Banned: the absurdity of Australia's game rating regime

Ask an average Australian about censorship and chances are they'll tell you it's a bad thing.

And yet when it comes to video games, we have one of the toughest regimes in the world in terms of dictating exactly what is available to our adult population. On one hand Australia is an oasis of game development, with a thriving, highly skilled industry generating hundreds of millions of dollars of valuable export revenue. On the other hand Australia's lack of an R18+ classification means that some of the world's most important video games are effectively banned from appearing down under at all.

This unfortunate paradox is centred on the horrifically outdated view that games are just for kids. The reality is that video games are an evolving entertainment medium of truly bewildering variety, that covers at least as many ages and tastes as traditional entertainment like movies, books and television. It is a great shame that some among our lawmakers have such a narrow view of the work carried out by the 2000 people employed in and around the video game industry in Australia.

The most recent game to be refused classification in Australia illustrates just how absurd the situation has become. Fallout 3 is a highly anticipated instalment in a series that began 10 years ago. Many adult gamers were eagerly awaiting the title's release, only to be thwarted by our archaic classification system. The farcical discussion of this issue on ABC television's recent Q&A program shows how little effort some policy makers have made to understand the current system, let alone get across the arguments for reform.