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Before reading the main section of this article I suggest people watch this entertaining and well made video that sums up essentially whats been going on here in Australia in relation to games ratings.
If however you already read my prevous article which is more or less the same thing or are well informed on the issue of games ratings in Australia then please continue.
In March this year our next elections are being held and for adult gamers across Australia something amazing is building momentum; that something could at last be our freedom from a small minded idiot who wishes to deny us our rights and keep our games rating system broken and out of tune with the rest of the developed world.
Michael Atkinson has been a politician for twenty years, a sizable chunk of time in which video games have grown from a small niche audience nerd hobby to a full on widely accepted part of every day life for many people spanning all ages. When he began his political career games were still very simple 2D graphics toys made for children and in his imaginary world they still should be.
Thankfully his reign of stupidity may at last be coming to an end.
The reason we aussie gamers are so hopeful of things finally being made right is we have a political party that began representing us around the time of Left4Dead2’s banning and subsequent extreme censorship that last month became officially recognized and registered.
Gamers4Croydon is running against Michael Atkinson in March for the seat of Croydon in South Australia, the current position he holds and uses to regulate the games ratings system here in Australia. While their is no guarantee that he will lose his position, their is enough confidence built up from a number of sources that shows the wind is definitely blowing in the direction of our favor.
For starters a total of 6239 forms have been submitted by the Australian public for the R 18+ related consultation paper that was made available in December last year. The form accompanied the paper with a few questions about the lack of the rating and allows people in Australia up until the 28th of February to submit whether they are supportive or not of its introduction.
So far a total of 1084 forms have been processed and less than 1% have been apposed to the rating according to Gamespot AU.
EBGames Australia has also been doing their own in-store survey on the rating. The results aren’t in until the end of the month but the EBGames website last displayed an 84% pro 18+ result from the poll they placed on their front page. No doubt the in-store result will also be highly supportive of the rating.
Their has been alot of TV and Radio coverage on the issue but it seems its pretty difficult to track down most of it online so here’s the one I could find. Atkinson of course makes an appearance for the against side of the argument.
The immense level of coverage combined with the fact we actually have our own very confident and professional political group and pretty much everyone who cares and isn’t a total idiot supporting us makes it hard to not see a bright future for Australian gamers. The elections are being held on the 20th of March and we should see the results not long after.
If all goes well then this will be the single greatest month in the history of my gaming life. Not only will I get to play three awesome sequels to three games I really liked but I will possibly see the end of game banning, game editing and selling of adult games to children in my country.