I… This country confuses me! (IFHTC! Part 3)

I’ve had two blog entries before this where I’ve ranted about how stupid my country, Australia, can be when it comes to rating video game content. It all stems from the fact that while we have an R18+ rating for movies, the government hasn’t allowed the use of that rating for video games… and to make it worse, there are certain individuals in the government who are extremely adamant that there should NEVER be an R18+ rating for video games.

Quite a few games were effected by the lack of an R18+ rating down here in 2008, and to top it off, the reasoning for some of these games being banned from being sold in Australia are downright confusing… especially when some of these games that were originally refused classification have now been rated MA15+ with little to no change at all.

I recently discovered that both Silent Hill Homecoming and F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin are being released down here in Australia despite failing to receive classifications last year… No cuts have been made to F.E.A.R 2 and it has gone through without a scratch (though a little delayed) with an MA15+ rating. Silent Hill Homecoming, on the other hand, has been edited in an interesting way. From what I’ve heard, the only changes that were made to the game involve some of its cutscenes which have slightly different camera angles and a few effect changes to try to tone down the impact of the violence being shown on-screen. I find it interesting that none of the gameplay elements for Homecoming have been changed. From what I’ve observed, it’s the interactive elements that is the issue for people who are against violence in video games.

Some of what is described to be too graphic in Silent Hill Homecoming also appears in many other games which don’t seem to have a problem being classified and are listed as MA15+ down here. For example, Dead Space which also features graphic content along the lines of “high-impact violence, copious blood spray, decapitations, partial corpse dismemberment, and depictions of torture” has no problems. And for those who are wondering about Resident Evil 5, worry no more… the OFLC finds it to be perfectly acceptable like they did with Resident Evil 4…

The small changes made in Silent Hill Homecoming also remind me of the hilariously funny “edited” version of Grand Theft Auto IV that Australia has. The only difference between the Australian version and versions from most other countries is that you can’t turn the camera while Nico is doing his thing with a prostitute of his choosing while in his (someone else’s) car… Oh, you can still pick up a prostitute and you can still kill them afterward to get your money back, but nope, you can’t try to move the camera around to try to find that small field of view where you can just about see Nico and his lady of the night still fully clothed and bouncing up and down like no tomorrow… yeah, I think I’ve made my point… it’s stupid and confusing.

But while we’re at it, let’s not forget Fallout 3, the game that was banned not because of its violent content, but because of the use of a real world drug, morphine. As we all know now, the name of the drug was changed for all versions of the game around the world and has been released complete and uncut in Australia… All that commotion because of morphine… a drug referred to and shown to be abused in a number of movies and TV shows…

I don’t know, I can’t seem to understand the reasoning behind why some games are refused classification and other games aren’t… or why some games that are originally refused have somehow made it to Australia with no cuts despite the OFLC (Office of Film and Literature Classification) being adamant that the content is far too graphic for us to handle. Is it about context? If you’re a “good guy” in the game, are you allowed to perform graphically violent acts that a game starring a “bad guy” can’t? What makes drilling holes into one kind of monster wrong while using a chainsaw to saw another kind of monster in half with a glorious spray of blood all over the screen okay?

What is the use of refusing to allow video games to have an R18+ rating? To me it seems so simple as to why we SHOULD have it. Our rating system is to inform and educate those who buy those forms of media about the content of the media they are buying. The MA15+ and R18+ ratings are also used to restrict minors from being able to buy games with such content in them… and most importantly, having the R18+ rating will allow games like Silent Hill Homecoming and F.E.A.R 2 to be released as R18+ games and distinguish them as something more than just MA15+ games which they are right now.