I’ve never had much of a problem with the understanding of a rating system of any sort. They’re usually pretty clear. For instance here in the US a M on a game means that it’s for adults only. It actually says this underneath the M itself. Do parents read this? Usually not, but that doesn’t mean if they did that they wouldn’t understand it. Maybe in the UK it’s a bit different and thus people have been running around buying Manhunt 2 for their five year olds. Well worry no longer UK, if you can’t understand the ELSPA’s new rating system you’re too stupid to play games anyway.

The new system, which takes after some sort of food content rating system is based on traffic lights. Green dots are kid friendly, yellow dots are teenage and red dots are for adults. Both green and red break down into age groups and the ages are printed in large friendly letters in the middle of the dot. The only way it could get any simpler is if someone came with every game and yelled the rating at you every time you picked it up.

In all honesty I doubt all those parents who were ignoring previous rating systems are going to pay attention to this one. The rampant purchasing of inappropriate games by children’s parents will continue on until dumb people stop breeding — which will never happen. At least now they might be too confused by seeing a red dot on the game and think it means to stop and not pick it up.