Kotaku Discovers Why We Don’t Have An R18+ Rating For Games
You know what this Monday needs? More anger. More outrage. Fortunately, there’s a nice long letter from Michael Atkinson over on Kotaku (or at least linked to from Kotaku) that spells out his position on the issue of an R18+ rating, which should provide plenty of ammunition for your resentment.
I’d suggest reading the full letter for maximum rage, but if you just need a little bit of a 3pm fury top up, read some of the excerpts. He seriously believes that movies deserve to be classified differently because “in cinemas, the age of movie-goers can be regulated” (what about DVDs? Do they not count as movies?) and “access to electronic games, once in the home, cannot be policed and therefore the games are easily accessible to children”. Either can alcohol, and that’s arguably a lot more dangerous, but we trust parents to keep that out of their childrens’ hands…
Feel free to vent a bit below, but try and keep it civil. Last thing we want is to make him think his crusade against democracy is legitimate.
[Kotaku]
Comments
Nothing we didn’t already know.
this is what has always baffled me with him. his argument has always been we shouldn’t introduce an R18+ rating because the RATING SYSTEM FOR GAMES IS POINTLESS CAUSE IT CAN’T BE POLICED!!
and yet he is happy with the state of the MA15+ rating. how can that be any more easily policed? why aren’t you up in arms trying to abolish the MA15+ ratings? if we can’t have one age restriction why should we have any? a man with that belief must see only one possibility, ban all games that aren’t suitable for everybody, yet he doesn’t peruse this at all (for the love of God I wouldn’t want him to).
what he is doing to fix his problem is the most lazy and half arsed solution to a problem I’ve ever seen. he seems to have such a strong view on this problem he is materializing, but the only thing he does about it is sit on his lazy ass and vote NO every year or so.
so that can’t be his real problem with it. unless of course he is the laziest person around.
“What the present law does is keep the most extreme material off the shelves. It is true that this restricts adult liberty to a small degree, however, I am prepared to accept this infringement in the circumstances.”
are YOU. well good, i’m so glad this is a DICTATORSHIP and you SPEAK FOR ALL OF US…
“I would welcome advocates of R18+ computer games testing public acceptance of my policy by standing a candidate against me in that general election. I think you will find this issue has little traction with my constituents who are more concerned with real-life issues than home entertainment in imaginary worlds.”
this, to me is the most worrying statement he makes, at the end of his letter.
he is effectively going:
“ha what you going to do about it huh? face it, I can say what ever I want and there is nothing you can do about it!”
He is effectively mocking the system. surely this can’t be legal? because he is right, he has done great things for his electorate, he knows he would never get kicked out over such a small – all be it NATIONAL – issue that, as he says, his electorate would not care about.
He is consciously abusing his power in order to bully us.
yeah, problem is he’s in a safe seat. trick would be to run for the state senate on a gaming platform – even if you don’t get enough votes to win a whole seat, if you get a good number of votes you can choose who the preferences will go to – if your preferences can swing the seat to either labour/libs/greens, that might be enough to get a deal with labour to get this riducluous ratings issue sorted out.
Only problem is getting a someone who has enough social/political skills to get people to vote for them!
Firstly, I would like to state I am all for the R18+ rating, however, the politician is correct in the way the political process works and the attempt to overthrown him, which I fully support, is unlikely to succeed and he knows it.
The problem is that as he points out, he is a duly elected representative of his constituents which cover a wide variety of interests. The major thing they have in common is where they live and what issues may their local community. Adult games would come way down the list under issues like local schools, hospitals, roads, law and order, etc. (all the usual popular electoral platform topics). This is basically a vertical slice of the population. Gaming represents an interest across the entire population over many electoral boundaries which in essence is a horizontal slice of the population. The intesection of these two reside in the electorate that have the voting power to sway a politician. Unfortuantely in this case (as quite often happens with special interest groups) there is little chance of anything happening. In most cases a politician will at least give you lip service that they will do their best, in this case his arrogance prevents him from doing so.
I’m stuck with a guy in my electorate who compared increased police search and seizure powers to Hitlers approach and he was meaning it as a good thing in favour of the motion. It’s hard to know if that makes me better or worse off.
Once again I find my self speachless. His sheer unapologetic arogance about this issue is what infuriates me the most. He has a right to his own opinion, however that doesnt give him a right to force it down upon 20+ million Australians.
I agree wholeheartedly with what matt is saying above.
While I know I will be stoned to death, I personally agree with the reasons Michael Atkinson suggests, and always have. On many occasions I’ve gone to the video store, been choosing a game to hire a game, and seen parents let their kids choose what ever game they want to play, regardless of the rating. Research shows that the material impacts children, and many adults think game = for kids.
If anyone has a solution, please shout it out. Would an ID system like for smoking, with huge “DO NOT RENT R18+ GAMES TO MINOR FINE=$XXXXX” posters satisfy you?
My primary issue is not so much that he is opposed to adult material, but he is clearly biased towards gaming as a medium. I honestly haven’t seen him fight any crusade to get the R rating pulled back for other forms of media which surely are just as accessible if not more so to children than video games.
Not only is he inconsistent about his stances but it’s basically an admission that the government can’t or doesn’t think it can properly enforce its own rules, here the case of selling minors games. For what it’s worth it’s incredibly easy to import these titles anyway and that wouldn’t require an ID check in a store either so I’m unsure how much of a deterrent this really is. It may be that they can’t police this right but surely the issue should be to resolve that rather than removing it from shelves completely.
But parents aren’t going to bother with that — its’ simply the lack of care that parents show with game ratings, they respect them less than they do movie ratings. I think perhaps import laws should be relaxed, or perhaps having the games completely unavailable for easy rental, and have a stricter policy for store purchases.
So how is having an R18 rating going to affect them any differently if parents don’t pay attention to the ratings stickers now?
I think fines and the posters are acceptable but why don’t we just have the r18 games behind counters like cigarettes? you have to produce id if you look under 25, sure its a pain but its easy than importing titles.
As much as I think it’s a good idea running against him, look at the figures. His seat is one of the SAFEST labor seats in the country. It’ll get the issue a little bit more coverage, but there’s no way he wont be elected.
he is using the classification system as a substitute for good parenting. who would really let their child play a game with an R 18 rating. What video games has he been playing lately that have extreme sex scenes (except maybe GTA), cause the ones i play dont have anything to do with sex
Strange, weird, sad little man, and he has my pity. His comments are fair, but such a weak argument that has more gaps in it than swiss cheese. He has obviously made up his mind and the only way around this issue would be if there was someone with more brains in his chair. However, the thing is that people are too savvy now, regardless what he says. All I can say, he is my #1 reason for pirating games not sold in Australia. Essentially, his decision is promoting piracy!
Thanks Michael Atkinson, works out much cheaper for me this way!
If worry about the sale of restricted content is your biggest worry, then I don’t think you’ve really thought through the issue…
Sales of Cigarettes, Porn, and Alcohol are all restricted items, that don’t require any special skills or certs to sell.
The same goes for Movies that are R18+.
The fact is, that it IS illegal to sell restricted goods to people under age, no matter where or how it’s done.
The other fact, is that kids all over Australia are regularly smoking, drinking, and absorbing restricted material, every day, with their parents full knowledge. There are also many kids who are actively parented, and prevented from partaking of restricted goods and content. The system is designed to help parents make an informed decision about their childrens welfare, because in the end, it’s up to adults to be responsible for their kids.
Creating an R18+ category for games would require an advertising campaign to go along with it, and posters put up in stores to make parents aware of the fact that it exists, and that this content isn’t for kids, but ultimately, if a kid wants to get access to restricted content, nothing’s going to stop them.
Informed parents however, can better watch what their kids do, talk to their kids about the games they play, movies they watch, and “bad” things they do, and help their children grow up to be well rounded people.
Uninformed, or plain lazy/bad parents will go on like always. Their kids will grow up how they grow up, and the fact that we have an R18+ category will change nothing.
So, in effect, what will happen, is that games will be rated appropriately. Staff won’t sell those games to underage children, and if they do and get caught they will face fines (just like cigarettes and alcohol), and adults will be allowed to play games that they wish too.
Basically, what I’m saying boils down to: If you don’t support an R18+ rating for games because you think the system is broken, the same system that manages alcohol, pornography and cigarettes etc, then you should be arguing that THAT system needs an overhaul. NOT that we should just stop that system from doing what it’s supposed to do.
It’s clear we’ll never change his opinion or his vote.
We need to start lobbying to have the decision to create an R18+ classification through majority vote rather than unamimous decision. That way it doesn’t matter what his opinion is, we’ll still get a sensible decision about creating an R18+ category for games.
His arrogance has one flaw though. While his seat may be safe his position of attorney general is a decision for his state premier (I believe) so we just need to make it an issue for Labor not just this man and get him removed from his position.
Could someone please post up the letter as the URL is blocked for myself and many other interested parties with our employer.
Thanks
Your employer blocks Kotaku?
That’s worse than blocking out the sun :-(
A person’s position on a government body is not an outlet for personal indulgence. The methods of a regulating government body, in a democracy, needs to be demonstrably sound and _consistent._
The OFLC’s rulings are neither of these things – they are unsound and _wildly_ inconsistent – as the most recent ruling on the videogame “Left 4 Dead 2″ illustrates not only to Australians but, embarrassingly, to the entire world.
This is a game which is functionally identical to its predecessor, but was banned for content which was evidently fine in the original. The most baffling criteria was that there wasn’t sufficient immediate differentiation between zombies and uninfected people.
And yet not only was that not a problem with L4D1, the OFLC has no problem whatsoever in giving MA ratings to military shooters in which the entire point of the game is to kill actual representations of healthy human beings. The most glaring example of this hypocrisy is allowing Modern Warfare 2 to be sold with an MA rating when the most notorious scene in the game involves the player moving through an airport assisting with the wholesale execution of crowds unarmed civilians.
Furthermore, Atkinson’s reasoning for not allowing an R18+ rating is it’s impossible to keep those titles out of the hands of kids. So are firearms, alcohol and tobacco. Will we be banning these as well? Furthermore, if Atkinson doesn’t trust Australian parents to actually parent their children – taking it upon himself to do it for them – then why isn’t he also campaigning to have the MA rating abolished?
This is not a legitimate government body. It is a brothel, and it is the citizens of Australia who are being made to staff it at – and for – the pleasure of Mr. Atkinson.
This simply must stop.