Nice cuppa
It’s been a popular opening to trailers for a few years now. The screen darkens, the announcer says in his dull monotone “PEGI, 18”, and the action begins. While in theory this is supposed to refer to the PEGI game rating system (Pan-European Game Identification), a typo in the government bill making the system law has meant that all games are actually now being rated by 78-year old retiree Margaret “Peggy” Smith of Tadcaster, who hasn’t ever played anything more taxing than Solitaire, a game she personally ranks as “Enjoyable but a bit dull”.
After impersonating her grandkids (who “never call you know!”) we were able to obtain a phone interview with Peggy, who had this to say on her newfound fame and responsibilities:
“Really it’s nice that someone cares enough to ask my opinion. No-one ever wants to know, even the nice man down in Tesco just politely smiles and nods, so it’s really nice that the people in government want to know what I have to say about these new forms of entertainment. I can’t actually play the games of course, arthritis y’know, but I can look at the pretty pictures and then tell the nice men at the games companies what it is I think about them. They’ve been very helpful they have, they even listened to me when I told them about the time that I…” at this point we sadly had to cut the interview short due to a case of incredible boredom, however we were able to obtain a brief summary of what the new Peggy ratings will entail.
The main system itself won’t be all that different, however instead of focussing on things such as violence, sexual references or drug-use, games are now graded on “how likely they are to turn up on Antiques Roadshow“, “how nicely it would go with a cuppa”, and “how much it reminds me of the War”. Given the new guidelines, Activision have hastily added in a “tea party” mode to Black Ops 2 ahead of its November release, in the hope of obtaining the highest “Rather Nice Really” rating.
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