On the Left 4 Dead Ban
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
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Not everyone seems to understand what is happening here. Australia has absolutely no rating for adults for video games, or for North American's an equivalent of M. Any game that Australia feels deserves what should be an M rating can not be classified. It is the Office of Film and Literature's job to rate games and they didn't feel right rating this game for teenagers.
Australia generally rates games much more leniently than other organizations but because they this one couldn't be rated for teenagers and there is no higher rating, the game can not be classified.
It is not as if there was, at any point, someone who said, "This game is horrible. We must ban it/refuse to give it a rating." What happened was that someone said, "We can't rate this game for teenagers, and since we have no higher rating, we can't rate this game."
Huge, huge difference. Get upset at the lack of a higher rating, not at Australia/the rating organization. The organization did it's job and if there were a higher rating then that rating would have been given instead. Australia generally give games ratings much lower than their North America counterparts. This is not leading to a police state and the logic behind that idea is absurd.
Australia generally rates games much more leniently than other organizations but because they this one couldn't be rated for teenagers and there is no higher rating, the game can not be classified.
It is not as if there was, at any point, someone who said, "This game is horrible. We must ban it/refuse to give it a rating." What happened was that someone said, "We can't rate this game for teenagers, and since we have no higher rating, we can't rate this game."
Huge, huge difference. Get upset at the lack of a higher rating, not at Australia/the rating organization. The organization did it's job and if there were a higher rating then that rating would have been given instead. Australia generally give games ratings much lower than their North America counterparts. This is not leading to a police state and the logic behind that idea is absurd.
Yahtzee kind of summarized what I thought when I heard of this L4D2 ban. So it´s suddenly better to ban a fairly normal violent game to "protect the children" at the cost of creating the murderous hate of *all* well-informed gamers in Australia? Nice. This also brings us to the question of how flawed democracy really is. My guess would have to be that 99,999989% of all Australians would either want this game to be released or doesn´t care. But the few idiotic politicians ban it and will not bother to create a K-18 marking. Brilliant. The sad thing here really is that the world is driven by two things. Money and violence. If a gamer or even the entire nation of Australia (politicians are not counted as a part of the nation due to their need to survive on pure gold) wants to get L4D2 out in Australia... he/she basically needs to kill every politician who is behind this. This really is a sad thing but that´s basically the only way people can have a say on things in the current dictatorship we call "democracy". It won´t be long before the Australian government bans the critisism of the government and innocent people are thrown into jail because they "work against Australia". Australia just took the crucial step of becoming Burma/Myanmar. Very soon the army will start killing innocent civilians because they feel like it. Riot. Now.
The problem is parents are too bloody lazy to look after their children and actually care about what happens to them, that the Australian Government have to do everything to control their children. It is shown by the no red food in schools law, what the balls is that? Just because parents give their children junk for school doesn't mean it what they eat all the time and even if they did it none of the Governments business to butt in and get their old wrinkly arses in their making everyones lives worse.They are like pedophiles with the way they constantly watch our children and the way they stalk families. They need to stop taking what power we get as a parent and let parents decide what their children should eat, watch, play, touch, do, etc.
Apologies to anyone who may have said this, but I think it would be damned funny if some guy tryed to mug someone in a dark alley with a video game controller. "X, Y, LB, LB! Why won't you drop your loot?!" Worst case scenario, someone gets beaned in the head. Really, no video game can teach someone how to kill.
Until the Wii perfects the motion controls.
Until the Wii perfects the motion controls.
Aside from the fact that your spelling hurts my eyes, I agree with your statement. Australia doesn't get violent games? Boo hoo. In a way, what we get served over here is worse. At least you don't shell out 60-70 Euros on a violent game only to find out they've cut half the content. I've already made it a policy to do extensive internet research on any game I am even remotely interested in buying as to possible censorship... otherwise the chance of getting ripped off is just too big.Metalrocks said:
Wolfenstein in Germany? Yeeeeaahh... no Nazi symbolism, no gore...
The Darkness? Nuh-uh, no devouring of enemy hearts for you! Instead your tentacles get to absorb friendly green 'soul fog' to power up.
WET? Just finished it, not a single drop of blood, and no severed limbs either.
And yesterday my suspicions about Assassin's Creed 2 were confirmed when it was officially announced the German version is to undergo the gimp treatment as well.
All in all, sucks for you, fellow gamers who happen to be unlucky enough to suffer Michael Atkinson's stubbornness... I hope you'll be rid of him some time in the near future, but thats really all the sympathy I can muster considering the sorry state of censorship laws in my own country.
So I assume it will be released in Germany, just with less blood and flying bits of zombie? I too feel an empathetic sympathy for German gamers, but at least there's been no announcements to ban it in Germany (at least, not that I can find) like in Australia, and there have been no official announcements to produce a less violent version here.Sonicron said:
It's not as if I play games just to see lots of blood and gore. It's disappointing that I am forced to play games that have been censored, but at least I'd get to play the game, so as long as Left 4 Dead 2 is actually released, I'd be... well, I'd be more or less satisfied. Happiness seems to be a revolution away, though.
While I appreciate that the censorship laws in Germany are a lot stricter than the ones here, in Germany it's understandable, given certain parts of it's history that the German government is very fearful there will be repeats of (mostly unwarranted fears, of course). But here there is absolutely no reason for this kind of censorship; our violent crime rates are very low, there's nothing in our history that we wish to avoid a repeat of (except maybe the Port Arthur shooting spree), we have very strict gun laws so gun crime is minimal etc.Sonicron said:
Well, I'm not one of the gamers who need five buckets worth of blood and entrails on screen the entire duration of the game, but I do feel ripped off when I play a game that features somewhat realistic violence (a game I paid a lot of money for, mind you) without depicting the obvious consequences of said violent acts (say, shoving a blade into someone's face without apparently drawing blood)... especially considering the fact that gamers in other countries paid the same amount of money without suffering a diminished experience.Andronicus said:
Well... that may be true in part. Most of the censorship madness we have here at the moment, though, is the result of a school shooting in Erfurt only a few years back - that's when the thumbscrews on gaming went from squeezing the metaphorical fingers to grinding them into paste.Wyes said:
I live in Australia and whilst i couldnt really give 2 shits about "Left 4 Dead 2" (i found the 1st to be lacking of content and not nearly as good as TF2) I get the feeling that if Valve just changes the name of 'The Infected' to fucking 'Zombies!' or even 'Living Impaired' then im sure the game will be reclassified with MA 15+ rating.
Although i agree that our govt. is full of dipshits...theres a paper out there for R rating in videogames but some cockhead is purposely ignoring it as it would mean they would have to do something else than twiddle their thumbs.
Although i agree that our govt. is full of dipshits...theres a paper out there for R rating in videogames but some cockhead is purposely ignoring it as it would mean they would have to do something else than twiddle their thumbs.
Pretty sure steam wont allow downloads of L4D2 into Australia if its against and sort of laws, like it realeasing games in countries at different times.Psepha said:
All hail mighty Steam nonetheless!
Australia is so lucky, swimming knifes, sharks, snakes and old pricks giving games classification.
Yay.
Yay.
Sonicron said:yeah, i know my spelling sucks. german is still my strongest language. i also have a little dyslexia problem which stopps me to get it all right. plus it was 3am when i wrote this. but i am always happy when people understand what i mean.Metalrocks said:
yeah, i hope this ass will have a painful death. this just proofs that only idiots run the country. well, since he is the GA of South Australia, and i live in SA, maybe i will find him play assassins creed with him
I suggest the australian government to confiscate certain body parts from all underage people. God knows what they may try to do with them. They might try to masturbate, and as we all know that's 18+ content. also, they should remove their teeth. they might bite something/someone with them. what about the fingers?they might end up poking someone in the eye. Also, I suggest to rate 18++ all "home alone" movies. If children see that movie, they will all start thinking that ballbusting is fun, and then they will go on rampage, thus ending the human species history. Also, I suggest hiding people with missing arms or permanent injuries from children. They are mature content. As war is. So if Australia takes part in any war, they should put all their children in the Vault 101, so they won't never ever face the harshness of reality. Wait, what?
Also, thank you rating system, government, and censorship. Now we get games which are supposed to be horror while they are not. (Seriously, the camera looking down when Chris gets beheaded/after his throat is cut in RE5?LOL. Also, why did they cheat on us making us believe it was horror. It's more scary to watch a movie which has been reviewed by the Nostalgia Critic). Also, with this "do not give bad example to children", each time on of the two guys gets revived from the partner, the camera turns around. I think the partner is supposed to being injecting adrenaline on him to keep his vital system alive (not that it would work in real life). Do they think people would go around injecting weird things into people dying?MM this rant is way too long and I'm digressing, but oh well.
Also, thank you rating system, government, and censorship. Now we get games which are supposed to be horror while they are not. (Seriously, the camera looking down when Chris gets beheaded/after his throat is cut in RE5?LOL. Also, why did they cheat on us making us believe it was horror. It's more scary to watch a movie which has been reviewed by the Nostalgia Critic). Also, with this "do not give bad example to children", each time on of the two guys gets revived from the partner, the camera turns around. I think the partner is supposed to being injecting adrenaline on him to keep his vital system alive (not that it would work in real life). Do they think people would go around injecting weird things into people dying?MM this rant is way too long and I'm digressing, but oh well.
I'm pissed as all hell when i heard that left 4 dead was banned in my country i bit my lip so hard it bled. i broke the pen in my hand. beyond left 4 dead 2 was one of the few games i was looking forward to in 2000 and 10. the worst thing is the ratings classification board aren't a group of soulless greedy bureaucrats nut they think there the good guys and they think I'm the soulless monster. why can't they just take there share of game taxes from the gst and stop pissing me off. JUST TAKE MY BLOODY MONEY AND LET ME PLAY MY GAME.
And I thought America was bad for unleashing censorship scorn on any game where a woman gets her tits out, and here we have Australia getting their brains in a twist about blood, guts, and violence afflicted upon the non-living.
I can only feel genuine sorrow for the poor buggers.
I can only feel genuine sorrow for the poor buggers.