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• Australian pol says country's ratings 'out of step'

Australian pol says country's ratings 'out of step'

By Randolph Ramsay on 01 April 2008

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  wlp commented on 01/04/2008 23:54

  Given the demographic cnet caters for (avid video game players- for which i am one of these) my argument may be a lost cause.
  Walrusami, i am not sure who your comment is directed at as I am an 18 year old male who has studied Media extensively throughout my education. My point is simple. Some MA games are quite violent, very violent in fact. What good can possibly come out of having games that are more violent than games such as GTA or Stalker? For a game to become R it must have more violence in it than an MA game. For a game to become MA it must have more violence in it than a game rated M. Is the extra violence really necessary? Does it actually improve gameplay or just desensitize the player? In my opinion seeing extra blood when I slit the throat of an enemy does not change how fun i find the gameplay of the game in question.

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  walrusami commented on 01/04/2008 22:53

  It's very simple. You cannot expect game developers to compromise thier artistic vision just to cater for some backward nation that makes up a fraction of thier overall market. The choice is 1. we allow R rated games or 2. we miss out on these games completely.
  
  For those of you that say they don't care for the things (such as violence) that R would bring, there is a simple solution... DON'T PLAY IT. You do have a choice. And b4 you complain about children getting hold of them - there is this thing called PARENTING....

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  wlp commented on 01/04/2008 20:32

  Some valid points, although I still fail to see the purpose of a R rated game. Nathan I see where you're coming from but arent you afraid that by making these banned games legal kids could think that R rated content (and based on what has been deemed illegal in the past includes rape for example) is the norm for society? Sure, I love video games, but I am quite happy to be limited to my already horrendous MA games if it means that R rated content is restricted in Australia. I realise that R means not for sale to anyone younger than 18 (eg. sexy_shazam) but you have to be naive to think that in reality this is the case. The difference between MA and R is never gameplay or quality of the game, merely influential violent content that serves no purpose other than to shock players. Tell me there is not already enough violence in MA games. I accept that my view will not be the most popular one because of the nature of the cnet audience.

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  sexy_shazam commented on 01/04/2008 19:46

  yes R18+ games do make a diffrence in game play as for certain games like dark sector and grand theft auto certain missions get censored and
  many weapons that make the game fune get taken out
  
  just try turning an M15+ game like gears of war into and PG or PG13+ game and see the diffrence in gamming experiance

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  Nathan commented on 01/04/2008 17:58

  I think the above comment is thinking only in reference to the games listed in the article and forgetting that video games are a media of expression just like books, film and art. As a democratic nation we should be able to use this media just like the others, but the current censorship conditions make anything thats extreme or edgey completely illegal, even for adults.

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  Dean commented on 01/04/2008 17:35

  wlp: In my opinion, the problem is that Australia is a relatively small market for games and most games are produced in the U.S., what has an equivalent rating to 18+. So if a game doesn't make that MA15+ cut in Australia, it's unlikely that a U.S. developer will re-work the game just so it can be sold here. So we essentially miss out. (Sometimes they'll rework it, as was the case with some of the GTA games, but not usually)

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  wlp commented on 01/04/2008 17:18

  Ok this comment won't go down well but oh well. Before i start it should be known that i am an 18 year old video game playing male.
  In my opinion, is there any real need to have an R rating available for video games? It is highly unlikely that allowing games with more graphic content will lead to better gameplay, so what is the point? If people crave the need to play R rated violent video games just so they can see more pain inflicted on their garroted counterpart then society has massive issues. Why won't simply shooting somebody in an MA game suffice? To me this issue comes down to the fact that the jury is still out when it comes to the influence violent games have on our culture, why risk changing our values and desensitizing the community just so that you can be witness to a virtual massacre never before seen under the MA classification.

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  Nathan commented on 01/04/2008 16:30

  It’s silly to ban Adults from something because we don’t want children to have access to them. By that logic we should completely ban R movies, alcohol, cars, credit cards, home loans and the army. But we don’t, we put a system in place so children can’t easily access these things and for most things that is considered adequate. Why don’t they let the parents do the parenting, not the some government appointed committee.
  
  Plus if they think that Kids aren’t playing these games because they are banned in Australia, they need to think again. I remember in my teens, 10 years ago, that we used to very easily hunt down these illegal games just because they were banned, only to find that most of them where incredibly poor.

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  Dean commented on 01/04/2008 16:26

  It's about time. Let's hope it goes through and we get the 18+ rating.

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