It’s time to stand up and take note, politicians, because gamers have put down their controllers and found their voices. According to Randolph Ramsey at Gamespot AU, the public discussion paper for the introduction of an R18+ adult classification received over 55,000 submissions.
While there’s no indication of how the balance between for and against the rating is broken up in all 55,000 submissions yet, after the first 1100 or so were reviewed 99% or respondents were in favour of the adult classification for games.
From here, the Federal AG’s department will create a report on the findings which will probably then be used as a platform for all the country’s AGs to vote again. Which means that if Michael Atkinson is still in office, the chances of all those voices making a difference is quite small. Still, it would be a brave politician who completely ignored such a response, so we’ll just have to see what happens next.