Well, another game has fallen foul of our OFLC ratings board. This time it's Silent Hill 5: Homecoming. The game was banned by the OFLC due to the use of "copious blood spray in the game, decapitations, partially dismembered corpses, and numerous scenes of attacks, fights, torture, and death." Now many of your average Australian gamers are of course going to cry foul about how there rights to play a game have been infringed, etc, etc, etc.

I can really see there complaints now. "The other games were violent." "Movies are more violent." "We need an R rating." I could go on ad infinum. Really amongst all the reasons that the OFLC have mentioned, I think the the biggest problem they have is the torture aspect of the game. And really, do we really need to play a game where we torture someone? Not really. At least the OFLC are being consistent with it's decision. After all Manhunt was banned for the same reasons.

15 years ago, banning issues with regards to games were few and far between for one main reason. Games didn't need gimmicks to sell themselves. Games were somewhat original back then. Today though, the games industry is really an industry with zero originality. So much money is being spent on titles today that most game developers decide to play it safe. All the developers really have going for them is the gimmick. Something that will add that shock or WOW factor.

Silent Hill had this originality in the early games without going overboard on the violence detail. Now that originality is gone and all Konami have going for them is the shock factor. So do we really need to play another tired retread that uses a pretty repugnant gimmick to sell games. NO. The OFLC have done us a favour here. They were right about Fallout 3 and stood up to the developers, and they're right about this.

If we ever needed anymore proof that your average gamers of today are uninformed idiots, here it is. News surfaced a few days ago about what was being changed with regards to Fallout 3's release. As you're no doubt aware, a storm in a teacup brewed over here in Australia about the banning and the unbanning of Fallout 3 due to the use of drugs which exceeded our OFLC MA15+ rating. (The maximum for games in Australia.)

All over Australia uninformed gamers (mostly kids under 30 probably) were crying fowl about how our ratings board were too harsh and don't understand games, blah, blah, blah and that we don't have a high enough ratings system here in Australia. Those uninformed Idiots!

So then, Aussie gamers were going to protest and import an uncut version because they didn't want a cut up version of the game to be released in Australia. This is all well and good, if they wish to do so they have got all right too. But the level of hypocracy and lack of knowledge about this issue really was no surprise to these eyes when reading forum posts and gaming websites around the interweb. Gamer's, like most young people just shot from the hip without actually being informed about the issue.

I wrote in one of my blogs at gamespot on August 30th, that compared to the rest of the World, Australia's ratings system is very liberal compared to a lot of other countries, if Fallout 3 had fallen fowl of out MA15+ rating, it must have been for good reason. The fact that we don't have an R rating for games here has nothing to do with the issue.

Now Bethesda has given gamers and Aussie gamers in particular details of what is to modified in the game, and it turns out that this modification is now World-Wide, not just here in Australia, and it's as simple as a name. Click here to see the story at Joystiq. It turns out that the OFLC had issue with the use of the drug morphine in the game. And it turns out that the concerns were justified as other countries also had concerns about the use of the drug also.

It looks like the OFLC though were the only ones who had the guts to stand up to anyone on this subject matter though. Now Bethesda agrees and has changed the name of the drug in game, not just for Australia, but the whole World! See, one little change makes all the difference. This decision by the developer effectively justifies the OFLC's original decision to ban the game originally and modify the offending problem.

But does you average gamer realize that they've made fools of themselves with their uniformed, spiteful and quite frankly stupid comments. No, of course not. Because it's easier to go along with the sheep and jump off a cliff than actually think about something rationally and have an informed opinion these days. The average gaming community just showed with this situation how immature it really is when it comes to issues like this. It won't be the first time and it won't be the last.

Recently there has been a lot of whinging and complaining about the recent banning and modification of Fallout, this is not a new thing here in Australia and it won't be the last time this will happen. Now a lot of people here are yet again complaining that we have a draconian ratings system and from an overseas perspective, were getting shafted. So I would just like the re-iterate what I've said previously.

Yes, the OFLC has banned several notable games over the years but the amount of games in insignificant considering the amount of games that do get released here. Games like BMX XXX, Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude, Postal, Postal 2 etc hardly had any redeeming features, they were generally dud games who were using
their controversial subject matter to shift titles because they had no
real other reasons to rise up and above the pack.

Our OFLC ratings system works a little differently to the U.S. MPAA system, what we rate an MA15+, the yanks will rate it as an R, just like our M15+ is basically the same as a U.S PG-13

From this perspective I don't see a problem with our ratings board.
Okay we have a maximum rating system of R18+ for our mainstream movies,
do we really need this for games? Not really. If a games content
exceeds the realms of an MA15+ rating, then it deserves to be banned, because it must be pretty bad considering how liberal or ratings system actually is compared to so many other countries.