May 5, 2008 -
It is the nature of the U.S. video game market that parents make the final decision about what constitutes appropriate content for their child.Not so in New Zealand, where the government's chief censor has ruled that parents may not purchase Grand Theft Auto IV for their children.
As reported by the New Zealand Herald, Bill Hastings (left) of New Zealand's Office of Film and Literature Classification issued an opinion that store clerks may not sell the game to parents who are buying it for their teen. Said Hastings:
If it's perfectly obvious the parent is buying the game for the child, don't sell it to the parent. If a game is R18 it's R18 for a reason and it's illegal to make it available to anyone under that age.
In New Zealand, adults buying the game for a minor - even for their own child - could be jailed for 90 days or made to pay a $10,000 fine. The Herald notes, however, that the law has never been enforced.
And while Hastings seems to take his censorship duties seriously, he had some quite reasonable comments about GTA IV's more redeeming qualities:
With the games we ban you have to kill everyone you meet and you're generally rewarded for making the killing more gruesome. In Grand Theft Auto, you don't have to kill everybody you meet - you could drive around and just look at the architecture...
All games in the Grand Theft Auto series have a kind of black satire - an overstatement of machismo. It takes the piss out of Soprano-type things.
By the way, we've heard America's self-appointed censor, Jack Thompson, claiming that the sex scenes were taken out of the Australia/New Zealand version of GTA IV. Not entirely so, according to the Herald:
In the version submitted for classification [in New Zealand], the sex scenes include going to a strip club and getting lap dances. There's also another point where the player can have sex with a prostitute - but in the version sold here, there is no visual depiction, just audio.
Thompson is trying to claim that the game is pornography, making its sale to 17-year-olds (as permitted by its M rating) a crime. If so, it would likely be the world's first-ever sans genitalia porn.
Comments
Give me a link to that interview and you win epicly
While the millitary did use Doom they did not use it for removing soldiers inhibitions to killing which is the argument that the idiots use
what they used it for was to teach teamwork and tactics NOT killing
@ everyone ripping on our Chief Censor, leave the guy alone; at least he knows something about GTAIV. He understands that most the worries/claims about the game are completely unfounded.
As for the whole no under 18's thing, never gunna happen:
A) They can't police it unless you pretty much tell them your breaking the law.
B) This law is nothing new; it has always been illegal to provide minors with games rated higher than their age. Which naturally has had absolutely zero effect on whether underage people play R rated games, the most common determining factor there is the parents.
In my opinion this law is (would be; if it were enforceable) too harsh, parents should get to make the decision on whether their child is mature enough to play R rated games.
My brother is not a great gamer, the only games he ever really likes are the GTA games, from III all the way to IV (he’s 15). I have never for a second considered him too immature to play the games. Although he does miss some of the subtler jokes e.g. Turning Tricks driving school.
Finally, the whole carding people for age thing: When I went to pick up my pre-order the store had all new signs about game ratings and another sign saying if you looked under 25 they would card you (and that you should take it as a compliment). I am 21 and no one carded me, however a day later I went to buy a bottle of vodka to celebrate my return to inebriation and got carded.
So, in the end, despite all the crap about censorship, things are pretty good the way they are.
If this law were enforced, it probably would not be at the time of sale. It COULD be brought up in, say, child custody battles, child protective services, teacher complaints,.. you know, good old fashioned 'I need something to hurt my neighbor so I'll find an unenforced law that they broke' stuff.
Lets bring up children in a cotton wool filled world so when they grow up they commit emo suicide at the slightist problem because they have never experianced hardship before.
As ConstantNeophyte mentions, New Zealand's laws regarding the rating and restriction of video games are hardly new, having been in place since at least the Video Recordings Act 1987. How enforceable they really are, I couldn't say as I'm not a lawyer.
Although the Office of Film and Literature Classification have banned three games as of Jan 2008 (which I definitely don't agree with, although I wouldn't actually have bought them anyway), in general video game content is a lot less censored than in the US. The uncensored versions of Fahrenheit and The Witcher were on sale here for example.
We also seem to get a lot less posturing from politicians on the whole area of censorship (except for irrelevancies like Gordon Copeland and Ron Mark). And bizarrely Family First (which has called for GTA4 to be banned) seems to be mostly focused on helping parents to regain the ability to physically assault their children without fear of being convicted. Which I suppose makes them hypocrites, but what else is new?