The topic for my oral is whether or not Australia should introduce an r18 rating for games. I think that Australia needs an r18 rating for its games. If we don’t have an r18 rating, more games are forced to show graphic content at an MA rating, which means that a younger audience is being subjected to graphic and violent games. If the games are rejected because of their violent nature, the older people who want that game will not be happy that they need to travel countries in order to play it.

No one is happy without the R18 rating, with parents complaining that their child picked up something bad as the result of playing a poorly classified game and late teens and adults complaining they don’t get their game which they have been waiting a year for. With all these complaints you would think they would just bring the rating to Australia, wouldn’t you?  No, they don’t, even after all the reasons why the rating should be here in Australia they put the idea in the “maybe pile”.

Not only is the average gamer over the age of 18, the
Board that classifies movies is not the same as the board that classifies games, what does that mean? It means that R18 rated movies show what MA rated or sometimes even M rated games show. With the absence of an R rating for games the younger generation of people who have Xbox’s or PlayStations have access to a lot more high gore and violent material. In the past not having an R rating wasn’t that big of a deal, but with the rapid growth in technology in the past decade more and more families with young children gain access to this type of games.
With the average age of gamers over the age of 18 and the board of game classification worried only about the children that play games, lots of people are getting angry. How stupid must the board of classification be to think they are protecting younger people by giving them more violent material, but rejecting the games the adults want? Not only do they think they are protecting the younger generation, but they think that not having and R18 rating will prevent aggressive behaviour as a result of video games. Well they may stop the younger generation from having a bad behaviour as a result of video games, but the older generation is getting aggressive towards the lack of thought put into the rating of video games.

Another main reason people want an R rating in Australia is that the people who play games to admire their creativity, as a person would admire art or a movie, feel as though the game is being supressed. All the hard work and effort put into the game is being rejected and thrown aside like rubbish. Isn’t one of the main ideas behind being creative expressing yourself? People don’t think it’s fair if their form of expression is being completely ignored and disregarded. The board of classification in regards to games is ignoring a big fact in favour of introducing an R rating. If you look at art, there is nudity and violence in many different painting and sculptures, but a visit to the museum is a good thing for children, but the same thing in games is just not aloud.

The way in which people look at games needs to change, it is just another way to relax and have some fun, people need to stop being so