Getting Up, Fable Under Australian Pressure

The premier of Australian state Queensland, Peter Beattie, has called upon Atari’s console game Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure to be banned for glorifying “high risk, law breaking, violent and possibly deadly behavior”. The game, fronted by fashion designer Marc Ecko, has already drawn criticism from New York City council member Peter F. Vallone for promoting graffiti. Beattie, meanwhile, has said he will write to federal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock to ask for a national ban on the game. "It makes heroes of a cast of reckless characters," Beattie told parliament. "It has the worrying potential to steer impressionable young people into activities that will endanger life and limb and earn them criminal records." Although Getting Up has already drawn complaints from several parties, Beattie also stated, in comments reported by the Australian press, that he felt Peter Molyneux’s Fable should also be banned for promoting male violence against women, although he offered no specific example of this type of content within the game. This game has already been rated M15+ for 'medium level animated violence' by the Australian Office of Film & Literature Classification as of June 2004 and passed for sale in Australia. Though not having specifically ruled on Getting Up as of yet, the Australian government's Office of Fair Trading recently banned the sale of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in the wake of the Hot Coffee furor, and has previously banned other titles included Manhunt, NARC and Carmageddon considering them to be more extreme than the maximum M15+ rating allowed in that country.