Does Australia Need An R Rating For Games?
Just spotted that Aussie newspaper The Age has a video game specific blog, Screen Play, and it has a number of interesting Australian-related game posts on it, which seem to get pretty fierce commentary from the blog’s readers. In particular, there’s a post about Australia’s lack of a R rating for games, which notes: “The games industry has been actively lobbying State and Federal Governments for the introduction of an R18+ game classification for several years, but new statistics show the majority of Australians believe classification is irrelevant.” It continues: “The Interactive Australia 2007 report found 62 per cent of respondents in game-playing households said game ratings have no influence on their decision to purchase or hire a game, and a further 16 per cent said it only had “a little” influence.” Well, from a U.S. and ESRB perspective, those stats probably sound… bad, if you think Aussie consumers are anything like American ones with regard to taking notice of ratings. [He
