Board Thread:Warhammer 40k General Discussion/@comment-6078851-20140116150837

should the 40k franchise have an official age restricted certificate?

40k is extremely dark and extremely violent and as such i believe it should have at least a 15 certificate. on the box of the 40k tabletop game there is a note that "games workshop recommends this product for ages 12 and over", but this is simply a recommendation and not an official age restriction.

the point i want to raise is the world of certification: movies, music and videogames are all required, by law, to have an age restricted certificate if there's mature content - mature content being violence, sex, drugs, coarse language, and psychological trauma - and with the exception of sex and swearing 40k is rife with drugs, physical violence and psychological violence. in fact there isn't much that can compare to 40k in terms of the degree of said violence.

i think the lack of certificate is largely to do with the majority of 40k being in a written format - books, mostly (so far i've only seen 2 books that had a certificate), seem to be exempt from certification, i've read books that have shocked me not because of the level of violence, but the fact that such books are available to anyone old enough to read, the horus heresy series being a good example.

now i know 40k has a large market of young people and as such GW most certainly wouldn't want official age restriction as this would affect 'the all-important profit'. and i'm not trying to take 40k away from youngsters who love it (i myself got into 40k quite young), but if certification is law then it should apply to all formats - movies, music, videogames and books, as well as tabletop games in which the main form of conflict is extreme and vicious violence - violence which is graphically described in the manuals/codexes.

thoughts? 