This news bit covering a recent media ratings/censorship conference in Australia briefly mentions how Oz censors are being too uptight when it comes to games. This is no surprise, as many can remember their ban of GTA3 and other recent games…

This all reminds me of the cross-cultural interface design session I attended back at SIGGRAPH (which I’ve mentioned before). In particular, the concept of “uncertainty avoidance”, which is one of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions. Uncertainty avoidance can be defined as the degree to which people feel threatened by, and attempt to avoid ambiguous situations; and cultures that desire to avoid uncertainty are resistant to change, and engage in stabilization practices such as rigid rules and rituals. (This is pretty serious stuff that global orgs like the Peace Corps study).

So, it is quite interesting to see that in the above mentioned censorship article criticizing the Australians for being too uptight, it is the Swedes that are most lax (Sweden has a pretty low UA index). The Brits, with a slightly higher UA index, have classifications but are not overly anxious. The USA is about the same level as Australia (but I am sure it is guys like Jack Thompson that bump up the score). Even Canada has a similar UA score, which might explain earlier bans on games like Soldier of Fortune and looking to games as a reason for police disrespect/violence.

The real clincher is Greece. The Greeks have the highest level of uncertainty avoidance among all the profiled countries. Ah, their desire to wipe out all digital gaming starts to make a bit more sense ;)