The Fridge Door: The High Octane Smell of Something Fishy

Opinion from Samo - Tuesday, 10 February 2009 @ 1:40pm

I had a revelation today about the single biggest problem facing us as generally mature, responsible and fine upstanding gamers.

Formula One is boring.

Yes, you read right. The supposed pinnacle of sports, the most expensive, glamorous and exotic sport in the world has become one big gigantic snooze fest.

See, there are numerous problems with F1, long before you get to the head of the governing body’s recent publicly exposed S&M Fetish. The drivers, the main characters in this high-octane whirlwind of glitz, glamour and excess are boring as batshit. Nothing more than business cards, with the emotions to match. A place for the multi-national corporations of the world to attach and display their logos and slogans accompanied by a cheesy white smile and the classic interview punch line ‘The team and the car were perfect today.’ Yeah, haven’t heard that one before.

The closest thing to excitement in pit lane at the moment is Kimi Raikonnen because if he crashes out or has mechanical issues, he’s likely to storm half way across Monaco to his luxury yacht to crack open several beers while in the arms of several beautiful women. Yet this is a man known as ‘The Ice Man’ for his cool, no, icy demeanour. Seriously, I’ve seen more inspirational interviews given by a bar of soap. This is true, because I interviewed the bar of soap in the shower tonight just so I could make this point.

What happened to the days when Nigel Mansell grabbed Ayrton Senna by the throat or when Nelson Piquet unleashed a barrage of punches and a kung-fu style kick at Eliseo Salazar?

The answer? Liability.

No one can accept blame for anything anymore and as a result everyone in Pit Lane is scared out of their wits of offending a sponsor, industry executive or god forbid a lobbyist who represents a minority group and has the phone number for the local paper.

There’s a fairly strong sentiment around the opposers of the R18+ rating for video games that we need to keep it out for fear of ‘protecting the children’. SA Attorney General Michael Atkinson’s standard defence against the heathens. His argument, however, gets thinner and thinner every year as games that are rated the R18+ equivalent overseas make it through the Oz classification system with the marking that makes them suitable for 15 year olds.

So what is it really? I’m sure you’re with me when you say, well, something else is up here and I’m not talking about the light fittings or the ceiling. Which is where I come back to my argument about the blandness of Formula One. The ‘think of the children’ argument isn’t substantial; it’s a political convenience to win favour with family groups. What this really is, is the people in power are scared shitless of being labelled liable for what they see as inevitable and common video game related violence. If we get an R rating, all of a sudden GTA is allowed into the country uncensored and our classification making politicians are liable for all the prostitutes that have been run over, completely forgetting all the degenerate nutcases that are already out there in the first place for whatever reason. All of a sudden the nutcases have someone to blame and that’s what all bureaucrats are scared of. Things they can be held liable for. So they wash their hands with a thin and ill-conceived excuse that will win favour with all the idiotic, uneducated parents that have no idea that Manhunt 2 isn’t suitable for their 10 year old. See at the moment we have these parents who think they’ve been completely let off the leash of responsibility and they can blame someone else if their 11 year old tries to murder them with a pickaxe. ‘Oh no, it wasn’t bad parenting despite me completely never having disciplined Jimmy in his 11 years, it was those bad people in the Classification Board who let Fallout 3 through on an M15+ rating which is clearly suitable for MY 9 year old.’

Yeah, right.

Call me old fashioned, whatever. Until the members of the general public learn to wake up to reality, re-grow their spines and take some responsibility for their own actions instead of looking to place the blame for their own shortcomings on someone else, we’ll never have an R 18+ rating.