From My Cold, Dead Hands!

Cranky old man Atkinson is holding the R18+ discussion paper hostage until he gets his changes.

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By John Gillooly on 30 January, 2009

Australia’s impending discussion paper on games classification is apparently being held up by everyone’s favorite prude. As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson is now preventing the release of the promised discussion paper until he gets his way with changes.

This comes on the heels of a fascinating interview via email between Michael Atkinson and GameSpot AU. While he ignores the questions by and large, he goes to great length to explain his position, which, depressingly, seems to match up in a lot of ways with arguments for an R18+ rating. Of major concern is that his position comes down to the following statement:

“The interactive nature of electronic games means that they have a much greater influence than viewing a movie does. People are participating and ‘acting-out’ violence and criminal behaviour when they are playing a video game. They are essentially rehearsing harmful behaviour. Children and vulnerable adults (such as those with a mental illness) can be harmed by playing video games with violence, sex, and criminal activity.”

Apart from the ignorance of psychological work on the matter, this is the whole reason why we need an R18+ rating. It is a fine line between defining what is harmful to children yet, on the other hand, adopting a vaguely fascist approach to deciding what law-abiding adults can and can’t see. What really angers this particular writer is the following nugget of scary, old man talk:

“In cinemas, the age of moviegoers can be regulated, and at the video store people must provide ID to hire R18+ videos. Once electronic games are in the home, access to them cannot be policed and the games are easily accessible to children. These days, older children (18-30) are often living in the family home with younger children (under 18). This means games belonging to older children or parents can easily make their way into the hands of those under 18.”

Wake up, dude. A game getting banned just means kids will learn how to pirate it from the intertubes. Some smart cookie at school will get their hands on it, spread it among friends, and generally make a mockery, not only of classification, but any sense of respect for intellectual property. These kids may well do this whether a game is R18+ rated or not – but it is a separate issue.

Attaching an R18+ rating onto a game puts an onus upon parental responsibility. It also makes things easier from a parental perspective. It means granny isn’t accidentally going to buy the latest survival horror title for a five-year-old’s birthday, and it means that point-of-sale operates just like the R18+ movies in his video store example. What, really, is the difference between a DVD of SAW 83 and a copy of an R18+ rated game? They both have to be physically purchased and they are both only playable by the person with the copy in hand. Keeping R18+ rated games out of children’s hands isn’t that difficult.

One suspects that a lot of Atkinson’s worries come from fear of the youth. The tired old arguments really do smack of a general ignorance of video games, and the restrictions mean that he doesn’t actually have to make an effort to understand younger generations. Later in the GameSpot interview he indicates that there are many attorneys-general that agree with his position. What he doesn’t seem to twig to is none of those guys are stupid enough to say so publicly.

What really shits me about the entire situation is that this is supposed to be someone representing the fair state of South Australia. Call me naive, but that means his personal opinions shouldn’t matter – he should be doing what is best for his constituents. His rolling series of fuck-yous to game-playing adults is a really wonderful way of doing that. Now he is even dragging his feet on the discussion paper that actually does put power into the hands of the people.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the personal opinions of politicians didn’t always override the people they are supposed to represent? We don’t practice censorship in Australia, we classify media based upon the societal standards. What’s happening in games is society in general is being ignored in favour of the opinion of the cranky old, South Australian hater lobby.

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