An amendment to the classification act could see significant streamlining of the games classification process, as well as paving the way for mobile games to receive proper classification ratings.
The amendment, officially the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Amendment (Classification Tools and Other Measures) Bill 2014, which you can read here, passed through into law yesterday, enabling the creation of tools that should allow publishers to classify content “using classification tools”.
Why is that important? Simply because it’s pointing the way to a streamlined process that should make it both simpler and cheaper for games to be properly classified. Up until now the classification regime has been a slow and clunky beast, and while we’ve had victories such as the shift towards a proper R18+ rating, there’s a not inconsequential cost and delay involved in getting games classified.
Moving to a regime where “classification tools” will be made available should significantly streamline that process, as well as cover additional areas such as mobile and online games, which are specifically noted in the amendment. Up until now they’ve largely been ignored in the whole classification debate.
You can read more about the classification changes over at Kotaku.
[Kotaku]