Who is Responsible for Advice Labels on Games? 155
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?"
Get a lawyer. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Get a lawyer. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nameless because it doesn't matter... (Score:2)
With the console (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:With the console (Score:1)
How on earth does that happen? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've known for years that it does happen, but it still boggles my mind that something as inocent as a little bit of flashing light could cause so much harm to a person.
Re:How on earth does that happen? (Score:1)
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=
Re:How on earth does that happen? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:How on earth does that happen? (Score:2)
If most of their neurons are interconnected at nearly the same length, it would seem this could create electrical feedback at a certian frequency (sort of like the natural resonating frequency of most objects).
Perhaps people who are not prone to seisures have much more random neural interconnection distances, which dampens the feedback loop?
Re:How on earth does that happen? (Score:2)
Mandatory? Don't think so. (Score:2)
Re:Mandatory? Don't think so. (Score:1)
I'm wondering how one would go about determining which games are more or less prone to inducing seizures, short of testing on epileptics.
Re:Mandatory? Don't think so. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Mandatory? Don't think so. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Mandatory? Don't think so. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Mandatory? Don't think so. (Score:2)
But regardless, the vertical refresh of CRTs isn't what causes photo-sensitive seizures of this kind. Flashing lights on the order of 5 to 20 Hz are the culprit.
A "lightning" effect is usually done by painting pure
Re:Mandatory? Don't think so. (Score:2)
Re:Mandatory? Don't think so. (Score:2)
Re:Mandatory? Don't think so. (Score:2)
Re:Mandatory? Don't think so. (Score:1)
The cathode ray scans up and down 60-100 times a second (depending on settings). This rate is 100% independant of what the software is doing.
The software can render crap and tell the video card to draw it as often or infrequent as it wants. If it does that in the middle of a scan, you will see part of one frame and part of the next; an artifact which is called tearing.
If you turn on vsync, the software will wait for the next re
Mod up +1: Just what I was about to say. (Score:2)
Now, it could be that in a _game engine_ they never intended it to do that, but the uses puts himself in a situation where that occurs. Imagine barrel rolling in a fligh simulator while out of control over a dark landscape and bright blue sky. Imagine the sky and ground roll in and out of view about 5 times a second. That could induce a seizure, even if the designer
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Mandatory? Don't think so. (Score:2)
I know, I know: this would never pass Human Subjects Review. But it almost makes me wonder if LCDs are a better way to go with children.
God, don't let the LCD manufacturers catch wind of that theory...
Re:Mandatory? Don't think so. (Score:4, Interesting)
Mind you, these types of events aren't very common - just possible (especially if you sit 6" from the screen, as kids love to do
Oh, and you can read up a bit on photosensitive epilepsy here [epilepsy.org.uk]. Its not very detailed (nor technical), but its a good little overview.
A better idea. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:A better idea. (Score:1)
Re:A better idea. (Score:2)
No, it would not be a viable solution for specific games. It would be very viable for... all games except on-line competitive games. It's ok if you "effectively ruin" games for yourself.
It would allow the kid to play specific video games and know that they were safe. This would make those video games have a marketting point that might get them some extra sales. It might be worth it for some publishers. (It might also expose
Re:A better idea. (Score:2)
It Doesn't Matter, AccUser (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a feeling that you're wanting to sue somebody in this situation. Instead, you should accept the fact that you made an error in your parental judgement. You shouldn't have let him play the game without consulting his doctor, whether or not the game had a warning, because you knew that video games could potentially cause a problem before you let your son play the game. Besides, you can't go around trying to protect everybody from everything. Don't try to pass blame onto anybody else, just apologize to your son and move on.
Re:It Doesn't Matter, AccUser (Score:2)
No, but it's a nice thing to mention if it contains nickle in the alloy... so nickle sensitive individuals can avoid it. In the same vein, it would be nice if videogames mentioned if there was significant strobe lighting.
I have a feeling that you're wanting to sue somebody in this situation.
Many people here seem to think he's looking to sue. Maybe, maybe not. In the group I hang o
Re:It Doesn't Matter, AccUser (Score:2)
Nice, yes. But legally necessary? Probably not, nor should it be. We could do a lot of things that are nice, but taking into account each and every special case would be overwhelming.
Many people here seem to think he's looking to sue. Maybe, maybe not. In the group I hang out with, ther
Re:It Doesn't Matter, AccUser (Score:2)
There is an ethical issue, and despite the common Dilbertesque view of corporations, ma
Re:It Doesn't Matter, AccUser (Score:2)
I thought along the lines of "given this situation, what *is* the right thing?" I would imagine that the latter is a more productive question to ask in a public forum.
True, but I would hope that the guy wasn't looking for a good, specific answer in this case.
Re:It Doesn't Matter, AccUser (Score:2)
As I stated elsewhere, but will adapt to this post, you'd need to put on a nickel (peanut) warning because there's no ready way to determine that a fork contains nickel.
A video game contains flashing lights. That's a given. It's the nature of something displayed on a television. Therefore, warnings are superfluous.
Re:It Doesn't Matter, AccUser (Score:2)
I will fully admit that I am not the biggest video gamer, but almost all the video games I've played have not had any flashing whatsoever. Age of Empires, Command and Conquer, Tetris. In fact, the fact that I can recall the ones that did have flashing (FF VII, Batman for the NES, the powerup cutscenes from MegaMan III) would indicate that there are fewer that
Re:It Doesn't Matter, AccUser (Score:2)
The very nature of CRTs means that it's a flashing picture. Some games just have more flashing than others.
Televison means flashing lights. A television is nothing but a big square flashing a picture 30/60 times per second. This is what a television is. Therefore, by it's very nature, television is dangerous to somebody who is subject to photosensitive seizures. Yes, some is going to be more dangerous than others, but who can qualify this?
One doesn't put a warning on every knife that it's sharp, an
Re:It Doesn't Matter, AccUser (Score:2)
Yes, but we're talking about flashes on the order of 5 times a second with distinct changes in brightness. Your argument is specious, as you are saying "it's inherently dangerous because of foo" where foo is not dangerous, even if it can be defined using the same words as the thing that is dangerous.
Flashing is not dangerous, it's a specific type of flashing.
Re:It Doesn't Matter, AccUser (Score:2)
But it is dangerous to a certain group of people. The problem being, you can't define 'this pattern/freq of flashes will trigger an attack.'
Re:It Doesn't Matter, AccUser (Score:2)
There's quite a large body of medical literature that says you are wrong. There's a pretty predictable and narrow range of strobe that will trigger seizures in sensitive individuals.
I'm not trying to play word games, I'm simply stating that when you're sensitive to a certain subset of flashing lights, and you're dealing with a medium that is nothing but various patterns of flashing lights,
Re:It Doesn't Matter, AccUser (Score:2)
And the manuals for the system, and for most games, do include a warning.
Re:It Doesn't Matter, AccUser (Score:2)
So what's the problem, then?
--
Evan
Re:It Doesn't Matter, AccUser (Score:2)
Why, the original posting.
What the targeted age has to do with anything, I don't know. I'd also be curious to know what game it was, so I could hunt down the info myself.
Re:It Doesn't Matter, AccUser (Score:2)
Too much labeling is a problem too - if everything is labeled as harmful to a group, that group can't make informed decisions. The "may contain traces of peanuts" always makes me wonder if there's a legitimate reason. Plus the warnings that you will die within 30 seconds if you ever look in the gen
Re:It Doesn't Matter, AccUser (Score:2)
Aye, it all boils down to 'you can't please everybody all the time.'
It is not common knowledge.... (Score:2)
Games should be properly labeled, period.
Re:It is not common knowledge.... (Score:2)
This isn't a matter of common knowledge. Epileptics know the score after they are diagnosed. Unless somebody is extremely paranoid, they usually don't try to steer clear of problems that
Re:It Doesn't Matter, AccUser (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:It Doesn't Matter, AccUser (Score:2)
Until he responded to my initial post, there was plenty of room for speculation. He did a good enough job clearing that up by responding on his own.
Re:It Doesn't Matter, AccUser (Score:3, Informative)
Check the documentation... (Score:5, Insightful)
WARNING: READ BEFORE USING YOUR PLAYSTATION(R)2 COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM. A very small percentage of individuals may experience epileptic seizures when exposed to certain light patterns or flashing lights. Exposure to certain patterns or backgrounds on a television screen or while playing video games, including games played on the PlayStation 2 console, may induce an epileptic seizure in these individuals. Certain conditions may induce previously undetected epileptic symptoms even in persons who have no history of prior seizures or epilepsy. If you, or anyone in your family, has an epileptic condition, consult your physician prior to playing. If you experience any of the following symptoms while playing a video game - dizziness, altered vision, eye or muscle twitches, loss of awareness, disorientation, any involuntary movement, or convulsions - IMMEDIATELY discontinue use and consult your physician before resuming play
Moral of the story: Don't assume that merely because the game manual does not repeat this warning that the game is safe for your child; any game (indeed, anything that flashes light, including your TV when it is not being used by the game system) can trigger a seizure.
Same for Xbox.. (Score:1, Insightful)
"Important Health Warnings
About Photosensitive Seizures
A very small percentage of people may experience a seizure when exposed to certain visual images, including flashing lights or patterns that may appear in video games. Even people who have no history of seizures or epilepsy may have a
Re:Check the documentation... (Score:2)
The epileptic seizures warning is about as common as the "warning may contain peanuts" that is on almost every prepackaged food product.
Re:Check the documentation... (Score:3, Informative)
My mother suffers from epilepsy ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Kleedrac
What is the very small percentage? (Score:2)
PC or console? (Score:3, Interesting)
I work for Sony and AFAIK every single game has these warnings on - and rightly so. Every parent should be aware that any video game (and many TV programs) can potentially cause seizures in photosensitive individuals. The only safe route is abstinance.
In any case, you should inform the game's publisher of this event, to ensure they tighten their act up.
Re:PC or console? (Score:2)
Re:PC or console? (Score:5, Funny)
We all know the kids of today are going to do what they want to do, so please teach them about safe gaming. Try stretching a condom over your child's head (just enough to cover the eyes! we don't want to suffocate anybody!)
(All kidding aside, I hope you little one is better soon.)
Are these flashers (Score:2, Funny)
oh wait, the search engine stories reported that as the most popular search of all time.
just turn down the refresh rate on your vid settings until it goes away, then turn it back up until they start. get empirical. and perhaps keep the wean away from computer games!
Irresponsible (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Irresponsible (Score:2)
Re:Irresponsible (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Irresponsible (Score:3, Insightful)
While you should have known better, only your barrister or lawyer can tell you who will pay your medical bills. Duh.
Re:Irresponsible (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Irresponsible (Score:2)
Re:Irresponsible (Score:2)
Re:Irresponsible (Score:2)
But for 99.9999% of people playing game
Re:Irresponsible (Score:2)
Forget thinking for yourself, or oh my god, asking the doctor? Nah, lets just assume its ok ev
Re:Irresponsible (Score:2)
Re:Irresponsible (Score:2)
A Gameboy maybe? (Score:1, Interesting)
General thoughts... (Score:2, Informative)
No PC game manuals I looked at had any such warning, however the EULAs (for whatever they're worth) all contain passages disclaiming responsability for damages, including personal injury.
After some brief googling, it would seem that 15-2
"Who can I sue? and how much can I get?" (Score:2)
Are you sure he is the idiot? (Score:2)
I know epilepsy can be triggered by the flashing effect that results from driving along a row of trees with the sunlight behind them. SO if it is the same in video games then not all games have t
Re:Are you sure he is the idiot? (Score:2)
A certain onus should be on the sufferer of the condition, or their guardian; peanut warnings are required, as there's no way to readily determine if trace amounts of peanuts are in a food.
It should be fairly obvious, however, that an entertainment device that operates by putting colored lights onto a screen may very well trigger a photosensitive seizure.
Assumption (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:Assumption (Score:3, Informative)
Question (Score:3, Interesting)
WARNING: This game may contain images of peanuts. (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [about.com]
Photosensitive epilepsy affects about 1:3000 people [findarticles.com]NOTE: This post is actually meant to be informative; I went with a humorous title to get noticed.
Re:WARNING: This game may contain images of peanut (Score:2)
Unpredictable (Score:4, Informative)
I believe it would be disingenuous of the game manufacturers to label certain games with seizure warnings and leave others without when they really have no way of knowing which ones will or will not stimulate a given epileptic.
That said if I were you I would consider the following things. Maybe use PCs and not consoles for gaming so you have more control over the frame rate and refresh rate, hoping to avoid the certain frequencies that may cause this. Also something like a Gameboy Advance or one of those small LCD screens that attach to the console may prevent this, I would investigate this.
Also if you have and HD TV or an available computer monitor you might try using progressive scan capable consoles as they should have higher refresh rates and less flicker. And I'm sure there a websites/blogs/forums for epileptic gamers. Check them out and see what works for them.
I hope your son is feeling well and good luck.
Programmers are not doctors (Score:2)
The reason they put the labels on the games is as a fail safe, not because of any knowledge about their game's potential for inducing seizures. Because this is a lawsuit-happy society we live in, they figure it's easiest to put labels on everything.
I'm sure that in 20 years time there'll be big disclaimers before every television show saying that there may be a risk to viewers of seizures, j
Could some custom hardware fix this? (Score:2)
Let's say that the cause of the problems is a change in brightness of x% ocurring between a and b Hz. Maybe the device could sense that and reduce the brightness, or even drop the framerate to below a or something.
Maybe people don't know the exact parameters that cause a seizure, or maybe it would be too expensive... but maybe it would work.
no warning (Score:2)
Should have done your homework... (Score:2)
http://www.epilepsy.org.uk/info/photo.html
In summary:
* The high flicker rate of CRTs means they present a very small risk to people with photosensitive epilepsy.
* LCD and TFT screens do not flicker at all.
* Increased brightness and sharpness of LCD and TFT screens may increase the risk to people with photosensitive epilepsy. This risk can be minimised by reducing the brightness of the screen.
* Any material being displayed that contains flicker or repetiti
Trouble is.. (Score:2)
As for the epileptic stuff, even if the game doesn't have flashing lights if your computer has a good enough vidcard, you can often do the equivalent by just moving fast enough - e.g. wiggling/moving the mouse so that you rapidly switch between a dark frame and then a light frame.
Anyway, there are drugs to control this epilepsy stuff. If you don't want the drugs or want to cut it down (the drugs have side effect
Re:Trouble is.. (Score:2)
Side effects:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/33036 6 9.stm
At the end of the study, two children and one young adult were completely free of seizures, and were able to cut down on their use of anti-convulsant medications. The patients stayed on the diet, and free of seizures, for as long as 20 months.
http://my.webmd.com/content/article/77/95378.htm ?z =3734_00000_1000_rs_01
How ketos
A lot of negative feedback around here... (Score:3, Insightful)
First, I hope your kid gets better. As a gamer/nerd, I also watch out for what my kids play and I have to respect any parent that says they read the labels and buy accordingly. Kudos to you.
Second, from reading over the posts, it sounds like you've done nothing wrong. You have the right hardware (PC with LCD using a digital and not analog video card), your kid had no seizure history, and you've been responsible in the titles purchased. While there may be no legal reparations possible (IANAL) the publisher and developers both deserve to know about this incident. It allows them to possibly make personal reparations to you and your family. It allows them to possibly look into their development, publishing, labeling policies. And being a PC game, it might also push them into the development of a patch for the game to reduce the intensity of that final level.
Finally, I'd go ahead and post the name of the game here since this crowd is not likely to start a news jihad against the companies for this incident. And other people may have similar problems with that title, or other titles from the same developer. Useful knowledge to have for any letters you choose to write.
Again, good luck to you and your kid, and kudos to you for taking some responsibility for your kid in this day-n-age when most parents think it's everyones' responsibility but theirs.
I hate the way AccUser describes the situation (Score:2)
Now, I can't help the uneasy feeling that you use weasel-speak in your description. A lot of things are worded in that subtle way to make a casual reader assume things that you don't actually say. Specifically :
- You hint (without actually saying so) that you always check warnings on video games
- You hint (without actually saying so) that the presence or absence of warnings is a major factor in your decision to purchase a game.
- You hint (without ac
Re:Uhhh why do you care? (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the reasons he let his son play was because of the lack of a warning.
Re:Uhhh why do you care? (Score:5, Insightful)
You watch your kid have a gran mal seizure, and we'll gauge your rationality afterwards for comparison.
Re:Uhhh why do you care? (Score:2)
Companies can barely get a game through the door (Score:2)
What makes you think they have the resources, knowledge, money, or time to do a study with epileptics? They don't.
For it to be even worth putting on the box it'd have to be a clinical study, and that would totally fuck up a release schedule. It's impossible. Just stick a EULA in the installer.
Publishers, if they have the presence of mind, will add a seizure warning just to cover their bases. This is
Re:Uhhh why do you care? (Score:2)
Well then, you don't have a leg to stand on, since you wouldn't have paid attention to the warning anyway, not knowing that it applied to your son.
Of course, you wouldn't really have a leg to stand on even if you did know about your son's condition, seeing as how any doctor of any competence at all would've told you that video games (all video games) are a prime cause of photosensitive epileptic seizures.
Rob
Re:Uhhh why do you care? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Uhhh why do you care? (Score:2)
On PC games I suggest you read all the README files and any other TEXT file on the game's main directory. This is especially true of games that have no manual or printed documentation.
Games without flashing effects are obviously your best bet. Almost every game has them. Even games without flashing could
Re:Uhhh why do you care? (Score:2)
The problem is figuring out where to draw the line between games that need it, and games that don't. Clearly, a game like Civilization th
What does it matter? (Score:2)
Much like other defects of the body, there are several things in this world that are readily accessible that could trigger a seizure from photosensitive epilepsy.
What do you want from the world? You CANNOT shield your child forever in this whizbang-electronic world from seizure-inducing situations. Eventually your child would have had a seizure despite your efforts, and even with your curre
Re:Uhhh why do you care? (Score:2)
You'd be right back where you started -- having no idea which games your son could safely play without playing every one all the way through.
I'm currently working on an independently developed game. This
Re:What about (Score:2)