South Australia and video games have a bit of a turbulent history. Long term Attorney General, Michael Atkinson was a major obstacle for over a decade by blocking any attempts to establish an R18+ rating for games in Australia, and more recently the current incumbent in that same role, John Rau, considered that just replacing classification stickers with higher ratings or forcing developers to resubmit all their games were effective ways to deal with the new classification rules.
There is a current campaign in South Australia focusing on gambling addiction and how it can be prevented. Part of the focus is on education for children and an awareness campaign for parents after a study showed links between games that have gambling like features and gambling problems further down the track. So far so noble.
Unfortunately the problem lies in the delivery. The poster (above) with a young girl behind an iPad at a poker table makes the connection but the caption 'gambling starts with games' is just plain awful in its generalisation. Now this has caused quite a bit of outrage over various internet forums but I am not prepared to go as far as calling this an all out attack on gamers, but it certainly does not help with the desire most gamers have to see there passion considered the equal (and sometimes superior) to other artistic expressions like cinema and literature.
It baffles me that such a targeted campaign that is essentially trying to get parents to actually monitor what their kids are playing can drop the ball with such a broad and over simplified tag line. While there are plenty of people who will get the message you can bet there will still be a sizeable group who will decide that this is just more evidence of the horrible evil within computer games. Thanks a lot South Australia!
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