The Korea Media Rating Board is being criticized for not adequately carrying out its role in preventing the spread of video games that are largely about gambling, as well as for being less than thorough about reviewing game machines found at adults-only game arcades.
During the past three and a half years the board reviewed 6,757 games and classified 3,508 of those as "adult." It essentially looked at an average of 37 games a week and approved 23 of those under the adult classification.
If you look at the details, the situation is even more pathetic. It reviews 37 games every week but has only about 10 working-level employees responsible for the task. Preliminary reviews are done by seven board members who either studied games academically or worked in the game business. Then, the games go to a subcommittee that essentially makes a final decision. Most of those sitting on the subcommittee are professors, lawyers, reporters, and others who have separate livelihoods outside of their committee work.
It is just too much to expect this system to able to adequately review games that are getting more sophisticated and complex every day. Few of the individuals on the board that actually makes the official final decision to approve a game or not actually know anything about them. The board itself admits that it has certain limits and needs to consider more technical issues such as their commercial aspects and the variable nature of games themselves.
Sources say the Ministry of Culture and Tourism has repeatedly asked the board to not grant approval to games that are mostly about gambling, but each time the board has ignored those requests. If true, that means that on top of being incapable of properly examining games in the first place, the board refuses to listen to the views of the related government ministry. It is generally undesirable to have the government interfering with what is an independent, private body, but when it comes to gambling games, the issue is somewhat different. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism, for its part, is also deserving of criticism for doing nothing more than conveying its views. It should have prevented a repeat performance of the cycle where it commences on inquiries only after things become a problem and based on its findings try to persuade the board to do the right thing.
The government says it plans to create a special rating committee for games because of the need for a body with expertise about games and the game industry. However, you wonder how serious it is about remedying the situation, as it has appointed current and former members of the current board as members of the preparatory committee. The country is beyond the point where it can entrust the task of reviewing games to a few people who already have something to do with gaming. It is not just adult games that are a problem anymore; there are calls for something to be done about the content of online games favored by teenagers. It is time for civic groups, scholars, and the whole of society to get involved in the issue of rating games.
[Editorial] Rating system for video games inadequate |
