The 27 member nations within the European Union have declined on any move to ban ultra violent games hitting game shovels. They shall instead work upon tightening the grip at the end of the noose i.e. stores and the PGEI classifications, most retailers are anyway cautious whilst selling games to minors, for they fear the ire that parents have against ultra violent games, but this however does not stop the whiners getting their way with their folks.
The task up at hand is educating parents regarding the various heads under which games are classified, most of the core problem lies at the fact that parents are often ignorant to these ratings, and fail to follow the age limit prescribed for games like Manhunt, Grand theft Auto or Half Life. They feel that games and consoles are a cheaper way than hiring a babysitter. They are awakened from their slumber when there is any crime/violent behavior directly related to games.
Developers often exploit loopholes in the given set of guidelines; more often than not games under the ESRB require merely developers to send in footage of their games, containing violent elements and thus the “M/T/E” ratings is arrived at, but is this the only way to strengthen the system? Recently I saw a video of a 3 year old kid smash a Plasma television, just because he lost matches in Wii sports. This incident occurred when his father had gone out to have a can of beer, a steel can cost a lot sometimes!
–Neelesh Mukherjee