Australia is still a repressive gauntlet of government game censorship. However, recently they switched to a new ratings scheme which makes things marginally better. It used to be that the equivalent of R-Rated games were ‘denied classification’ which effectively banned them. Since 2011, though, they’ve instituted a new rating that was the equivalent of Mature games. Games that were previously banned before 2011 were welcomed to reapply. It’s still censorship and should be opposed by game lovers and creators…. but it’s better than it was. I wrote about this previously here.
Today, people have been circulating the story about how Australia has banned 220 games in 4 months. It was a scary statistic with a banal explanation’ as Brendan Keogh noted.
The frightening statistic has a much more banal explanation: exponentially more games are being classified now. Australia is adopting the International Age Rating Coalition (IARC), which has developers fill out a survey about their game that is then mapped to participating countries’ own classification system…. Outsourcing the labour of classifying videogames to the developers themselves helps individual countries come to terms with the unprecedented number of videogames currently being produced and distributed.
This article claims that 180000-200000 games are released every year on digital storefronts– literally an impossible task for a small government agency to judge by playing through it. So starting soon, they will send a questionaire. This questionaire is what multiple countries use to help determine rankings for the millions of games that come their way.
From July 1, Australia will officially begin participating in a global pilot program that attempts to regulate the enormous volume of games being released online using the International Age Rating Coalition (IARC) tool, which has been adopted by the UK, the USA, Canada, Brazil, and most of Europe.
Before the IARC model was adopted, video games released through digital storefronts did not have to be rated by the Classification Board.
The emphasis is mine. This is actually much more eye opening than the number of games censored. Steam previously managed to sidestep the ratings system entirely. My guess is that the brick and mortar stores finally complained loud enough about the disparity. Anyway, what’s on this self-exam? And no cheating, devs, you’re on the honor system.
For example, the IARC form enquires: “Does the game contain any bodily functions such as belching, flatulence, or vomiting when used for humorous purposes?” The form also asks developers whether their game contains fictitious creatures that bare naked breasts, offering the example of a harpy.
So yeah, Censorship is alive and well in Australia, and people should be upset about it. So let’s take a moment of silence for the fallen comrades – these are games that is in the ‘Denied Classification’ category of games, and are therefore effectively banned.
- Douchebag Beach Club.
- Stickman Crime in Kitchen
- Drunk Driver
- HoboSimulator
- YatzyGolden!Ilntimate Hotties
- Yatzy Paradise!Hot Guys
- Police Dog: Crime City Chase
- Sniper 3D Assault Zombie
- Measure Bra Size Prank
- Swimming Pool Fun
- Naked Scanner Pro – Free
- Pocket Pool Pro
- 2015 Athletic Fruit Girls
- iShootThings
- Circus Accident
- Tank Girls
- Virtual Marijuana Smoking
- Mad Cow!!
- Police Bus for Criminals
- Fatal Finger Fight
- League of Guessing
- Hit My Ass
- Spin the Bottle
- Spin the Bottle Premium
- Drug Dealer Simulator Game
- Marijuana’s Game
- Time for Cocaine
- Wrecking Miley
- Thesis Escape
- Torture the Murderer 2
- Smoke a Joint
- Smoke a Bong
- Smoke a Bong FREE
- Nose Dose
- Charming CHeerleader Girl
- Pass the Grass
- WatDaSheep?!
- iSmoke: Weed HD – Free
- Weed Bakery The Game
- Dress Up: Mom and Daughter
- Guess the Gender
- Shroom Tycoon 2
- Russian Roulette Drinking Game
Truly, truly a sad time for WatDaSheep, and a sad time for freedom.
Australia’s ratings categories are a bit weird and don’t map to ESRB well at all – the new R18+ isn’t really the equivalent of an ESRB ‘Mature’. There’s five categories for games (six for film, as there is an X rating for pornography). They are, in order, G, PG, M, MA, R. The MA category used to be as high as it went, and most but not all ESRB Mature games ended up there. MA and R are legally restricted categories, though enforcement is tricky. MA is 15+ restricted, R is 18+ restricted. It’s a felony to sell or provide an R18+ rated game/movie to a minor.
Australia doesn’t actually flat out refuse classification to games that often. Even before the R18+ introduction, it was only a handful a year. The fact that the ESRB AO rating is a kiss of death for games at retail effectively pushes most high-profile stuff down into being acceptable in Australia as well as our countries end up having fairly similar views on content. The real reason Australia needed to introduce R18+ aside from the few games that were being banned that shouldn’t have been, was that there was a lot of stuff being pushed into MA15+ that really should have been restricted to adults.
The IARC system is potentially a massive improvement, even though I think at the moment it’s only being applied to mobile games. The bulk of Steam stuff will continue to go through the normal ratings process as far as I know because they’re going to also be sold at retail. The law allows for games that have no expectation of getting into a restricted category to be self-rated, and I believe that’s what’s happening here: The IARC is allowing these mobile games to be automatically assessed as not belonging in a restricted category in Australia and thus allowing them to automatically assign the appropriate rating (G/PG/M). I’m fairly sure you’ll find that being ‘rejected’ from the system simply means you need to be properly assessed because they think you might end up in a legally restricted category. I’d expect it’s the best they can do right now, because having an industry group self-rate into legally restricted ratings categories in Australia isn’t something the classification legislation allows for, and it’ll require a change to the laws to allow. That change because it affects classification, has to be ratified by all the states – which was the whole issue with the R18+ change. One conservative Attorney General in South Australia stymied progress on it for years.
Industry self-rating like IARC should eventually make the classification board in Australia redundant, I hope. It’s already looking much better than the existing process, because it’s free. Actually getting rated through the Australian ratings board costs several thousand dollars, which is more than most small-scale developers would ever hope to make in the AU market.
However, it is censorship though and it sucks. But Australia has always had censorship and it used to be far worse, so there’s progress being made overall.
Australia has traditionally had a very different attitude to making materials available when compared to the US. It is more paternalistic – much more inclined to limit what people can watch . Generally, that hasn’t been a bad thing. There’s the occasional movie or other artistic work that garners some controversy when it is refused classification, but on the whole it is accepted as part of Australia’s culture.
Games have been in a difficult position. Until recently games were viewed as being for children, and therefore the possibility of adult games wasn’t considered. Adult games were banned automatically. With the new classification – which took years of fighting to have accepted by the Government – we can finally get games aimed at older audiences. This is good. But it wasn’t expected that this would then allow anything through, so it is no surprise that games are still being refused classification.
In all honesty, it doesn’t bother me that games are still refused classification, but I’d like to see whether or not those games warrant this response. The measures have traditionally been far more conservative than my tastes, but this comes down to a cultural difference between Australia and other countries, and in this case it is something I’m comfortable with.
I just want to know what you get in the full version of Smoke a Bong that is held out of the free version.
I want to know who runs ads on the free version.
Some of these are baffling. Like “Mad Cow !!” by Cow House Studios. Judging from the Google Play page (which I won’t link, because Akismet would probably eat the comment), it’s just an cartoony, amateurish endless runner. Did someone screw up filling in the form?