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!

Comments

Are Aussies expected to return the game?

[Dimensio]

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?

The best and Worst Game this year!

[Quizme2000]

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.

They *mean* well, but...

[b.foster]

I'd just like to start out by saying that banning a freakin video game is not going to solve the world's problems, and is completely absurd.

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

Secret code for GTA3

[Hougaard]

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!

Why this doesn't immediately bother me...

[wrinkledshirt]

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.