Early Wing Commanders Finally Receive Rating in Australia (February 3, 2017)

KrisV

KrisV

Administrator
Electronic Arts has recently asked Australia's Department of Communications and the Arts to provide a rating for Wing Commander, Wing Commander 2 and Privateer. Evidently, the three oldest games in the franchise (published before Origin was acquired by EA) had never been rated for the Australian market. With several Wing Commander games showing up on Origin Access, a digital delivery/subscription service, it's possible that EA had to quickly get that straightened out. All three have been classified Parental Guidance, with Privateer considered the tamest, due to just mild sci-fi themes and violence. I guess the ratings board never shopped for contraband.






The content is mild in impact.
The impact of PG (Parental Guidance) classified films and computer games should be no higher than mild, but they may contain content that children find confusing or upsetting and may require the guidance of parents and guardians. They may, for example, contain classifiable elements such as language and themes that are mild in impact.
It is not recommended for viewing or playing by persons under 15 without guidance from parents or guardians.
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Original update published on February 3, 2017
 
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I suppose the most violent thing in Privateer was shooting or ramming of ejected pilots. I can only think of the shooting of McGuffin in WC2 (and corresponding puddle of blood), but WC1 was pretty violent. If you failed the early series, the McAuliffe scientists' bodies would get very bloody from all the shooting. And the worst is perhaps the beheading of the Confederation soldiers on Rostov - I don't even remember if there was blood spurting from the neck once the execution was done.

Then again, these are all rather primitive graphics by today's standards, so I suppose it's considered pretty tame now.
 
I assume that the contraband in Privateer wasn't actually an issue, because it none of the drugs you bought were identifiable with existing drugs. Had the player been trading in cocaine or heroin, or even something "lighter", the rating would have probably been MA15 or higher. But for a sci-fi drug to get that same kind of result, you would need to very clearly show its effects in the game. As it is, who even knows what "brilliance" is or what it does?

Generally speaking, modern ratings systems are pretty silly - unfortunately. They're very mechanical - rather than trying to analyse a work for its themes and qualities, they basically just tick off boxes. Violence? Check. Blood? Check. And so on. There's just no analysis as such. I think, all in all, I would strongly object to a PG rating for these games - I think an M rating (which still legally permits children to play a game, while strongly recommending it for older audiences) would actually be far more appropriate. But of course, that would result in a lot of whining about excessive ratings, because most people equate ratings with censorship rather than with consumer information.
 
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