent, gross violence against humans or animals, human sexual activity, human urinary or excretory functions or genital organs, or techniques likely to be useful in the commission of offences.' However as always there'll be ambiguity and it all comes down to the publisher arguing their case to the Video Standards Council.