GDAA President, Australia's game classification system is a joke

By Mike Bantick
Tuesday, 11 August 2009 10:33

Opinion and Analysis

Tom Crago is President of the Game Developers Association of Australia, as well as working in the game development field as CEO of Tantalus software.  He therefore is one of the frustrated when it comes to local laws of classification of his product, and is typically embarrassed when meeting international colleagues.  In the shadow of yet another game being banned (the RPG Risen) everything he has to say is still current.

For the full text of this interview – mosey on over to this link . 

During a recent radio interview with myself on 3RRRFM 102.7’s Byte Into It , I asked Tom Crago, president of the Game Developers Association of Australia how he felt about the Australian Federal Governments stance on video game classification and proposed ISP filter targeting importation of video games.

Tom Crago:  Well it’s a joke isn’t it?  We are once again caught in this awful, ridiculous web of the antiquated classification system that we all have to endure.  Here in Australia the sooner that changes, the better; it is obviously a battle to ensure common sense prevails.  We will get there eventually, but in the meantime as gamers in Australia we suffer, and to be honest we are embarrassed at how backward our government is...

Mike Bantick:  Do you see any chinks in the armour there?

TC:  Well the way I look at it, ultimately the war is won, we will get there in the end, and it’s just a matter of counting the days until common sense prevails.

MB:  For those people listening that don’t understand the Australian game classification system, can you just explain what the problem is there?

TC:  Absolutely, the biggest problem we have here in Australia is that we don’t have an R classification for video games.  At the moment, the highest a game can be classified is M [MA 15+] which means you need to be 15 years or over to buy it.  It’s ridiculous because it assumes that games are fundamentally different to film and outrageous in that it assumes that adults shouldn’t be allowed to access adult content in video games.  And of course it is a fundamentally broken system in that games that should be classified R being shoehorned into the [MA 15+] classification, which means you get a 16 or 15 year old, who really shouldn’t be able to play a particular type of game actually able to play that game, under the age of 18.

TC:  It is really because of complex constitutional reasons that this law hasn’t been changed, and ultimately it will, but it is the bane of our existence until the day it is overturned.

MB:  It does seem extremely frustrating, especially when, often times there are games that attract a bit of controversy, Grand Theft Auto and stuff, that controversy is magnified by an out of date classification system, when clearly when these kids have access to certain content, when they do because the government system is behind the times.

TC:  We are the butt of a lot of jokes; I travel, obviously a lot, talking to other developers and publishers and people cannot believe it that we still have this ridiculous system here in Australia, designed twenty or thirty years ago, and hasn’t changed since.

TC:  We need some form of classification system don’t we?  But it needs to be relevant; it needs to move with the times.  It needs to recognise that people’s leisure habits change, and people that are accessing content evolve, and we are looking at a video game industry that is very different from what it was twenty years ago.

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