5 reasons why a R18+ game rating is needed

Mike Bantick
Tuesday, 26 February 2008 07:06

Opinion and Analysis

3 Protect the kiddies – Ironically, bringing in an adult classification of games, putting it in line with the film industry indicators will take away the grey area of censorship decision making, easing the burden on both parents and retail.  This will make regulation of sales to minors that much easier to enforce.

Currently, some of the most violent or otherwise adult orientated interactive entertainment may – with only minor modification – slip in with a MA 15+ rating.  This meant underage sales of games that overseas would be - in theory - only purchased by the correct demographic.

4 Modernisation – Technology changes, there is a need for law enforcement and governments to stay up to, and sometimes ahead of the game, even if just for relevance sake.

Not only that, but the audience for such entertainment has moved on from the stereotype of the past , today’s average game age is 28, why should they be playing only content designed for 16 year olds?

5 Creative Freedom – Free the shackles of game development in this country.  We have a host of burgeoning talent, capable of producing mature and enthralling content for interactive entertainment; check out BioShock by 2K games as a recent example.

As in movies and literature, there needs to be a shackle free environment for creative types to work in, let the market place itself sort out if there will be dollars made from it, but give the creators freedom to move in their genre.

Heck I would like the government to go further and consider an X rating as well, but that might just be pie-in-the-sky.

There will always be room for sensible debate around censorship and the role of government control of popular culture.  But until the playing field is somewhat level, and we have consistent comparisons can be made, we will be left with stupid stereotypically based arguments and the banning of relevant and sometimes brilliant work.