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Grand Theft Auto Still Banned Down Under
SicariusMan sent us a CNN story that talks about australia upholding the ban on GTA3. It's been
mentioned here before, but
its interesting that its gonna stick. GTA3 really is perhaps the best PS2 game out in recent memory.
I'm having a PS2 resurgance of late, beating Klonoa2, MGS2, Baldur's Gate: Dark
Alliance, and getting hooked on Jak and Daxter and Frequency. And
GTA3 is easily among the best of PS2 games. Sorry .au! At least
they probably won't ban FFX!
Consider this from the CNN article (And I've seen it before):
The OFLC was firm on the point that the game would not allowed in Australia, saying "if you have already purchased a game you will need to contact your retailer about return procedures."
Are people who purchased the game before the ban now expected to return it? Exactly how many Aussies are going to return what is essentially a collector's item in their country?
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Ture the gamplay and replay value are pretty damn good, even a descent storyline. But, copkilling games and those with other criminal content will always attract publicity and bans. Remember "Postal". It was the same thing, at the time it had great graphics and a high replay value (especially the marching band level). Anyway, don't think for a second that this will be a negitive for the game publisher, its just an added plus to help sell the game in the US and UK. Hey, I played through GTA, Max Payne, and Spycraft. I can't say that I'm a better person for playing them. I would never want my child to come in contact with that shit just for someone else's entertainment.
"Get them before they get....
However, I do see where their government is going with this. It has been a disturbing trend for several decades in this country that criminals feed on the public's attention, and when the public gives much attention to criminals, it encourages people with self esteem issues to become criminals.
That, then, is the problem with GTA: it encourages car theft. Not in the sense that a GTA player is likely to go out and steal a car, but rather that it allows a culture to slip steadily closer to a hellish society in which crime is tolerated in order to entertain the public. This is not unlike the Colosseum in ancient Rome, in which murders took place between god-fearing christians for the sake of the public's amusement. Compare this to the instant notoriety of serial killers like John Wayne Gacy, who make a killing selling paintings from prison, and you can see why the government wants to stop glorifying crime now.
Something must be done about this morbid situation. But it doesn't involve banning games. Perhaps it is a media problem; if the government owned a few media outlets, it would be able to put writers and producers with old fashioned values back on the TV, replacing the ratings whores we have today. That is a bit closer to socialism than we should be, but it might be better for society in the long run.
Bill
Duke3D was banned in Australia until 3DRealms patched it so the Adult lock couldn't be deactivated; it took a few hours at least before it was cracked, if memory serves.
We'll ban anything you like over here, it seems...
"If you create user accounts, by default, they will have an account type of Administrator with no password." KB Q293834
Ofcause they need to ban a game where you can do the following:
Urinate:
Walk up to a wall and press Up, Down, Up, Down, L2, R1, R2(2), Up, Down, Up, Down, Up.
Your character will urinate on the wall. The cops will chase since it counts as vandalizing.
Funny!
Okay, what you have is a society whose government has decided that it doesn't want video games that make carjacking and other violent mayhem seem like a fun idea.
From a moral standpoint, that's actually kind of healthy.
Where it starts to get iffy is when this sort of ban is actually symptomatic of a bigger problem, in which the government is trying to make their entire population goosestep and a commercial ban on violent games is only one such restriction imposed, in parallel with other restrictions like clampdowns on information or restricted free political speech.
For instance, if the US were to ban counterstrike servers that didn't automatically put bots on the terrorist team, I'd be pretty freaked out. And you can bet this is something that will come further down the line if Ashcroft et al. don't get their powers checked.
But I've never heard of Australia being a society with a reputation of doing this sort of thing to its population. Now, I'm not saying that this isn't happening there per se, I may just be ignorant of it, and an Aussie contribution on this issue would definitely be valuable.
But what I'm thinking is that we shouldn't necessarily be taking this in the same vein as if a North American government were imposing such a restriction. You might disagree, but I think that the censorship is only a problem when it comes close to stifling dissent against the powers that be, as opposed to just trying to promote a little bit of morality and decency. Yes, I know that the line is easily blurred, but is it blurred here?
Just my two cents.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
I believe you are describing the typical American. The kind that thinks we're better than the rest of the world just because we have more nukes, or something. (I'm American).
Do you really think that international tourism hasn't dropped already? This little thing happened, something to do with planes. About 3 months ago. You may have heard about it on the TV.
This is practically a psychosis. There are a lot of people who think you'd have to be crazy to get on a plane. Now, how many planes were there that weren't hijacked? Besides, Australia doesn't have *that* many terrorists....
Yes, videogame censorship sucks. But this won't stick anyway. It hasn't before, and it won't now. The censoring of TV, movies, and games is getting overhauled now. GTA will probably get a harsh rating under the new system. Whatever. I'd prefer to have to download a copy of some game off the internet to having a government body like the FBI installing spyware and destroying my privacy.
Yes, spyware sucks. But how did this censorship get in place in the first place if it's sure to go away eventually?
BTW, It's far more fun to pretend that you're the Crocodile Hunter than to actually watch the show. This view is popular even in America!
You can kill shopkeepers, kill succubi for their money after you finish with them, eat little kittens, and do all sorts of Unaustralian things.
They can't censor life. So they will fail.
Yikes.
Hey I like Australians, man.
I like to think that I know what really happens in the world. Unarmed civilians are slaughtered by others. Governments look the other way while minorities are persecurted. Serbia, Croatia, Turkey, Iraq, Columbia, Uganda, Ethiopia.
On the other hand, we have some 10,000 gun deaths a year in this country. Wonderful things such as little kids finding daddy's gun and shooting brother Jimmy, nutsos shooting up a KFC and the like.
And by the way, you can check out the below listed sites for the "evidence". Granted they are a bit one-sided but that seems to be the nature of gun issues.
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~confiles/
http://www.nrawinningteam.com/auresult.html
http://www.gunsandcrime.org/aussiegc.html
I have as much freedom as I choose to have. That is why I vote at the polls, with my pocketbook and engage in civic activities. Just because I rag on Australians for pussing out on gun rights doesn't mean I don't know what is going on in the world. Both of our countries fought off the yoke of British colonialism. How do you think that was accomplished? Diplomacy with Her Majesty?
But it is your country so do what you want with it....
Yap yap yap, at least we can play GTA. And as for guns, I don't know any numbers, but I was there earlier this year, and my hotel sat right across the street from a gun shop. So I don't know what that's about. But my theory on guns is this: if everybody had guns, there would be no crime. If nobody had guns, there would be no crime. But once you let the cat out of the bag, it's tough to stuff it back in. In the US, we have a saying, "Outlaw guns, and only outlaws will have guns." That's the gist of it anyway. But it makes sense to us.
That being said, you guys do what you want, make up your own crazy laws, censor stuff you don't like, whatever. If I don't like it, I'll just not move there, and to hell with the great weather and beaches and all the BBQing and what not. If they did that here, I'd move somewhere else. I really would. Really.
But your definition of freedom mustn't include freedom from censorship, because if it did, you wouldn't be able to say that US citizens have no more freedom than you. I'm not saying we're perfect, but GTA is a great game, and you aren't free to play it.
Synergy is your friend
Yes, videogame censorship sucks. But this won't stick anyway. It hasn't before, and it won't now. The censoring of TV, movies, and games is getting overhauled now.
Yeah whatever. That's why the Aussie government has already banned damn near the whole Internet by trying to make it safe for kiddies, putting the damn thing through a country-wide proxy, and countless other horror stories.
Tell me how it's getting "overhauled" again.
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