Overkill Slammed for "Sexually Aggressive Violence"

19 March, 2009 28 February, 2022

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It’s ‘Good News/Bad News’ day for House of the Dead: Overkill as an Australian Parents Group has slammed the game for not being fit for it’s MA 15+ Age Rating. The problem in Australia is there is no higher rating for games there. Any game that exceeds the standards for the MA 15+ rating is outright banned.

Pro Family Perspective director Angela Conway recently told the Melbourne Herald-Sun,

“The gaming industry has been mischievously misrepresenting the classification system on this issue. I feel very distressed that a large number of teenagers and adults would play this game and soak up this amount of sexually aggressive violence and aggressively violent language.

We need to draw a deep breath and look at the research, which will show a need to scale back this level of violence.
Given the increasing amount of knowledge now available of the effects of exposure to intense levels of violence on the adolescent brain, we should be reviewing the level of violence the MA15+ classification now allows.”

Sega have immediately responded with Sega spokesman Vispi Bhopti saying.

“House of the Dead: Overkill has been rated as suitable for people over 15. It is not an R-rated game. The swearing in it is very much stylised so it matches the Grindhouse cinema style made famous by director Quentin Tarantino.

In playing the game, players attack zombies or humanoid characters but never humans. This is an important distinction that the classification board makes when it gives a rating.”

Interestingly MadWorld, dubbed the Wii’s most violent game is scheduled for release in Australia on March 26th and has also been rated MA 15+. With attention diverted by Sega’s Zombie gore fest one wonders what Angela Conway and people like her might make of this latest game.

This post was originally written by the author for TSSZ News.

10 Comments

This will not end well for MadWorld.

Maybe Australia should get a better rating system, like the USA’s or Europe’s.

She is worried about what adults think pshhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaa They will still play it

*Sighs*
If they hate the game, then don’t even touch it anymore. There, problem solved.

I haven’t played it, but how could anything in there be “sexually aggressive”???

Who cares what a game contains? If you think it’s bad, don’t play it, and don’t let your children play it. Don’t go trying to make it near-impossible for other people in that country to play it. That’s quite rude.

I think part of the problem is the fact Australia doesn’t seem to have an adequate way of rating clearly adult games. I don’t think Overkill and MadWorld are 15 rated games at all. Indeed both seem to have gotten an 18 rating in the UK. It’s just Australia lacks the proper classification for clearly adult games thanks to an out of date system.

Geez, this is rediculous! These parents complain about the games they let thier kids play. What the heck?! Seriously, it’s their fault that they let this game into their houses, not Sega’s fault for creating the game.

The problem is, the Australian censors still are stuck in the dark ages that ‘Games are for kids, not adults’. THey refuse anything above 15 and most Australians have to miss out on some of the good games that come out.

I say to this the same thing I say to every censorship act: “At what point does parental accountability come into the factor?” When I was 10 (I think) and Perfect Dark came out on the 64, my dad bought it for me. My mom promptly took it away. She wouldn’t let me or my brothers touch it until we found out you could filter the blood and language, and checked afterwards to make sure we did. She still won’t get me occult games (such as Castlevania), although I can still play them if I get them, because she knows I got nightmares from stuff like that when I was younger and isn’t totally sure how I’d react now. I’m 20 now. THAT IS PARENTAL ACCOUNTABILITY!

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