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back to article Oz R18+ game rating goes live

With the sole exception of a media that’s campaigned for the legislative change, World+dog has greeted the activation of Australia’s R18+ game rating with a collective yawn. The existence of the rating means three things: a rating now exists under which some games, previously refused classification and therefore illegal to …

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  1. Benjamin 4

    I'm all for protecting children if there is genuinely a danger, but methinks this is a rubbish way of going about it. Sure there is an age where children shouldn't be able to access content currently rated at 18+, but I'm not sure that this is it. And I'm not sure that this would solve it even if it was enforceable.

    We would be far better off if parents sat down with their children and explained that there is violence / sex / whatever portrayed within this game. It's not representative of real life. Treat it as a fantasy and a way to blow off the stresses of your real life.

    Wouldn't that be far more sensible than an unenforceable legislation? Even if shops abide to it and people don't buy from abroad and adults don't buy the games on behalf of children they'll still play it round a mates house who has an older brother who got it.

    It's the same with all the f**king stupid legislation they keep trying to introduce to block porn. Massively expensive, never works, and doesn't achieve what they set out for it to achieve.

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    1. Chris 155
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      Actually it's about being able to legally sell adult games to adults.

      In Australia, prior to this law change, anything which the classification board felt was too mature to be rated MA15+ was marked RC and was therefor illegal to sell in Australia. This has impacted a number of games, though some of them had last minute modifications to allow sale in Australia. If you played either of the new Fallout games this impacted you as the injection of meds was once animated and was removed to get an MA15+ rating.

      This is actually believe it or not a win for freedom as the games in this category were previously blocked, we haven't added new censorship we've relaxed what we already had.

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Childcatcher

    Happy new year

    It feels just like 1913.

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  3. Magani
    Megaphone

    States' rights?

    "...the change in regulation required approval of all states as well as the commonwealth."

    Yet another reason why 3 tiers of government (federal, state and local) is at least one tier too many. It may have been required back in 1901, and there are probably many areas where states have a particular role to play, but why should WA's kids needs any more/less protection from violent video games than NSW or Qld kids?

    While I'm standing on my soapbox, why do we need both federal and state depts of health, roads, education, etc (I'm sure you can think of more examples).

    </rant>

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    1. silent_count
      Reply Icon

      Re: States' rights?

      You'll hear no argument from me, Magani but there's the problem of honour among thieves. It would take a referendum to eliminate a tier of government and, regardless of who is in charge at federal level, they wouldn't call such a referendum because, in the unlikely event that it's successful, it would put either their state or local-level labour/liberal mates out of a job. Furthermore, whichever party called the referendum would have internal fighting as a result of the federal members trying to 'knife' either the state or local members. And, as we all know, "the party" (doesn't matter which one you prefer) is far more important than doing the right thing by the people of Australia.

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    2. Ben Shurey
      Reply Icon

      Re: States' rights?

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity

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  4. FozzyBear

    @Magani

    I have been saying this for years. We definitely need to get rid of state or local. Getting rid one level of bureaucracy would be a huge money saver for the tax payer. Not to mention we could take all that dead wood in low level government jobs and get them to do something useful like.....

    Oh fuck I knew there was a hole in the plan.

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    1. Tim Bates
      Reply Icon

      Re: @Magani

      "We definitely need to get rid of state or local."

      There's no question about that - state is what needs to go. Anyone outside of a state capital will understand what I mean.... State governments are too busy thinking of the capital city voters..

      At least if state goes, the councils would all be on fairly equal ground when trying to catch the attention of the federal lot.

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  5. andro

    I dont know if state needs to go, but it does need to be reduced, and have no say in classification which should be a federal thing.

    As someone who lives in SA, and voted the way I did over the r18+ issue, I can say for sure that other problems we have here - eg not enough water in the river murry due to too many water licenses along the river and in particular cotton farming licenses in the eastern states (in dry australia, how does that make sense?), would not be solved at the federal level as most people there do not see it from south australias point of view and dont take this environmental problem seriously.

    Having said that though, there does seem to be enough problems solving that one even with a state government. Some issues can remain state, but most would be fine at the local or federal level.

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