Football Manager 2007 Arrives To Give Me An Excuse To Discuss Electronic Gaming Censorship

Today's Musical Selection: Sexy by Car5
From the Girlmonster Album

Glorious news arrived in Sir Spell Cheque's bunker last month with the release last month of the latest in the Championship/Football Manager games series, Football Manager 2007 from SI Games. Apart from giving football fans around the world such as yours truly the opportunity to prove that they could do a better job than the managers of their favourite clubs, it is also a way to educate oneself about world football via immersion. The most impressive evidence of the effects of the CM/FM series in my opinion has to be the fact that it has been discussed in an academic journal.

Garry Crawford in his article The Cult of Champ Man uses the example of the CM/FM series to show how electronic gaming help to create community and fuel social interaction, whether virtual or traditional. In many ways this goes against the dystopian view of information technologies which hold so much influence in Australian society and regulation, despite often having little relationship with reality. Crawford's arguments of the social aspects of electronic gaming, expressed via analysis of the CM/FM series, contrast strongly with the dystopian stereotype of the 'loner' gamer which in extreme cases may lead to disorders such as Hikikomori.

Departing from Crawford, social isolation is not the only complaint of the dystopians. Perhaps the most troubling is the idea that players of violent electronic games will themselves turn violent. Apart from the very simplistic view of how people consume media, it also leads to simplistic solutions. In Australia, this has meant that electronic games that are freely available overseas are banned due to their content. The form of censorship employed in Australia is further insulting due to the method used to censor these electronic games. The Australian classification system for electronic games is based on the increasingly false premise that mostly children play electronic games and does not have a R18+ rating. Therefore, electronic games which fail to receive a MA15+ rating are unable to gain a classification and therefore cannot be sold in Australia. This is a blatant double standard given that movies such as Sin City and Kill Bill are able to be publicly shown in cinemas and sold on DVD to adults. (While Sir Spell Cheque thinks that Sin City was pretty light on for plot, the violence did leave him a bit fucked up!)

One hopes that in the near future a more mature approach to such issues takes hold in Australia and electronic gamers are given the same level of respect as other media consumers, especially since these are often the same people! Unfortunately one does not hold out much hope due to the increasingly conservative views held by the government and its supporters regarding censorship. The influence of such views is dangerous due to its ability to chip away at the freedom to free expression in politics by undermining it for entertainment purposes. The strength of the view that people, especially children, are input devices for information good or bad seems to hold for other policy areas such as history education, where the government seems to hope that children will uncritically internalise particular historical 'facts' in a nationalistic spirit whit out asking uncomfortable questions.

I notice that I have rather diverted from the stated topic, but since it's my blog I'll let myself off of the hook :). Oh well, at least I can concentrate on getting Melbourne Victory into the ACL on FM2007. And whether virtually of in real life I reckon I can still do better than Ernie Merrick! (OK, maybe not, but certainly I'd kick Frank Farina's arse!)

P.S. Some good resources on the issue of censorship in general in Australia can be found here (Warning: Some material may not pass prudish filters!)