By Shaun Inguanzo
AN R18+ video games classification won’t guarantee violent or drug-referenced games safe passage onto Australian shelves, the Federal Government has revealed.
Gamers have been calling for an R18+ classification after national censor, the Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC), banned the post-apocalyptic set Fallout 3 from being imported, sold or advertised in Australia as it contained ‘incentives and rewards (to gamers) related to drug use’ earlier this year.
The game’s protagonist administers morphine to himself to ease the pain that nuclear fallout causes as he traverses the postapocalyptic landscape.
But Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus, whose portfolio includes classification policy, last week revealed that an R18+ classification was no guarantee to save games such as Fallout 3 from being banned.
“In the board’s view, the game warrants an RC classification in accordance with item 1(a) of the computer games table of the National Classification Code,” Mr Debus said.
“As a general rule, material that contains drug-use related to incentives will be refused classification,” he said.
Mr Debus said the availability of an R18+ classification would not necessarily have resulted in a different decision by the Classification Board.
Since July’s classification ‘fallout’ at the OFLC, the game’s developer Bethesda has modified the Australian version to remove animations showing drug use, pleasing the OFLC and resulting in it classifying the game as MA15+ on 7 August.
Meanwhile, Mr Debus said a review on the R18+ classification for games was underway with a review paper to be released for public consultation ‘once Censorship Ministers agreed to it’.
Mr Debus said policy change would require a unanimous agreement from all state, territory and federal censorship ministers.
For gamers wandering whether or not they can import the game, Mr Debus said games classified RC ‘can not be legally imported, sold or advertised in Australia’.
