Why does Minecraft: Story Mode have a PEGI 12+ age rating? Telltale Games creative communications manager Laura Perusco spoke to PCGamesN about the narrative-driven adventure game, saying “it’s not necessarily aimed at kids or adults”.
Perusco spoke in detail about the creative direction both Minecraft’s creators and Telltale Games were working towards: “When Mojang came over to our offices and we started generating story ideas, there were three things that came up on the whiteboard. The first one was The Goonies, second was Ghostbusters, and third was Pixar movies. These were the things we wanted to guide us tonally in terms of where we wanted to land.
Perusco went on to defend the universality of the game despite its European rating. In response to the apparent contradiction between making a game that is “an all-ages adventure”, and producing something that can only be bought by tenagers and adults, Perusco pointed to the older films that inspired Telltale Games’ story. “The Goonies and Ghostbusters, they’re movies that came out before there was a PG13 rating, so it’s a space that existed back then but maybe doesn’t so much now.”
In Perusco’s opinion, “those movies, they’re things you can enjoy as a child, but just as much as an adult, or sharing it with younger people.” It might seem odd for Telltale Games to create a product that is not suitable for a substantial section of their target demographic. However, legally or not age inappropriate content does regularly fall into the wrong hands – I played an 18 as a child and couldn’t sleep for a week.
It’s worth noting that in the US the game recieved an E10+ rating meaning the anyone over the age of 10 can buy and play it. The first episode of Minecraft: Story Mode launches today, but will it be able to give Telltale Games’ other episodic masterpieces a run for their money?