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Duke Nukem Forever Not Edited For Australia
dotarray writes "In case you still somehow didn't believe yesterday's news that Duke Nukem Forever had been given an MA15+ rating in Australia – effectively evading the notoriously strict censors, GamePron now has confirmation that the Duke has not been edited in any way for an Australian release. Hooray!"
What about all these 15-18 year old kids who'll think it's okay to throw pipe bombs at a mutant pig cop!?
So how lame does a game need to be for australia?
This joke is going too far. They have official ratings now? Can they get in trouble for submitting something that they have no intention of finishing?
I don't get it. Duke Nukem Foerever? Rating? You kidding me?
Nope, I think you mistook me for someone else.
If you're going to go Duke, you better go full Duke.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They're probably giving it a pass because they think it's an urban legend that Americans came up with to mess with them.
Like they did with dropbears.
Excuse me, what? You mean there's going to be an actual game by that name? Before the Hurd is released? What engine are they using?
Always bet on Duke.
...forever. ;-)
Duke Nukem won't allow you to censor him, he'll just kick your ass.
Duke Nukem 3D back in the early 90s was refused classification and had been re-released as a censored version.
There is next to no consistency with the classification board, no logic. The only consistent thing is that most of their reasoning makes little to no sense when they've previously waved through worse games than the one they are classifying at the time.
Not long after the "Atomic" edition of Duke-3D was released in all its glory. No censorship, same game just with 'more'. Makes sense doesnt it?
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
I remember Duke Nukem 3D having an adults only rating. That title for the time was pushing boundaries. With interactive strippers, heavy profanity and hell, he rips off an aliens head and shits down its neck. Thats what made it great. If even Australia gives this game a 15+ rating how watered down will it be.
You went too far this time, douchebag.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
So far, it doesn't look too good, anyway: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/02/hand-on-duke-nukem-forever.ars .
That kind of thinking is what keeps people of different cultures hating each other over centuries, just because their ancestors hated each other. You need to look in the mirror, never mind the family tree.
So basically if we ever actually see this game, we should expect it to have none of the spunk and crudeness the original games had? What's the point of being Duke Nukem then?
Oh yeah?
The Classification Board is aware of just how much of a joke it's become. They've figured out that anything remotely popular now has to be given an M15+ rating regardless of content because they've been threatened by state governments to have their mandate pulled if they start trying to censor things. Basically they've become toothless, refuse classification and the media will drag you thought the mud so they'll just rubber stamp any level of violence and nudity even when it should be clearly restricted.
Basically this was the worst possible scenario for former attorney general Michael Atkinson, as 15 yr olds can now legally buy material that should be in the Restricted (R18+) category ironically because Atkinson opposed the introduction of a restricted category for video games. Hell, a 12 or 13 yr old could get it as they dont really do ID checks for M rated films, not to mention parents who dont understand the content that will buy it.
Well you made the bed Michael, now you have to lie in it.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Pirated? I don't see any link at all, other than both having aliens in. Very different aliens at that.
Duke Nukem wasn't just about the (admittedly very juvenile) humor and one liners.
It actually had really great gameplay for the time. To this day Duke Nukem ranks right up there as one of my favorite multi-player FPS games.
In part it's because of the variety of weapons - you didn't just have guns but you had things like shrink rays. What other game even since then has actually had the player scale down to a tiny version of themselves and then try to elude the massive pursuers around them....
And then there's the jet-packs. Awesome aerial firefights, or flying up to office buildings high above. In todays modern games you are only begrudgingly allowed to even jump, much less fly outside of something like a helicopter.
But really my favorite part was the pipe-bombs and trip mines. No other game since Duke has done booby trapping nearly as well as Duke, which gave you the option to either trigger a trap yourself (pipe bomb) or have an unwitting enemy set it off themselves (trip mine). Best of all, you could combine both for the ultimate trap of doom.
My favorite memory of all time is an extended jet-pack fight with one other guy between sky-scrapers, which ended when he came up an elevator shaft that I had lined with something like six trip-mines. BOOM.
So I have no idea if the new game will be any good but I think it still carries a lot of the same weapons, thus I am really looking forward to it way more than I should be. If it does come out and you go wandering up the skyscrapers, I'd take the stairs if I were you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Duke Nukem was also one of the earlier games to really embrace destruction of the environment, which is another aspect I hope they have carried forward and modernized.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't know why you're saying 'Hooray'. If it's not edited for Australia this most likely means it's been edited for all of us.
Duke Nukem wears Jack Bauer pajamas.
I know I deserve a whoosh for this, but I'm in a pedantic mood
So long as we're ignoring the huge figures of people moving here from overseas: Actually, we're the grandchildren of petty theives. The nasty ones all would've been hanged back in England.
Our culture doesn't get smarter, it just finds new ways of being retarded.
Wait, what? The post authors are confusing me here. Outsider replies to himself, calling himself a douchebag?
Sybil, is that you?
Our culture doesn't get smarter, it just finds new ways of being retarded.
Whoa, hold on thar cowboy. At least admit it's a bit disengenuous. Like germany preaching tolerance towards jews. Keep a little historic perspective is all I'm really saying. Like it or not, we're all to some extent a product of our national history.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
The Classification Board is aware of just how much of a joke it's become. They've figured out that anything remotely popular now has to be given an M15+ rating regardless of content because they've been threatened by state governments to have their mandate pulled if they start trying to censor things. Basically they've become toothless, refuse classification and the media will drag you thought the mud so they'll just rubber stamp any level of violence and nudity even when it should be clearly restricted.
I can understand why violence might need to be restricted, but nudity? Come on..
Bzzt. The vast majority of convicts sent to British colonies in the 1700s (which includes Australia, and GASP, also America pre-1776!) were petty crooks. Small time thieves, people stealing some food for their family, or general undesirables that managed to piss off the establishment. Serious criminals (murderers and rapists etc.) would most definitely have been executed in England at the time. They wouldn't waste time and money shipping them to the other side of the planet.
Perhaps I didn't make my point clearly enough. I did say "any level" of nudity, not any nudity.
The difference between an M (Mature) rated and an R (Restricted) rated film is normally the severity and frequency of violence and nudity.
Australia is not like the US, we have naked breasts on TV all the time, however when it becomes excessive or turns into full frontal nudity it tends to be a bit more restricted. Even simulated sex (heavy panting with the covers on) is not considered R rated material here.
Having some nudity is M rated, having a lot of nudity is R rated.
Games that have a lot of sexual or violent content should be R rated, I'm not talking about sexual innuendo or the odd naked breast but material that is clearly meant for adults (think sex scenes).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
It's just a troll, ignore :P Duke Nukem was based on a lot more than just Roddy Piper, and Roddy Piper was Canadian. Wearing a kilt does not make you "a true Scotsman".
which is totally what she said
Except Rowdy Roddy Piper is Canadian and Duke Nukem 3D had absolutely nothing in common with They Live except for a single line that was inspired by that film. It wasn't even the same line.
...... getting an MA 15+ in Austra_nany_state_lia means the game is going to suck.....
I would've went with slave owners and tax dodgers but I guess that's fair too.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
The fact that Australians are descended from criminals is historic fact. It's only offensive if you're Australian and choose to be ashamed of it.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
And so they should be toothless, the fucktards. Better a 15 year old be able to buy something he shouldn't than an entire population not be able to buy something that they should. Censorship of retail media is completely irrelevant in the internet era, why even bother?
You describe the situation for the former A-G as terrible - it's only terrible for him. No-one else gives a fuck as it doesn't matter any more.
You mean Josef Fritzl and his friends? It's Australia, not Austria :D. http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk269/zorrodeltaco/Australian_Flag_Joseph_Fritzl.jpg
You're thinking of the Americans.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
Nice. A whooshjack.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
Apologies for the confusion, I was attempting to preemptively call myself out on the douchiness of my post while standing by the basic tenet.
I'm aware that calling Australians the descendants of criminals is a little un-PC but I mitigate it by (as an american) admitting to being descended from slave-owning tax-dodgers in order to gain some cred. If the US were to censor a game for having slave-driving or tax-dodging (or for that matter gun-toting) elements I would have no problem with the international community for calling them hypocrites. But I reserve the right to mod them trolls nonetheless.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
Basically this was the worst possible scenario for former attorney general Michael Atkinson, as 15 yr olds can now legally buy material that should be in the Restricted (R18+) category ironically because Atkinson opposed the introduction of a restricted category for video games. Hell, a 12 or 13 yr old could get it as they dont really do ID checks for M rated films, not to mention parents who dont understand the content that will buy it.
LOL
Sorry but this just made my day. Excellent turn of events a++
NO shitpile........
More "convicts" were sent to America anyway.
120,000 to Australia vs 160,000 to America.
Fuckstain
Pretty much what I was trying to say mate, you're reading into my melodrama a bit too much. Think of it as twisting the knife in Atkinson's side, his opposition to R18 means that R material is being released as M15.
The Classification Board (Fuck it, we need to rename it back to the Office of Film and Literature Classification) should only offer "ratings advice" not determine if a product can be sold in Australia. That is about the only useful job they have, to help people make more informed decisions about media purchases, not to decide for them. Certain individuals in this nation do not wish to see violent or possibly sexually exiting material, whilst I dont agree with them, I respect the rights of wingnuts to stick their heads in the sand and only buy G rated material, what I dont want is these wingnuts sticking my head in the sand at the same time.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
This was the first FPS I really got into (+ the first one I learned mouse+kb for), and the level editor was amazingly easy at the time. Their timing was perfect for consumer network technology around here too where Doom2 or ROTT was still mainly a dialup game for most folks. And, pre-quake, the first video game engine to even attempt stacking levels on top of each other. Sure it was a teleport trick, but at least they tried.
After all these years they could Star Wars prequels this game and I'd still buy it. From the looks of it though they've kept Duke true to his roots so this should be all sorts of awesome.
-Matt
--- Need web hosting?
while it's not what what i would call 'un-PC' to refer to Australians as being the descendants of criminals, it is not terribly correct. some australians (a small proportion) do have petty criminals amongst their antecendants. but probably not as many as in the good ol' us of a. plus - australia actually progressed from it's penal colony days. unlike the us. which is still full of inbred criminals. amongst the leading class anyway. and middle class. and trailer trash. incarceration rates anyone?
Now Yahtzee will have to review it for real...
No, you're wrong. You just don't see his sense of humour. You should lighten up and be more like him.
Yep, including our sizable Asian population. They're descended from convicts of far eastern England.
Perhaps the entire industry can finally get it through its head that labeling a game with a stronger rating than "M" is a better alternative than heavy censoring and will not be the death knell of sales for that game. Just because Wal-Mart will not carry it does not mean that the entire pool of gamers will ignore it!
Go look at Australian film in the '70s and '80s. They got away with stuff that I had to see to believe. "Not Quite Hollywood" is a good doco about it. Classifications have got a lot tighter since then.
I, too, remember fondly DN3D and its gameplay did have all those things you mentioned. But I wouldn't expect too much from DNF. My guess, from all game sequels I have seen in recent years, is that it will have well polished graphics with a mediocre gameplay.
It was the same thing with car simulators. I played "Need for Speed - Porsche Unleashed" in 2000 in a 500 MHz Pentium 3 machine with 128 MB memory and a 6 GB hard disk. It was awesome, especially with a force-feedback wheel. It had great playability because it had a perfect combination of a decent physical simulation without having to bother too much with details.
Today there is no driving simulator that does what NFSPU did. Either they are arcade games designed for consoles or they are extremely detailed simulations where you spend more time fiddling with adjustments rather than driving. All of them have great graphics, though...
I wouldn't worry too much, since Australia is upside down the rating will be 51+, so it's all ok, she'll be right, fair dink-um. Sleep tight Aussies, no USA game's gonna spoil your child's mind untouched by civilized or remotely intelligent thought.
They don't and never have done ID checks for R rated films either. I rented Bad Boy Bubby when I was 12, and bought Se7en when I was even younger.
The ratings are a joke, nobody takes them seriously.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
they'll just rubber stamp any level of violence and nudity even when it should be clearly restricted.
What level of violence and nudity should "clearly" be restricted? It is not clear that ANY level of violence, nudity, or anything else should be restricted by the government.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Meh, look at Australian TV in the 1970s. Number 96 -- Full frontal nudity and Gays when America 40 years later still gets into a moral panic about a loose nipple.
It's almost like none of them were even breast fed!
Will Duke wear a cork hat?
a BABY ate my DINGO!
On the plus side -- none of the violence causes any harm, or if it does, only in a small portion of individuals. I did a review of media violence research, and was appalled by what I found. Basically, we have two sides. One makes academic arguments, and use the scientific method. Their research does not support the main-stream view. The other side rides on the coat tails of real science, pretends to use the scientific method, but only responds to academic criticism with political arguments. They are almost always social constructionists, feminists, and environmental determinists.
It took me about a year of reading both sides of the argument to reach this conclusion. Consider that today we have the most depraved violence in history, and the lowest violence rate. Shockingly simple. See here for more details: Psychology's quixotic Quest For the Media-Violence Connection.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
>Basically they've become toothless, refuse classification and the media will drag you thought the mud so they'll just rubber stamp any level of violence and nudity even when it should be clearly restricted.
100% Agree. Let's start with the bible. Do you know just how much perverse sex and violence there is in that thing?! Good God! And the drugs in it too! The very first chapter introduces us to a mythical gateway drug tree that incites perfectly good people to disobey specific commands and have illicit sexual relations, ending in a drug trip so strong it causes an hallucination that people are born from a rib!
Lo and behold in the end days he would descend from the sky to face the wicked one and his decadent followers.
Praised be his holly jetpack and his cigar for he is the king of the heavenly kingdom as well as the earthly realm. Hail to the king baby.
All these restrictions remind me when wanted to see a movie when I was younger. I was not allowed, do I bought the book and read it instead.
Many years later when I saw the movie, I realized that the book was way more explicit and specific then the movie. Several pages at the 'level' of Penthouse letters vs not even a nipple in the movie.
Pretty interesting when you are 15.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
No, no. Violent media merely makes people aggressive! And, as we all know, those temporary aggressive thoughts always turn into physical violence! Therefore, games should be banned/censored. Also, teenager's brains haven't completely formed yet, so that automatically means that they are so ignorant that they can't tell the difference between fiction and reality (the same goes for children). This is all very scientific, you see...
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
There is little to no danger that 15-18 year old kids throwing pipe bombs are real cops, even if that were in the game.
The dominate paradigm in the humanities, and much of psychology, is called Social Constructionism. This has come to define feminism (unfortunately) and much of the academy. While no doubt profound, social constructionism has been taken way to far, and has turned into environmental determinism. The humanities are scared silly at any thought that biology may have an important role to play in human behaviour. It is considered racist, sexist and morally wrong to even consider it. In particular, any attempt to question social constructionist principles is attacked by main-stream feminists because it threatens their hope for fixing men -- who are subtly taught by society to dominate women -- the first principle of being a man (really!). Social constructionism is a powerful force in a politically correct and pusillanimous academy.
If you take the view that society shapes us, and causes patriarchy, violence, sexual aggression, and everything else under the sun... then it is a slippery slope before you are soon moralising about everything you don't like in society. Because -- if you can manipulate the environment (society), then you can fix all of the problems. Thus, social constructionists (feminists, sociologists, many psychologists, the humanities), see violence, and look to find how society teaches us to be violent. The answer is obvious: media violence.
Problem is, empirical studies just don't support the proposition. There is a very weak correlation (bordering on noise), and correlation does not equal causation. It could be that naturally violent people prefer violent media. An unexplored hypothesis. Instead, correlation is taken as causation, and numerous other inconsistencies are explained away -- because being wrong on this point, means being wrong about a great many things regarding human nature and societys.
This confusion is entrenched, because of political bias, and a sense of absolute rectitude on the part of anti-media-violence advocates.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I'm just curious... so, is MA15+ a vaporware index?
Bleargh anti-gubbermint rant.
If you bothered to find out anything, you would have learned that:
1. the classification board is an independent entity, which is why the Pro R rating government has been able to do nothing about the lack of an R rating for games.
2. Restricted is the term for the R rating which can only be sold to people over the age of 18. In other words, it does not mean what you think it means.
But dont let any of that get in the way of your senseless rant.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I wouldn't say that, violence has always been pretty depraved throughout history, we just dont write that bit in the history books. We tend to remember the past with rose tinted glasses.
But the second part is true, we have the lowest rates of murders, domestic violence, assaults and several other crimes in the last 100 odd years. Personally I put this down to cultural shifts away from the glorification of actual violence and education. Particularly in the area of domestic violence, I think anti-DV campaigns have been pretty successful.
Violence in media does not change our reaction to violence, when you see an actor in a movie rough up his wife in the movie, is your reaction (emotion) any different to seeing a real person backhand his wife?
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Why does his jetpack have holly on it?
Irony? Yea, it's like goldy and bronzy, only it's made of iron!