As I state in an upcoming feature, I relish every opportunity to play titles designed with a more mature audience in mind -- many of which are exclusively available online in flash. Now, the opportunity for Australians to play these games online is being ripped away.

The Sydney Morning Herald noted (SMH), “Australia is the only developed country without an R18+ classification for games, meaning any titles that do not meet the MA15+ standard - such as those with excessive violence or sexual content - are simply banned from sale by the Classification Board, unless they are modified to remove the offending content.” Under this ruling, any title that exceeds MA15+ is deemed “Refused Classification” (RC).

In the past, this focus has applied only to the physical sale of content, but with the Federal Government’s new filtering plan, it will extend to “downloadable games, flash-based games, and sites which sell physical copies of games that do not meet the MA15+ standard.”

A spokesman for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy explained the filter would cover “...computer games such as web-based flash games and downloadable games, if a complaint is received and the content is determined by ACMA to be RC.”

All hope is not lost; the SMH noted nine ISPs are currently trialling the web censorship plan.

If that doesn’t work, I have a little plan of my own. I say we all start churning out flash titles that we know the government will find questionable, and scatter them on hundreds of sites. Next, we’ll get our Australian friends to complain about the material.

If we can’t win, we might as well annoy the piss out of those idiots.

Posted by Kyle Stallock
June 26, 2009

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