As a child and young teenager, the USK ratings were the bane of my existence. I hated those little plaques on the covers of games with a passion. Now that I’m 26, I seem to still hold a grudge against them. I don’t really know why since they don’t actually affect me anymore. Maybe it’s just down to my personal experience with them.

I always thought it was kind of unfair, all my friends seemingly got to play whatever they want. It felt like I was the only one with parents strict enough to actually forbid me from playing games that were rated above my own age. Of course, I wasn’t the only one in the world, but among my friends I was always the only one.

If you’re not from germany you might not be familiar with USK at all. It’s basically the german version of PEGI or ESRB ratings. I don’t entirely know why germany feels the need to have their own rating system even long after PEGI was founded, but then again, germany is somewhat well known for their censorship of video games, so I guess it doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Aside from the weirdness of its continued existence, USK isn’t significantly different from PEGI or ESRB.

Here are the current USK ratings for context:

USK 0, USK 6, USK 12, USK 16, USK 18 Image Source: Wikipedia

I believe these are pretty self explanatory. They specify the minimum age you should be for playing a given game and that’s it. It’s not exactly a very granular system but I’m not here to critique it’s granularity, but rather the fundamental concept behind it, which is the same for USK, PEGI and ESRB.

The childhood experience

Let’s start by talking about my experience with it as a child and young teenager. I’d always see these fun games at friends places. GTA San Andreas, Halo and various other games. I really wanted to play them, but of course, I wasn’t allowed to since they were rated USK 16, and I was probably around 10 or 11 at the time.

I remember having a game that I would nowadays refer to as a “GTA substitute”. This game was Jak 3 for the PlayStation 2. What I always found the most fun about GTA was stealing vehicles, driving around in them, running people over and shooting at random people. I just enjoyed causing chaos in these games. I’m sure most gamers can relate to this. Jak 3 pretty much allowed me to do all of those things once you got to Haven City. Ironically enough though, Jak 3 was rated USK 6.

Of course, despite having some substitutes, I still wanted to play the real deal. And I did, actually. I usually played those games at other peoples places when I went to visit them. I was the only one who wasn’t allowed to play them after all, so finding people who had them wasn’t terribly difficult. I’d even visit people who I knew were going to bully me just so I could play those games. Pretty strange in hindsight, now that I think about it. It’s entirely possible that aside from the games being very fun, not being allowed to play them made them more attractive to me. I guess the thought process of kids is pretty weird.

The thing is, I’d sometimes borrow these games from my friends without my parents knowing or install pirated copies of such games on my computer, but I always ended up chickening out. Ironically enough, the idea of being caught playing those games was far more terrifying than any of the content you’d find in them. I remember locking my door and muting my speakers whenever I played games like that, always paranoid that my mother might find out somehow. You know the saying “My parents are gonna kill me!”, right? Yeah, I guess as kids we don’t tend to realize that our parents might actually like us.

What also didn’t help that in 2009 (when I was 11/12), there was a school shooting in Germany. And because we apparently needed a scapegoat, german media went haywire and started blaming video games. That seriously scared a lot of parents. Talking to some of my current friends about it, I certainly wasn’t the only one who had to suffer from our parents paranoia. Being an outcast at school didn’t help either. Not having many friends and having a mental disorder pretty much painted me as a potential school shooter.

Now keep in mind that in germany, school shootings don’t happen all that often. So when one does actually happen, it’s a hell of a big deal. All the parents and teachers were scared shitless, and as it turns out, the school shooter from 2009 had Counter Strike installed on his PC. Therefore, it must be the fault of those darn video games! Shortly after this shooting, the USK plaques on video game covers doubled in size. What, you think I’m joking? No, I’m actually serious.

USK New vs Old
Left: new USK plaque, Right: old USK plaque

I don’t entirely know why they did this, but they probably thought that parents didn’t realize the games they were buying for their children had an age rating. I guess they never considered that some parents might’ve simply chosen to ignore them and made their own judgement.

Of course, as I became older, these ratings started to matter less and less. I believe by the time I was around 15 years old, my parents pretty much stopped caring about those ratings entirely. Or maybe they just came to the conclusion that I’d just hide it from them, so they probably figured it would be better to just let me play them instead of souring our relationship. Or perhaps they realized that playing GTA won’t turn me into a school shooter after all.

Retrospective

As I said, I’m going to critique the fundamental concept of these ratings. But this won’t be some kind of rant saying that children should just be allowed to do whatever the hell they want. Of course not. What I actually take an issue with here is the fact that they attach an arbitrary age to those ratings.

People can’t be broken down into numbers, they mature at different rates. Age is a very unreliable way to measue maturity. When it comes to video games, I believe the most important part is being able to tell apart fiction from reality. Very young children are generally not able to do this, but as you grow older you tend to realize that what’s happening behind the screen is entirely fictional. At what age this happens however significantly varies from person to person.

I mean, really, is every 12 year old going to be at the same level of maturity? Of course not. Some 12 year olds might be scared out of their minds by seeing a cartoon villain while other 12 year olds might be able to tolerate a horror movie without any issues. This is essentially why I think these ratings suck. The only people who can actually know what sort of content is suited for a particular child are the parents. Sure, the final judgement is still down to the parents, but if a parent takes these ratings really seriously, they might end up viewing them as absolute truth. Especially if they don’t know much about the game in question or even video games as a whole.

However, I think whether or not a child can handle a certain game should be decided on a case by case basis, not by something as arbitrary as age. I get that the age ratings were probably intended to make it easier for the parents to decide, but I feel like attaching a number to a game is an oversimplification at best. Not having a number would of course mean you’d actually have to take a closer look at the game or god forbid even play it yourself. But come on, nobody ever said parenting would be easy.

I believe it would be far better to just have some facts about any potentially harmful/intimidating content within those games. You know, little bullet points listing things such as sexual content, violence, crime and so on. And actually, those do exist alongside the age ratings. Unfortunately though, they are usually just a step above the fine print. Come on, if anything should be printed on the front cover this would make the most sense. Parents could easily see at a glance what kind of content is in the game to easily filter out games that their child might not be ready for just yet without relying one some arbitrary number for judgement.

Of course, some parents are inevitably going to be overly strict anyways, but that’s an entirely different topic and far beyond the scope of this post. My point is really just that we should not care about those age ratings and asses the individual situation instead of the numbers. With our current technology this is easier than ever. You can simply look up a gameplay video of the game in question. And come on, watching a video for half an hour can’t be too much to ask for if your kid wants to play a game, right?

To be fair, considering the digital age we live in, I feel like the relevance of such ratings has diminished quite a bit. Digital games are more popular than ever and are also easier to acquire than they’ve ever been. Instead of going to the store with your parents for a new game (which your parents are obviously going to see), you go to the store for a Steam/PSN/Xbox/Nintendo gift card which you can then use to purchase games digitally. Maybe even without your parents knowing if they don’t check your gaming device.

I won’t judge if this is a good thing or not, but I genuinely believe that parents have a tendency to view the influence of video games as far worse than it actually is. Children won’t become school shooters or violent people because of some video game. In fact, video games may actually help them to vent their frustration in a healthy way. If some kid becomes violent, there’s usually some other issue, be it a toxic family, bullying or some sort of mental disorder.

The world isn’t black and white, so we shouldn’t treat everything as if it were. We need to put actual thought into our decision instead of impulsively picking an arbitrary scapegoat and arbitrarily restricting it.