Mumbai, February 27: As PlayStation 3’s latest offering raises eyebrows in the Middle East, the release of Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain has started a debate among gamers, parents and censors over a long forgotten proposal by the Censor Board to screen video games coming to India.
The game, which released in the US yesterday and Europe today, contains a sex scene and has already been banned in the UAE. It has an 18+PEGI rating from the European rating standards.
Don’t look now: Heavy Rain, which contains a sex scene, has been banned in the UAE
Vinayak Azad, regional officer for the Censor Board in Mumbai, admitted that a proposal regarding this had come up two years ago. “There was talk about censoring video games, but the discussion didn’t make much progress.
For one, we saw video games with very little penetration into the market and it’s only an urban phenomenon.
Furthermore, there wasn’t enough public opinion to motivate us to take a concrete decision,” he said.
The Parent Teacher Association (PTA), however, was indignant. “Why does the Censor Board have to wait for us to agitate? These games are not only filled with sexually implicit material, they are also violent. We get complaints every single day from parents,” said Arundhati Chavan, president, PTA Mumbai.
Quantic Dream boss David Cage had told PlayStation3 magazine, “There are a couple [of sex scenes], but it’s definitely not porn… We don’t intend to push the boundaries and be ultra-realistic in every detail. It’s about real characters having emotions and doing what adults do when they fall in love.”
Counter strike
Gamers, however, have different reasoning. Argued Chirantan Patnaik, the Mumbai boy who broke the Guinness record for the longest continuous game play session last year, “Price is the biggest barrier. Games developed for the Xbox and the PlayStation cost anything above Rs 2,000. I don’t see how kids younger than 18 can afford these.”
Indiagames CEO Vishal Gondal agreed, adding, “There are stringent rules governing ratings of video games.
Though India does not have parameters of its own, we use a combination of American and European standards.
The game you’re referring to here is meant for adults, and it’s not posing as something else.”
Chavan, however, argued that children didn’t always necessarily need to buy the game. “Many children visit gaming parlours or friends’ homes. The regulation needs to come before and not after we feel the ill effects of this obsession,” she said.
–Agencies