UK survey: 74% want independent ratings body

What a crock. These people have no respect for the government. Next they'll be saying they don't want to be watched by CCTV cameras!

Did they mention there is PEGI on their so called survey?

Soooo, the BBFC wants to replace PEGI completly, but the ELSPA claims that PEGI is better than the BBFC.

All I can say to that is: ORLY?

Kind of.... The government (via the Byron report) want to make a standardised certification system for gaming as there is for movies. We already have a standardised system for titles that developers and publishers believe will fall into the 15+ age groups (that's M for mature for the US peeps). The BBFC currently has one of the most rigorous and fair systems for rating games and has 'banned' fewer games in the last twenty years than the ratings bodies in the US, Germany and Australia. (I say 'ban' because we actually have an 18+ rating whereas the ESRBs AO rating means that the game will not be carried despite being the same thing).

PEGI are basically a ratings body that is spread across a large proportion of the EU countries. Their ratings system is less rigorous than the BBFC's and can in the extreme cases allow a game to be published with just the publisher/developer filling in a form though they also view videos of games they think might be on the boundary of an age rating. They also contract out each country's ratings to a body within said country rather than having a centralised unit which does all the ratings for every country it covers.

ELSPA are a group that comprises publishers and developers that have interests in the UK. They want the system which will give them the least hassle and cost the least. PEGI is the system which fulfills their desires however, legally PEGI is more open to challenges on the rating of a game (if some parent or councillor or MP etc. takes issue with the content of a game) due to them not playing every game that is sent to them for rating. Their main (official) arguments for adopting PEGI is that it is more understandable than the BBFC's rating system... which is the same as the movie industry's rating system.
PEGI's rating indicators are quite obscure because (apart from age ratings - which BBFC has) they also apply content descriptor icons which range from a spider, a fist and a pair of dice and which are not explained on the game box (at least none that i own). My main issue with these is that across multiple cultures and societies these representations do not carry the same weight or meaning and so therefore are more confusing for the general public.

(Presumably) PEGI wants to make their system more open to the public and have recently announced a traffic light system which basically looked the same as the movie ratings (red for 18, orange for 12/15 and green for PG)... for which they were rapped on the hand and told to not to infringe copyright/trademark by the BBFC. Now they have altered the traffic light system so it's distinguishable from the BBFC's but i haven't seen the new symbols so i don't know how different they are.

So, PEGI is easier and cheaper and thus more open to legal challenges (which IMO is bad for the industry) and to make themselves less complicated copied the BBFC's rating icons which were previously 'not clear enough'.