Silent Hill: Homecoming Refused Classification

Wednesday, October 1st, 2008

Melbourne’s The Age is reporting that the much anticipated Silent Hill: Homecoming has become the fourth game this year to be refused classification by the Classifications Board. Distributed in Australia by Atari, the board have refused the game for excessive violence in the same manner as that of Fallout 3. The inevitable backlash from industry leaders followed, with IEAA chief Ron Curry saying to News.com.au:

“With the average age of gamers being 28, it makes no sense to censor games to a point where they are only appropriate for a 15 year old… Such censorship would not be acceptable on television, at the cinema or in print, so why apply it unfairly to another entertainment medium?”

Unfortunately, News.com.au also saw fit to garner the opinion of Heather Ridout, Chief Executive of the Australian Industry Group, who provided this monstrously unqualified piece of insight:

Chief executive of the Australian Industry Group Heather Ridout said she supported the work of controversial photographer Bill Henson and that it was necessary to view art through “a different prism”. However she said she found violent video games “appalling”.

“Grand Theft Auto was one of the more famous games and seemed to turn everyone into a car thief,” Ms Ridout said. “Violent games… violence, it breeds violence.”

While Heather is of course entitled to her biased and outdated interpretation of art forms, her naive statement about violence shows exactly how uninformed prejudices about video games are preventing a mature and informed debate about their classification in this country. In the 1700’s, people were terrified that women who read fiction novels would become unsatisifed with their domestic duties and that their weaker feminine mind would collapse from immorality. In 2008, we can laugh at this old-fashioned thinking and dismiss it out of hand. Let’s hope we can soon do the same about these ridiculous fears surrounding video games.

Source: No Homecoming (Jason Hill, The Age)