Been working too much to blog, but I still made some time to submit to the R18+ classification review. Thought I’d post my submission here:

I’m currently 33 years old, and I’ve played computer games all my life. From back when they were simple, like asteroids and space invaders, to now, where the graphics are 100 times better… but the concept is still the same: It’s just entertainment.

To assume children are not smart enough to know the difference between pretend violence and real violence is absurd, and an insult to them quite frankly.

Do we not encourage kids to play Cowboys and Indians? Cops and Robbers? They pretend to “shoot” each other, to fall down and “die”… but they know it’s not real. They know they are just playing “a game”.

And whether the game is on the playground, or on a TV screen, there is no difference. It’s “pretend” you see. Perhaps the lawmakers in this country are so old and jaded, they forget what it’s like to be a child, to have enough imagination to “pretend” and know it’s not real.

I play “Halo” with my sister, who is 16 now but I’ve done so since she was much younger. She and I have killed many pretend aliens on the xbox, but do I think she would actually pick up a gun and shoot it…ever? No, the thought is utterly ridiculous.

The current classification system is broken. Countless games get rated MA15+ in Australia and R18+ everywhere else in the world. Modern Warfare 2 is a recent example, the biggest selling game of all time and we rated it MA15+ because that’s the highest rating we could give it, and to ban it would have caused hundreds of thousands of copies to be imported into Australia from the US, the UK and Asia (and the retail industry wouldn’t stand for that). So the rest of the world rated it an Adult game, but we said it was OK for teenagers because the system is fundamentally flawed.

Parents DESERVE the right to know which games are suitable for their kids and which games are not.

And Adults (like myself), DESERVE the right to purchase games made for Adults.

If you haven’t made your submission yet you’d better hurry up, only 3 days left (Feb 28 is the cutoff).

I keep reading this article over and over. It seems to be a fairly logical argument from a person who obviously doesn’t have any love for gaming (nor an irrational fear of it).

This particular paragraph really gets me, it’s something I hadn’t though of until this guy put it so plainly:

Indeed, it is curious that so many pro-status-quo arguments revolve around the impact on minors, as this implies scepticism of not just the proposal at hand, but the entire structure of the classification system. While the protection of children from disturbing and/or inappropriate content is indeed a valid consideration, the very purpose of classification and ratings categories is to serve this concern. The fact of a minor’s possession of a game that had been deemed inappropriate for his or her age range would not represent a failure in the guidelines; it would represent a failure in the application of the guidelines. A rejection of a classification category based on lack of confidence over the correct application of the criteria can only imply a rejection of classification schemes as a whole.

Surely, if people like Atkinson campaign against R18+ games because they don’t trust the system to stop these games from getting into the hands of minors, then their problem isn’t with the games… it’s with the classification system ITSELF.

They don’t trust the system, and if that is the case… we’re having the wrong argument.

On a side note, I noticed that Modern Warfare 2 has received an R18+ rating in every other country apart form Australia. Here, it got a MA15+ rating, but really/probably should have been banned in Australia because we don’t have an R rating.

But how can you tell the Australian retail games industry they won’t get the opportunity to sell the greatest selling game OF ALL TIME? All that revenue is going to go to overseas sites like amazon, dvd.co.uk and play-asia. You just can’t… so you give the game a MA15+ rating instead!

So now Mum is at the game store and little Johnny the teenager is begging her for Modern Warfare 2 since all his mates have it and it’s the most awesome game ever. She picks it up, reads “MA15+” on the label, and probably think’s it’s appropriate for little Johnny and pats herself on the back for being such a good parent.

Only in Australia.

South Australia’s Attorney General on a radio interview regarding the propsed R18+ classification for computer games in Austalia. You know, the rating every other developed nation in the world has. That would allow me as a 33 year old adult to decide what I want to do in my own spare time.

Atkinson: “We’re talking about games such as the Japanese game game “Rape Play” where one scores points for raping a mother and daughter.”
Mares: “But as I understand that’s not allowed on sale anywhere outside Japan even in countries with R18 classifications.”
Atkinson: “Yeah, but I wouldn’t put it past the classification board to make that an R-rated game frankly.”

Oh YES!! Of course they would! Even though it’s banned in every other country, we’d classify it!

Seriously, I don’t know what planet this guy lives on. But its very very far away from here.

I blogged not long ago on an article about music in games, and commented on the fact that they left out the Halo franchise. Well ODST dropped a few weeks ago (already completed the campaign 3 times ) and I think this is my favourite soundtrack yet.

Some commentary on the score:

Due to ODST’s shift to a new protagonist, O’Donnell wanted to create new music that was evocative of Halo but branched in a different direction. Because the game tells a “human story, not a cyborg story”, O’Donnell said, the score was more “intimate and personal”. For the Rookie’s rain-slicked investigations, O’Donnell felt that a jazz-influenced approach worked best in echoing the noir atmosphere. Other characters did not have any themes written for them specifically, but rather became paired with motifs that suited them.

Here’s a track called “Rain” which is my personal favourite. There’s also “Traffic Jam” and “Neon Night”.