Australia Likely To Get 18+ Game Rating 55
Posted
by
timothy
from the thank-you-uncle-government dept.
from the thank-you-uncle-government dept.
hypnosec writes "Australia is set to update the age rating system for video games, adding a new 18+ category which should allow for the more violent games to be sold in the country. The current maximum age rating for a console or PC game is 15+. If a title didn't meet the specifications for this age it was denied a rating and was therefore not allowed to go on sale. This didn't necessarily mean the game never hit the shelves, but it could only do if tweaks were made to remove some of the most violent or questionable content. The first parliamentary session in the new year is set for the 7th February — giving the poor fellas a nice long break — where the bill to introduce the new age rating will be voted on by the lower house. If it passes there, it will go on to the senate, which has the ability to pass it into law."
Let me just clarify something here for you all. (Score:5, Informative)
"Australia is set to update the age rating system for video games, adding a new 18+ category which should allow for the more violent games to be sold in the country"
While it's good they are fixing a stupid problem, no one BUYS games here anymore, everyone I know is all over international mailing services. Where I can buy games overseas at HALF the cost they are here - and that's not from Asia either, I'm talking US / UK releases of the games. PS3 is region free (thank you Sony for something smart) and X360 AU is compible with UK releases. Plus Steam - when they do rip us off here (normally other publishers, not Valve) we get our US friends to gift them to us at a sensible price and pay them back via paypal.
Re:Sanity to prevail? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:By the way, game prices in Australia (Score:4, Informative)
Nope it ain't taxes, it's simply "pricing at the levels the market will bear", plus the fact that pricing hasn't been adjusted to account for currency fluctuations.
Ten years ago, the AUD was worth half of what the USD was. Back then, our game prices were double (in raw numbers) US prices (e.g. a game that was $50 in the USD was $100 here, or so). No issues there - that is roughly the same amount after you converted the currencies.
However, now, the AUD is worth slightly ~more~ than the USD. So it's more than doubled in value in the last decade. But game prices haven't changed (much). They are still 50-80% higher than US prices (in raw numbers). Thing is, that's what people always bought games at. So companies, to an extent, get away with it because the actual numbers on the price tag haven't really changed (or in fact, they've decreased, but nowhere near as much as would account for the change in currency value).
Some are blissfully unaware of how much cheaper games overseas are (or simply don't pay much attention to the news and realise just how strong our dollar is now compared to what it used to be). Some are aware, but simply don't care because they have enough disposable income not to worry about it (the average Aussie has more disposable income than, say, the average American, and is used to paying higher prices for almost everything - food, clothes, cars etc.) Others, like myself, say "screw that" and simply purchase over the Internet from the US (or use a US-based Steam account or something), and save themselves a healthy chunk of change. More and more people are doing this and it's starting to become a mainstream issue (not just games but all kinds of things - retailers here are complaining about everyone importing stuff and arguing that sales tax/GST should apply to imported goods etc.)
The other factor is that, Australians are still buying at those high prices. If people simply refused to pay, well, prices would come down. But retailers aren't gonna do that without good reason ... they're looking to turn maximum profit after all.
The final thing is that the AUD, although strong now, is an incredibly volatile currency. It may be 0.80 EUR and 1.05 USD now, but in any economic crisis (such as the one that could easily unfold in the Eurozone this year), it will collapse as investors rush back to safehaven currencies like USD and JPY (which is stupid, really, as the AU economy is far stronger than the US or JP economy ... but currency traders don't really care about that). So if they reduced prices to US levels, and suddenly our dollar lost 40% of its value in a few weeks (which has happened before, and indeed, has happened within the last few years), then what? They'd have to raise prices back up, and THAT would create a huge controversy (far more so than failing to simply reduce prices in the first place).
Re:Violence? More about nipples (Score:4, Informative)
In Australia no.
If you read the classification guide, the guideline from G to MA15+ is: "Nudity should be justified by context. Nudity must not be related to incentives or rewards." i.e. it cannot be "collect 12 badger skins to see my labia". The proposed R18+ guidelines allow for incentive related and contextually unjustified nudity of course (up to and including actual footage of human genitalia), but there was never a general prohibition on nipples, or wang, scrot or vag for that matter. It was always either violence or drug use that got games banned in Australia, apart from BMXXX, which was considered "contextually unjustified nudity" to the censorship board and just about every game reviewer that played it.