Australia's contentious record of video game censorship receives an additional chapter in the "Online Safety Act"

The folly of safeguarding social media continues to intrude upon the industry.

As an Australian, I am familiar with my country’s rotating rows of statesmen routinely misunderstanding how younger generations engage with media. Prior to the implementation of an 18 and above rating for video games, titles that were deemed too graphic for those 15 and under were banned outright. For instance, Grand Theft Auto III, despite receiving an initial MA15+ classification upon launch, was pulled from store shelves in a rather rigorous reversal; the removal of a function allowing players to pick up a prostitute restored its avaliability. Similarly, Fallout 3 was forbidden for its simulated drug use - a superficial change in renaming morphine to Med-X satiated the government’s scrutiny. The latter is a particularly egregious case: the function is the same, the mechanics are identical, yet the name is fictitious. There is no apparent basis for this judgement, save for an inability to understand the concept of verisimilitude.

Gaming’s youthful standing amidst the arts invites suspicion from the old guard; Hollywood of yore was restricted in its expression by the scrupulous Hays Code. As the medium began to further itself through the implementation of diegetic sound and colour, its foremost industry became enraptured in a moral panic - antithetical to its maturation.

Following its dissolution, a generation of filmmakers rebelled against its tyranny, drawing upon the strides of their European contemporaries to codify a class of New Hollywood: Bonnie and Clyde, Midnight Cowboy, Taxi Driver, and The Graduate confronted disquieting, taboo concerns on a mainstream scale. Granted, we now look upon the horror the MPAA hath wrought, notably through in the unfortunate chasm between a PG-13 and an R rating, pondering how we returned to a nigh-tantamount model of suppression. Nevertheless, a phenomenon in Terrifier 3, released without a rating to avoid a restrictive NC-17, suggests the potential for film to break from its traditional form of exhibition; streaming platforms allow their users to apply age guidelines at their own discretion.

The conversation on the culpability of video games in arousing the darkest impulses of its audience has hardly quelled since the Columbine incident; the perpetrators were known to regularly play Doom. Though each successive Doom has increased in sophistication and viscera, itself and its contemporaries cannot be assigned responsibility for a greater cultural rot - particularly in a cowboy country of rogue actors with little social support and easy access to firearms. Reform is not achieved through repression, nor blaming fiction instead of real life, as indicated by Australia’s response to the 1996 Port Arthur massacre: automatic/semi-automatic rifles and shotguns were banned from both importation and sale. There is a common understanding on the purpose of guns; their potency is not a mere trifle.

Nevertheless, successive parliaments have failed to contend with virtual depictions of violence, in league with a fundamental misunderstanding of one’s suspension of disbelief within a fictional space. Irrespective of their standing upon the ideological spectrum, political actors within the country reserve their most reactionary qualities for the medium. One of the last victims of their stringent model of classification came in the form of Mortal Kombat - evidently, the Classification Board feared players would be inspired to freeze their teachers, before shattering them onto the carpet and writing FATALITY on the whiteboard. Regardless, restriction in creative spaces is an unfortunate casualty of the eternal conflict between art and commerce: if a government body believes a title contains abject content, advertisers are inclined to follow suit in fear of repercussion, thus preventing consumers from passing their own judgement. These products are not public property, rather licences granted to the people on a conditional basis.

Ultimately, this ratings discipline is a gestural folly: digital distribution has evolved, allowing players to use whatever age they feel on the PlayStation Network to purchase Grand Theft Auto V, rather than sheepishly sneaking into EB Games with their highest heels on and their deepest voice ready. This is a nebulous market - however, if a parent provides consent in the home, is it not acceptable? Naturally, I believe in the integrity of the player, rather than the turncoat agenda of serpentining political parties. Nevertheless, the incumbent Labour government, with bipartisan support from their opposition in the Coalition, are preparing to ban teenagers under the age of 16 from accessing social media services. Indeed, this includes YouTube. Yes, YouTube: a known educational resource with its own manner of regulation. Nice work, team!

Additionally, this ban would encompass PSN, Steam, Xbox Live, and Roblox. Oh boy, I cannot wait to turn 16 so I can finally experience Roblox at the right time! The government has reportedly mulled the prospect of requiring IDs or biometric data to prove one’s age, primarily because not enough parts of ourselves are accessible on the internet. Thus, we are being asked to surrender autonomy online, submitting to a flimsy campaign of fearmongering. This solution simply puts a single gate in the middle of an open field: its enforcement would have to be on a scale to China’s Great Firewall to achieve a semblance of efficacy. Each internet user would have to surrender their privacy to access a public amenity, calling into question the integrity of our democracy. If our elected representatives do not respect the ethics of those who granted their station, what is the value of a vote?

On an immediate paradox it proposes: the MA15+ rating prohibits players under 15 from purchasing games with this designation. Thus, upon turning 15, one may purchase Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 with legal conviction. However, they cannot use its multiplayer faculties: they would be limited to those 16 and above, per this proposed legislation. This is an inherently flawed concept, evinced not only through this case, rather through vital channels of communication being limited for young people. Prime Minister Albanese’s contention that malicious content on social media platforms makes for a “really difficult time” as a teenager is blitheringly myopic. The internet is not the cause of these challenges, it is a tool. It is a microcosm, reflecting social values; suppressing engagement with these platforms is a band-aid to a scar, a gestural deed rather than true rehabilitation.

It is not for the state to decide how young people engage with social media. They do not reserve this power on the schoolyard: why would it apply in this case? This practice will cause universal harm, taking a contemporary part of adolescent development from legal guardians and placing it in the hands of a parliament that rotates its agenda on a nigh-biyearly basis. This will not improve the mental health of teenagers, as parroted by Albanese: it will sanction a climate of digital naivety, severely limiting their aptitude in these spaces. Comparing this prohibition to that of alcohol is a perfect encapsulation of the utter incompetence of this government, illustrating their inability to envision how generations younger than themselves engage with the internet. It is a repository of knowledge, a means of mobilisation; reducing it to a series of skirmishes is a reflection of their own immaturity. Not all forms of communication are delivered through ad hominem attacks and jockeying for power - perhaps politicians cannot comprehend the notion of cooperative communication.