This is a major stand off in Australia, especially about the gaming censorship being as it is and how games become blocked from being allowed to be sold within the country, making companies actually lose revenue because of it.
In one of the latest news articles, the Office of Film and Literature has been hacked with messages being changed to reflect the mood of the hackers as a parody of the site and the conditions many gamers are feeling in regards to how the country is positioned in the developed world.
Links
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/032609-oflc-web-site.html
http://au.gamespot.com/news/6206902.html?tag=latestheadlines;title;6
This is a gravely contentious topic and has really been raging on for a long while now and times do change, but sometimes, the things may do require filtering to provide as a warning block rather than as a military blockade.
There are so many things in the world which has been changed or modified to suit societal realms of safety living safety standards. Some of them rightly justified some, over the top. The R rating is one of those which is due for a review and be up for consideration greatly due to the aging population of gamers and the wider spread of audiences now.
At any given time, I can bring up a totally innocent game that's rated as a safe game and then replace the safe intention with a really wrong view.
I know! Space Invaders! You are to shoot down aliens with that weird weapon to stop an alien invasion. Yep, there's honestly nothing wrong with the view of using strange objects, either being flung or shoot towards things which you have no idea about or what they are due to the conceptualisation of it being bad. Wait... isn't that the same thing that's being done by China about Capitalisation? Actually... that isn't about right... Oh! I know.... Germany... and I'll just stop it right there.
In honour of games as a legit entertainment medium and getting my point through, I'll just get on with it.
The rule about no R rated game was mainly cause by Mortal Kombat since it had an extreme amount of blood and gore along with the player models based of real images of people, but greatly pixelatted and I can understand why right now, but back then, it hasn't an issue.
Back when games didn't have ratings, stores even refused to stock games. It did happen in the acknowledgement of looking after their customers. What's to stop shops from doing the same now? Even there are some games which do have an adult rating, mainly in USA, which does refuse to stock a certain title due to content. It is all apart of natural Selection, Survival of the Fittest.
Some games are really great and some games are just too ill-conceived to be given the right to exist.
Businesses exist for a reason. To make money and lots of it! If a game is too risky, they would be afraid of their image being tainted and will resorting to not selling it at all.
I know I have written a blog about the inverse, people who actually buys them... but the main cover topic was, there are too many stupid people in the world complaining for the wrong reasons when it is their fault to start off with.
If you want to stop games from falling into the wrong hands; use a plain DVD case, put an R rating game warning on it and write the game's name on it. Before annoying the purchase of title, the sales assistant or cashier must check ID of proof of age (same with MA15+ game titles you non-checking idiots) and provide verbal warning about the game's contents.
If the people still complaining after being given the warning, then I'm afraid that they really should get their brains checked and learn to accept their mistakes and take it off of whoever they gave the game to and play it themselves... The games do exist and sell for a reason...
Australia is due for a revamp in the game rules and require a full review and update just like how the Exorcist has been rated from an adult rating to a Mature rating. We don't want to become like China do we?
People always complain. Most of the time, for the wrong reasons!