An unshaven man with a vaguely Middle European accent strides from behind a car, automatic weapon in hand. Letting off a volley of shots in the direction of a group of men sitting around a table at a café, battle begins. In the ensuing violence, bodies lie bleeding on the pavement.

This is not a description of a North London gang outrage, but could easily be a scene from the next hit computer game. The man whose job it is to police such games is David Cooke, the film censor, who also has to give an age rating to any game with “gross violence” or perhaps even ban it.

Now, though, the debate is whether Mr Cooke's powers should be extended, making it compulsory for him to rate 12 and 15 games - and so help to stop children spending hours in front of the screen absorbing unsuitable images. But he faces opposition from the games industry, which believes existing self-regulation is enough.

Mr Cooke, the director of the British Board of Film Classification, reviews some games and films personally, although he concedes that he needs quite a bit of help to play some of them.

The BBFC handles about 250 to 300 games a year, as well as 500 to 600 films and more than 10,000 DVDs. Films are watched in their entirety, while games are played for five hours and the censors are given cheat codes to reach higher levels.

However, he is not best pleased with some parts of the games industry. Electronic Arts, home to the FIFA and Battlefield titles, criticised plans to extend Mr Cooke's remit as unworkable on Monday.

Keith Ramsdale, who runs EA's British business, said that the censors would have to move out of Soho Square to a building the size of Milton Keynes to review all the games, online games, and game modules produced.

Mr Cooke describes that as plain silly. He has a team of 12 specialised game players who review games. “They are absolutely wrong. We would have to review another 300 to 500 games every year under the new proposals, and we think we can do that without taking on any new staff at all.”

EA's worry is that the BBFC might have to regulate not just the games distributed on a disc through the shops, but every add-on sold online, and every casual game on the net. The censor does not accept that his organisation needs to review to that detail, arguing that the concern is exaggerated.

In the UK games that are not 18-rated are regulated by PEGI, a small European body that provides games makers with a questionnaire to help them to rate their games. Some games, including all violent ones, are double checked.

“The trouble is that it is not clear who PEGI is,” Mr Cooke says. “Administration is handled by the Dutch film regulator, who subcontracts to a couple of blokes [the Video Standards Council] in Borehamwood.”

EA and other games-makers like PEGI because it is pan-European, and caution that introducing UK-specific regulation may mean Britons would get games late. “I think that is a red herring; Germany and the US have their own systems,” Mr Cooke says.

“Look at what happens in film - there are different cultural sensititives in each country. The French give Tarantino films 12 certificates; I'd be out of a job tomorrow if I did that. But the point is that there is no reason why those cultural differences go to sleep when it comes to games.”

It takes eight days to review a game for classification, and the fee is £300. Mr Cooke says that “if anything, that is coming down” as his gamers grow more accomplished at working out where problems lie.

If those gamers can handle the extra games it seems hardly likely that a $14 billion (£7 billion) company such as EA would have trouble with either the time required or the fees.

Ministers are consulting on the proposals. For the games companies to resist the change, they will probably have to demonstrate that extra regulation is disproportionate. However, to judge from Mr Cooke's opinion, the arguments advanced by the industry so far appear likely to fail.

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