When a game gets rated by classification boards, such as the ESRB, that often means that an upcoming release is nearing. Such is the case for Dreams, which has just been awarded a PG rating by the Australian Classification Board (IARC). While the game has been available in early access since 2018, there are rumors that Sony is planning a full release on February 14th, 2020.
The description is marked as PG for “mild themes, violence, and coarse language, online interactivity.” Beyond this, a chart breaks down that it had a “mild impact” ratings in themes, violence, and language. It also has a “very mild impact” rating in nudity and no rating in sex or drug use. Considering Dreams is a content creation game, not much unlike the popular LittleBigPlanet series, there’s a good chance that this rating is mostly based on the single-player campaign and the creation tools available, not on the community creations. The campaign is broken into three distinct sections to showcase the varied possibilities of Dreams: a cheery 3D platformer, a film noir style point-and-click adventure, and a sci-fi puzzle game.
The best news to come from this is that Dreams won’t suffer the “banned in Australia” fate that many games seem to end up with when they’re refused classification. Recently, DayZ was refused classification for the way it portrays drugs like morphine and marijuana in the game. Because you get positive benefits in-game from both, such as getting some health back, it was refused classification and effectively banned from sale in Australia. Likewise, recently Rockstar’s still-unannounced mystery game “Bonaire” was also refused classification in Australia, though it’s a bit harder to say why when we haven’t seen anything else on the game. Other games refused classification include Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number and We Happy Few, the latter of which was later able to get a rating later. Of note, most of these titles are the equivalent of M-rated games in the US, of which Dreams is most certainly not.
[Source: Australian Classification]
