Minister for Home Affairs, Brendan O'Connor, today released the proposed Guidelines for the introduction of Australia's new adult category for computer games. The release has something of a triumphalist air about it but the reaction from the games community, which has been waiting over ten years for this to happen, is muted to say the least. Why? Have unelected, moral-outrage, lobbyists really influenced government policy?

Those who have been following the argument, will note how a large chunk of the release is spent placating the hysterical, ultra-conservative family groups who have railed at the notion all along. It says,

The amendments reflect concerns expressed by the public, stakeholders and governments about the draft Guidelines.

Bans on violence, sexual violence and drug use have been strengthened at all levels.

"Games with high impact violence that is, in context, frequently gratuitous, exploitative and offensive to a reasonable adult will not be permitted in the R 18+ category," Mr O'Connor said.

"And I want to make it clear that sexually explicit games, or games with very frequent and unduly repetitive strong and realistic violence, will not be classified under the MA15+ category."

This may be dismissible as politics and paying lip service to the think-of-the-children brigade (actually the last part is very reasonable), but what of the legislation itself? Is it strong policy based upon rigorous research and does it demonstrate a strong understanding of the subject matter?

No. Not at all.

In fact I'd venture that it was written and discussed almost exclusively by people who don't regularly play modern video games and then subsequently passed to the outraged lobby groups for approval. If the latter didn't happen, it reads like their outraged allegations have been foremost on the legislators' minds.

For years, ultra-conservative, pro-censorship lobby groups have cited "research" which shows that playing video games is more harmful than other media. But when the lobbyists appear in mainstream media they typically get given a platform, soap box, some embellishing video/audio packages and are allowed to espouse their "research" unchallenged.

The problem is that just about every single piece of this research is... well... bollocks.

I've yet to see a single study that is a) scientific and b) compelling. I've seen many biased, try-hard articles which try desperately to sound scientific. But when they ignore all the glaring evidence to the contrary, or draw outlandish, partially-related conclusions from their results they lose every semblance of credibility.

If anyone wanted to do an actual scientific study, they'd have to get thousands of kids from all walks of life from all over the world and isolate each group into various subgroups which are then only allowed access to one type of media for some ten years or so.

Until then I'll just rely on my own scientific training and personal observations of playing video games with my friends for the past 30 years and with my nine-year-old son and his friends for the past few years. That is: there is no significant difference in playing games as watching violent films, TV shows, Nerf Guns, watching violence on the news, violent cartoons, Laser Tag, and running around playgrounds shooting each other with sticks.

A government literature review concurs that the "research" is not reliable, and yet the new guidelines shamelessly pander to unelected lobbyists.

For an unspecified reason, the guidelines revolve around "impact". Games that have too much "impact" are to be banned. There is a spurious description of what "impact" is and how much is too much:

One eloquent phrase follows thusly, "Assessing the impact of material requires considering not only the treatment of individual classifiable elements but also their cumulative effect. It also requires considering the purpose and tone of a sequence."

This is followed by,

"Impact may be lessened where reference to a classifiable element is verbal rather than visual. For example, a verbal reference to sexual violence is generally of less impact than a visual depiction. Also, some visual impacts have less impact than others: for example, an incidental depiction may have less impact than a direct one. Some depictions in computer games may have less impact due to the stylised nature of computer generated images."

At no point anywhere are we told what is wrong with "impact". Imagine banning films because of impact? I've been playing games for thirty years and I've never once remotely had an issue with "impact". What evidence did the legislator base this on? The global games and computer industry has striven for years for games to become like interactive cinematic movies. The more impact, the better.

I should reign myself in a bit here. To be fair, when dealing with kids, separating different content into different age ranges using impact can make sense. But the problem is that the new legislation is being formed because of the discussion about what adults are allowed access to in Australia.

It gets worse...

Interactivity and computer games

Interactivity is an important consideration that the Board must take into account when classifying computer games. This is because there are differences in what some sections of the community condone in relation to passive viewing or the effects passive viewing may have on the viewer (as may occur in a film) compared to actively controlling outcomes by making choices to take or not take action.

Just read that again. So because "some sections of the community" think something which has never been proven and goes against experience, observation and common sense, it should be banned? Is reasoning like this really suitable for law? Should it really trump the founding cornerstone of the Classification Code which states categorically that, "adults should be able to read, hear, see and play what they want"?

What's most troubling is that this isn't even a veiled acknowledgement of what lobby groups have been baying for. It goes on...

"Due to the interactive nature of computer games and the active repetitive involvement of the participant, as a general rule computer games may have a higher impact than similarly themed depictions of the classifiable elements in film, and therefore greater potential for harm or detriment, particularly to minors."

The word "may" is being used as a basis for law even though the government's own literature review dismissed these claims. This whole paragraph is essentially a paraphrased version of an ACCM press release.

However, this is all followed by a qualifier, "Except in material restricted to adults, nudity and sexual activity must not be related to incentives or rewards."

Here is an acknowledgement that games aren't played primarily by young children anymore. The actual average age is now 32 in Australia. This is a big step for forward legislators.

But despite the acknowledgement of adult games being for adults who play games, there is still a Refused Classification classification which describes what should be banned.

First a quick aside - What does "Banned" mean these days? I've written about classification for the past two years. People subsequently asked me about the "banning" of The Serbian Film. I felt duty bound to watch it - it was utterly horrible. But the questions it posed validated its artistic merit in my opinion. Ultimately though, banning it gave it enormous publicity - I hadn't even heard of it beforehand. Secondly, it took me all of ten minutes to locate and procure an uncut copy of the film. What exactly did the banning exercise achieve?

So what's "banned"?

"Detailed instruction or promotion in matters of crime or violence." - that's standard fare in Australia. Although I can point to heaps of games which tell you how to pick locks, use guns and murder people. Maybe they just mean the bad crimes?

"The promotion or provision of instruction in paedophile activity." I've spoken to all sorts of people in my classification travels - from lobbyists to porn stars and everyone in between. Overt child sexual abuse is the one and only censorship theme everyone seems to agree on.

"Descriptions or depictions of child sexual abuse or any other exploitative or offensive descriptions or depictions involving a person who is, or appears to be, a child under 18 years." This may sound reasonable. However, there are huge potential issues here. Japanese Anime heroes are frequently very young but placed in very adult settings. There can be a very blurry boundary. It's discussed further here.

Depictions of:

(i) violence with a very high degree of impact which are excessively frequent, prolonged, detailed or repetitive;

So adults can't access high-impact material but we are not told why.

(ii) cruelty or realistic violence which are very detailed and which have a very high impact;

Banning depictions of realistic violence in video games almost beggar's belief. To an increasing extent this would require the bulk of the video games industry to be banned in Australia. The realism of games like Battlefield 3, recent Call of Duty installments and countless others only heralds a new age of ultra-realism for violent games.

(iii) sexual violence.

Implied sexual violence related to incentives and rewards.

This is a term which has been skewed to a farcical extent in the adult film industry. Films have been banned for featuring a character with a black eye (implied sexual violence) and even for showing a headline about a murder in a newspaper. It will be interesting to see what the Classification Board objects to in the world of gaming.

Depictions of practices such as bestiality.

It's not clear whether this includes comedy sheep-shagging type bestiality? I'm sure I've seen comedy scenes where some cartoon-like farmer character is getting romantic with some type of ungulate but it wasn't as disturbing as some of the horrors in Dead Space 2.

Material promoting or encouraging proscribed drug use.

An American Football game got banned in Australia because a tactic was to use steroids in a stat-based management system. However, a multitude of "accepted" games allow you to jab virtual syringes into various game characters. Consistency and keeping pace with the modern world are issues here.

We are told that these guidelines will come into force mid-next year. Around the same time, the Australian Law Reform Commission will be trying to have its own guidelines implemented. Hopefully we'll see more facts, logic, reason, common sense and a feeling that the legislation has been written by informed people at that time. Along with a sense that the legislator hasn't pandered to unelected lobbyists and their bogus claims.