News just in – the latest incarnation of Silent Hill has been refused classification in Australia. That makes the game illegal to sell to Australians of any age, because it fails to meet the restrictions applied to an MA (Restricted to Mature Audiences 15+) rating; Australia has no R classification for games. There have been four games banned this year, with Dark Sector, Shellshock 2: Blood Trails and Fallout 3 rounding out the other four.

As a thirty-year-old Australian male that enjoys playing video games of just about every shape and form, I am highly offended by the decision of my government. By refusing to create an R classification they are saying one of three things; 1) that they do not accept that computer games are played by people over the age of 15; 2) that adult players of computer games are not of sufficient mental or psychological competence to distinguish fiction from reality and thus cannot be allowed to access material that they deem objectionable; or 3) that restricted video games are more likely to be played by people under the age of 18 than videos that receive an R classification for violence or sexual content.

Personally, I believe that the reasons are a combination of the above. The lack of an R classification is ludicrous given that the average gamer is aged 28. There is an entire generation of adult gamers that grew up on the PC, NES and Sega Master System – some of us even got are start on the Atari. The fact is we are still having our lives dictated to us by our parents’ generation; baby boomers rule our aging population and that is how things will remain for some time to come. In ten years or so, they will be replaced by people of our generation – but until then all we can do fight the good fight and hope for the best and hope that our current leaders are not replaced by a fresh crop of ignorant zealots. [News.com.au]

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