I remember being in a church one day when I saw the petition for Australia to add the R+18 censorship policy.
I was 18 or nearly 18 at the time. And I thought it was great that churches were backing the R18+ category. It showed that churches understood that the problem was not just banning video games but it was more important to actually address the issues and make sure everything had it's place. Heavens knows that from the time I was 15 and able to play M or MA15+ games I'd seen quite a bit of content in video games that I should not have seen at such a young age but had slipped in because developers either took clever or lazy loophole methods to make sure their games were still released in Australia and passed our Australia. The problem with censorship is not that content exists. It's when inappropriate content falls into the hands and eyes of children. From my primary school teacher experience I've seen the attitude and behaviour effects of age inappropriate content. Not that a violent video game will make a student violent but it does mess with a child's sense of innocent. Children mimic and copy a lot of actions from their parents and homelife and the media they consume because they do not have a fully developed sense of right and wrong or sense of self and agency. Kids can be negatively impacted from what they take in. Where as a well developed human being is less likely to be influenced as much. The R18+ classification was a great step. Because at the time this meant kids would not be able to get their hands on games filled with swearing, or sexual themes and gratuitous visual violence. or so we thought. The Australian R18+ still turned out to be broken. Censoring and blocking ridiculous scape goats. It's ruleset is too vague, it falls over and doesn't specifically understand itself. Things still leak through where they shouldn't and other things that decisive and wisely advised adults should be allowed to play are blocked to the point where developers encourage piracy as a way around it. And still, our parents and grandparents are poorly educated about the rating system. Children still get access to R18+ games either through deceit and bamboozlement or because the parents just don't care, believing their child is "the special" case that is exempt from the rule. **SPOILER ALERT** You child isn't not special and needs age appropriate boundaries, just like every other child. **END OF SPOILERS** It's really frustrating. It's holding back our video games on many fronts. Firstly from being a truely expressive artform. Hideo Kojima has talked multiple times how censorship and being afraid of going to dark places is really holding back the full potential of video games where gameplay is a platform of narrative. And the amount of children still playing content not appropriate also holds us back because it sets broken expectations for what games should be to kids, as well as tars and smears the good name everyone else in the media and press. No wonder the media blame video games every time there is a serial killer. I just hope the Australian government start to realise video games aren't a fringe hobby anymore and they're not just toys. They're a multi-billion dollar industry, that's just as relevant to art and entertainment as film. And they need to support this and actually put into infrastructure that supports the industry and allows it to go. Not cripple it with concrete ceilings any time it tries to grow. References: http://www.classification.gov.au/Industry/Pages/Specific-provisions-and-downloads.aspx
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AuthorBen Spanos is currently playing Undertale, Uncharted: Among Thieves and Legend of Zelda: Triforce Heroes. Archives
March 2018
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