ALL THE LATEST NEWS ABOUT THE BUSINESS OF PC GAMES

News

Games industry needs be better at catering for kids, Outright's Button-Brown says

Games industry needs be better at catering for kids, Outright's Button-Brown says

The global games market needs to be more socially responsible and make sure children aren't playing titles that are too old for them.

That's according to Outright Games chair Nick Button-Brown who spoke to GamesIndustry.biz saying that the industry needs to do a better job of catering to a younger audience.

"I think games need to take more responsibility," he said.

"We have the opportunity to do good, and it can be in subtle ways. Hopefully we can learn some lessons from what we did 20 years ago, or 10 years ago--things that took our industry in certain directions. Can we deal with things with more social responsibility?"

He continued: "10 years ago, those licensed games would sell up to 18-year-olds. I don't think we have that anymore. 11-year-olds unfortunately want to play Grand Theft Auto. Kids grow old quickly. But there's still a market. We're not going to sell 10 million units, but we can sell a good number of units that justifies making it."

Asked about Valve's laissez-faire attitude to games curation, Button-Brown says is a lazy approach.

"I think that's copping out," he said. "It is our responsibility. It's not just up to the parents. That's too easy a get-out. It's our responsibility to provide experience which cater to a mature market, and to make sure the experiences catering to a mature market are selling to [the appropriate audience] that wants that experience."


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.