Australia bans Left 4 Dead 2.

[mkultra333]

God, I feel like I'm starting to suffocate in this country. Mandatory internet filtering at the ISP level (using secret "blacklists") is currently being tested, will be implemented ASAP despite most people hating the idea.

And there's no adult game classification, so anything deemed unsuitable for children is banned. The latest victim being Left 4 Dead 2. Other recent bannings include Necrovision and Risen. The highest rating is MA 15+, if your game is aimed at 18+ then you're banned, baby. The state I live in considers such material on par with child porn.

It is virtually impossible to fight this. Anyone who argues against it is labelled as supporting child abuse. (Though there is some hope that the Senate may block the internet censorship.)

But to get an Adult game classifaction involves something like getting the Attorney Generals of 6 different states to agree, which is unlikely to happen any time soon, if ever. Ugh. I hated the old right wing government, but I'm starting to hate this left wing one just as much. They all hate free speech so much! The joke is that Australia is becoming the China of the Pacific.

Oh, and I just found out that since I want to write a first person shooter, and therefore would probably get a MA 15+ classification or worse, I would have to submit it to the classifaction board and pay them several thousand dollars for the privilege of possibly being banned. And my game site would probably end up blocked and on the secret blacklist.

[reptor]

Wow, you are optimistic



I've heard similar stories about Australia before. Perhaps at this forum

Also, I watched a documentary film on TV some time back in which they told how young mothers were taken their babies away for some common good reason, I think it was if they were not married, then they were taken the babies away and didn't know what was going on and where the child ended up etc. weird things. I think they were nuns in one example case who had been doing that. Bah. Boo for that. What non-sense - because you are not married, we will take your child away from you and you will never see her again.


Boo, Australia, boo.

I understand that is not the practice nowadays.



OK. I'll get back into reading the Australian immigration forms - it may be I just qualify for a quick pass because of my profession and field of study

Not kidding, I did read through the immigration documents some years back, but didn't file them, I'm still considering. It's still an option, although if I leave my country, the most likely destination would be an English-speaking country in the European Union, and England would be the favourite - I've even got a relative already there, very familiar with the place, so it would help a lot. There were all sorts of rules - it did seem a little strict but I didn't mind at the time. Like I would have to promise I will live like an Australian, or something like that. There was a lesson of what are the Australian values and then a requirement that I would respect those values. It was a nice read, nothing wrong in that in fact. I've read similar documents from other countries as well, and I have to say the Australian documents did look like they were putting a lot of effort into telling me that the entry qualifications are high (so might as well go elsewhere).

[Kojack]

All the attorney generals must agree for the new rating to come in, and all of them do agree with it, except for Michael Atkinson. He has said many times that nothing will change his opinion. As long as he's an attorney general this will continue.


I was considering making a game at one stage which used the visible human project as a voxelised texture source for character injuries. That would definitely get banned here.
(visible human is a giant dataset made by photographing thousands of slices through the body of a convicted murderer who donated his body to science)


Of course the german government isn't much better, they freak out about a lot of games too, and in 2002 the greek government banned all games in public (internet cafes, arcades, etc).

[jjp]

Of course the german government isn't much better, they freak out about a lot of games too

Sad but true. German mainstream media and a lot of the political parties are very hostile towards gaming. Just a few month ago several e-sports events were cancelled because the cities they were to take place at banned them because so termed "killer games" were made responsible for a shootout at a school some time ago.

But we're slowly making progress. Finally there have been a few demonstrations by gamers and politicians start to notice that the story of the evil youth-damaging games is getting old - save for a few Bavarian Christian conservatives.

[Kojack]

Last week Germany recalled Wolfenstein from sale, because the government found out that the developers missed a couple of swastikas while censoring the textures.

[mkultra333]

Maybe they can argue the swasticas are the Hindu symbols for Brahma and the evolution of the universe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika

When I read about how Germany was banning all shooters, I was pretty appalled. They use the same old spurious logic that some psycho killer might have played first person shooters, therefore first person shooters turn people into psycho killers... Overlooking the fact that practically everyone plays first person shooters, at least in the male 25-35 age bracket. You may as well argue the killers watched cartoons as a child and therefore cartoons cause killers.

When you try to understand why one person in every 20 million turns into a deranged maniac, you don't blame a trait they share with hundreds of millions of other perfectly normal people.

But damn, Australia isn't much better, and it's getting worse. The problem with that one hold out Attorney General is that he'll be around for a while, and there's every chance he'll be replaced by a more conservative AG. Not only do you have to wait for a more liberal AG to get the job, you have to hope that none of the other five regress in the meantime. It's ridiculous, and there's no real hope of any change for a very, very long time.

[jjp]

Last week Germany recalled Wolfenstein from sale, because the government found out that the developers missed a couple of swastikas while censoring the textures.

No, the publishers withdrew it from sale themselves. It is not known if this actually had to happen, as the swastikas that were in the game were barely noticeable.

And for further clarification: violent games or shooters are not banned in Germany. The situation is not as severe as in Australia (if a 'banned' game can't be sold in Australia). As an adult you may purchase anything that is not 'confiscated'. To my knowledge this is the complete list of confiscated games: Mortal Kombat 1-3, Manhunt and the English version of Wolfenstein 3D. The list of indexed games is a lot longer but games that are indexed are not actually banned from sale.

In any case, for the future I am slightly optimistic. Eventually the conservatives who do not understand games will either be dead or at least not involved in politics any more

[mkultra333]

My understanding of the German situation was that all first person shooters aren't currently banned, but that there is a push for such a ban.

http://au.pc.ign.com/articles/101/1010967p1.html

US, August 5, 2009 - Amid the growing possibility that the German government may ban violent video games, Crytek CEO and co-founder Cevat Yerli has told the magazine PC Games Germany that the company will leave the country if such a ban is enacted. Crytek is the developer of Far Cry, Crysis, and Crysis: Warhead.

Germany's Interior Ministers have asked the Bundestag, or parliament, for a ban on violent games in the wake of a shooting rampage in March in which a 17-year old killed 15 people at a school. The German media quickly fixated on the fact that the shooter had played Counter-Strike and other first-person shooters (dubbed "killer games" in Germany). The ban would not only prohibit the sale of action games that depict violence against human characters, but it would also prohibit German companies from developing or publishing them. That would obviously cause problems for Crytek, which is headquartered in Frankfurt.

One thing that interests me about this is how any goverment will stop violent fan made mods. They'll certainly start showing up. I wonder if the governments will demand that games be made difficult to mod... I can imagine releasing a game where all blood and exploding heads are replaced by smiley faces and happy little elves, requiring the player to simply locate a fan made patch with the correct blood splats and mangled head meshes.

[jjp]

My understanding of the German situation was that all first person shooters aren't currently banned, but that there is a push for such a ban.

Yes, but that is more or less part of the background noise from conservative politicians around here and fortunatly that means it is very likely that nothing will happen about it. For a start such a ban would probably be in conflict with EU law.