With the announcement less than a week ago that the Senate has finally passed legislation to allow the states to introduce an R18+ rating for games. This however isn’t the final step; it still has to be passed by each individual state and territory. This is expected to happen shortly with SA to be the first for the rating to be come into action from January 1st 2013.
A lot of people don’t understand what this means, all Christian groups seem too be opposed to this decision saying it’s “All For the Children” but that just doesn’t make sense to me. This will make it harder for children to obtain games that have the rating and we all know that there are games out there under the MA15+ rating (free for anyone to buy) that shouldn’t have this rating. Yes I don’t think that an 11 year old should be playing a game like GTA but it’s up to the Parents to make the decision not me or some other group.
The biggest reason for this rating and one that most people don’t know is that the average age of gamers in Australia is 32, making the vast majority of gamers over the age of 18 which have a legal right to choose what they watch, play and do. We don’t need some group with their own motives deciding things for us.
Having read many articles about this debate, it’s always funny reading the comments people leave from both sides of the fence, who either don’t understand what this actually means or aren’t willing to listen.
Long overdue and dreadfully immature, yet not unusual of the governments of Australia to drag their feet. I’m extremely grateful that the federal government stepped in to kick this matter in the balls. I think I’ll go play some games 😀
Thanks for the updates by the way. Generally I’m quite withdrawn from the media.