Novocain For Your Brain

"SINGAPORE: A new two—rating classification system for video games will be
launched end of the month, the Board of Film Censors (BFC) under the Media
Development Authority (MDA) announced on Monday."-Channel NewsAsia - Tuesday, April 14
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/cna/20080414/tap-341374-231650b.html

Referring to the article above, MDA will be rating games into different classification just like what they did to movies and films into ratings like "Mature 18" (M18) etc. With effect from 28 April, "retailers (will be asked to) exercise responsibility by not selling Age Advisory—labelled games to those below 16." This will mean that kids will need to show their IC or other documents to verify that they are of "suitable age" to buy the games from retailers for games with certain ratings.

Will this censorship practice be really effective? The whole idea of censorship in games is to "protect" children (below 16 years of age) from media content which may depict violence, sexual activity, drug abuse, nudity or coarse language. Parents will be the one who are likely to welcome this censorship policy on games but whether this type of restriction is likely to be effective is another matter.

According to psychological reactance theory when people feel that their freedom will be restricted in some way, they are likely to respond by wanting something even more than before (http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/reactance.htm), censorship on certain game titles will be likely to make those games more appealing. Childrens below age of 16 can ask help from older friends or siblings for game purchases and this simple act can by-pass the entire censorship system. Similarly, the system may lead to shift of game demand from official game retail to parrallel imports or from other unofficial sources. This may lead to fall in revenue for game retails store. All these may undermine the practicality and effectiveness of the system.

It is considered a blessing that we are well taken care off in the sea of information. With censorship, we are spoon-fed and had our diet of information properly filtered. Pampered like a baby, one could not stop but ponder when we will grow up in the eyes of our parents, to be discerning enough to pick and discriminate information critically.