Oz lawman "at risk" from gamer mob

Michael Atkinson, an Australian Attorney-General that doesn't like violent videogames, believes his family to be at more risk from angry gamers than "outlaw" gangs of bikers. I know who I'd rather fight.

Marauding button-pressers have been lurking around his house in the early hours of the morning and have even used pens to write nasty messages with.

"I feel that my family and I are more at risk from gamers than we are from the outlaw motorcycle gangs who also hate me and are running a candidate against me," said Atkinson, reported by GamesIndustry.biz.

"The outlaw motorcycle gangs haven't been hanging around my doorstop at 2am. A gamer has," he recalled, adding that "a threatening note from a gamer" was pushed under his door one morning.

Why? Atkinson is one of around five per cent of people that don't want an 18 rating for games in Australia. Currently, a title deemed inappropriate for a 15 certificate - the highest available for videogames (but not films) in the country - cannot be sold there.

Atkinson has made public his opinion of these mature games in the past. Talking to his constituents in a letter to The Advertiser last year, Atkinson wrote:

"Their vote is hardly likely to hinge on the 'right' to score gamer points on the computer screen by running down and killing pedestrians on the pavement, raping a mother and her two daughters, blowing oneself up in a market, cutting people in half with large calibre shells, injecting drugs to win an athletics event or killing a prostitute to recover the fee one just paid her. (Welcome to the world of R18+ computer games)."