There are two things that this Friday seems to be missing here on Giz. The first one is beer. The second is a healthy dose of rage. I’m hoping that the first one naturally turns into the second, although after watching the video above, I’m actually thinking that it might work the other way around.
You see, Logan over at Kotaku got pointed in the direction of this clips from ABC program Q&A. It’s a fairly new show that lets people in the audience ask questions of politicians and their kind about topical current events.
As you can see from the video, the topic in question here is the need for an R18+ rating for games in Australia. What spews forth from the politicians’ mouths is something many would find more offensive than any super-violent game – total ignorance. This wouldn’t be so bad if they admitted they weren’t in a position to make any kind of judgment, but instead most of them used it as an opportunity to propagate their own beliefs and opinions without a passing consideration for the facts.Of course, matters weren’t helped by the discussion being started on a misinterpretation of the recently refused game Fallout 3. The gent who asked the question (who gets FULL credit for asking it, by the way) obviously wasn’t familiar with the reason the game was refused classification, as he agreed with the host’s summary that the game lets the character “self-inject intravenous drugs so that they can kill more people”.
In any case, the conversation moves on from there, and instead of addressing the real issue – that adults should have the right to choose what games that they play and more responsibility should be placed on the parents of children to restrict inappropriate content – most of the members of the panel merely announced that restricting content that will negatively effect others makes sense, and by making up examples to suit their argument.
It’s enough to make you want to run out, carjack some helpless old grandmother, drive past the ABC studios as the next session of Q&A finishes filming and pepper all their bodies with bullets from a submachine gun out the window as you drive past, all while injecting myself with morphine so I can kill more politicians.
Oh, wait. No it doesn’t.
Because no matter how many violent video games I play now, as an adult, I was fortunate enough to have parents who educated me on both right and wrong and the difference between my imagination and real life.
The politicians need to wake up and realise that it’s not their role to raise children – that job falls to the parents. And the fact that they think they can decide what’s appropriate content for an adult shows that they firmly believe that they’re parenting not just the kids, but the grown ups too.