Australia, what are you doing?

There are two countries that come to my mind when I think of silly laws when it comes to video games and they are Australia and Germany.

Big news story of the moment is coming out of Australia this time with yet another game being refused classification and therefore being made unavailable within the country.  However this time, people have a reason to be slightly more pissed off than usual.

Ya' see, this isn't the first time games have been censored or banned in Australia.  Things that pop into my head are Manhunt being banned and Left4Dead 2 being censored in the Australian version.  But from January 1st of this year, a new age rating was introduced of R18+ for the purpose of being able to give violent video games a proper classification.  This has worked for certain games like Ninja Gaiden 3, but not for this one.

So what's the problem with Saints Row 4?  Well apparently the classification board doesn't like all the drug use flying around the game.  This, coupled with all the rampant sex and violence means that the classification board have deemed it far too bad for Australian consumption and therefore it can not be sold.

So first of all, what is the point if having the R18+ classification if it doesn't cover this shit?  Why bother going to the trouble of introducing that thing in January if you're just going to ignore it's existence a couple of months down the line.  I'm pretty sure a rating of 18+ covers the games content just fine, it's not so bad that even adults shouldn't be allowed to see it, I'm sure the developers aren't that depraved.

The other thing is that if someone is going to take drugs after playing Saints Row, I'm pretty sure it's because they were on drugs anyway.  It's not like someone is going to come away after a session and think "you know what! I really need to go do some meth!".  I'm pretty sure the Australian people aren't that easily swayed into illegal activities.

I'm not Australian and I don't even like Saints Row all that much, but this is just stupid.  The Australian ratings board needs to sort their life out and they should stop being so sensitive over tongue in cheek open world GTA clones for fucks sake.  It's adults buying these games after all, and if kids do get a hold of it then you have a problem with shit parents, not violent video games, idiots.

What happened to our hobby?

Back when I was a wee lad, when I picked up a Sega Mega Drive controller for the first time at the age of 4, gaming was a simple thing.  I was given and objective and I had to fulfil it and stuff would try to impede my progress along the way.  It was a simple time filled with simple, yet fun games and the only thing people were worried about was if they could get to the next level or not.

But gaming is evolving, and for the better too!  As technology gets more advanced, and developers try to do bigger and better things and maybe one day gaming will be able to stand tall along things such as books and film.

However, we are a long LONG way off anything like that happening, but somewhere along the line gaming lost its purity, and in losing this purity it is behind held back by different groups of people throwing complaints and criticisms at the industry without really knowing whats going on.

A few years ago the big issue was violence in games, and while it's still an issue this controversy has sort of lost steam a bit.  People would point at games like Manhunt and cry foul at how its "corrupting the youth" yet were happy to ignore a staggering amount of other media that had extremely similar content.

Nowadays we have sexism, and all the people who seem to be at the forefront of this "gaming is sexist" thing seem to know very little about what the fuck they are actually talking about.  I can't go a day on the internet without being reminded how sexist gaming is and how sexist gamers are, and the issue is starting to wear a bit thin.

Yes, there are issues in the industry but people are so willing to fling shit that nothing gets sorted and it all amounts of a bunch of idiots in front of keyboards silently yelling at each other and just making any issues worse.  While I'm not sure exactly, I think that this internet shit flinging is having an impact on the developers too!  No developer or writer or anything like that is going to want to push the envelope with this medium if all they get for it is people chucking needless amounts of shit towards them online.

People who enjoy this hobby and people who work within this industry need to sit down, and calmly examine the various issues that we have and maybe take steps to sort them out.  Gaming will only get better only if the people who truly know whats up are allowed to do things without everyone else throwing in their 2 cents.  Too many cooks etc.