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Aussies Ban GTA3
KITT_KATT!* writes: "Australia has banned Grand Theft Auto 3 for PS2. This is a tragedy for Australian gamers! According to this story in Australian IT, the problem is that there is no R rating for games - MA15+ is the highest permissible and GTA3 exceeds that because it contains scenes of sexual violence." Aren't you glad Australia has a helpful rating system?
that game was like a religious experience for me.
way to go oz for fucking over one of the best games ever written.
-c
"I hope I don't make a mistake and manage to remain a virgin." - Britney Spears
It's further complicated by the fact that the OFLC doesn't actually set the censorship guidelines - they enforce the censorship guidelines written by nine state, territory and federal ministers. The OFLC is working quite closely with the game industry trying to get an R rating, but all nine ministers will have to approve the change!
Assuming that the major premise is correct, that in Canada, women can claim rape after consenting to sex (actually feminazis there weasel on the definition of consent), it stands to reason that all sorts of other absurdities are reasonable: i.e. violent video games, particularly where the virtual victims are respresentative of the source of absurdities in reality.
The only question then, is if the major premise holds up to scrutiny. See a previous reference on feminazi attitudes in Canada regarding consent, and thus whether rape occured.
I suppose one could argue that the link between the source of absurdities in reality, and objects of anger in a virtual setting is weak, and so the argument linking them is, indeed, a straw-man argument, but I don't hold that view.
Feminazi movements in Canada have resulted in absurdities such as child support payments that exceed the payor's income, resulting in jail time for contempt of court. The reasoning behind this folly is as follows: the payor is "artificially" earning less than he can to spite the recipient.
It strikes me that in such an environment, where legislation and attitude feeds a hatred of women, games that permit the resulting anger to be vented on virtual victims would be in demand.
I am not suggesting that this is reasonable or healthy, merely that it is to be expected.
You could've hired me.
Of course these are the same group of people who initially gave Hannibal a MA+ rating instead of a R rating, until the outcry by anti-censorship people amongst others forced them to change it. The reasoning behind the anti-censorship people going against the decision was that if you were going to have censors you should at least have censors who make consistent, commonsense decisions. Not to mention one of the chief Australian censors went on to start a porno film company....
This move to "reclassify" (ie. censor) a whole stack of games right before Christmas, when demand for such games is at its highest, reaks of not only ignorance but a certain sense of mean-spiritedness. And this isn't the first time that the Australian government has tried to ban games it didn't like. First up was an FMV-driven graphical adventure by the name of Phantasmagoria because it contained very violent scenes and was thought to have contained a possible scene of sexual violence. Next in the firing line was Carmageddon, which the government attempted to ban on the laughable premise that it would encourage people to run each other over (interestingly enough, the sequel, which contained more realistic graphics than the first, passed through without dissent). The game Postal also came into the firing line, although I'm not sure if it was banned or not (I think it was). What strikes me as even more odd this time around is that the first two GTA games passed through practically untouched, while this game was allowed to be released and is now being recalled right before the busy and lucrative Christmas holiday period. Furthermore, the basis on which the game is being banned ("sexual violence") is extremely tenuous because the act of killing a prostitute after (and not before or during) sex shouldn't qualify as sexual violence. The term "sexual violence" refers to violence that is being committed during the act of sex (eg. rape or killing someone during sex), which is not the case here. Yes, the game does allow you to kill a prostitute after you have sex with her, but the two acts as described are not mutually exclusive (ie. you can do one or the other as well as both) and are not necessary to win or advance in the game itself. Yes, the possibility of committing the described acts may offend your sensibilities but you do have the democratic freedom in this country to not perform the acts in-game or, even better, not buy the game altogether. This recent move to remove all the games from stores effectively removes that democratic freedom. Controlling what you see, do, read, write and say should be your responisibility and not that of your government. Same goes for parents with children. If you continue to abdicate such a right (this responsibility is also one of the fundamental democractic rights of my nation, Australia) to government then you lose the right to complain when things don't go the way you want them to or when the government starts to take more than they're entitled to.
The reason for all this madness when it comes to the classification of video is that the Liberal government (which has just won its thoroughly undeserved second term by successfully tapping into the nation's xenophobic tendancies over the Tampa incident and illegal immigrants in general) is notoriously conservative and ignorant when it comes to matters of new technology. For instance, they banned online gambing in Australia, effectively giving the world market a huge headstart, because a moratorium was needed to "assess the risks of online gambing" when in reality the government had allowed, even promoted, the installation of poker machines in pubs and clubs with willful ignorance of the social consequences. They also tried to remove "offensive content" from the Internet (ie. net censorship), which merely made it hell for companies to host content locally for fear of being shut down by an anonymous person who was offended and forced ISPs to do the technically impossible and monitor their services for such "offensive content" (a term which was not even properly defined and hence gave the bill a DMCA-like level of scope). However, this bill was necessary to gain the support of Independent senator Brian Harradine, whose vote was needed to swing the balance of power towards the government so the "wonderful" GST could be passed (which the government screwed up in spectacular fashion by creating mountains of red tape through increased business paperwork and "exceptions" fiascos, when they would have been better off by taxing everything and giving income tax cuts). So what starts out as beeing a possibly good idea becomes a complete pain in the ass. Furthermore, the little surplus (which was collected by slashing budgets across the board, especially in the areas of health, R & D, the arts, science and education - now university costs a packet and we're behind in pretty much everything), often derisively called the "election battle chest", was used to offer all kinds of expensive gifts to the electorate to lure their votes in the election. Now that they've spent it, the only way they can get more money to actually do something useful is to raise taxes or cut spending (usually the latter). Wonderful.
So as you can see, this kind of inconsistent, ignorant, poorly-implemented crap, I mean policies, (ironically the only consistency in government policy is it has all these properties) happens all the time. The sad part is we're used to it, even expecting it to happen.
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When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is no longer our friend.