The issue is who decides what is good for kids; Sounds like NZ has a politcal committee doing it.
And I believe that if things are designated the equivalent of 'M'/'X' then there are many places that will/can not sell the item in the first place.
Three are three main problems with this.
1) The parents should be deciding what is appropriate for their children, not a political process
2) The political committee will be susceptible to creep of what is not allowed. If the industry is lucky, then the definitions will be clear what is allowed and what is not. If not, they'll have to 'guess' what to leave out to get a 'PG13' or whatever rating the developer/publisher desires.
3) The developer having to censor the content of a game to 'make' a rating is not a good thing. It means that the play of the game will be determined by the lowest common (political) denominator and not by the market choice of the people buying and playing the game.
The IGDA's Censorship advocacy group has a lot of good information on the censorship problems the industry is facing. http://www.igda.org/censorship/
Slashdot Mirror
And I believe that if things are designated the equivalent of 'M'/'X' then there are many places that will/can not sell the item in the first place.
Three are three main problems with this.
1) The parents should be deciding what is appropriate for their children, not a political process
2) The political committee will be susceptible to creep of what is not allowed. If the industry is lucky, then the definitions will be clear what is allowed and what is not. If not, they'll have to 'guess' what to leave out to get a 'PG13' or whatever rating the developer/publisher desires.
3) The developer having to censor the content of a game to 'make' a rating is not a good thing. It means that the play of the game will be determined by the lowest common (political) denominator and not by the market choice of the people buying and playing the game.
The IGDA's Censorship advocacy group has a lot of good information on the censorship problems the industry is facing. http://www.igda.org/censorship/
The most importnat part of a design document is to document what is NOT going to be implemented.