Australia bans another video game

23 October 2007 in Media, Notes by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

Australia, apparently, is the only western nation which doesn’t have an R18+ classification for video games. Which means Soldier of Fortune: Pay Back is banned ‘cos it’s too violent for MA15+. Personally I don’t care one way or another about these shoot-em-ups, but some consistency would be nice. Thanks to Peter Black for the pointer.

5 Random Semi-Related Posts

Tags: ,

  1. Yeebok Shu'in’s avatar

    Yeebok Shu'in on 22 February 2009 at 7:44 am

    Yes, this one’s quite an issue, especially when you consider the ‘average’ gamer is apparently male and 35-40. That ‘we’ (collective, not royal we) can only play games that are suitable for 15 year olds or younger IS a worry. It means bad things for the economy also, as people are forced to get the games they want “illegally” (eg buy it overseas or torrent it). In a few ways this is quite a large issue, particularly in terms of consistency : You can buy R/X rated magazines, books, movies, etc, but not games. Why ??

    Reply

  2. Stilgherrian’s avatar

    Stilgherrian on 22 February 2009 at 7:57 am

    @Yeebok Shu’in: This is also precisely why the proponents of pervasive Internet censorship… sorry, “filtering” like the Australian Christian Lobby’s Jim Wallace are misleading people when they talk about refused Classification (RC) material being about child pornography. A video game which in other countries would be rated R18+ also falls into that category because we don’t have that category here in Australia.

    As for the “Why?”, in most cases it’s probably like the current one: a political trade-off for Senate votes from the extreme-right Christians by people who value short-term political gain over long-term thinking and human rights.

    Reply