Tom Crago, Tantalus CEO and president of the Game Developers' Association of Australia (GDAA), has written a great article up for ABC news on the absurdity of our games classification system and includes some thoughts as a game developer. Tom looks at the reasons for why an R ratings system is needed, the recent Fallout 3 ban and the cluelessnes of the policy makers during the discussion of it in the Q&A program, and picks apart the argument of South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson on his refusal to approve the new rating...
(Tom Crago) Part of the problem is that Michael Atkinson believes, against the government's own evidence, that games are unusually harmful to children, as compared with films, television, and books. What's more, he seems not to believe that there exists the facility to stop children from playing adult games. All this despite the fact that we already have a statutory age restriction for retail (MA15+), and that games consoles have easy to use and effective parental lockout systems.
For the full article, head on over to ABC news!
So what exactly is the problem here?
"So what exactly is the problem here? As far as I am concerned, many games are moronic, violent and contain puerile, infantile sexual fantasies. Sure they are not just for kids - many kids I know are mature enough to realise computer games serve a purpose in childhhod and adolescence and do not maintain this interest as adults. More adults should stop wasting their time and money and get more exercise, instead of submerging themselves in these infantile fantasies, much like role-playing games and the like. Get Real, stop living life in some Cyber-fantasy and get over these violent fantasies -"
Wow. Just... wow.
<insert media name here>
You know, your comment reads just the same when replacing the word 'games' with movies, books, television, theatre and music. The older media types openly accept adult-only content. Games are simply the next iteration of media and in time will be accepted just the same.
That comment...
That comment is one of the responses to Tom's article on the ABC site. It's pretty hard to believe anyone can be so irrational, and it's not surprising to see so many people shoot down such a narrow minded viewpoint.