The story appears on

Page A8

March 11, 2013

GET this page in PDF

Free for subscribers

View shopping cart

Related News

Home » Nation

Better ratings sought for online games

CHINESE parents are in grave need of a sound age rating system for online games to protect their children, according to a new study report.

The country still does not have a unified content rating system for the online games industry, which relies on individual games developers to put their own products into suitability-related groups.

According to a report from the government-backed www.youth.cn, only 39 percent some 423 games were age-rated by publishers.

Also, 51 percent of those labeled with an age restriction failed to pass a third party evaluation on the ratings, said the report, based on the website's assessments on those 423 games from October 2011 to last December.

Based on its own standard, the report found that 78.5 percent of the games should be restricted to adult players above 18, while only 2 percent were good for children aged six.

However, about 80 percent of China's more than 564 million Internet users are minors, who need more child-friendly or teenager-friendly games, the report said.

The report also said the major problems for online games were not violence, pornography or horror elements, as only 3 percent of the games failed to pass those tests. In-game-purchase traps were found in 58 percent of the games and gambling features in 35 percent, said the report, adding that 40 percent of the games do not have anti-addiction mechanisms.

It also noted that child-friendly games struggle to survive, as 13 qualified games were shut down by the operators. Those games deserve more favorable policies and financial support, said the report.





 

Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.

沪公网安备 31010602000204号

Email this to your friend