Electronic Arts is applauding the Australian government's plans to implement a R18+ game rating in the country. EA Asia Publishing vice president Mark Bradley told GameSpot Australia yesterday that the publisher is encouraged by the Australian federal government decision to bring the country's game rating in line with other countries in Europe and North America.

"Australia needs a rating system that recognises that millions of adults play video games," Bradley said. "The current policy of the Australian government forces an arcane censorship on adults who play games--cuts they would never impose on movies, books or other forms of artistic expression. This year, the American Supreme Court voted overwhelmingly to affirm that game developers deserve the same creative freedom as film makers and authors. Read More

A new survey by video game price comparison and marketplace Playr2 reveals that the average consumer doesn't spend all that much time playing a new game's campaign mode (or single player) before their interest wanes.

The short answer to that question is the time spent on the campaign mode is usually just a handful of days, according to a survey of 1,671 users. Breaking that question down among the most popular titles, the answers become even more surprising:

- Call of Duty: Black Ops - 2 days
- Terminator Salvation - 2.5 days
- Resident Evil 5 - 3.2 days
- God of War 2 - 3.3 days
- Uncharted 2 - 3.8 days
- Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands - 4.1 days
- Assassin's Creed II - 5 days
- Uncharted - 6.6 days
- Metal Gear Solid 3 - 6.8 days
- Grand Theft Auto IV - 8.2 days

This question did not include downloadable content or online modes. Read More

The Australian government has announced that it will introduce an R18+ classification for video games within "a couple of months."

Australia's federal, state and territory ministers met in Adelaide today for the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General meeting (SCAG) to discuss the introduction of an adult rating. NSW was the only state to abstain from the vote on R18+, while all of the eight other jurisdictions agreed to its introduction once the guidelines have been approved by various cabinets.

Federal Minister for Home Affairs Brendan O'Connor said that he would introduce the R18+ classification for games at a federal level. At that point it would be up to each state and territory to decide whether or not to adopt it. Read More

Apple announced on Thursday that OS X 10.7. (Codenamed "Lion") sold more than 1 million copies since its debut on the Mac App Store a day earlier. Lion costs $29.99 on the App Store and was released as download-only. At that price point, Apple raked in just under $30 million. No doubt they are happy with these early numbers. This download-only release may set a standard for future software releases, according to Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg.

"Typically the idea of downloading the 4 gigabyte operating system and installing it over existing stuff and expecting it to work isn’t a common expectation for a lot of users," Gartenberg told VentureBeat. "Conventional wisdom says you should do a clean install, and broadband connections are finally fast enough." Read More

A game developed by 10-year-old leukemia patient Owain Weinert is now available for iOS devices. Back in April Make-A-Wish Foundation tapped PopCap Games to help fulfill the dream of young Owain: help him to create a game. The result of those efforts is a real-time strategy game called Allied Star Police.

Owain first pitched the game during his week of brainstorming with PopCap:

"On the first day of PopCap the team - a producer, several developers, programmers and a musician - invited Owain to our Seattle office to learn more about his idea for a video game. They were blown away when he came with a PowerPoint presentation and basically walked them through the game."

"He had mapped out pretty much everything - storyline, unit types, firepower, shields, respawn times. We were blown away. Clearly, Owain was not your average fourth grader. He knew everything about this game." Read More

SocialApps, makers of a lesser known social farming game called MyFarm for Facebook is suing Zynga, claiming that the social gaming giant stole source code from its game to create what we all know as Farmville. MyFarm launched in 2008, and according to court documents the two companies were going to sign some sort of agreement. After allegedly getting their hands on the source code for that game Zynga stopped negotiating with SocialApps and a month later launched Farmville on Facebook.

You can get the full details at Patent Arcade.

Meanwhile Zynga is in the midst of another legal dispute with Brazilian social game developer. It filed a lawsuit in June claiming that the developer stole elements from its games to create several Facebook games. The company points to the SF Weekly article "FarmVillain," which chronicled the dark side of the company's creative process. Read More

Edge Games owner Tim Langdell has finally responded to allegations that he's a "trademark troll," via a "lengthy character defense" obtained by Eurogamer. In it, Langdell or whoever the author is of this document, attempts to defend what he calls misconceptions about him personally, his trademark disputes and his company, Edge Games.

"Previously Edge Games and Tim Langdell have made virtually no public statements about the various Edge disputes over the past two years since it seemed clear any statement they made would not be reported fairly," the document begins.

"However, they believe the time has come to try to set the record straight on a sizable number of misconceptions and falsehoods that have been circulating on the internet." Read More

The father of a Wellington Ohio teen who blamed video games for killing his mother and attempting to kill his father, is warning parents about the evils of playing them to excess. In court during his son's trial, defense attorneys blamed depression and an addiction to video games for the violence that saw a mother die and a father seriously wounded with his own handgun.

"We have a young man who's normal, a normal young man until he starts viewing video games," attorney, James Kersey said.

While people will argue about the merits of the "video games made me do it" defense, one supposed expert on teen shootings says that this case sheds light on the serious problem of violent video games. Read More

The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) is a statement today applauding efforts on "electronics stewardship" and "CE recycling" by federal government agencies and individual companies.

Government agencies that earned praise from the group included the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) and the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). Corporations that are committed to CE recycling included Dell, Sprint and Sony. These companies also issued separate statements earlier today about their commitment to recycling. In addition, LG Electronics announced a two-day eCycling event it is co-sponsoring to take place in Oklahoma later this month. Read More

Andrew Wilson, the worldwide head of development at EA Sports, details a new business model at the Develop conference. In a talk titled "Gaming 3.0: Moving the Goalposts," Wilson talked about Amazon's Whispersync feature, which lets consumers download a digital book for one price and then read it on whatever format they like without having to pay again for each platform.

Wilson claims that EA Sports may move toward the same business model with its games, and going so far as saying that his company would provide all of its titles for one fixed price on multiple platforms – all linked by the same social gaming system. Read More

Trion Worlds (makers of RIFT Online) studio general manager Scott Hartsman says that the business of gold farming hurts both developers and players.

"If you're talking about what different kinds of fraud exist in the world, the ones that for us as a developer and a publisher, the kinds of fraud that concern us the most, are the actual credit card frauds," Hartsman tells Gamasutra.

According to Hartsman, the same people that sell gold to players then turn around and steal their credit card information.

"Where you go buy gold from a disreputable gold site, and they say 'thank you' and deliver your gold, and sell your credit card number, or start registering accounts with your credit card." Read More

Former Rock, Paper Shotgun contributor and games journalist Quintin Smith has been hired by publisher Paradox Interactive as "Creative Marketing Commissar." He will apparently do this while "continuing to pursue his freelance writing career part time." Quintin will split his time between London and Stockholm and will help work on the entire portfolio of Paradox products.

"I had a tremendous time interacting with Paradox as a journalist, so when they asked if I'd like to start working for them while continuing to work on projects of my own, it was an easy decision. This represents an opportunity for me to work even more closely with people I respect and games that I love. I originally wrote in that last sentence that this represents an opportunity for me to get even more involved with people I respect, but that sounds a bit suggestive. I'm glad I changed it."

"You don't turn down a job in California," Quintin added. Read More

In the latest edition of IndustryGamer's monthly series, Pachter's Podium, Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter talks about the pricing "sweet spot" for the Wii U. According to Pachter, that sweet spot is a price point of right around $249. Pachter said that a higher price point - especially anything near $399 - would surprise him. Here's an excerpt speaking to this subject: Read More

Angry Birds developer Rovio believes that its popular franchise is strong and is betting its future solely on it. Speaking at Casual Connect this week in Seattle CEO Peter Vesterbacka said that it was unlikely that it could replicate the game's success with a future title. Instead of coming up with something new the company plans to focus on Angry Birds.

"Game makers buy into their own bulls***," he said. "You think you can make hit after hit. We know how hard it is to do that, so we are betting everything on Angry Birds."

In another part of his talk, Vesterbacka added that Rovio's aim is for Angry Birds to become "the first entertainment brand with a billion fans," estimating that goal could be reached in "two or three years." AS of last month, the game has been downloaded 250 million times. Read More

Super Meat Boy developer Team Meat says that it really "just doesn't f*cking care" if its games are pirated - in fact they say that they know that it is happening.

"Our game was hugely pirated - we don't fucking care," Team Meat members Tommy Refenes and Edmund McMillen explained. "If there are, let's say 200,000 copies of SMB that are getting passed around for free, that's 200,000 people who are playing the game. If they like this game there's a really high probability of their friends coming around and seeing it or them posting about it on their blogs."

The duo believes that shame will motivate some of the people downloading the game without paying for it.

"It's not cool to go round and say I really like this game that I stole, so they're not going to say that," they added. "So it's going to come around to sales." Read More