Monday, August 4, 2008

Game Ratings In Oz: Yes, We Suck

Kotaku put me on to a great post on abc.net.au by Tom Crago on the current Australian games classification system. Tom is the chief executive of Tantalus and president of the Game Developers' Association of Australia (GDAA) so you'd hope his words carry some weight.

Tom mentions that there are 2,000-odd game developers living and paying taxes (we hope) in Australia yet some of the games they work on can't be sold here due to the lack of an R rating (18+) for games using Fallout 3's effective banning as a good example.

One interesting quote is "Australia's absence of an R18+ category, and the financial imperative of getting a game onto store shelves in a timely manner, means that many games intended for adult audiences (and rated 18+ in other countries) are inappropriately shoehorned into the existing MA15+ category in Australia. Far from protecting minors from adult content, our uniquely incomplete classification system has allowed them, in many cases, to legally purchase and access such content.".

Read the entire thing, it's not long and points out how stupid our government (yes, even you KRudd) is in the eyes of the world.

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