Oz Government Seizes Games For "Full Classification"

sprayNwipe writes: "QGL is reporting that the Office of Film and Literature Classification has raided game stores in Australia and removed games from shelves, after deeming that said games are offensive earlier in the day. Some of these games are big christmas sellers, too (Grand Theft Auto 3, and Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon). Why must our government be filled with luddites?" Can any Australians comments on what "full classification" means? Does it only mean labels, or are some games outright banned?

Comments

Not the issue, but the reason...

[Kris_J]

"more sophisticated and realistic games"

Games have always been violent. Heck, the Atari 2600 had specific hardware/instructions to draw players and missiles. But it becomes an issue for most people when it looks realistic. The problem first arose in a big way when Full Motion Video (FMV) games came out -- back in the days of the Sega Mega CD. Night Trap's horror footage prompted something like a US Senate enquiry into violent video games. So did Mortal Kombat with it's photographic sprites. FMV mostly died for other reasons and while MK has stayed around it's had a lower profile.

Doom skirted the edges. It was violent, but it wasn't realistic. You were obviously killing monsters, not people.

Now that 3D technology has gotten to the point where the graphics leave nothing to the imagination the issue has arisen again. At the core, these are the same games that have been played since the beginning of computer games. But on the surface the games look real. What this means is that with a single glance a non-gamer can be exposed to violence -- while previously you had to get into the gameplay and use your imagination to feel/see the same thing. Violent computer games used to hide behind graphical limitations. Whenever the technology catches up with the designer's imagination we have problems like this.