The game that’s too sexy for Sweden is coming to Australia, and it’s not even getting that high a rating.
Remember how it was announced that Dead or Alive: Dimensions wouldn’t be coming out in Sweden, reportedly due to concerns over the country’s child pornography laws? Well, apparently the game isn’t really all that scandalous, as it’s received a “PG” rating Down Under.
The Classification Board said it assigned the rating based on “mild violence and sexualized gameplay” but made no mention about the issue of child pornography or the game’s photography mode. That alone is kind of weird because – as the Sydney Morning Herald notes – any sexual depictions of minors, even virtual characters, can have some very real consequences:
In Australia, a Sydney man was convicted in 2008 of possessing child pornography over a cartoon showing characters from The Simpsons engaged in sexual acts.
In a landmark finding in the NSW Supreme Court, Justice Michael Adams concluded that a fictional cartoon character could “depict” a “person” under law.
Justice Adams said cartoons could “fuel demand for material that does involve the abuse of children” and found that “a fictional character, even one which departs from recognisable human forms in some significant respects, may nevertheless be the depiction of a person within the meaning of the Act”.
He said the man would have been jailed had the cartoon depicted real children but instead fined the man $3000 and placed him on a two year good behaviour bond.
The Australian rating is similar to the T for Teen rating that the ESRB has assigned the game here in the United States. Based on these two ratings, it doesn’t sound like Dead or Alive: Dimensions is really all that scandalous; not only that, but it’s kind of ironic that Australia is getting a game that’s being withheld from certain European countries.
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Published: Jun 1, 2011 12:00 am