The Office of Film and Literature Classification in Australia has received widespread criticism for its banning of certain games with mature content, including Postal, 50 Cent: Bulletproof and Reservoir Dogs. Tom Crago, President of the Game Developers Association of Australia, is embarrassed by these policies and openly expressed his disdain during a recent radio show [thanks IT Wire].
"It’s a joke isn’t it?" said Crago. "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."
"The biggest problem we have here in Australia is that we don’t have an R classification for video games," he added. "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. 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."
We really feel for our Australian gaming brothers and sisters: not only does the government treat their hobby like something for children, it adds yet another hurdle towards getting mature gaming content into consumers' hands.
