Australia Asked To Rethink Censorship Controls

Various foreign delegates have been lobbying Australian censors to relax their attitude towards video games. The Australian Office of Film Literature and Classification (OFLC) has the power to ban games outright and Swiss and British delegates have been trying, in a classification conference which began on September 23rd, to convince them to rethink their strategy. In reply though OFLC director Des Clark has said, “We tend to be extremely strict because of our guidelines on sexualised violence or where there are rewards for sexual violence, gross nudity and other sexual activity. The ministers in adopting a classification system for games were of a view that the interactivity of games required them to be treated more strictly than films." This is not the first time that sexual content has been claimed as the major reason for banning video games (see Regal Cinema Bans Violent Video Games) despite the fact that virtually no current games include such content.