Should the Australian National Classification Scheme include an R18+ classification category for computer games?
No. SSAA National believes that the introduction of an R18+ computer games category will hinder positive social interaction and adversely affect community safety. Baroness Susan Greenfield, a professor at Lincoln College, Oxford and a recent Thinker in Residence of the South Australian Government, said that more and more gamers are spending up to six hours a day playing video games, meaning they have “less time to live in three dimensions, to learn how to talk to other people by judging their voice and their body language and by their pheromones and thinking in real time about how your empathising or otherwise with them.”1 By allowing this classification category, the Australian Government will be simplifying and legalising the way in which gamers obtain material that the government has currently labelled too violent and offensive. Regarding games that are currently prohibited in Australia, a representative for the then-Minister for Home Affairs Bob Debus said that ‘gamers’ “can get th
