The point of government and legislation / regulations is not pander to small vocal minorities and implement labyrinthian legislation that is costly to police, (more so for business to implement), of which the benefits are tenuous and the negative impacts on freedom of expression are enormous, and the cost to the consumer (who inevitably pays for it) is considerable.

The sexualisation of children in adverts has so many facets and is so much a matter of perception, that any regulations would be very difficult to define and the policing of which would be extremely subjective and inconsistent.

Even the author has no idea as to the form any possible legislation would take and resorts to the pathetic call for the government to do "something".

Emma rush:

Apart from "not about banning little girls from putting on mummy’s lipstick or playing with Barbies" what do you really want?

Barbara Biggins is one of the Blue rinsed dowager brigade who feels that freedom of speech is luxury and is baying for the censorship of everything that might somehow make its way into the hands of children including news items etc.

Barbara Biggins might not need R18 rated games, (she probably wouldn't need anything more racy than "I love Lucy") there is a whole world out there of legal entertainment and communication that adults enjoy and are entitled to that would grind to a halt just because little Johnny might see something he shouldn't.

The world has come too far to be locked up by geriatric tyrants such as Barbara Biggins.

Wong article, Shadow Minister.

I'm a bit sceptical about the invocation of 'science' in this matter. There is still a long way to go before the science is really settled. It may well be that there is evidence of deleterious effects for specific levels of violence in limited longitudinal studies, but how does this bear on other adult themes in games, and how does the medium of games compare to other mediums. The existing studies are of doubtful utility in a debate where the moral panic brigaide is calling video games a threat to civilisation as a uniquely destructive medium and generalising all of their adult content as sex and violence.

For example, Risen, a rather tame action-RPG which involves a quest with a reefer 'weed' was refused classification because it supposed incentivised drug use. But no study has any bearing on vindicating that stance, even if a minor were incidentally exposed to Risen, the game is entirely tame by standards of film and cinema.

Of course, the stupidity of this debate is that it is the potential harm to children which is exactly what demands the need for an R18+ category. Appropriate classification allows parents to make appropriate decisions, with minors denied at the point of sale.

This all makes me recall my mis-spent teenage years playing

"D&D"

otherwise known as:

"Dungeons and Dragons"

There was a campaigner from memory back around the mid 80's pushing to have the game banned - was it Adrian Van Leen?

"D&D" of course is a Fantasy Role Playing Game within which you can choose the "Alignment" of your character, ranging from

Lawful Good through to Chaotic Evil

..

All of our "Evil Campaigns" usually disintegrated as everyone eventually turn upon one another, often leaving everyone very upset.

All things said and done we preferred a "Neutral" alignment, be it with or without the addition of Law or Chaos and a general sense of valuing the group, with "Good and or Evil" acts being discretionary, though a number of notable Paladins, Priests and others of the Lawful Good persuasion did also often arise.

We often committed the most heinous of War Crimes with relish,
and what went on in the UnderDark with the Drow Priestess's is probably best left unsaid. ;-)

Still, none of us have gone overly astray ...

Posted by Ozandy, Tuesday, 16 February 2010 12:50:35 PM
" ... These thoughts need to be managed as part of being an adult. ... "

That indeed is the point to me also, but it is a mastery mostly untaught in our Schools. This has been discussed before - perhaps something like a compulsory unit of:

*Good Guvment & Adult Responsibilities*

and I note the modern neurological view that until such time as the "frontal lobes/temporal lobes" develop, children in particular simply have a very limited capacity for Self control and discernment.

My view is probably that for vid games, hard core adult material and gore settings (and with the advent of HD, it can indeed look lifelike) should be restricted to "mature adults."

Growing up fast and furious,

That was an impressive list on the effects of video games. But I can't make too much sense of them without reading the background material and I don't live in Sydney so I can't attend your conference.

Can you provide some links to supporting material so we can see how this list was arrived at?

What a nauseating article.

Hey Barb, while we're at it we should also ban every R18+ film, TV show and probably every news item about a murder or terrorist attack too- in case children illegally access it.
Except that we've already seen the damaging results of impressionable children accessing ultra-gory R18+ films like Robocop for the past 15-25 years (which is bugger all).

Now, I'm no expert, but if an R18+ rating on a video game is anything like an R18+ rating on a movie, then a child is NOT LEGALLY ALLOWED TO BUY IT, but someone at the age of finishing 12th Grade and moving on to college. The "risk" of a child accessing such material is no different from an 18+ movie- just require vendors to remind their customers that they are purchasing an 18+ game, and possibly deny the purchase if they adult buyer is with a child and purchasing no other game.

I'd imagine little things like domestic violence, alcoholism, drug use and contact with bullies, pushers and gangs would be a *slightly* bigger motivator for violence than illegally accessing a legitimately bought computer game by someone else.

And I don't appreciate the slight tone suggesting adult video games are a recent phenomenon and therefore parental misconceptions are justified- we've had gory violent video games since at least the 80s/early 90s (Mortal Kombat and Doom). Just like adult cartoons (Akira, Fritz the Cat)
Nor do I appreciate your sneering tone towards the complaints by the group of people whose rights you're walking over to get your way (funny when that happens- bunch of whiners).

Now I understand that you're just doing your job trying to lobby against the rights of others to the maximum theoretical benefit of the target audience of your own company, so I'll just bid you good day.