The Globe and Mail, June 12, 2000
Republished with permission

July 12, 2000 -- The film commissioner for British Columbia ruled yesterday that the province's retailers will no longer be able to rent or sell a violent video game called Soldier of Fortune to people under the age of 18.

The ruling is the first of its kind in Canada, and makes B.C. the first jurisdiction in North America to restrict access to video games. Until this point, video games have not been controlled or classified by the government. However, Mary-Louise McClausand's decision to place Soldier of Fortune under the motion picture act will make it illegal for retailers to rent or sell the game to anyone under 18.

Under B.C's Motion Picture Act, interactive video games can be considered films. A video game may be considered an adult motion picture if there are "scenes of brutality or torture to persons or animals depicted in a realistic and explicit manner."

Attourney-General Andrew Petter has also said that the government is seriously considering a rating system for all computer games.

McClausand's decision to define Soldier of Fortune as an adult motion picture was a result of its "depictions of violence against personals and animals" which she judged to be "brutal and portrayed realistically and explicitly."

"The object of the plot is to create an environment where the participant can maim or kill as many assailants as possible, with the level of viciousness that the participant chooses to employ," she wrote.

Soldier of Fortune is a popular first-person shooter game widely available on CD-ROM. It contains 10 animated covert missions that take place in five geographical "political hotspots," over 26 levels of play. As John Mullins, an "antiterrorist" mercenary, the player's objective is to kill as many adversaries as possible. Killings are rewarded with additional weapons and ammunition including knives, shotguns, missile launchers, flame-throwers and machine guns. Each weapon imparts a different and graphically detailed agony on the player's victims.

"Depending on which weapon is used, the participant can enact gory violence that results in the horror of evisceration, decapitation, dismemberment and victims burning to death," wrote McCausland. "The expressions of this agony are manifested in cries of pain, screaming, and physical responses to the injuries, including recoiling, flailing, grimacing and grasping at the wound site."

The decision to rate the game as an adult motion picture means that all copies of the game will have to be recalled from stores before it can be licensed as an adult film. Every adult picture distributed in B.C. required a "B.C. approved" adult-video decal.

"If this inconveniences distributors, I believe that the inconvenience is necessary to protect the interests of the public."

The distributor of Soldier of Fortune, Beamscope Canada, has 30days to appeal the decision. At the time of the ruling, Beamscope could not be reached for comment.

McCausland's ruling was the result of a single-citizen complaint about Soldier of Fortune, which was released earlier this year.