British Mom Tussles with Publishers over Seizure-Inducing Games
You know those warnings that pop up before many console games and are on the first page of nearly every video game manual? It’s about four paragraphs long and talks about photosensitive seizures. The warning you have probably scanned once or twice and then decided it wasn’t interesting enough to actually read. Well, since last May, a mother in Britain has been going after the British Parliament to change the law to force manufacturers to test if their games induce seizures, as opposed to simply displaying this sort of “voluntary warning.”
Gaye Herford, a mother of four, began her quest after her 10-year old son had a seizure while playing Ubisoft’s Rayman Raving Rabbids on his Wii. She did not know that video games could cause epileptic seizures and that children and teenagers are especially susceptible to such fits.
