@1 PUTTING AGE CERTIFICATES ON PD AND SHAREWARE DISKS "Yeah... but what's the point?" By Andrew Campbell, who has started doing it! @2 Perhaps the best known candidates for legal age requirements in software are sexy or violent games. In the world of PD and Shareware it tends to be slideshows that get the stick - images of naked women in full colour AGA, although not pornographic, are labelled "adults only", as are horror slideshows, especially those that have been scanned from comics/fanzines, or digitized from TV... fair enough I suppose, considering films are rated on the same basis. So what's the equivelant of a U (Universal) rated film in the PD scene? Children's disks, art packages, utilities, etc? It certainly makes sense. Such products are the norm, and can be sold without any age certificates at all. What comes next? PG (Parental Guidance)... in a film of this kind you might get the odd splat of blood, an occasional sexy scene such as a French kiss or a lead up to the bedroom door, and you may hear the odd "s***" or "b******" used by the actors. PG software would translate to disks such as "Zombie Apocalypse", "Black Dawn II", "Cindy Crawford Slideshow" (harmless bathing-suit imagery) and most demos which might have the appearance of bad language here and there - nothing too strong or offensive. At 15, children are no longer children - they're adults. Films given a certificate for this age group can contain unlimited use of the f-word (even the m-f word, shock/horror!) and scenes of fairly graphic sex and violence. The equivelant software could be titles such as the "Grapevine" magazine, which is bursting at the seams with abusive language and jokes, "Street Fighter 3" which has cartoony blood spurting all over the place and two characters supposedly having sex (they just judder up and down on the screen. How realistic), "Suicide Man" (violent ways to take your own life, which are more likely to PUT YOU OFF DOING IT than anything else) and the "Fit Chix" series of girlie slideshows, with their occasional pair of naked breasts. @2 The ultimate certificate is 18 - proper, broad-minded adulthood has supposedly been reached, and you are ready to see anything the makers of films can get away with. 18-rated movies are ultimited in language and often contain scenes of graphic sex (though actual penetration has, as far as I'm aware, never been allowed to be shown apart from in the "Lovers Guide" video release. An erect male organ is usually a definite no-no!). Violence can extend to rape and even torture. So what sort of Public Domain warrants the classic `Over 18's Only' warning? Slideshows of an explicit nature for a start - "Madonna Sex", "Naked Beauties" and such like probably contain on-par-with-top-shelf- magazine images, as do strip-poker games which could over-excite an under 18-year-old (not that I'd know or anything!)... violence has to be pretty steep and realistic to justify an 18+ only rating, though some disks have actually managed to achieve this. But IS it an achievement? The answer is, quite obviously, NO. It is a requirement, that's all, to help guide parents more than anyone. In most cases, children are not influenced by adult software, be it a slideshow of naked women or a digitized exploding head... they will either look away or forget. But this isn't ALWAYS what happens... Children love to immitate things they see on the screen. Karate moves in the latest action-packed blockbuster, pretend to beat each other up, smash their toys, torture them in the same way they saw on TV... Yes, I think it IS worth putting warnings on disks which warrent them. The PD scene is a free realm; authors should be allowed - like film makers - to express themselves, at least within the limits of social acceptability. And childhood and teenage years are perhaps the most influencial ones in a person's life... @1 --------------------------------------------------------------------- BLACK DRAGON DESIGN - RATED PRODUCTIONS --------------------------------------------------------------------- Name of disk Minimum Age Er... WHY?!? --------------------------------------------------------------------- THE TERMINATION DEMO 15 Small animated executions of human beings. Large amounts of blood and gore. --------------------------------------------------------------------- DARK PORTAL EDITION I 15 Bad language/sex/violence is contained within the fiction --------------------------------------------------------------------- DARK PORTAL EDITION II 15 For the same reasons as the ones stated for edition one --------------------------------------------------------------------- DARK PORTAL EDITION III 18 Stories of merciless rape, torture, suicide, and some references to child abuse & a lot of bad language. --------------------------------------------------------------------- THE GLOWING RED MAN 18 Teenage violence, homosexual relationships, justified but graphic scenes of child- rape/abuse, talk of sex and references to masturbation and very strong language. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Over-the-top? You decide..