Mike Bantick
Monday, 22 March 2010 21:32
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 3
By resigning as South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson may indeed achieve his goal to protect children from the possible harmful effects of the increasingly mature content found in video games.
As my iTWire colleague David Swan
reported on the weekend, despite winning his seat comfortably during the South Australian state election, Attorney-General Michael Atkinson has decided to move to the back-bench and resign his AG position.
Atkinson has been the most vocal and seemingly resistant of the state Attorneys-General when it comes to the question of the introduction of an R18+ classification for video games in Australia.
The debate has raged on for years, with interactive entertainment classification – unlike cinema – topping out at the (somewhat confusing) MA 15+ rating. Any game rated by the Classification Board as outside of the definition of MA 15+ is unclassified, effectively banning the game for sale in Australia.
Only a handful of games have been banned, many others have been modified to fit into the MA 15+ category (witness the
woeful release of Left 4 Dead 2 in Australia).
Worse still is when a game is not modified at all and released under the MA 15+ banner. A game such as
Dante’s Inferno, rated 18+ in overseas markets arrives on Australian shores full of depraved scenes from Hell depicting all manner of sexual depravity, violence and other sins and gets an uncensored MA 15+ rating sticker slapped on its cover.
Whilst many gamers are outraged over the attitudes of former Attorney-General Michael Atkinson, with his crusade to not have an R18+ classification introduced, some so incensed that Mr Atkinson stated that he feared more for the safety of himself and his family from the
threats of gamers than those of bikies put offside by his proposed anti bikie-gang legislation.
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