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Who is Responsible for Advice Labels on Games?
AccUser asks: "So, I spent the day in the local hospital with my son after he suffered a seizure while we played a computer game (that shall remain nameless). The game was labeled as one for younger children, but had no warnings about photosensitive seizures on either the packaging or associated documentation, and I assumed that it would be a safe game for him to play. Many games (Halo and others) come with these warnings, and rightly so - I expected that any game that was a potential risk would indicate this. To be honest, all was fine until the final level, when there were a significant number of special lighting effects, and I guess this triggered the subsequent events. So, is the labeling of games to indicate risk of photosensitive seizures and other dangers mandatory, both in Europe and the States, and who is responsible for placing this information? Is it down to the distributor? The publisher? The developer?"
Without discussing who's job it is, I'm sure we can all agree that determining whether a video game can be made to create the particular type of pattern that may trigger any person's epileptic seizure might be quite difficult. There are two potential solutions. Labeling, if done conservatively and cheaply would pretty much require every video game developer to put "Danger, this videogame has flashing lights that will give you seizures" on the packaging, and the result would be the same: you wouldn't know which ones were actually dangerous for your son.
The other option would be for some developers to either design the game with photosensitives in mind (unlikely) to put "disable all lighting effects" in the options menu. "Disable all lighting effects" doesn't sound like a bad idea... and probably not as expensive to code or QA as a photosensitive-conscious game. It might decrease the quality of the game for y'all epileptics... but you wouldn't be foaming and twitching on the floor. Personally, I'd take that trade.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
From what I know of photosensitive epilepsy, the trigger is caused by patterns of light, like strobes and bars, etc. That means that any CRT display can cause a seizure by displaying a pattern at a certain frequency. Like a cartoon explosion or something (remember that pokemon event in Japan a few years back? Yeah, like that).
Now the problem specific to video games is refresh rates. I'm sure I don't have to explain refresh rates to a crowd of geeks, but technically it is a repeating pattern, and therefore capable of causing seizures. Luckilly, most modern CRTs refresh fast enough (60-100hz+) to avoid this problem. But a video game that pushes your hardware might not be able to render frames that fast. If your game slows down to about 25hz or so, you can cause a seizure. Especially if vsync is on, since vsync limits the frequency to the refresh rate of the monitor (to avoid rendering parts of two seperate frames in a single pass - aka "tearing"). If the refresh rate isn't met, then typically a multiple is used, at least temporarily. This can lock your refresh rate below the usual frequency for extended periods of time, which is a recipie for disaster as far as photosensitivity is concerned.
So while, yes, you probably could 'test' videogames for the likelyhood of causing seizures, the reality is that any CRT can be a hazard, regardless of media content. It just means that photosensitive epileptics have to be very careful about what they watch. And how they watch too - taking precautions like staying back from a screen (so it doesn't dominate your field of view), taking frequent breaks, etc. Basically looking out for themselves.
Not that any of this matters in a court of law, mind you.
I did some googling for peanut allergy and photosensitive epilepsy. It seems peanut allergy occurs at about 25x more often; however, I was not aware that either of these are as common as the statistics show. This is quite an eye opener for me.
Peanut allergy affects about 1:125 people
Photosensitive epilepsy affects about 1:3000 peopleNOTE: This post is actually meant to be informative; I went with a humorous title to get noticed.
Here is a guy who tries to take the right steps. He knows many video games label themselves as dangerous. He's scanned them and filters out the ones which he believed were dangerous to his son. This is good parenting. Sadly, the system he depended on failed him. Now he needs to know why it failed, much like the US needs to know how the CIA could be as misinformed about Iraq as it was.
When he asks who is responsible for labelling, he's trying to understand the system better. Don't attack him for that. What does this get him other than fodder for legal recourse? If he finds out publishers are responsible, then he knows to that the publisher of the game he bought can't be trusted and should be avoided. Likewise up and down the chain. This improves safety for him. If labelling is mandatory, he can be relatively comfortable getting games from large companies who would have the adaquate fear of litigation to check. If it's optional, he may need to reasses his strategy alltogether - perhaps try and play all these games through himself before sharing them with his son. Will he be able to detect the danger signs? Maybe.
Don't attack a guy in a rough situation who is watching over his kid at the hospital for trying to figure out what went wrong and how to prevent it in the future. I suspect he knows that all games carry some risk. Instead of depriving his kid of all games, he is doing his best to filter the games that pose the highest risk. Likewise, instead of not driving cars, I try to purchase cars with good reliability, anti-lock brakes and airbags. Again, attacking someone who is struggling to limit risks for his son is insensitive, and childish.