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Australia Likely To Get 18+ Game Rating

Posted by timothy on from the thank-you-uncle-government dept.

hypnosec writes "Australia is set to update the age rating system for video games, adding a new 18+ category which should allow for the more violent games to be sold in the country. The current maximum age rating for a console or PC game is 15+. If a title didn't meet the specifications for this age it was denied a rating and was therefore not allowed to go on sale. This didn't necessarily mean the game never hit the shelves, but it could only do if tweaks were made to remove some of the most violent or questionable content. The first parliamentary session in the new year is set for the 7th February — giving the poor fellas a nice long break — where the bill to introduce the new age rating will be voted on by the lower house. If it passes there, it will go on to the senate, which has the ability to pass it into law."

14 of 55 comments (clear)

  1. Better read the article by ArrowBay · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just based on the headline, I thought that somehow the whole country was being rated as only suitable for 18+. Sure, I could see parts of Brisbane getting this rating, but the whole country?

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  2. Sanity to prevail? by RogueyWon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    On the face of it, it looks like sanity might finally prevail. And in all likelihood, it probably will.

    There's just this little nagging worry at the back of my mind that after going through the political process, what might happen is that a bunch of games that would previously have been released as 15+ will now be released as 18+ and that games which couldn't have been released before... still won't be able to be released because the 18+ guidelines won't actually be much/any more permissive than the old 15+.

    But that's just paranoia, right? Perhaps somebody with more knowledge of Australian politics and their ratings system could provide comfort.

    1. Re:Sanity to prevail? by jimmetry · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I don't have any supporting evidence, but I assume our rating systems are pretty similar to those in the US and UK, simply to make the process of importing a whole lot easier since we have pretty similar "moral standards" (based on the judgement of a few geriatric goons). It means developers don't have to consider Australia "special" and decide whether they'll make a special version just for us or consider us insignificant marketshare.

    2. Re:Sanity to prevail? by rtb61 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This will also drive online sales for 18+ games. Likely a lot of 18+ games will simply never hit the shelves in the original format, as parents will notice they are unsuitable for minors, rather than wallowing ignorance and buying unsuitable games for their children. So most brick and mortar versions will be adjusted to lower the rating and gain access to a larger market and those sold online will be original versions (strict rules on contracts with minors in Australia so, Adult only contracts for online sales).

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    3. Re:Sanity to prevail? by KorrodeAU · · Score: 4, Informative

      Problem is there was an original set of draft guidelines drawn up that stated the games R18+ rating would basically allow the same degree of content that is allowed in R18+ films, however that draft was unable to gain an unanimous vote (required) from all the AG's. A re-draft was then done on the games R18+ guidelines that was more limiting and can easily be interpreted as little other than a re-branding of MA15+. That is what got passed by the AG's.

    4. Re:Sanity to prevail? by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Likely a lot of 18+ games will simply never hit the shelves in the original format, as parents will notice they are unsuitable for minors, rather than wallowing ignorance and buying unsuitable games for their children.

      I don't think that parents will stop the 18+ games from being stocked. Most of the people I see in the computer game stores are adults. In Australia, the average age of a gamer is 32 years old. 75% of gamers are aged 18 or more. Source: Australian gamers getting older and wiser, Oct 2011, or download the full report.

      As an aside, here is a suprising finding from the article:

      63 per cent of gaming households play on a dedicated gaming console, 62 per cent play on PC, 43 per cent play on a mobile phone, 13 per cent on a gaming handheld and 13 per cent play games on a tablet computer.

      So much for PC gaming being dead.

    5. Re:Sanity to prevail? by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This won't stop kids from playing them either. It will just stop them from buying them at least ones without a fake ID.

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  3. Let me just clarify something here for you all. by AbRASiON · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Australia is set to update the age rating system for video games, adding a new 18+ category which should allow for the more violent games to be sold in the country"

    While it's good they are fixing a stupid problem, no one BUYS games here anymore, everyone I know is all over international mailing services. Where I can buy games overseas at HALF the cost they are here - and that's not from Asia either, I'm talking US / UK releases of the games. PS3 is region free (thank you Sony for something smart) and X360 AU is compible with UK releases. Plus Steam - when they do rip us off here (normally other publishers, not Valve) we get our US friends to gift them to us at a sensible price and pay them back via paypal.

  4. Violence? More about nipples by Smigh · · Score: 4, Funny

    The thing that usually pushes these games over the ratings is nipples.

    I'm ok with mutilations but nipples? No way, I hope they go back with this measure, no nipples should be hidden from all mankind, forever!

    1. Re:Violence? More about nipples by donscarletti · · Score: 3, Informative

      In Australia no.

      If you read the classification guide, the guideline from G to MA15+ is: "Nudity should be justified by context. Nudity must not be related to incentives or rewards." i.e. it cannot be "collect 12 badger skins to see my labia". The proposed R18+ guidelines allow for incentive related and contextually unjustified nudity of course (up to and including actual footage of human genitalia), but there was never a general prohibition on nipples, or wang, scrot or vag for that matter. It was always either violence or drug use that got games banned in Australia, apart from BMXXX, which was considered "contextually unjustified nudity" to the censorship board and just about every game reviewer that played it.

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  5. Re:More of the same by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    More of the worlwide tendency: governments wanting frantically to control what people see, hear, read, have access to, and do.

    Haven't you got that backwards? This is the government making more content available that was previously banned.

  6. A game? From a shelf? How deliciously absurd. by sakdoctor · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Governments have always done that since there have been governments.
    What you're seeing today is governments scrambling to stuff the internet genie back in the bottle.

    As for this story, by censoring mature games people are forced to pirate, so the government simply lose out on the sales tax of those who would have bought.

  7. By the way, game prices in Australia by bravni · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why is it so expensive? Taxes?
    Or just good old price fixing?

    I am a European, now living in Japan, and have ordered a lot of stuff from the US over the years. While I can figure out most factors for explaining game prices in these 3 regions (the 1 USD = 1 GBP = 1 EUR "special exchange rate", VAT differences, margins lower in the US vs rest of the world aka price fixing), I still cannot make sense of the outrageous prices in Australia...

    1. Re:By the way, game prices in Australia by Cimexus · · Score: 3, Informative

      Nope it ain't taxes, it's simply "pricing at the levels the market will bear", plus the fact that pricing hasn't been adjusted to account for currency fluctuations.

      Ten years ago, the AUD was worth half of what the USD was. Back then, our game prices were double (in raw numbers) US prices (e.g. a game that was $50 in the USD was $100 here, or so). No issues there - that is roughly the same amount after you converted the currencies.

      However, now, the AUD is worth slightly ~more~ than the USD. So it's more than doubled in value in the last decade. But game prices haven't changed (much). They are still 50-80% higher than US prices (in raw numbers). Thing is, that's what people always bought games at. So companies, to an extent, get away with it because the actual numbers on the price tag haven't really changed (or in fact, they've decreased, but nowhere near as much as would account for the change in currency value).

      Some are blissfully unaware of how much cheaper games overseas are (or simply don't pay much attention to the news and realise just how strong our dollar is now compared to what it used to be). Some are aware, but simply don't care because they have enough disposable income not to worry about it (the average Aussie has more disposable income than, say, the average American, and is used to paying higher prices for almost everything - food, clothes, cars etc.) Others, like myself, say "screw that" and simply purchase over the Internet from the US (or use a US-based Steam account or something), and save themselves a healthy chunk of change. More and more people are doing this and it's starting to become a mainstream issue (not just games but all kinds of things - retailers here are complaining about everyone importing stuff and arguing that sales tax/GST should apply to imported goods etc.)

      The other factor is that, Australians are still buying at those high prices. If people simply refused to pay, well, prices would come down. But retailers aren't gonna do that without good reason ... they're looking to turn maximum profit after all.

      The final thing is that the AUD, although strong now, is an incredibly volatile currency. It may be 0.80 EUR and 1.05 USD now, but in any economic crisis (such as the one that could easily unfold in the Eurozone this year), it will collapse as investors rush back to safehaven currencies like USD and JPY (which is stupid, really, as the AU economy is far stronger than the US or JP economy ... but currency traders don't really care about that). So if they reduced prices to US levels, and suddenly our dollar lost 40% of its value in a few weeks (which has happened before, and indeed, has happened within the last few years), then what? They'd have to raise prices back up, and THAT would create a huge controversy (far more so than failing to simply reduce prices in the first place).