The ESRB has a fairly detailed and complex system that determines what games are marked kid-safe and which are considered appropriate for adults’ eyes only. All major publishers participate in the voluntary rating system, and it is instrumental in physical, retail game sales in stores like GameStop and Walmart.
Digital Extremes hasn’t had much luck with our Classification Board. The developer’s Dark Sector had to have dismemberment and decapitation removed before it could be sold here. Now, there are two entries for The Darkness II in the classification database. Does that mean we’re getting a censored version of it too?
There was concern that South Korea’s rating board was throwing a monkey wrench in Diablo III‘s certification. If the game went unrated, then Blizzard’s planned worldwide release would go right out the window.
We often complain about the decisions that The Classification Board makes, but what would happen if some of that power was given to the industry itself? Would a self-regulating industry, or one that co-regulates with The Classification Board, work? This was one of the questions raised at yesterday’s GAME conference at Macquarie University.
House of the Dead: Overkill Extended Cut has received a rating of MA15+ after SEGA appealed its original rating of Refused Classification (RC), which effectively meant the game had been banned.
A couple of weeks back we were shocked to hear that the Issues Paper for the Australian Law Reform Commission had only received 80 submissions. We’ve now seen a large influx of submissions, but we just thought we’d drop a quick post to let you guys know that today is the last day for submissions.
Early this morning the United States Supreme Court finally judged that Video Games were a form of speech, therefore deserving of protection under the First Amendment. In Australia, video games, or any form of media for that matter, are not granted the same rights. Adam Ruch, as an American living in Australia, can’t understand why and, in this compelling piece, discusses the issues with censorship in this country.
