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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?
Here's the same story
True warriors use the Klingon Google
that link is in the story itself, sorry for the redundant comment. But if they were aware of that previous story I can't see why they posted this one. There isn't much new content in this one.
True warriors use the Klingon Google
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
I guess it goes without saying that we all believe games should allow us to "bash and kill a prostitute for money after having sex with her."
What scenes of sexual violence? The cut-scenes imply some, but it's never shown.
The Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) refused classification for Grand Theft Auto 3 because of a scene in which the player can bash and kill a prostitute for money after having sex with her.
Even with an R rating this would not be permissible content for a movie, let alone a game. WTF is up with the sick fucks over DMA Design?
How we know is more important than what we know.
I'm sure no-one put it forward that way for the people at the OFLC. Neither am I completely convinced that such acts of deprevity are immoral (after all, it's just a game folks). As games become more like free form environments is there a requirement that programmers add restrictions to conform to a rating? Maybe rather than har haring about all this classification stuff we should be getting in there and asking the hard questions of people like the OFLC.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I'm not even from Australia(though my dog is a Aussie Shepherd), and this makes me mad. GTA3 is such a great game. I am almost mad enough to fly down there, rip some OFLC member out of their car and run over them a few times while leading the cops in a high speed intnercity chase. What? No, video game violance doesn't inspire real violance!
-Henry
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
As the technology increases, we're going to see more videogames that present realisit worlds in which we have more and more freedom to do what we wish? Have sex with a prostitute and then killing her is NOT part of the primary gameplay in GTA3. It's simply the result of a game that allows you the freedom to do what you wish instead of confining you to abstract game rules.
I wonder if reality should be banned since I have the ability to have sex with a prostitute and then kill her.
That's because that's all that /. ever runs about Australia. It's not really any worse in Australia than anywhere else - just take a look at your Digital Millennium Copyright Act or whatever it's called and the criminalisation of hackers in the US. And I agree with gun control, thank you very much.
I think games - like movies - should have a rating system. The issue here is that there should be an R rating - it shouldn't stop at MA15+. I think that will change soon.
The other issue is that killing a prostitute for money is not part of the main game play for GTA3 - you can kill _anyone_ in the movie, so why should the prostitute be any different?
If the content in question is sexually violent, an R rating wont help you in Australia. You would require an X rating (of which I believe only the ACT has on shelf) and you are really opening a pandora's box by going after such a rating. If every possible sequence of game play has to be scrutinized to get a rating (the maximal set of violence if you will) then what happens when we have truely mulible worlds? What happens when we have NPCs in games that can converse with us about any topic we choose (before we shoot them). Not only is it an unanswerable question, it's also an NP-hard problem. I would really like to have some confirmation that the OFLC did indeed refuse classification because of the posibility of certain game play. That's a story.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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....
Nevermind that, go for the tank instead (aka 'rhino', it at the same place, North staunton island, I actually didn't notice it until I finished the game, not sure if that may be a requirement to have it appear). Its SO COOL.
When you get 6 stars, the Army comes after you with tanks and trucks of soldiers. The great thing about the tank is that you are pratically invincible (but so are they), and you get to aim and fire the cannon. But watchout, some people may try car-jack you :-)
Ooh, me, me!
... if you live in Australia, just order the game from someone off of eBay in another country. Do they look through every fucking box that comes into the country? Banned schmannned. They can only ban it if you let them.
Of course, the Aussies gave up their guns so I dunno.
Is there any way this story could get bumped up to the front page? Is there a system for that? Because personally, I think this is incredibly interesting, especially in the comments. This story brings up a deep and interesting question: In GTA, you can choose to be fairly good (ambulance, taxi, police officer) or incredibly evil (fucking and murdering prostitutes, doing drug runs, stealing cars). That's the nature of an extremely open game world where you can do almost anything. So if Australia's going to start banning games for what you CAN do instead of what you must do, will MMORPGs be banned for "sexually explicit dialogue" because people can talk dirty to each other in them? Will gaming worlds that are becoming increasingly more open have to restrict themselves in some areas to avoid being banned, thus cheapening the reality of the game in the internationally released version?
These questions are very important for the future of gaming, i.e. incredibly open and diverse gaming worlds.
The current world trend to the political right affects US and Australian citizens in much the same way.
... and I trust in their inherent good natures and a positive home environment to help them ignore the nasties and benefit from the positives that on-line life has to offer.
It isn't the person in the street asking for more censorship, but those in power making the most of their time to impose conservative values on the rest of us!
In Australia it was the Port Arthur massacre that was used by the conservative government to ban firearms nation wide, just as in the States it was Sept 11 used to push through a range of restrictive legislation.
Do we get the governments we deserve? I dunno, these are complicated issues, but keeping a balance between the right and the left requires that we use our voices while we still can, etc etc.
I don't want my kids to have the sort of violence described above shoved down their terminals, but at the same time I want them to be empowered to explore whatever virtual realities their minds are capable of
Censorship sucks, Put some faith in human intelligence to make the right decision. Removing the ability to choose results in atrophied thinking apparatus. That is why the right wingers are ultimately working against the values they claim to uphold!
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.
What fucking world do you live in, Mr. Roger's neighborhood? What self-respecting little kid depends on their Mom to procure all their games? If they have a damn PS2 in the first place they are probably savvy enough to find the games of their choosing. Your argument is not only self-righteous, but naive to the point of uselessness.
this speaks mostly for the US and its concept of "free speech," but the general idea applies in countries that protect speech thus:
- you can't defend yourself from a slander or libel charge claiming "free speech"
- you can't defend yourself from inciting a riot claiming "free speech" (http://www.spectacle.org/freespch/bomb.html).
the idea is that if your speech is doing or advocating damage it's not protected.
the next question is whether a game is speech, art, or a product (like a pen or a sponge). i don't think most governments have figured that out yet.
"Mister Potato-head --MISTER POTATO-HEAD! Backdoors are not secrets!" (War Games, 1983)