Haunted said:
So basically, it's the same old shit. Sounds like Germany prior to 2003 -what a terribly shitty and outdated stance to have.
If there's concern about proper policing of the rating system, that's the area that should be improved, circumventing this by not allowing the content in the first place is a cheap cop-out and not a viable long-term solution.
It's made worse by the huge inconsistencies between ratings and the way the board manages its decision making. Sometimes bans and censorships can be avoided by simply working the submission document properly. Case in point, Left 4 Dead 2, which was really only censored (heavily, mind you) because Valve, EA, or whoever wrote the submission documented decided to refer to the infected as 'infected humans' or whatever, and not 'monsters'.
Inconsistencies are the fact there are many games that, under a full rating scale, would be rated R18+. Instead they are given an MA15+ rating and allowed in. There's a lot of games that, based on the current ruling, should be RC'd and banned but are not, and there are a lot of RC'd games that are less severe yet banned.
EveryonePlays aims to balance out the rating system to include R18+, which allows high content games to be given the rating they deserve, while still allowing them in the country, and thus allowing adults to have the freedom to chose the games they wish to play.
A lot of the lobbies seem to think we're all about getting an R18+ rating to allow a flood of RapeLays or whatever into the country, when it's really the other way around. It's extremely frustrating for our game and film rating system to be identical, with the exception that the game rating, for no reason, cuts off at MA15+ as opposed to R18+.
bumpkin said:
Holy shit... Wow. It's a video game... A VIDEO GAME. I don't live in Australia nor have I ever been, but good god, this is some serious over-reaching. There are movies with content far worse than what's in the new MK; are those banned and seized by customs, too?
Yes. As I said in my posts above, all banned material opened at customs, regardless of whether it is a movie or game, will be seized. It's been this way forever, and the searching is random.