Australian Road Safety Authority Criticizes Racing Game

Thanks to the Sydney Morning Herald for their story revealing Australian road safety authorities are trying to pull the plug on Project Gotham Racing 2 for Xbox, claiming the real-life Sydney course in the game is "undoing a lot of the effort authorities are putting into road safety." According to State Labor MP Paul Gibson, chairman of the Staysafe Committee: "This game sends the wrong message to young people. It is actually glorifying speed and power. It is clearly an inappropriate depiction of speed behavior. If I had my way I would ban it." A spokesman for Microsoft responded: "It is not about driving on the streets, it is purely a racing game. The streets are blocked from other traffic and there are no pedestrians. All we are doing is taking the geography of Sydney and turning it into a race track."

Comments

Pac-Man?

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

Wait till they see Pac-Man! It glorifies the culture of overeating! These damn Americans and their fatty games coming to Australia and perverting the minds of the young - there ought to be a law!

Hopefully, some right-minded person in Australia will take the reigns and end the tyranny of Pac-Man.

Re:Pac-Man?

[jordanda]

"It is ridiculous to claim that video games influence children. For instance, if PacMan affected kids born in the eighties, we should by now have a bunch of teenagers who run around in darkened rooms and eat pills while listening to monotonous electronic music." --Gene Spafford

Pre-Approved games by INSOC

[Dutchmaan]

Soothing be productive lights and pretty be happy colors... and the gentle sounds of the be complacent ocean..

There now.. isn't that better than be accepting those nasty old violent thought games...

You've achieved a productive happy accepting citizen rating.. a shiny gold star will be mailed to you shortly..

oh no!

[elmegil]

We had better ban Flight Simulator too, in case people get the idea that they can actually crash planes into things without any consequences!

Re:doesnt this happen in real life too?

[gmhowell]

Indycar is like open wheel Nascar. F1 is much better. Crap, everyone else in the world gets cool racing (touring car, observed trials, WRC, etc.) and we get Billy Bob's Go Fast, Turn Left Extravaganza.

At least US Superbike is still tolerable.

Re:Glorifying speed and power

[WTFmonkey]

I know what you mean, but it's not restricted to young males. I've seen EVERYBODY driving on the wrong side of the road over there! I know, it's crazy. I'm from California, and I almost got killed countless times on my vacation to the UK because of all the crazies driving on the damn left. I tried to stay in my lane, and people seemed really pissed. You guys should pass a law about that. Or something.

Milton Bradly and others maybe in trouble

[xenocide2]

If games encourage reckless behavior:

Risk - Its lifelike depiction of the globe and glorification of "world domination" may be a severe liability to Hasbro worldwide.

Monopoly - The day someone is inspired by the best strategies in this game will be the beginning of the end of mankind. Encouraging housing shortages, anticompetitive behavior and beauty contests are not desireable behaviors in our landlords.

Hungry Hungry Hippos- In today's world of fast food franchises being sued for causing obesity, any game encouraging eating all you can outside of a thirdworld country is asking for trouble.

Hi Ho Cherroy - Sure, most people think the most dangerous aspect of the game is children choking after actually eating the cherries. But they neglect the greater social consequence of stealing poor American farmer's fruits!

The game of life - Its encouragement of heterosexual marriages may be approved by the President, but that won't stop gay right's activists from petitioning stores to stop carrying it!