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Dead Space To Launch Early, Banned in Three Countries
EA Redwood Shores' Dead Space seems to be one of the few games that has its release constantly moved forward. Shortly after news that the game's European debut was moved up to Oct. 24th, the company announced that the US launch date would be moved up to October 14th. Unfortunately, EA's Ben Swanson also said the game has been banned in China, Germany, and Japan. (Announcement here, sound toggle to the upper right of the page.) Previews of the game are available from Ars and Gamespy.
But Japan? When did the Japanese jump on the censorship protects kids bandwagon?
I've been seeing this rumor for a couple of days, and as far as I can tell any talk of it being banned in Japan is bollocks. Can anybody post a single source which provides proof of this?
The Japanese rating associations can't ban a game, as their role is advisory only, so it's not them. The government normally only takes an interest in uncensored porn, and even then it's usually the police in an after-the-fact kind of thing where the distributor gets arrested and charged.
This isn't China - there is no central authority that has final say on what may or may not be sold. Customs could possibly block it at import, but even then there would normally be a court case first.
A ban for a game which hasn't even been released yet? I don't think so.
Japanese cartoons are full of violence, not to mention Japanese underground rape-porn and other shoddy media. How come Japan has banned this game?
Germany... well they are still in the 1940's trying to make amends for what the nazis did. I won't blame them for trying.
China banning this game? Yawn... so whats new? They ban everthing.
slashdot rocks
According to this German news site (link : http://www.eurogamer.de/article.php?article_id=230133 ), Andrew Green wasn't correct, and Dead Space has not gone through the German classification system yet.
However, knowing their past, I would be surprised if it did pass classification.
Never heard of the game, but apparently it did not go through evaluation, yet. Note that there is a difference between 18+, 'harmful to minors' and banned.
* The first can not be sold to anyone under 18
* The second can not be sold openly and you can't run ads for it (which was great marketing, when I was under 18)
* The third can not be sold at all
I highly suspect it is the second.
Obviously, violence is to Germans what sex is to Americans.
Why put so much violence in a game in the first place? There's an abundance of FPS out there. Wouldn't it be better to come up with some smart and witty game concepts?
Frankly, I think that's a publicity stunt with the "banned" - for the lack of details.
What exactly do they mean? Makes a world of difference, and they don't tell. Germany does have age ratings, and it does have something they call "indexing", which sounds like "banning", but really isn't. It's just one step up from "18+" in that you also can't display it openly in the store. You absolutely can buy it, legally, with age verification, and quite a few brutal computer games are in that area.
Americans: Think "sex" instead of "violence" and you'll understand. Germans don't mind nude models on magazines, but they do mind blood and gore, i.e. the exact opposite of what the US morals are.
Very few games are actually "banned", and almost all of them because they break a law against the use of Nazi symbols. A law, I should add, that the Allies forced on the newly founded Germany after WW2.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
German magazine GameStar has already reported on this, and got a comment by EA. It says:
"The rumor is not true. Dead Space is currently being checked by the USK (German ESRB). Thus it's too early to talk about a ban"
Link: http://www.gamestar.de/news/pc/action/1948825/dead_space.html (Google translation)
No, you should pretend you've modded him up if you pretend that he said something clever.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
Sounds like you're talking about what's known as "a chilling effect" and if it is, then you'll LOVE schoolbook adoptions. Just about all textbooks in American schools come from a handful of publishers and those publishers won't publish any textbook that has been rejected by what are called "textbook adoption committees", which are committees in a handful of states, most notably Texas and California, whose decisions determine all public school purchases for their state's public schools. These committees, btw, always have representatives of the hardcore religious right and one or two "political correctness" a**wads on them, which lets them veto anything like, say, discussion of evolution.
If you ever wondered why textbooks are so reliably foul, well, this is a large part of why. These adoption techniques can be counted on to weed out anything interesting and to reward bland, endless crrrrap. And just as you suspected, publishers remove anything from their textbooks that might not appeal to those committees even before submitting them.
Yet another reason that Americans can't think their way out of a paper bag (or in a voting booth).
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
Well, duh on this. Legitimate copies of programs will cut into their illegal copies market!
This is BS. It is totally legal to buy this game, it is on the index meaning it cannot be advertised. And ofc it is illegal to sell it to under aged people. You may have to ask at the counter for this game (and chances are that the shop owner won't have it, because he too thinks it is forbidden like "mein kampf"), or you may have to order it online, but it is NOT banned.
While there is a lot of stupidity going on in Germany regarding violent games and other stuff, and making advertisement for a product illegal is very close to censorship, it is not as simple as TFS tells you. You just have to buy your violent game of choice online, that's it.
On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
I know you can't sell it in said country.
But, in China, Japan, or Germany, will you be arrested, fined, or otherwise punished by the government for possessing these titles, be it imported from another country or downloaded from the Internet?
Japanese normally copies American. Just look at youtube "This video is not available in your country" As far as I know there are not restriction in Canada yet they are blocking some of the videos. I can just cross the border (five minutes walk from my girl friend's house in US and watch it. These new censorship are enforced right here in USA so don't blame Asian & Europeans.
Even veals have more autonomy!
Not really.
Germany has a long tradition of censoring entertainment media, especially those that are new and not yet established with the generation that provides the current bunch of politicians. The main differences are
-The emphasis is on censoring violence rather than sex like in the USA. Try selling a brothel management game with graphic sex scenes in the USA, and you'll get an idea of how some German politicians view violent games.
-The censorship is ostensibly about protecting juveniles from material that would warp their characters. Here you could speak of putting on a front, because some of the measures against sellig those games to kids also are an impediment in marketing to adults. Like indexing which leads to a ban on advertisement and displaying the games outside 18-only shops.
C - the footgun of programming languages