USD ($)
EUR (€)
This feature began as an argument written by my 12yr old son who then decided not to submit it to Zatu as he didn’t think he could commit to writing features and keeping on top of school work. However, I thought it was a feature that had merit and content worth discussion especially as many adult boardgame hobbyists might not consider age ratings or even look at them as all games will be suitable. For those of you with younger children, you may check the age rating on the box and allow those to guide your purchases but is this always wise as well?
Eventually, I asked my son if I could continue his article (which he gave me permission to do so) and I thought I’d try to keep as much of his original wording and add my own thoughts to this so as to look at the hobby through the eyes of someone to whom age ratings matter more. So the rest of this article will be his word with my additions (in bold italics)
My Age Ratings POV
Age ratings are an obstacle in boardgames I have overcome. This is because I am a twelve-year-old board game fanatic; so, this is a viewpoint that is actually from a child’s perspective meaning it matters more with the subject than that of any other adult talking about what may never have affected them.
What Are The Age Ratings?
Now these are often recommendations on how old the players can be to play the game. These may be printed on the box or in the instructions. So, these are helpful to stop younger players confronting inappropriate language, context or images. Now you are not incorrect in saying so but not all games contain any of the above yet are still given high age ratings; based on complexity, knowledge or skill.
Why Is This A Problem?
Not all adults who are buying for younger audiences are aware that some boardgames are based on skill not offensive content. So, some children may be missing out on games that they might be able to play. Now this doesn’t apply to all children; it varies how capable the child in question is; so how can we determine an age rating? You cannot just put all harmless games at zero as there are games about birds and trees yet are quite complex to the point I wouldn’t try to play with under tens. (To credit Wingspan and Photosynthesis.) So how do we justify what age ratings are and how we use them?
A Solution
Parents and guardians, I recommend that when reading reviews, to check what the game is about. For example (Spirit Island) already within the first paragraph mentions fighting against colonial invaders and has at the bottom of the page… Age: 13+ this game has high complexity as a high mid-tier game that also includes violence. Now seeing as this complex games’ rating is thirteen plus it’s a good recommendation.
However, if you believe your child is slightly more advanced or experienced you could play the game with people around the age of ten (I played Spirit Island at the age of ten) at the lowest. Now that’s a trustworthy age guidance. But what if we look at a game called Tiny Towns? Now this has a complexity rating of two on Zatu - but is a fourteen plus in age rating? The idea of the game is to create a small town using as little space as possible. I would say this is appropriate content for children around 8 years old.
Now they might find it slightly boring at times because they're too young. After establishing it's okay for people at age 8, we need to understand it has a complexity rating of two out of five according to Zatu. This means That the game mechanics are very simple. So why would this be rated 14 plus? Well looking over it again, the explanation of some cards are slightly too wordy and a bit difficult to understand but rest assured I cannot truly find any other reason into which its age rating may be rated highly – especially when this is depicted as a family game where adults can guide children.
Other Examples…
Now you are aware of a (in my opinion) good age rating, being Spirit Island and a worse one being Tiny Towns – remember this does not mean any of these games are better or worse it just shows that what you may have thought of as ‘a no go’ for your child may actually be a reasonable contender.
Buying for younger people - I mean under eight years - is quite difficult sometimes, but Labyrinth is an exception, though marketed for eight and above in the original version, I strongly believe it is great fun from the age of five. Though younger players may not always be able to see the consequences of their actions but can play the game one step at a time. This saves people the hassle of having to buy Labyrinth Jr and can just buy the standard package.
Another example; this one has a target audience being pre-teens and teens, The Castles of Mad King Ludwig. Now on the packaging it says 14+ and the Zatu official review says it is 13+. This is a tile laying game which does reference dungeons and such however no gory images are seen or hinted at. It is a simple game to grasp with a Zatu complexity rating of three.
My personal opinion is that it should be ten plus for the fact of the tile placement rules can be frustrating. Again, this is a game that can be played with even younger players if you don’t want to be too serious and so let them collect all the dungeons and mould rooms to keep them content is also fine.
Intrigued by his points, I began to take more interest, or note, of the age ratings of games and in some cases found it more confusing the more I considered it. How is it decided and by whom whether the content is suitable for a particular age? For example; Cluedo has a recommendation of 8 and up. This family favourite is easy enough to access but the theme of murdering someone with a weapon seems to come packaged as part of ‘the fun’ and who doesn’t love a bit of dispatching another character with a blunt lead pipe?
The makers of Coup, that’s who. I can’t fathom why this game, which doesn’t explain the concept of a military coup within the game play anyway and nor does this feature need to be explained, has an age rating of 14+. One character card is called the ‘assassin’ but the card image has no weapons or menacing details and so just serves as a different card with a different ability.
Conversely, assassins are also used in Five Tribes (a personal favourite) which is much more complex than Coup but you only have to be 13+ to play this. To be honest, we stumbled across Coup and have been playing it with our seven year old and never even thought to check the suitability as it was never an issue.
The only issue I can consider is if someone thought it necessary (which it isn’t) to explain what an assassin is. With that in mind, the same could be said of ‘zombies’ (not really a jolly concept when you unpick it) but Zombie Kidz is an 8+ game and you even get cartoon style brains to stick into a book which keeps track of your progress. I personally like all of these games and think them all suitable for children. The main point is whether age recommendations are always to be trusted and also just how random the logic applied to these ratings appears to be.
Dinosaur Island 8+ is definitely a fun game that we love to play. However, it has four phases and usually lasts a couple of hours. To be fair, not many eight year olds have the patience for such a game. And although I would say it is not that difficult, there is strategy involved and many choices to make. Quite simply it is definitely much harder , longer and complicated than Disney Colour Brain which is also rated at 8+.
The mechanisms of the latter game are that you select a card which asks for a colour or colours of a particular item, character etc. from the world of Disney and Pixar and then… oh no, that’s it. No phases, no, mixing DNA to create new strands to create dinosaurs before placing workers and scientists and then selecting/hiring professionals to gain skills within your park before letting some possibly get eaten. The game play, structure, complexity in terms of age rating does not compare.
By these standards, Disney Colour Brain should be about 4+ (I know that that seems ridiculous, and it is, but then again maybe the whole system is) if you think about it.
I went through our own board game collection of (currently) about 140 games, and counting, and the ratings really don’t match up. Some are perfectly suitable and others feel odd, especially when you start to compare them as I have done. Honestly, I urge you to try it. Go and investigate your games and wonder who put or why that age rating on the box.
We recently bought Cards Against Humanity - Family Edition as a fun game with family over Christmas. This game is an 8+ but very quickly can turn into something much darker, weirder, cruder or sexually themed (this may well go over an 8yr old’s head but a ten-year-old might start to sense or understand what the adults are laughing at pretty quickly). Again, this all comes down to personal choice but Tiny Towns it isn't. Which is odd when you consider you have to wait a further six years before you can approach that sort of content. I feel like I’ve really missed the subtext of Tiny Towns somehow.
Here are just a selection of some of our own games which on there own the age rating might not raise any questions but when directly compared with others seemed ‘off’.
- Scattergories 13+:
- Catan 10+:
- Forbidden Island 8+:
- For Sale 8+:
- Steam Punk Rally 14+:
- Smallworld 8+:
- Dixit 8+:
- Room 25 (10+):
- Gizmos 14+:
- New York Zoo 10+:
- Carcassonne 7+:
- Picture Perfect 10+:
Do you agree with these? Although these are just a few, some begin to stand out like Scattergories - name items you’d find in a kitchen (which match the list on the card the other team have) in one minute. Go! Now, list Hitchcock films (maybe skip that one for younger players) now list types of fruit. What child under the age of 13 can’t name a list of fruit?
Catan 10+: Much simpler and quicker than Dinosaur Island for starters and then there’s the fact that Carcassonne is considered simpler than For Sale or New York Zoo- which it isn’t especially, but the age gap between these three games ranges from 1 to 3 yrs. That’s quite a lot in the world of children.
It’s like the PG rating in films cannot be used in gaming so unless you ‘try before you buy’ this is a tool that many (including myself) use when purchasing games with younger players in mind and it is clearly a tool that needs clarifying and standardizing. At least with films, one Studio can’t decide that certain content is a 15 and then another decide it’s a 12. There is a Classification and Ratings Administration- The board gaming world clearly does not have this so each publisher can add the age they deem suitable (six and a half). Maybe we need a PG rating or a clearer set of guidelines as at the moment they are just arbitrary.
Maybe, the gaming community needs to be more questioning of age ratings, even if you are an adult, and furthermore, I personally, wouldn’t mind knowing the guidance given to how they have come up with the ratings in the first place.
Moving forward, it would also be good for reviews themselves to include a clear age rating as most do not and let’s be honest if it were a film or a video game, this is one of the first things we look for.
In the meantime, I do whole heartedly encourage you to take another look at your own collections and wander down the rabbit hole of how, who, and why certain age ratings were bestowed upon your favourite table top games. It is definitely an age appropriate task.