Benefits and disadvantages of gaming in your country

[acosn]

US
+
-Ease of internet access. Really unless you live in the piss middle of nowhere, the only countries that have flat out better internet access for less are countries that had it easy like South Korea and Japan.

-Non existent censorship. We put excessive gore on the map with titles like Mortal Kombat.

-Cheap games, long standing community means that many "classic" titles are easier to find. You can still find PS1 FF7 copies in the original case at local area independent Buy / Sell / Trade shops.

-Market Saturation. We buy the games we're making.

-
-On the other hand, the internet community for many games in the US just suck.

-Gaming became marketable, suddenly the people who put gaming on the map were ostracized from their own community.

 

[Jandau]

Croatia

Disadvantages:
Limited number of shops
Limited second hand market
High prices (roughly $10-20 higher than US prices)
Limited support
Basically, you're screwed.

Advantages:
Nobody cares about gaming enough to concern themselves with passing censorship laws or scapegoating gaming for every little thing.

 

[RaphaelsRedemption]

Australia.

Where I am, at least, it has been possible to find enough gamers for really fun multiplayer LAN games.
I'm a computer gamer, and parts for my machine are always readily accessible, however, games are sometimes only available via internet.
The internet is uncensored as of yet, and I like it that way . Sometimes it is really SLOW.


It is hard to find people who will train you in programming and animation skills for making games, and it is next to impossible to find a job once you are ready for one. This is what I am doing, however, so maybe I'll end up on benefits for the rest of my life making my own indie games, cause, despite the gaming glitches, I do like my country

 

[Woodsey]

Honestly, I feel Britain is one of the most liberal countries when it comes to gaming. I can't really think of any negatives for us - I wish they'd have continued to use the BBFC for ratings, as that's more of a familiar symbol for the morons who don't know what a big number on the front of game/film box means. Other than that though, nada.

The amount of investigations and restrictions other countries are (or are thinking about) putting in place are ridiculous.

I mean, since when has Australia been so up tight?! Now they're even searching people for porn when they enter the country, "just in case" they have "offensive material" on them.

 

[Frybird]

Germany

Advantages:
- Seeing as how many people complain about Gamestop and such, i guess it's pretty easy to get games in Germany. Lots of electronic stores have them, rarely in limited stock and without trying to talk you into any special stuff like insurances or special offers.
And there are lots of online stores to get games, and if you preorder, most will deliver them a day or so BEFORE the official release date

- Return policies and such are heavily regulated by german law, and they are mostly pretty customer friendly.

- Thanks to the PAL Standard you can get games from all over Europe, like the UK, where games are currently a LOT cheaper than in Germany.


Disadvantages:
- Importing Games outside of Europe however, is very pricey and there are not much actual import stores to get games from the US or Japan.

- Of course, the whole censoring thing...i guess i have to go a bit deeper into that:
(1) The age-rating logos of the USK (german version of PEGI or ESRB), are pretty f**king big, and mandatory. If you like pretty game covers, it can be REALLY annoying. Here's Bioshock 2, as an example:
http://www.spielerwitwen.de/wp-content/gallery/bioshock-2-packshots/BIOSHOCK%202%20PS3%20USK.jpg

(2) Speaking of the USK, they are REALLY tough...sometimes (more on that later).
Anything that involves blood or shooting people is restricted to 18 pretty much immediately. Of course, It's sort of understandable and no problem once you've grown up, but that does make the whole thing actually worse.

(3) You see, the USK can downright refuse to rate a game if it is too violent. And if that happens, stores are not allowed to sell the game "openly" (like, on shelves), wich of course leads to stores not offering the game for obvious reasons, and in turn for publishers to not even release the game in germany because it's just not worth it...

(4) Unless they censor the game itself and cut down the most violent parts. So it's very much possible to have a game only being sold to mature people that is STILL partly censored, effectively protecting "grown ups" with a law "for kids".

(5) So yeah, publishers are not releasing games in germany, but no problem, right? You just go into a gamestore and get an import....As long as the ratings board does not decide afterwards to forbid the game to be even sold in germany. So often times, importing from foreign countries is the ONLY option.

(6) Wich is ALSO not as much of a problem as it sounds, but if a game is not rated in germany, you also cannot offer any DLC openly on german networks, wich includes german accounts on Xbox Live, Playstation Network and Steam. So say goodbye to your international Gears of War 3 Clan/Team once the first Mappack is released...

(7) ...And speaking of Steam, you cannot of course buy unreleased/uncut stuff there.

- Games are slightly pricier in Germany

- German Dubs S U C K most of the time, and you can't always count on them being multilanguage.

 

[y1fella]

Germany

Advantages:
- Seeing as how many people complain about Gamestop and such, i guess it's pretty easy to get games in Germany. Lots of electronic stores have them, rarely in limited stock and without trying to talk you into any special stuff like insurances or special offers.
And there are lots of online stores to get games, and if you preorder, most will deliver them a day or so BEFORE the official release date

- Return policies and such are heavily regulated by german law, and they are mostly pretty customer friendly.

- Thanks to the PAL Standard you can get games from all over Europe, like the UK, where games are currently a LOT cheaper than in Germany.


Disadvantages:
- Importing Games outside of Europe however, is very pricey and there are not much actual import stores to get games from the US or Japan.

- Of course, the whole censoring thing...i guess i have to go a bit deeper into that:
(1) The age-rating logos of the USK (german version of PEGI or ESRB), are pretty f**king big, and mandatory. If you like pretty game covers, it can be REALLY annoying. Here's Bioshock 2, as an example:
http://www.spielerwitwen.de/wp-content/gallery/bioshock-2-packshots/BIOSHOCK%202%20PS3%20USK.jpg

(2) Speaking of the USK, they are REALLY tough...sometimes (more on that later).
Anything that involves blood or shooting people is restricted to 18 pretty much immediately. Of course, It's sort of understandable and no problem once you've grown up, but that does make the whole thing actually worse.

(3) You see, the USK can downright refuse to rate a game if it is too violent. And if that happens, stores are not allowed to sell the game "openly" (like, on shelves), wich of course leads to stores not offering the game for obvious reasons, and in turn for publishers to not even release the game in germany because it's just not worth it...

(4) Unless they censor the game itself and cut down the most violent parts. So it's very much possible to have a game only being sold to mature people that is STILL partly censored, effectively protecting "grown ups" with a law "for kids".

(5) So yeah, publishers are not releasing games in germany, but no problem, right? You just go into a gamestore and get an import....As long as the ratings board does not decide afterwards to forbid the game to be even sold in germany. So often times, importing from foreign countries is the ONLY option.

(6) Wich is ALSO not as much of a problem as it sounds, but if a game is not rated in germany, you also cannot offer any DLC openly on german networks, wich includes german accounts on Xbox Live, Playstation Network and Steam. So say goodbye to your international Gears of War 3 Clan/Team once the first Mappack is released...

(7) ...And speaking of Steam, you cannot of course buy unreleased/uncut stuff there.

- Games are slightly pricier in Germany

- German Dubs S U C K most of the time, and you can't always count on them being multilanguage.

wow............ Germany sucks, i new the gov was strict about games but that.... that is insane

 

[Riobux]

Disadvantages:
1. We get fucked over by the price exchange all the time. Got to love how Steam thinks it's appropriate to charge £20 for expansion packs when in the US, it's $20.
2. We get fucked over by the release dates. It took nearly a year longer for Rock Band to be released in the UK. We're only just getting Demon's Souls in the UK soon finally, despite there being absolutely no region issues. 99.9% of the time, games are released in the UK a good few days after the US.
3. We get fucked over with events. In America, there's all sorts. From PAX to E3. In the UK, eh, there's the odd few dotted around but nothing close to the scale of PAX.
4. We're mostly exclusively console gamers. Good luck trying to find someone who is into D&D, or even someone who doesn't just tilt their head in your direction when you mention mods on PC games.
5. Anti-English hate. It's expected that when you go on X-Box live and as soon as they hear an English voice, out comes the WW2 and Revolutionary war banter. Sure it may of cooled down, but it exists.
6. Our newspapers love to dramatise things, this includes "the evil menace that is video-games!". They even did a poorly constructed study to "prove" that video-games cause violence.

Advantages:

...Well at least there's no system in place that cuts down any gore like Australia has? Oh, and there are some good game shops like Gamestation. Even if GAME is a rip-off.

Edit: Oh, and we do get some limited edition packs which are cool. Just less choice than the US.

 

[veloper]

netherlands
- bit more expensive (due to tax)

+ english / UK version, so no bad dubs, or games that don't get patched
+ no censorship, just rating labels
+ availablity
+ early releases
+ good broadband access

 

[Bellvedere]

The topic is fairly self explanatory so I'll just start things off. I live in Australia. The advantages are
*easy to acquire games
*Low level of attention from the community (Games Stole my child's life despite what he says)
Now for the disadvantages
*Games are so much more expensive usually about 120 dollars for a new release, About sixty extra if you PlayStation
*Michal Atkinson
*R 18 titles are banned
*No notable game developers are in Australia, so if i want to get a job in the industry i have to move over seas
And that's about it. did i miss anything?

2K Australia is in Canberra. They worked on Bioshock 1 & 2. I know some kids that work there. The Academy of Interactive Entertainment shares a campus with Micro Forte too (they were the guys that did Fallout Tactics - not a huge developer but still...)

Michael Atkinson has stepped down.

Generally only Triple A titles are retailed for $120, and that's only from expensive specialist stores like EB or Game. And PS3 and 360 titles have cost the same for a couple of years now.

There have been very few titles that have been censored or banned. Most games just get through with a lower rating. The only one I've even cared about is L4D2. The biggest issue with the R 18+ is that games have irrelevent ratings meaning parents buy their kiddies games that are 18+ overseas. Or we let 15 year olds buy games that should only be for adults.

Oh I'm in Australia too by the way. I agree with games costing lots. They're just less than what you say.

 

[Leviathan_]

Belgium:

+ No censorship in games
+ The stereotype of "Gamers become murderers" is long gone.
+ UK games so no dubs (God I hate dubs)

- a tad bit too expensive
- limited amount of stores that actually sell a wide variaty of games (no Gamestop for instance)

 

[Toriver]

Oh, gaming in Japan. Let's see here...

Advantages
1. Plenty of stores to find what you're looking for
2. Speaking of, you can actually find some retro gems, and I'm talking collector's items, in some used game shops for a ridiculously low price.
3. High-speed internet; Japan is the most wired country in the world. YAY!
4. Early release dates for domestic games compared to when the West gets them
5. New release prices are about the same as the US
6. Japanese exclusives; being able to play all those games I read about on blogs before coming here that have been only released in Japan. Jump Ultimate Stars FTW!

Disadvantages
First, I will get to the big one:
1. The otaku stigma. Believe it or not, gamers are not seen as "cool" in Japanese society, but looked down upon. I suppose if you're a member of this forum, that's not news to you, but this is a warning to the weeaboos and otaku out there who think that they would be welcomed with open arms by Japanese society. Hate to burst your bubble, but you will be cast out just as fiercely as you may be in the West. Otaku is a 4-letter word in Japanese (when referring to a person and not a house), and it doesn't just apply to anime nuts. It goes for nerds of all stripes over the age of 12. Once you're out of elementary school, if you want to be socially accepted, you study and play your club sport all your waking hours. If you're not doing one, you're doing the other. When you graduate, you work all your waking hours until you're 60. Then you might have time to play a game or two. And I am 100 percent serious on this. It sucks but it's true. That's the ideal life here, not a gamer lifestyle. So no, you won't be "big in Japan", you won't be seen as anything good in Japan.
2. Eroge. They're just as rare here as they are elsewhere, but the otaku gamers of the world gobble them up, and when the mainstream finds one, it gives Japanese gaming in particular a very bad image, as if these games weren't made in other places. See Rapelay and the shitstorm that went along with it for an example.
3. "Xbox 360? What's that? We thought only the Wii and PS3 came out this generation." Exaggerated, but the point is, good luck finding much for a Japanese XBox. In the gaming stores, you might find half a shelf of stuff compared to the 2 shelves or more of all the Sony and Nintendo systems, and half of that half-shelf will be stuff for the original Xbox and not the 360.
4. The NTSC-J region code. If you don't speak Japanese, there's about a 50-50 chance your game will come with English support if you get the Japanese version, usually dependent on where the developer is from. Western games will usually have English support, but Japanese games won't, though there have been examples of each going the other way on that. So if you don't speak Japanese, you may have to purchase an NTSC-J English copy from Play-Asia instead of just going to your local store. Adding to that, if it's a Wii, you are SOL. Wii games have NO English support whatsoever.

Sorry for the big rants on disadvantages, but I think the advantages are pretty self-explanatory compared to the disadvantages.

 

[Jonluw]

Norway
Advantages
- Rather high availability. In addition to video-game stores (Of which there is a decent amount; at least in my home town), basically all electronics stores carry games, as does some music and dvd shops.
- Low levels of prejudice
- Internet coverage is decent (I think)
- Release dates are normally just a few days later than in the US.
- Age ratings are guidelines, so there is no law stopping me from buying 18+ games (I can't guarantee that this is a fact, but I think it is)

Disadvantages
- Prices are rather high. New releases are normally about 90 USD, but sometimes cut down to 76 USD for the first week after release. (I think these are high prices, correct me if I'm wrong)
- If I want to work in the industry my options are: Move overseas, found my own company, or join Funcom.

 

[Mozza444]

Well first of all I live in Spain so..

*Language - I play on Ps3 and all games seem to every European language on the disk, this is until you find a game like MW2 and have to wait 2 more months to get it when you next visit your family.

*Price - WTF!?! 70 Euros for a game? No thanks.

*Price again - Resistance, 2nd hand... Still 40 Euro? Wow spain.. you sure know how to sell products.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Australia.

Where I am, at least, it has been possible to find enough gamers for really fun multiplayer LAN games.
I'm a computer gamer, and parts for my machine are always readily accessible, however, games are sometimes only available via internet.
The internet is uncensored as of yet, and I like it that way . Sometimes it is really SLOW.


It is hard to find people who will train you in programming and animation skills for making games, and it is next to impossible to find a job once you are ready for one. This is what I am doing, however, so maybe I'll end up on benefits for the rest of my life making my own indie games, cause, despite the gaming glitches, I do like my country

Parts may be accessible but they are quite pricey when you look at the rest of the world due to shipping and so on.

 

[LeonLethality]

+ We don't have every news network saying games are evil.
+ We have the North American release dates which are earlier than Europe and Australia (sometimes Japan)

- We have to pay about ten dollars more than the USA for games even though our dollar is pretty much even to theirs.

That's pretty much gaming here in Canada.

 

[Zetsubou-Sama]

Portugal:

+ Games hardly sell-out.
+ Gaming consoles never sell-out. (Example: While every forum was raging on the wii going out of sale, I just had to go to the store and buy one).
+ Games usually come with extra content ( a la FF X european version).
+ Hardly ever negative press on videogames.
+ PC Games get below 10 euros really fast (Dead Space costed 5 euros after release)

- Impossible to buy games from before the current generation.
- Impossible to get decent support
- Online PS store sucks
- No events or gaming tournaments. (For Pokemon fans this almost takes the whole enjoymenty of competitive/completist gaming)
- Only big titles are sold (For example: No Demon's Souls or FFXI for 4 years) andfor the Wii there are about 40 games available.
- Lack of fps communities except for Counter-Strike.
- About 15 gaming shops in a 100 mile radius.
- Hardly you get national online play.
- No access to under the radar games, even mainstream ones.
- Fucking american console keys on european keyboard

 

[GiantRedButton]

Germany

Advantages:
- Seeing as how many people complain about Gamestop and such, i guess it's pretty easy to get games in Germany. Lots of electronic stores have them, rarely in limited stock and without trying to talk you into any special stuff like insurances or special offers.
And there are lots of online stores to get games, and if you preorder, most will deliver them a day or so BEFORE the official release date

- Return policies and such are heavily regulated by german law, and they are mostly pretty customer friendly.

- Thanks to the PAL Standard you can get games from all over Europe, like the UK, where games are currently a LOT cheaper than in Germany.


Disadvantages:
- Importing Games outside of Europe however, is very pricey and there are not much actual import stores to get games from the US or Japan.

- Of course, the whole censoring thing...i guess i have to go a bit deeper into that:
(1) The age-rating logos of the USK (german version of PEGI or ESRB), are pretty f**king big, and mandatory. If you like pretty game covers, it can be REALLY annoying. Here's Bioshock 2, as an example:
http://www.spielerwitwen.de/wp-content/gallery/bioshock-2-packshots/BIOSHOCK%202%20PS3%20USK.jpg

(2) Speaking of the USK, they are REALLY tough...sometimes (more on that later).
Anything that involves blood or shooting people is restricted to 18 pretty much immediately. Of course, It's sort of understandable and no problem once you've grown up, but that does make the whole thing actually worse.

(3) You see, the USK can downright refuse to rate a game if it is too violent. And if that happens, stores are not allowed to sell the game "openly" (like, on shelves), wich of course leads to stores not offering the game for obvious reasons, and in turn for publishers to not even release the game in germany because it's just not worth it...

(4) Unless they censor the game itself and cut down the most violent parts. So it's very much possible to have a game only being sold to mature people that is STILL partly censored, effectively protecting "grown ups" with a law "for kids".

(5) So yeah, publishers are not releasing games in germany, but no problem, right? You just go into a gamestore and get an import....As long as the ratings board does not decide afterwards to forbid the game to be even sold in germany. So often times, importing from foreign countries is the ONLY option.

(6) Wich is ALSO not as much of a problem as it sounds, but if a game is not rated in germany, you also cannot offer any DLC openly on german networks, wich includes german accounts on Xbox Live, Playstation Network and Steam. So say goodbye to your international Gears of War 3 Clan/Team once the first Mappack is released...

(7) ...And speaking of Steam, you cannot of course buy unreleased/uncut stuff there.

- Games are slightly pricier in Germany

- German Dubs S U C K most of the time, and you can't always count on them being multilanguage.

wow............ Germany sucks, i new the gov was strict about games but that.... that is insane

Well only 11 games have been banned in the history of Germany, you still get every game you wan't and uncensored (if they release a censored version, the can sell the uncensored one openly and pretty much only do that)
Also, imports are really easy since your in the eu and they are cheaper then buying a unimported version.
+ the shops carry the imported version instead of the censored one in my area and for the same price.

 

[Halceon]

Latvia.

Boons
Generally accepted and/or ignored
Cheap russian re-publishing
Rampant, ubiquitous piracy

Blights
No Latvian versions, very few english versions, truckloads of russian versions
Oversaturation with shovelware
Low availability
Rampant, ubiquitous piracy
No local developers

 

[JonnoStrife]

The topic is fairly self explanatory so I'll just start things off. I live in Australia. The advantages are
*easy to acquire games
*Low level of attention from the community (Games Stole my child's life despite what he says)
Now for the disadvantages
*Games are so much more expensive usually about 120 dollars for a new release, About sixty extra if you PlayStation
*Michal Atkinson
*R 18 titles are banned
*No notable game developers are in Australia, so if i want to get a job in the industry i have to move over seas
And that's about it. did i miss anything?

Adding to the Australian list:
+Atkinson os out of office now

-Games are over priced