Report: 98 percent of Australians in support of R18+ rating

by Griffin McElroy on May 9th 2010 9:00PM

Australia's Federal Home Affairs group recently published a poll which may turn the heads on a few of the nation's governmental bodies. Out of the survey's 59,678 participants, 98.2 percent said they would support the oft-proposed addition of an R18+ rating for video games in the region.

Of course, more than half of the participants in said poll were turned on to it by an in-store promotion at select Australian EB Games. A somewhat more balanced selection of special interest groups were also allowed to respond to the survey, and only 53 percent showed support for the mature rating. By our amateur calculations, the actual percentage of Australian citizens who support the rating falls somewhere between the two. How about 86.3 percent? It's a totally made-up number, but ... it just seems right, doesn't it?

Source

Tags: australia, censorship, mature-games, oflc, poll, r18, rating, survey

Reader Comments (50)

More importantly why do the 1.8% who said no not support R18+ ?

Only the Kangaroos opposed this rating.

@ Pure Black World Tendency

this is exactly right. Kangaroos only live about 15 years if they are lucky

maybe that 1.8% was your mum? ... and my mum too, knowing her ... come to think of it, why don't governments ever blame mums for people's violent behavior? They are more at fault than some stupid video game, them and fathers, right?

I would love an 18+ rating in the US and ban all kids from playing them... xbl would be so awesome...

wow dood, didn't wait to long after mothers day to start beating on them :P

Man, I can almost see the mature version of "Knifey/Spoony" around the bend.

Come on, Australia, do the right thing for the good of the children.

So 98% of respondents in a completely unrepresentative, unscientific poll said they support the 18+ rating. How useful.

- Scott

there is no such thing as a scientific poll, the responses are all based on opinion.

Brian, I think you don't understand what "scientific polling" means. If a poll or survey isn't conducted on a representative cross-section of the population, or the pool of respondents aren't chosen in a genuinely random fashion, or the sample size isn't large enough, it is unscientific.

This isn't a scientific poll. According to the summary, roughly half of the respondents were EB customers, meaning they were gamers. It's like conducting a poll about whether the government should provide more social welfare, and having half of the respondents polled be homeless people.

- Scott

Also, I love the fact that my initial post got voted down. "How dare he point out that the data gleaned from this poll is unscientific! That doesn't comport with what I want reality to be!"

Incredible.

- Scott

Scott, while I appreciate the gesture of posting your name so nobody gets confused that Scotto doesn't actually stand for Scott I have now copyrighted this. Any further use of this will be classified as infringement and may be subject to law.

Regards

- Scott ©

So my point of view is being voted down because I have the audacity to have an acquired habit of signing my posts with my first name, from years and years of using Usenet newsgroups? This place just gets more and more mature by the minute.

Your moms getting more and more mature by the minute

Then that's a bullshit survey. I mean, if it helps the cause, great. Australia should have an R18 rating. But seriously, you couldn't get 98% of the people anywhere to agree that the sky is blue.

"Of course, more than half of the participants in said poll were turned on to it by an in-store promotion at select Australian EB Games."

Because it would be a horrible idea to let the people who actually play games decide what ratings there should be for games. They're much better off letting crabby ultra-conservatives who have never held a controller in their lives decide.

btw, I understand that the bias in selection invalidates the survey. I was just trying to make a point.

Yeah, Neocons own all the media here except the internet, and Conroy wants to control that too.

That's the main pitfall of democracy I suppose: everyone's vote is equal, and the majority can control people's lives. Gay marriage/adoption is the best example; why should people, (incidentally the same people that control the media) that have nothing to do with the gay community get as much as a say than the people that the issue actually affects?

I agree that people that are actually knowledgable on the subject of games should be in control.

Let them have mature games dammit!,prohibiting an entertainment media that hurts no one to a person over 18 is just stupid.

Nothing has been prohibited. We get every single R18+ rated game from the UK let into the country at MA15+. If they are censored, its a tiny, insignificant censorship that noone would ever notice. The only exception is L4D2.

We DO get ALL the mature content, the problem is 15 year olds playing games meant for 18 year olds.

It's even funnier when I import games from the UK that clearly have an R18+ rating.

The same game here has an MA 15+ rating. Happens a lot and it's quite ridiculous to be honest. But it sure beats having to play games that have been censored.

But does this mean that their R18+ bill will pass, or will the new Tech Czar shit on everyone's day, too?

It wasn't passed at the SCAG meeting 3 days ago due to the fact 1 attorney general couldn't attend due to a budgetary portfolio. Unless they can make the decision outside that meeting, we'll have to wait for the next meeting. Not sure when that is.

At EB Games a large number of participants said that the lack of an R18 game rating insults their intelligence and that they are smart enough to not be negatively influenced. However they then proceeded to purchase the paperback strategy guide and DVD insurance that was offered to them.

Yeah we will probably get the R18+ bill passed and then the goverment will turn on the Australia wide internet filter and block all of us front the dangerous world wide web. Our goverment is a complete joke at the moment.

Michael Atkinson is not an ultra-conservative. He is a member of the Labour Party and a left-winger. Besides he as well as many other Australians aren't as worried about children playing violent games as we are about video games inspiring homocdal killers to slaughter people. So far Australia hasn't had many Columbine-esqe incidents, but the rate could rise if we do not control some of the content coming from overseas. Its not like it is impossible to obtain titles another way.

I'm sorry doesn't Aus have it's own movie category (can't remember the name) where the movie is basically nothing but blood, tits, and murder? Like, they're well known for it too?

what have you been smoking

DA time!

Now here's a question, how exactly is the opinion poll biased?

At nearly 60k people voted, the majority of which are obviously gamers voting on an obviously gamer related poll. This doesn't have anything to do with people that don't buy videogames so their opinion would the one that would be skewed and biased since they would mostly not understand the full details of what the rating would ensue.

Besides, if the naysayers are voting against a rating for games, why aren't they voting against a rating for movies?

Video-games are interactive. Films aren't. The former are far liklier to inspire violence in unstable individuals than movies.

Based on...what? Studies conducted by special interest groups that came to the paid-for conclusion that games cause more violent behavior in children than movies?

Maybe it's unfair to dump on you, but people like to make statements like this without anything to back them up. A history book covering WWII will show you that films are perfectly capable of inspiring children to commit specific acts of barbarism against specific people. The effects of propaganda films are real and documented. To claim that they aren't as bad as video games is ludicrous when there isn't a scrap of evidence to back that up.

Why am I so crabby today you ask? Finals week.

You can stab people with forks, let's ban those. Seriously, the argument doesn't matter. You don't ban something because it may or may not negatively affect 1 out of millions.

You're right. There aren't any studies to show that movies are less likely to influence violence in some people. I merely stated that interactive mediums have a better chance to inspire violence than movies which are non-interactive mediums.
I understand your mood though, I'm in finals too.

If youths are unstable enough to be influenced by a violent videogame, then its just a matter of time before any violent media influences them. The fact is, Australia has the most lenient game rating system in the world, with every R18+ rated UK game hitting our stored at MA15+. The R18+ rating will serve to make those violent games less accessible to youths, and therefore, harder to influence them.

By the time a child or person can actively persue killing hookers in GTA the damage would have already been done by the violent cartoons tv shows and movies that the child has been able to watch a child is more open and receptive of a non interactive media e.g. movies and such for a longer period of time then a game because they wont need to interact to watch a violent movie at 5 years old

Jack?

Next, demand for small tits!

YAY!

I'm not net event Australian and I support the 18+ rating, in fact it would really have no effect on me but I still support it.

even =/= event
Joystiq can we please have an edit button now.

Well it can affect you. You'll get 8 year olds in GoW3. I mean the few annoying ones with rap lyrics on their pillow cover.

This is why you should come to the UK. We have no government forcing mad rules on us, though Christmas was made illegal in the C17th....

it wasnt a poll just a request for submissions on a public discussion paper

http://www.ag.gov.au/gamesclassification

It's so nice to see that people want governments to be our parents. /end sarcasm

For the entertainment of the Joystiq readers, this is the actual report.

http://www.ag.gov.au/www/agd/rwpattach.nsf/VAP/(3A6790B96C927794AF1031D9395C5C20)~R+18plus+status+report.pdf/$file/R+18plus+status+report.pdff

They actually disgarded the EB games submissions for the majority of it and it still weighed heavily in favour of the rating.

Naturally, the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia is against it, because we all know guns don't kill people, video games kill people.

On a surprising note though, the Catholic Bishops are in favour of an R18+ rating. I believe that counts as having god in favour of it.

bah, don't know how the extra f got in.

http://www.ag.gov.au/www/agd/rwpattach.nsf/VAP/%283A6790B96C927794AF1031D9395C5C20%29~R+18plus+status+report.pdf/$file/R+18plus+status+report.pdf

I don't get it. who cares? obviously if it'll get rid of censored games, I'm all for it, but I just worry about the fact that R rated movie and MA rated games have a much harder time making money than PG/PG-13 rated movies and E/T rated games. (grand theft auto notwithstanding) Will you need ID to buy an 18+ rated game? will fewer stores carry them?

Props to the Australians for mobilizing and getting their voice heard (hopefully). I wish the US could do that and do it productively for just about anything.

Report: 98% of sentient beings disagree with Rupert Murdoch.

Report: 98% of Rupert Murdoch doesn't care. The other 2% really doesn't care.

Report: 98% of Australians don't matter. The other 2% is Rupert Murdoch.

Report: 98 percent of Australians in support of R18+ rating

Reader Comments (50)

Posted: May 9th 2010 9:12PM Rususeruru said

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