May 6, 2010

In a piece written for gamesindustry.biz, EA president Frank Gibeau has criticised the lack of an adult rating for games in Australia, saying that such decisions “effectively censor entertainment choices for adults”. “What will be next?” asks Gibeau. “Will adults be forced to see edited versions of mature films? Read books with certain chapters...

MCV is reporting that Switzerland has just passed a law that could see a blanket ban for all violent games. Exact details of the enforcement of the new law have not yet come to light, but it’s being predicted that all games that currently have PEGI 16+ or 18+ ratings will be banned outright. Previously Australia and Germany have seen some...

So we now see, after reading part one, that interactivity being used as a justification for the study concentrating on games falls apart on close examination of the study itself. Which begs the question: why did TRIAL and Pro Juventute choose to concentrate on games? One possibility, is that these organisations – previously almost unheard of outside of their...

I’ll start this article with a disclaimer – to truly examine the relationship between gaming and mainstream media, it’d probably take a University thesis, around 756 cigarettes, twelveteen source books and an ungodly amount of coffee. Instead, this article hopes to look at how gaming has been portrayed in the media recently and hopes to draw a few...

Censorship in games is hardly a new issue, and it can vary wildly from country to country. However, two Swiss human rights organisations – Pro Juventute and TRIAL – recently produced a study entitled Playing By The Rules: Applying International Humanitarian Law to Video and Computer Games. The introduction claims that “The goal is not to prohibit the...