Attention Whore
Attention Whore
by Andrew Russell
It turns out that my last post was indeed convenient!
Video Game Blog Kotaku has recently revealed (via http://www.kotaku.com.au/2009/11/atkinson-to-appeal-modern-warfare-2-ma15-classification/) that South Australian Attorney General and arch nemesis to all video game lovers in Australia, Michael Atkinson (member for Croydon) is going to appeal the MA15+ rating for the video game “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2″ and attempt to ‘persuade’ the OFLC to refuse the game classification; essentially asking for the game to be banned.
I am not interested in Modern Warfare 2, however I believe several things about this game make Atkinson’s move rather significant.
- Modern Warfare 2 is an extremely critically acclaimed game which many video game fans have been anticipating for a long time.
- The game has had an extraordinary amount of advertising and media coverage; on the first day of the game’s release the game made US$310 million in the US and UK alone. This makes Modern Warfare 2 the largest entertainment launch in history.
- The game was released on November 10. The game cleared the OFLC’s procedures and bureaucracy a rather long time ago.
Thus, Atkinson is attacking a game which has already been released and had spent a very significant amount of time being classified. He could have checked out this game’s content (and then go to the press to launch a moral panic) when it was being ran through the OFLC. Doing this is well within his powers.
But he didn’t.
Why?
-
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