This has happened many times over the years, from Shadow Warrior to Duke Nukem 3D to Blood (the first two were parent-locked, Blood was banned outright for a long time). Without being Australian (I'm a New Zealander, we get fallout from this but don't have the sane regime), I should point out that Australia isn't one big unit in terms of cultural acceptance. Certain of the states are extremely conservative, while others (Queensland) are perfectly "normal"(whatever that means, but they'd be unlikely to ban games on their own).
To take a different example on the porn side, Penthouse is sold in a variety of different editions in Australia, mainly to deal with the varying censorship levels and definitions of "acceptable" nudity in newstand publications.
I was interested in the extent to which Doom 3's sales arc has followed a blockbuster movie's; even more so than most big releases (in either media) Doom 3 effectively "bought its opening weekend" with massive publicity, enjoyed about two weeks of strong sales, then dropped off significantly as word of mouth spread. Kinda like "Van Helsing" (movie) and so many others. This expansion seems like more of the same.
Contrast, for example, Vice City, which had the same pre-release hype but managed to last. I wonder which route HL2 will end up taking?
Slashdot Mirror
A while back I wrote a piece about the ideals vs realism side of this topic for the Escapist:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_137/2940-Idea-Sex-in-the-Classroom
(Yes this is shameless pimping but I think it's pretty relevant to the main topic and a lot of these comments)
Cheers
Colin
This has happened many times over the years, from Shadow Warrior to Duke Nukem 3D to Blood (the first two were parent-locked, Blood was banned outright for a long time). Without being Australian (I'm a New Zealander, we get fallout from this but don't have the sane regime), I should point out that Australia isn't one big unit in terms of cultural acceptance. Certain of the states are extremely conservative, while others (Queensland) are perfectly "normal"(whatever that means, but they'd be unlikely to ban games on their own). To take a different example on the porn side, Penthouse is sold in a variety of different editions in Australia, mainly to deal with the varying censorship levels and definitions of "acceptable" nudity in newstand publications.
I was interested in the extent to which Doom 3's sales arc has followed a blockbuster movie's; even more so than most big releases (in either media) Doom 3 effectively "bought its opening weekend" with massive publicity, enjoyed about two weeks of strong sales, then dropped off significantly as word of mouth spread. Kinda like "Van Helsing" (movie) and so many others. This expansion seems like more of the same. Contrast, for example, Vice City, which had the same pre-release hype but managed to last. I wonder which route HL2 will end up taking?