A question about the OFLC rating

[Owltaku]

Okay, so I'm an Australian and I was just wondering why this game is rated OFLC M while it's rated ESRBM17+ Because if it's the violence which made batman go from T to M, I would expect Batman Arkham Knight to be OFLC MA15+. Uncharted 4 is rated MA15+ and has a T rating in the US. What does Australia accept and don't accept. Is it the Violence or Sex or Profanity or Horror themes?

[Mr. G]

Uncharted 4 would be far more violent than Arkham Knight. AK only contains fighting and some suggestive themes. I mainly think it's rated M since this is an new title than the other ones and I am sure the ESRB ratings have changed since then. The game only contains fighting, language and suggestive themes (which aren't that bad). Pretty much sums it up.

[Мяузер]

heh.only fighting? how about torturing unarmed prisoner by crushing his skull with the tire:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=859410105

he also brakes people's bones every few minutes with his bare hands. Bats in this game is completely gone badass.

[Mothvibe]

Originally posted by Sherlock4869:

What does Australia accept and don't accept.

It's actually got a lot more to do with the way it's worded, than the actual content.

I'll give you an example.

A really long example because I never get to tell this story. Feel free to ignore it and skip ahead to the next section.

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You're a fellow Aussie, so you'll probably remember it's not too far back that Left4Dead2 was censored here, while the first one, Left4Dead wasn't censored.

This is because, in the OFLC application (I mailed the OFLC and asked, which is how I know) that Valve made for L4D, the first one, the zombies were simply described as 'Infected'.

That could mean anything. It could be an alien race with name. It could be animals, mutated into human form. They could be ancient spirits. Robots. Clones. They could be ANYTHING.

Now, here in Aussie, we're not allowed to play games are 'mainly concerned with violence against humans'. In normal shooter games, the violence is a side-effect of the story. So you spend a lot of the ingame time in combat, but you also spend a lot of time looking at stuff in menus, or watching cutscenes, or hacking, or whatever.

In the Left4Dead series there is literally JUST combat. The violence IS the story. The graffiti tells the backstory, but the violence is the story.

In the OFLC application for L4D2, the Infected were called 'Infected Humans'.

That changed EVERYTHING. Because that meant that L4D2 was 'mainly concerned with violence against humans', and therefore had to be censored IF it was going to be released as an M game. Which it had to be, because, if you remember, being released as an R game wasn't an option, because R rated games were illegal, and that was that.

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So, to answer your question:

"Someone at the WB Games Legal Department knows how to do their job."

(Now we just need Quality Control to achieve the same standard)

Instead of 'Batman runs around breaking limbs left right and centre and tortures this one dude, but hey he doesn't actually kill anyone so that's great!' or whatever, they would have said 'The players will experience the psychology of a man close to the edge, without crossing the line of murder'.

I mean, probably. I don't know, I'm not a lawyer, and this is just my opinion. :)

But here's the list of things which I do know, by Aussie law, we CANNOT be rewarded ingame for using:

- Any form of illegal discrimination
- Violence (Try levelling up in most games without being rewarded for violence!)
- Drugs (which means Medkits are maybe illegal, and Painkillers DEFINITELY are)
- Sex (Which literally happens in the first 10 minutes of God Of War, but that didn't seem to bother the OFLC)

Which means that most games are technically illegal in Australia! :)