MA15+ Is the New R18+

Recent classification decisions shine a spotlight on how broken the system is.

By John Gillooly on 10 March, 2009

One of the most frustrating things about the current state of games classification in Australia is the sheer inconsistency that it breeds. The MA15+ rating has become a de facto R18+ rating, without the pesky need to police the sale of video games to minors. It is a fact brought home to me while reading the Classification Review Board’s report into F.E.A.R. 2, and reinforced by the recent MA15+ given to the game Velvet Assassin by the Classification Board.

Remember that we are in a country that banned Mark Ecko’s Getting Up because the Gold Coast Council worried it would teach kiddies how to write rude words on walls. For me, the treatment of this game is still the shining example of everything that is wrong with the system, driven by pure politics and powerful contacts rather than any obvious harm that can be done to consumers. Thankfully, it is an isolated case. But the fact that this game, which revolves around the use of graffiti as a means of non-violent protest against an oppressive future government, is still banned while we watch others get deftly fit into the ‘upper end of an MA15+ rating’ is just plain odd.

For example, in the Review Board’s report about F.E.A.R. 2, one of the justifications for the violence used in the game is that “… the violence in this game primarily occurs in a military or quasi-military context rather than a civilian context, with the enemies portrayed as enemy soldiers or mutants bent on conquering the world. The context is very much the ‘good saving the world’.”

In-game violence was the key issue in getting the game refused classification. The report states “The Review Board considered that the impact of these violent elements could be accommodated at the upper limit of the MA 15+ classification, as such impact was justified by context and mitigated by a number of factors”.

Without the possibility of an R18+ rating, it seems that these kind of decisions come down to working out ways to justify contentious issues. This defeats the point of classifying in the first place. Another statement that seems incredibly out of place in the F.E.A.R. 2 review is “the game falls clearly into the horror genre, in which large amounts of blood and gore are common and, to a certain extent, likely to be expected by the likely audience for the game”.

Isn’t this why splatter films inevitably end up with an R18+ rating? The horror genre was the driving force behind the whole ‘banned in Queensland’ marketing in the glory days of VHS, and essentially dismissing this in games because it is expected is slightly exasperating.

And what is with stuff like “This scene, however, is mitigated by the non-interactive mode in which it is carried out – the player has no control over the beheading but rather it occurs as an animated ‘cut scene’”. Aren’t games supposed to be classified on the same criteria as movies? Does anyone else see the irony in jumping through hoops to justify the interactive violence, yet being able to dismiss other scenes because the player doesn’t perpetrate the gore?

Then we have Velvet Assassin, classified MA15+ last week in contentious circumstances. This was a surprising turn of events, largely because of the extensive use of morphine as a power up within the game. In fact, if you watch the short demo video below, the developers actually state that killing enemies is the key to accessing more morphine.

It sounds kinda bizarre on its own, but the kicker is that the inclusion of proscribed drugs like morphine in Fallout 3 led to that game being refused classification. This, despite that the use of scavenged morphine to tend injuries seems like a fairly reasonable scenario in a post-apocalyptic world where pharmacies are now full of crazed mutants.

Bethesda took it on the chin, and renamed the drugs to more fantastical names, effectively sidelining the issue altogether and allowing the game to be reclassified MA15+. It was one of the more understandable classification decisions in recent times, and a problem easily fixed.

However, to follow this up a few months later with an MA15+ for a game that uses morphine as a central part of the game, so as to imbue the protagonist with superhuman powers no less, is completely nonsensical. It isn’t that I enjoy seeing games slapped with a Refused Classification, but some kind of consistency would be awesome.

As we slowly trundle towards the promised ratings discussion paper, these wildly varying decisions just get more and more perplexing. We need an R18+ rating for games if only to stop the seemingly arbitrary nature of whether or not a concept is taboo. When a publisher is surprised that a game has passed through unscathed, then it is clear that something needs fixing.

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