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Less banhammer, more gaming fun down under as Australia OKs R18+ game rating
Looks like folks from the land down under will be able to enjoy more of those upcoming titles featured recently at E3 2012. Australian gamers can now yell a collective "Get over here!" at more mature video gaming fare after the country's Parliament passed a new law to create an "adults-only" R18+ rating. The new classification puts video games on equal footing with films and other media that already allow mature content to be accessible in Australia via a similar rating. Prior to the creation of the new category, games deemed too mature for an MA15+ rating -- previously the strongest video game classification in Australia -- either had to be reclassified or banned from sale. One high-profile casualty that received a fatality from the old ratings system, for example, was the Mortal Kombat reboot. Lawmakers, however, agreed to pass the new rating law following years of consultation and strong public support for the change. One can only hope the legal tussle occurring in Australia between Apple and Samsung would reach an equally satisfactory resolution. [Image Credit: Associated Press]
How would the ESRB rate your game collection?
I'm very open to all sorts of games, be it genre or game rating. That being said, I've noticed that, more often than not, I'm buying mostly M-rated games. It's not a huge surprise to me. If given the option, I'd rather shoot someone in a game than shake their hand. It is a bit unique to a portable system though, and while I don't only love the PSP because I can play M rated games on it, I do appreciate it. Are you similar to me in this regard? If the ESRB were to give a blanket rating to your PSP game collection, what would it be? Did you get the PSP partly because of the ability to play more M rated games?
Nielsen adds games to ratings matrix
"The value of an entertainment medium is directly proportional to how well it is measured." This is the proposition Nielsen VP Jeff Herrmann put forth for the creation of GamePlay Metrics, a service that will measure just how many eyeballs are glued to the day's hottest games. Such data is of course highly coveted by in-game advertisers, who want to know exactly how many people are being subliminally attracted to delicious Subway sandwiches.This isn't Nielsen's first foray into the game space. For the past three years, the firm's annual Active Gamer Benchmark has surveyed gamers online to find trends in their behavior. The latest such report found that females and social gamers are becoming a more important part of gaming, echoing the findings of other studiesIn addition to measuring gameplay habits, the GamePlay Metrics data will be cross-referenced with Nielsen's data on TV and internet usage, showing what gamers do with the rest of their free time. In news from the future, Nielsen announced next month a program that will place a tiny surveillance chip in all babies shortly after birth, measuring everything they see and do for the remainder of their lives.
