Judging by the media that did get banned those banned as a side-effect are less than 10%. The law is visible to everyone and these games got banned for material that was not necessary for the game to function. In Wolf3D they only had to remove some of the wall textures, in MK they had to remove the fatalities (blood alone only got you an indexing back then and nowadays not even that) and Manhunt would have to replace the detailled killing scenes with something less explicit. Of course in the case of MK and Manhunt that was the whole selling point. Still, the games could have played entirely the same without these unnecessary things. I don't consider it censorship if it's not the message that's objected to but an unnecessarily offensive way of expressing it. We're a civilized society and civilization means consideration for each other and expressing yourself in a way that doesn't offend people unnecessarily.
I bet you that advocating a coup d'etat would get you arrested for treason, terrorism or threats against the president, if you get charged at all and not just thrown into Guantanamo. Your founding fathers said a lot of things but what isn't written down in the law and upheld by the courts is ignored in practice.
That isn't true. None of these games are attempting to incite hate or violence against people, nor are they trying to overthrow any government system.
Of course they aren't but those who do won't be that overt about it either so the law gives rules that would allow hitting subtle propaganda as well.
Eh, they'd just dump where it doesn't hurt them, what the others do isn't something they can change anyway. Of course in such a scenario the populace should be free to round them up and kill them to prevent further pollution.
The law is very clear about the kinds of propaganda that get banned, namely anything attempting to incite hate or violence against people or attempting to overthrow the government system as that's a disturbance of the peace. I bet you that no country would tolerate it if you handed out leaflets calling for a Coup d'Etat.
And I'll stop treating Americans like a bunch of radical Christians when they stop considering sex worse than violence and seriously attempting to teach religious dogmas in science class...
Mortal Kombat was allowed to be sold with the fatalities removed. It fell afoul of laws against glorifying or promoting violence. Of course it's just a game but Mein Kampf is just a book. Media can be designed to influence people and while I doubt Mortal Kombat was designed to promote violence the law can't guess intents, it has to be possible to ban propaganda without knowing if the author was serious.
I don't think it was something specific to this society that made the holocaust happen, I think it could have happened in the allied countries, too (in fact some argue that some allies did perform similar atrocities but of course the winner writes the history books). I also don't think the Islam-Nazi comparison is fair, a few extremist leaders train their underlings to extremism and hate but the vast majority of the muslims is more or less harmless. I do think the anti-muslim propaganda (i.e. spreading the belief that muslim = terrorist) could facilitate another holocaust, this time targeting said muslims and I think it's only a matter of time until a politician can gain influence by playing off that fear of "the others".
The only real censorship is of titles that reward the player for being very brutal and contain very graphic violence, namely Mortal Kombat 1-3 and Manhunt. They also censor games that include Nazi symbols without proper context (though games remove them completely because that context requirement is vague). The rest of the "censored" games can still be sold to adults in adult-only stores or below the counter.
Oh and a slight inaccuracy in the summary: CS isn't banned from sale (only Manhunt, Mortal Kombat and Wolfenstein 3d are), indexing prevents advertising (which includes putting it on a shelf) and sale to minors, theoretically it can still be sold to adults under the counter or in areas minors can't enter (though I don't think anyone but video rental places have such areas, sex shops and gambling dens certainly don't sell indexed games) but most stores don't stock games they can't advertise.
This is different from an 18 rating which prevents sale but still allows putting the games on store shelves and I haven't seen any stores refusing to stock these.
That was such a back and forth with that game, I have no idea whether it's currently indexed or not. I do find it quite silly to rile about CS while games like Company of Heroes and Dawn of War get a rating of 16 with all the blood intact.
Also there'd be no point to Steam on consoles because Steam's only benefit is that it's a popular service and getting your game placed and advertised on it will generate many sales, on consoles there already is an official channel for downloads that everybody will see.
Currently the trend seems to be going towards "pure challenge" as opposed to "pure walk-through"
Yet I feel that many major games are way too easy for me. I don't think there's a middle ground that'll satisfy everyone, what a seasoned gamer would consider a simple warmup exercise may be an unsurmountable challenge for many casual gamers. I mean, somewhere in this discussion people got stuck in Zelda: Twilight Princess yet I found that game to be damn easy and I'm really bad at combat in the 3d Zeldas (can't even beat a stalfos in OOT without dying 5 times).
I think one flaw is that games don't make failing fun anymore, there are some games where failing doesn't mean much, you just try again but there are others where failing even two or three times can already create frustration. A part may be the speed of the game, if dying means redoing the boss fight and the fight doesn't last longer than 2-3 minutes and retrying is almost instant it's much more motivating than having a 1 hour boss fight with an unskippable 15 minute cutscene before it at each retry. I've given up on a boss of the latter kind after maybe 2-3 tries (in FFX) while I've wasted over 50 tries on some bosses of the former kind (especially in Bunny Must Die, an indie game where e.g. the Dracula boss can instakill you* if you haven't learned his pattern yet). Generally I'm willing to put up with much harder games if losing doesn't mean much. Learning how to beat a hard boss can be fun but the game design has to help you with it, not punish you for not recognizing it at first glance.
*=The attack he uses is removing his clothes... Makes your character drop dead immediately if you don't look away.
Ideally there'd be games of all kinds of challenge levels so people who don't find challenges entertaining can still find games simple enough for them. Unfortunately the industry tends to think a game has to appeal to everyone so every game is designed for the same demographic (with only a few games deviating from that). This means if the majority of players want games that they can play through without any real challenges that leaves almost no games to the people who can't find enjoyment in a game if the only interaction is how you beat the enemies, not if.
I did get stuck at a boss in FFX (right before Zanarkand, he can kill my entire party in on turn) but that's because I got so fed up with the random encounter battles in the area before that (one long path with an encounter every 10 metres and probably the dumbest battle system ever) that I ran from everything and of course was completely underlevelled by the time I got to the boss.
That does indeed sound like a difference between the regions, even Gamestop gives a lot of shelf space to PC games around here (roughly twice as much as they give to a console and PC games don't even have a "preowned" section using up half their space).
But he'll still have a fun time in prison at least. And of course he'll be known to the police and might get caught much faster again than some person that is still unknown to the police so he could easily have to fit multiple visits to the funhouse into his schedule. Being rich does a lot less to make you happy when you spend a lot of time incarcerated.
Adventure games are popular with the casual gamers the Wii is aimed at, those people don't appreciate having to wield a gamepad when simple pointing and clicking would suffice.
Yes but why do they reach the conclusion that point & click adventures are dead? Do American stores stock so few PC games that you can't find them or what? Sure, they aren't as common as WW2 shooters/Sudoku games/other current fad but they do come out regularly. Runaway, Tony Tough and Ankh got sequels lately (I think Ankh is already on its third iteration or so) plus there's dozens of adventures played from the first person perspective coming out lately.
I think NoE just cares more. Japanese have no real reason to import because they get everything first and Americans get the cheapest games and have a language barrier to importing from Japan for getting stuff early. However, Europeans pay so much for games that importing actually ends up cheaper and games come out earlier in the US with a much lower language barrier. Europeans just have a lot more incentive to import stuff than other regions.
Plus I recall a US Nintendo representative claiming the Wii was region free with a European Nintendo representative claiming the opposite shortly after which leads me to believe that the Wii was planned to be region free until NoE started pushing for a region lock.
I doubt the signature section is that different between the three regions.
Slashdot Mirror
Even without Hitler the Neonazis make games like concentration camp tycoon.
Judging by the media that did get banned those banned as a side-effect are less than 10%. The law is visible to everyone and these games got banned for material that was not necessary for the game to function. In Wolf3D they only had to remove some of the wall textures, in MK they had to remove the fatalities (blood alone only got you an indexing back then and nowadays not even that) and Manhunt would have to replace the detailled killing scenes with something less explicit. Of course in the case of MK and Manhunt that was the whole selling point. Still, the games could have played entirely the same without these unnecessary things. I don't consider it censorship if it's not the message that's objected to but an unnecessarily offensive way of expressing it. We're a civilized society and civilization means consideration for each other and expressing yourself in a way that doesn't offend people unnecessarily.
I bet you that advocating a coup d'etat would get you arrested for treason, terrorism or threats against the president, if you get charged at all and not just thrown into Guantanamo. Your founding fathers said a lot of things but what isn't written down in the law and upheld by the courts is ignored in practice.
That isn't true. None of these games are attempting to incite hate or violence against people, nor are they trying to overthrow any government system.
Of course they aren't but those who do won't be that overt about it either so the law gives rules that would allow hitting subtle propaganda as well.
Eh, they'd just dump where it doesn't hurt them, what the others do isn't something they can change anyway. Of course in such a scenario the populace should be free to round them up and kill them to prevent further pollution.
The law is very clear about the kinds of propaganda that get banned, namely anything attempting to incite hate or violence against people or attempting to overthrow the government system as that's a disturbance of the peace. I bet you that no country would tolerate it if you handed out leaflets calling for a Coup d'Etat.
And I'll stop treating Americans like a bunch of radical Christians when they stop considering sex worse than violence and seriously attempting to teach religious dogmas in science class...
Mortal Kombat was allowed to be sold with the fatalities removed. It fell afoul of laws against glorifying or promoting violence. Of course it's just a game but Mein Kampf is just a book. Media can be designed to influence people and while I doubt Mortal Kombat was designed to promote violence the law can't guess intents, it has to be possible to ban propaganda without knowing if the author was serious.
I don't think it was something specific to this society that made the holocaust happen, I think it could have happened in the allied countries, too (in fact some argue that some allies did perform similar atrocities but of course the winner writes the history books). I also don't think the Islam-Nazi comparison is fair, a few extremist leaders train their underlings to extremism and hate but the vast majority of the muslims is more or less harmless. I do think the anti-muslim propaganda (i.e. spreading the belief that muslim = terrorist) could facilitate another holocaust, this time targeting said muslims and I think it's only a matter of time until a politician can gain influence by playing off that fear of "the others".
The only real censorship is of titles that reward the player for being very brutal and contain very graphic violence, namely Mortal Kombat 1-3 and Manhunt. They also censor games that include Nazi symbols without proper context (though games remove them completely because that context requirement is vague). The rest of the "censored" games can still be sold to adults in adult-only stores or below the counter.
Oh and a slight inaccuracy in the summary: CS isn't banned from sale (only Manhunt, Mortal Kombat and Wolfenstein 3d are), indexing prevents advertising (which includes putting it on a shelf) and sale to minors, theoretically it can still be sold to adults under the counter or in areas minors can't enter (though I don't think anyone but video rental places have such areas, sex shops and gambling dens certainly don't sell indexed games) but most stores don't stock games they can't advertise.
This is different from an 18 rating which prevents sale but still allows putting the games on store shelves and I haven't seen any stores refusing to stock these.
That was such a back and forth with that game, I have no idea whether it's currently indexed or not. I do find it quite silly to rile about CS while games like Company of Heroes and Dawn of War get a rating of 16 with all the blood intact.
Also there'd be no point to Steam on consoles because Steam's only benefit is that it's a popular service and getting your game placed and advertised on it will generate many sales, on consoles there already is an official channel for downloads that everybody will see.
Currently the trend seems to be going towards "pure challenge" as opposed to "pure walk-through"
Yet I feel that many major games are way too easy for me. I don't think there's a middle ground that'll satisfy everyone, what a seasoned gamer would consider a simple warmup exercise may be an unsurmountable challenge for many casual gamers. I mean, somewhere in this discussion people got stuck in Zelda: Twilight Princess yet I found that game to be damn easy and I'm really bad at combat in the 3d Zeldas (can't even beat a stalfos in OOT without dying 5 times).
I think one flaw is that games don't make failing fun anymore, there are some games where failing doesn't mean much, you just try again but there are others where failing even two or three times can already create frustration. A part may be the speed of the game, if dying means redoing the boss fight and the fight doesn't last longer than 2-3 minutes and retrying is almost instant it's much more motivating than having a 1 hour boss fight with an unskippable 15 minute cutscene before it at each retry. I've given up on a boss of the latter kind after maybe 2-3 tries (in FFX) while I've wasted over 50 tries on some bosses of the former kind (especially in Bunny Must Die, an indie game where e.g. the Dracula boss can instakill you* if you haven't learned his pattern yet). Generally I'm willing to put up with much harder games if losing doesn't mean much. Learning how to beat a hard boss can be fun but the game design has to help you with it, not punish you for not recognizing it at first glance.
*=The attack he uses is removing his clothes... Makes your character drop dead immediately if you don't look away.
In the Castlevania series holy water works even against humans. Of course "holy water" does seem to be just a nice name for a molotov cocktail.
Ideally there'd be games of all kinds of challenge levels so people who don't find challenges entertaining can still find games simple enough for them. Unfortunately the industry tends to think a game has to appeal to everyone so every game is designed for the same demographic (with only a few games deviating from that). This means if the majority of players want games that they can play through without any real challenges that leaves almost no games to the people who can't find enjoyment in a game if the only interaction is how you beat the enemies, not if.
I did get stuck at a boss in FFX (right before Zanarkand, he can kill my entire party in on turn) but that's because I got so fed up with the random encounter battles in the area before that (one long path with an encounter every 10 metres and probably the dumbest battle system ever) that I ran from everything and of course was completely underlevelled by the time I got to the boss.
Because it would be impossible to prove that you didn't know about the patent and invented everything yourself?
That does indeed sound like a difference between the regions, even Gamestop gives a lot of shelf space to PC games around here (roughly twice as much as they give to a console and PC games don't even have a "preowned" section using up half their space).
If the patent predates the comment the comment can't be prior art.
Yeah but now I want to know how you type on this phone with boxing gloves on.
What is the maximum penalty for breaking into a computer, stealing information, and in the process leave the computer unusable?
I don't know about the UK but in the US that's 15 years, 250000$ and whatever damages you have to pay.
But he'll still have a fun time in prison at least. And of course he'll be known to the police and might get caught much faster again than some person that is still unknown to the police so he could easily have to fit multiple visits to the funhouse into his schedule. Being rich does a lot less to make you happy when you spend a lot of time incarcerated.
Adventure games are popular with the casual gamers the Wii is aimed at, those people don't appreciate having to wield a gamepad when simple pointing and clicking would suffice.
Yes but why do they reach the conclusion that point & click adventures are dead? Do American stores stock so few PC games that you can't find them or what? Sure, they aren't as common as WW2 shooters/Sudoku games/other current fad but they do come out regularly. Runaway, Tony Tough and Ankh got sequels lately (I think Ankh is already on its third iteration or so) plus there's dozens of adventures played from the first person perspective coming out lately.
I think NoE just cares more. Japanese have no real reason to import because they get everything first and Americans get the cheapest games and have a language barrier to importing from Japan for getting stuff early. However, Europeans pay so much for games that importing actually ends up cheaper and games come out earlier in the US with a much lower language barrier. Europeans just have a lot more incentive to import stuff than other regions.
Plus I recall a US Nintendo representative claiming the Wii was region free with a European Nintendo representative claiming the opposite shortly after which leads me to believe that the Wii was planned to be region free until NoE started pushing for a region lock.
I doubt the signature section is that different between the three regions.