O.M.G.  Even more 'newsworthy' material has hit my inbox today.  I'm starting to worry about my continued chats with Jorp, who seems determined to feed me the latest news and such that is worthy of comment on ausMMO!  That means work and effort and...ugh...thinking.  So be it!  This 'gem' is about the states in Australia and the related legislation regarding the classification/maturity rating of content in games.  Yes, we've all seen the stickers saying 15+ or MA or whatever, and we take it for granted that games are rated for age suitability and content.  Fair enough - who wants their 9 year old spanking pimps in GTA?  But what some of you may not have noticed is that most MMO titles aren't actually rated...

Ratings? Eh?  Its pretty simple - games in Australia must be rated, just like movies and TV shows - its no different.  There are different rules for games, but essentially, if you produce consumable media for sale, you must rate the contents of what you're selling so that consumers can make informed choices as to what the content of your content is.  Righto.  Australian legislation states that if your media isn't rated, its not legally sellable in Australia. What is really ironic is that rating games is largely a "self service" thing - you rate your game, submit it to the board for ratification and bam - your game has a rating.  But many MMO titles haven't bothered with that step.

"Why the fuck not?" I hear many of you ask.  Well, there's a nice little loophole (allegedly).  The loophole goes something like this (I'm roleplaying an imaginary Blizzard executive here): Well, you see - the program "World of Warcraft" that we sell in Australia isn't actually a "game" that needs a rating.  Its a program that functions as a "key to access" the real game on OUR servers in the United States of America.  So piss off- your legislation doesn't apply.  Plenty of wiggle room for argument, but on the face of it, this holds up.  Every gamer knows that many of the files are stored on your computer, but the actual gameplay and interaction doesn't exist or take place on your computer, it all happens server side.  But then, a good argument against that would go something like: "Aha! So regardless of which hard drives the game takes place on, the actual end result of the game still takes place on the consumer's monitor!".  Which is the better argument? Dunno, I'm not a lawyer and have no legal experience.

I haven't got the time to research the ins and outs of the legislation, but I'd imagine there's some nice passages in the legislation that will permit Australian governments to place the onus of proof on the game developers.  That is to say, ban a 'program' until said game developers successfully obtain a court ruling that supports their arguments and lifts the ban.  This would be bad, as I could definitely see a plausible game developer response: "That's fine skippy - ban our program and fine us some pissant amount of money.  We won't sell our game in your country, as you represent such a miniscule amount of the market, you mean less than 0.01% of our profit margin.  You aren't worth the effort, so bugger off." Of course, it would be phrased far nicer than that, no doubt with a large amount of rhetoric to suggest that the government is censoring what games we can and cant see in Australia.  Oh dear, they already do that, don't they? But then, they censor snuff films, rape shows from TV and other questionable content.

Hardly surprising.

Speaking of censoring, this becomes a little concerning when you look at kRudd's diabolical scheme to 'filter' (read: censor) the interwebs omg!  If there ever became a filter system in place that big-brother'd our ISPs, with their willing co operation (much like the 'free media' in China...), we'd have a real problem, wouldn't we?  Australian ratings board bans WoW until it gets a rating.  At the same time, adds WoW signature traffic to the filter list.  Bam. No MMO connection for joo!  Think Im crazy? Perhaps, but I'm not generally into conspiracy theories.  IF kRudd gets away with this idiotic censorship plan (idiotic because I don't feel it can achieve anything except piss us off a bit...) and IF the Australian Ratings Board (or whatever they're called!) decide to start laterally banning un-rated MMO's, then this is exactly what MUST happen - illegal game + filter for illegal content = banned MMO traffic.

Here's some good news!  Eve Online, Everquest 2 and Vanguard, Saga of Heroes appear to be rated! Here's some bad news: Everquest, Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, Lineage and Pirates of the Burning Sea aren't.

Concerned about YOUR MMO title?  You can check out to see what's rated here: http://www.classification.gov.au/special.html?n=46&p=156

Spanka's view: I think that content rating for media is a GOOD thing - consumers and more importantly, purchasers for other consumers (parent buying for child, etc...), should be able to get an overall impression of the type of content they are buying, without having an indepth knowledge of the game and without having to research it.  Food products have ingredients, movies have ratings and boxes from IKEA say "you will be screwed putting this together in under 20 minutes".  Its accepted that most of what we should want to know is on the label. I don't have any problem with that at all.

If it is legally correct to suggest that an MMO is not a 'game' and therefore, not necessary to rate, simply because of where the server is located, then I would suggest that our legislation needs amending.  The reason is that the test of requirements should be based on where the media is consumed. Regardless of where an MMO's server is, it is consumed by Aussies in Australia.  It follows that the content should be rated, even if the purchased product is just a key to the game, because the end result is still media consumption in a country that has laws to regulate that.

If I applied the game developer argument to say, an online movie site - I should legally be able to watch men having sex with sheep, so long as the content is hosted in Norway and never actually resides on my computer, in any way, at any time.  Because bestiality is legal in Norway.  Im not holding illegal material on my hard drive in Australia.  The material was never 'hosted' in Australia. Its legal, right?  WRONG!This is total CRAP; the fact would remain that an Australian would be watching material that is illegal by Australian law, in Australia.  What's even scarier here is that the legal age of sexual consent for a female in Bulgaria is 13...or 14 in most parts of Germany... Yeah, suddenly the argument isn't so great eh?