Age Ratings and Media Production

An age rating is worked out from what is actually in a product, not from who the producer hopes will watch or play it. That links content and rating together: a punch thrown in close-up, a rude joke or a scene that keeps the tension going can push a product into an older category, whatever the original plan was.

Planning around a rating

Producers choose the audience first, and the rating follows. A team making an animated film for family viewing checks the script against the guidance for that category while it is still being written, so anything likely to push it up a band is caught early. A studio building a puzzle game for young children might fill it with friendly robots and cartoon bumps, but must keep the scares gentle and the language mild to stay in the low age band they want.

The rating is decided at the end, but the decisions that cause it are made in pre-production. Changing a script, a storyboard or a level design before anything is filmed or coded costs far less than re-editing a finished product, or discovering too late that the content no longer suits the audience you were aiming at.

Showing the rating

People need to see the rating before they pay, so it appears on packaging and promotional material such as a box, a poster, a trailer or an online store page. Planning documents must make room for it: the layout plan for a magazine advert, for example, needs a space where the symbol will sit.

Why it matters

Ratings restrict access — a cinema can refuse entry to a child, and a shop cannot sell an age-restricted game to someone below its rating — and they help audiences judge whether content is suitable. So compliance shapes the whole project: themes, language, images and marketing all have to fit the category chosen. A producer who ignores this risks a higher rating than planned, a smaller audience, or a product retailers will not stock.