Despite what some may say, Australia's ratings system is one of the harshest in the world, writes Patrick Vuleta.
By Patrick Vuleta on November 14, 2013 at 2:33 pm
John Rau, the South Australian Attorney-General, just called for a review of the several games rated MA15+. Murder simulators such as Splinter Cell Blacklist, Killer is Dead, and The Walking Dead. Apparently these games had been released as 18+ in some countries, but only MA15+ here. Some were not happy about this lack of moral standards.
Earlier this year, Mr Rau also claimed this discrepancy meant games were not receiving rigorous attention at the review stage. However, Australia’s classification system is different from that of other countries, so perhaps we should make our own decisions. We need to develop our own Australian standard of what is fair game.
Our system is mandatory, and leads to bans
The first major difference in our classification system is that it is mandatory. Games must have the approval of the Classification Board to be sold. In contrast, both America’s ESRB, and Europe’s PEGI ratings are entirely voluntary.
Games can never actually be banned under ESRB and PEGI. Some countries, like Britain, do have additional review laws which allow bannings. But this is rarely done. Britain has never permanently banned a game, only temporarily shelved a few until they could be edited.
Therefore, despite the claim that our laws are less enforced than those overseas, there is rather a lot more rigorous enforcement in Australia. We can further explain why the ESRB and PEGI systems seem more rigorous in their application of 18+ ratings by looking at them individually.
We have MA15+, ESRB does not
We differ from America’s ESRB in that we allow strong violence into the MA15+ age range, while ESRB jumps right from “teen” to an almost-legal 17+. Strong violence is not allowed under teen, and if a game is not suitable for 13 year olds, it goes into the 17+ category, a year away from being a fully-fledged adult.
This was the case with most of the games on the list to be reviewed. Instead of going into America’s 18+ category, Splinter Cell Blacklist was rated at 17+, because there wasn’t anything lower. Maybe if they had an ESRB 15+ it would have been 15+. It’s not correct to say the game was rated at 18+.
PEGI gives 18 to everything
That’s all well and good for the 90% of the gaming market that is America, but why did these games still receive PEGI 18 ratings? That’s probably what Mr Rau and his constituents are more concerned about, especially since PEGI 16 is roughly parallel to MA15+.
In practice, PEGI leans towards being ultra-conservative with its ratings. While PEGI 16 allows for strong violence, most of the time a game is given a PEGI 18 rating when it could be quite lower.
An example is the original Mass Effect. Back before Kelly, Britain had its own classification system, but still used PEGI on top. The British Board of Film Classification gave Mass Effect a rating of 12 — so theoretically you could show Liara’s sex scene to your pre-teen cousin. However, PEGI rated it as 18, creating a rather confusing situation where a game was given ratings of both 12 and 18 on the same box.
This came about because PEGI’s answer to the flood of games it has to review is not to actually play the game, but to assign ratings based on a checklist of factors the publisher provides. In Mass Effect’s case, the possible alien sex scene the publisher highlighted meant PEGI automatically gave it a rating of 18, even though it was really quite tame and a few mere seconds in a 50 hour+ game. They probably didn’t even spend all that much time looking at the game. If Mr Rau wants a more rigorous review standard for games, he’d probably do better than make PEGI the example.
We need our own decisions
To be fair on PEGI, being conservative makes sense given it’s meant to cater to the entire European Union—from the frisky Swedes, to the frigid Icelanders. With no attempt to make culturally-appropriate decisions they err on the side of caution.
This is yet another reason why we can’t simply imitate the ERSB or PEGI systems. ESRB is the product of an American, industry-focused culture we do not have. PEGI is the bureaucratic product of no culture at all. I doubt Mr Rau would be happy with either.
Unfortunately, the Australian cultural sensitivity that our classification system is meant to provide will take time to work its way into the system. R18+ is new, and lacks significant precedent for the classifications. Even the category description in the legislation itself is kind of weak — whatever’s not suitable for teenagers just shove in here. There can be no shortcutting this process — it will simply take a few years of classification board decisions. Trying to imitate ESRB or PEGI will not accomplish anything.