Thoughts on R18+ rating for Australia

[badgersprite]

I don't like the fact that I, as a functioning, reasonable adult, am being babied by my government and told, "No; you can't decide what you want to do with your money because we know better than you."

I seriously don't understand why children are always brought into this debate. Isn't the whole point of the R18 rating that children aren't supposed to play it? Why are R18 movies (which I still get carded for if I want to buy them on DVD) fine and perfectly legal and totally no drama at all, but bringing that same rating into games is the final straw that's going to cause society to go mad, even when they require identification to buy?

No what I'm saying is that the Australian government is planning to bump up the rating for games like Cod from Ma 15+ to R 18+, and yes the government is slowly taking away more and more things that are fun and eventually we'll be left with a box of crayons in a heavily padded room and Superior Mind they've essentially said that they are going to do it however the process shall wait until next year or so.

Oh, wow, I've never even heard of that. And this is ridiculous. Why is content that would be perfectly fine in an equivalent movie okay for fifteen year olds, but once it's in a game, it's too much for them!

This really is stupid. I wholeheartedly believe things like this should not be regulated through legislation, because this is not the government's business. They aren't a creative body. They aren't at all involved in the entertainment industry. And this isn't something that you'd think should be under law in the first place. It is not the best answer when it comes to things like this.

Besides which, I always thought ratings were handed out by an independent body separate from the government (although maybe I'm thinking of the USA here - correct me if I'm wrong). Sure, they always had to follow the restrictions of the government, like the no 18+ rule, but now the government are actively telling these people how to do their jobs, and are holding them to a completely different standard from everything on TV and in movies?

Ugh. This is just pissing me off now.

 

[Chatato]

I don't like the fact that I, as a functioning, reasonable adult, am being babied by my government and told, "No; you can't decide what you want to do with your money because we know better than you."

I seriously don't understand why children are always brought into this debate. Isn't the whole point of the R18 rating that children aren't supposed to play it? Why are R18 movies (which I still get carded for if I want to buy them on DVD) fine and perfectly legal and totally no drama at all, but bringing that same rating into games is the final straw that's going to cause society to go mad, even when they require identification to buy?

No what I'm saying is that the Australian government is planning to bump up the rating for games like Cod from Ma 15+ to R 18+, and yes the government is slowly taking away more and more things that are fun and eventually we'll be left with a box of crayons in a heavily padded room and Superior Mind they've essentially said that they are going to do it however the process shall wait until next year or so.

Oh, wow, I've never even heard of that. And this is ridiculous. Why is content that would be perfectly fine in an equivalent movie okay for fifteen year olds, but once it's in a game, it's too much for them!

This really is stupid. I wholeheartedly believe things like this should not be regulated through legislation, because this is not the government's business. They aren't a creative body. They aren't at all involved in the entertainment industry. And this isn't something that you'd think should be under law in the first place. It is not the best answer when it comes to things like this.

Besides which, I always thought ratings were handed out by an independent body separate from the government (although maybe I'm thinking of the USA here - correct me if I'm wrong). Sure, they always had to follow the restrictions of the government, like the no 18+ rule, but now the government are actively telling these people how to do their jobs, and are holding them to a completely different standard from everything on TV and in movies?

Ugh. This is just pissing me off now.

Yeah it is ridiculous, in fact at one point Michael Atkinson tried to regulate R18+movies by trying to pass a law that said all R DVDs had to either all be put in one section of any store that sold them or the only thing they were allowed to have on the cover was a 1 centimeter big piece of writing