Australian Game Raid

this isn't very surprising considering the very conservative goverment in power right now. And I would guess that the average person in Australia is unaware of much of the governments 'actions' when it comes to the IT world. Fear and ignorance :( bring back Paul Keating!

Interesting. Harvey Norman's Mega Store in Moore Park's Super Center, Sydney, was jam packed with Ghost Recon copies and associated posters and various propoganda yesterday.

Guess the software classification peons hadn't quite made it there yet.

Now, my question is, do I suck for buying Return To Castle Wolfenstein as apposed to Ghost Recon ? GR was running on a bunch of demo machines, and looked somewhat tasty. Although, I miss my pal Billy, and was just itching to mow down more of Hitler's Himmler's blind followers.

HAHAHA! Who would have EVER guessed that this could happen in Australia?!

Let us not forget that this is the same country that wants to adopt legislation in each state (starting with NSW) to make it illegal to put material that is "unsuitable for children" on the internet. It doesn't matter how far you go to make sure only adults can access it, it's still illegal. Many australians trust that this will be used only in the right times, but that's pretty naive especially considering what their government is up to now. I honestly do not see how people can live with such oppression and still trust their government as much as they do.

History has proven time and time again that faith in government only leads to oppression while being vigilant and not trusting your government leads to freedom. If the Australians aren't careful, they're going to end up just like 1984. Although it seems like most of them don't even mind, as long as the children are "safe" from the evils of the world.

I'm an austrlaian and in the last couple of weeks all we have heard in the news is how they want re clasify games to iclude an R rating on games and implement massive fines to any store selling games to anyone under the advertised age limit eg. MA15+. They were even sayig that the first game to be classified R under the new system will be DNF

Socialism at work, folks. Be thankful it isn't that pervasive in the USA... yet.

Oh no, a movie in America might have been PULLED FROM THE MOVIE SCREENS if the film makers had not given in to CENSORSHIP from the MPAA classification board and removed the graphic sexual content* contained within!

*the showing of a condom

http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/2001/12/06/FFXTTLEZTUC.html

Don't they have a ban on guns too? What a crappy country to live in.

This has to be a sick joke or a misunderstanding...

I'm gonna call some game stores today and ask...

Got to love it how this is turning from a discussion on the issues to a bash Australia thread.

If memory serves me correctly, this is the same country were you can go down to a local whore house and play hide-the-pickle legally????? That's kinda funny if ya think about it.... Lets take away those video games and force the kids to take our their aggression on 3 dollar whore night...lol

http://www.webruler.com/wduford/images/nk28.jpg

I miss the 80's =(

Dingo sole our games!
HaHa bloody diggers

next up, book burnings. wheeeeeeeeeee!

No guns and no violent video games? Australia is a beautiful country, but it's a shame the government there absolutely sucks.

There are only so many ways to say "This sucks!" Most of them have already been said. I wish to add a few varieties.

This sucks.

This SUCKS.

This suuuucks.

This sucks, dude!

This f*cking sucks!

Th15 500K5!!!11

Okay, we all know this sucks. Although there must be an upside. Maybe they'll be less dumb 14 year olds getting on co-op servers and fragging their teammates. On the other hand, a lot of budding young spree killers will instead have to turn to violent movies and weapons magazines for material to further develop their violent fantasies. Hopefully once they have been deprived of an online medium for their inadequacies they will more quickly escalate to the point of violence against their friends and classmates and get it all out of their systems. No wait, that's a bad thing.

Now I could wax eloquant on the difference between programming a person for violence and providing a medium for the development of pre-existing violent fantasies, but I'm not going to do that because that's not my job. I mean, according to their rules I wouldn't have had the choice to play a horribly violent videogame like DOOM back when I was a minor. Who am I to suggest a course of action when I am one of those poor, flexible children who was so easily turned to the dark side? I'm just not qualified to make any decisions about my life and my experience and what I'm ready to see or not see, play or not play.

It's not my job to lead the blind. That's clearly the job of the blind AND stupid.

PS: This sucks, amigos.

You will be happy to know you don't have a gun when the robber shows up at your door with his illegally owned gun.

http://www.news.com.au/

go to the bottom of the left column, the "have your say".

it seems the state government here went a bit fruity yesterday.

that, and there's regional issues with playstation 2's. You can't play an american ps2 game on an australian ps2.

of course, you could just mod it with a neo4, and you could play all the fucking region 1 dvds you own that were encoded better than the dodgy region 4 version done in france, rubbed directly on someone's rectum, and then shipped to australia, as well as american games. but that voids warranties and costs extra money. it'd just be nice if I were free to exercise my personal choice. =(

I think it works out similarly price wise to buy a game from the US and have it shipped, as it does to buy it from EB here. But there's a whole lotta hassle involved.

Aussies, please reset your clocks to 1984.

From what I've read, this sort of thing often is a sort of extortion by the Classification people. I've read stories about how "questionable" material has been blocked from sale until it was submitted for the review process, which requires a *substantial* fee.

Knee-jerk censorship or extortion, it's all annoying. What was wrong with the ratings these items already had?

Scratching Australian off the list of places to live...

Can aussies order stuff from the US? Or is distance too much of an issue?

oh thats fantastic, just brilliant :(
Senator Alston, the Minister for Information Technology, Communications and The Arts, was probably behind this. Yet again, doing the worst possible job.
I'll find out what i can in the next couple of days.

What's next on the list for banning? Kangaroos? Koalas? How about those damn dingos and wallabies? And all the freakin feral animals that the Croc Hunter hates!

Sucks to be in Australia...

Australian too, for that matter!

Oh yeah, I'm all for ratings, so people can decide that if something has strong violence and strong course language, that they are forwarned and forearmed. I personally know that if I see there is a movie that's rated M because of "STRONG DRAMATIC MONOLOGUES SET IN PERIOD COSTUME IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND" I can avoid it and the ensuing coma.

Stupid Australians... oh wait...

Anyway this sounds like the typical over-compensation of governments in Australia going after whatever hot topic the media has jumped on this week. There were similar stories when the original GTA came out.

It's the usual problem of people failing to seperate the true market audience for these games from the perceived audience.

im in .au
im glad i bought my copy of gta3 a few weeks ago

Wow I thought those people were really laid back and such.

Illegal to warez games and illegal to sell them...

PLEASE don't ban breathing!

Raiding stores for games like GTA3 or Ghost Recon (wtf - you don't even play the russians in that one, so it's theoretically a "good" game) is even more retarded than the game banning etc. that we Germans are used to.

Depriving "young people" of games like GTA3 has a more negative influence than letting them play it anyway.

i have to admit though, when i saw a gta3 video yesterday, the "mowing down the civilians" stuff seemed a bit, umm, weird

Helllllllo thought police.

Australia should be on our list after Afghanistan. Bomb those bastards.

Sweet Jebus. That sounds a bit extreme to me.

THis stuff looks awesome. first