The Australian Censorship Board is at it again

[Grumman]

@BigNik

While I’m here, Grumman, there’s no penalty for owning or playing the game.

There is in W.A.:

(1) A person must not possess or copy —

        (a)         an unclassified computer game that would, if classified, be classified RC; or

        (b)         a computer game classified RC.

    Penalty: $10 000.

[Martini_Enfield]

It’s an important and popular fact the classification guidelines for computer games here often don’t seem to make any logical sense.

I mean - shooting yourself with a syringe full of some unknown substance that lets you run around and shoot lightning from your hands? That’s ok (Bioshock 1 & 2).

Mix pharmaceuticals from leaves you find lying around and inject yourself with those to heal, run faster etc? Also cool. (FarCry 3)

Loot real-world drugs off the corpses of pirates you’ve just capped, which you can then sell to vendors for money or items? Also fine. (Same game)

Use a real world medical drug to heal grevious injuries sustained whilst exploring a post-apocalyptic wasteland? Fuck off, no you don’t. (Fallout 3)

Chop/Shoot Zombies into chunky bits in a super-graphic, over-the-top style? No, you won’t be doing that either. (Left 4 Dead 2)

Shoot/Blow bad guys into chunky giblets? Sure, go right ahead. (Countless FPS games)

And that’s without getting into all the stuff you can get up to in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Saints Row The Third etc, which is all completely kosher from a classification perspective.

[thelurkinghorror]

@clairobscur

Not much. Visiting any doctor will instantly cure you of your addiction for a small amount of money. Fallout 2 was much more interesting from this point of view. Addiction was a very serious problem and there wasn’t any easy way out. Once you had become addicted you basically had to keep injecting yourself with whatever crap you were addicted to. Much more interesting IMO and the very minimal negative consequences of drugs in Fallout 3 was one of the elements of the game I found dissapointing.

True. But I always never used doctors. Also, in 3/New Vegas, Ultrajet is an incurable addiction (without console I assume).

@clairobscur

Germany also censored (don’t know if it’s still the case) games where you could kill children. As a result, in the European version of fallout 2, they plainly had removed all children from the game. A couple of missions couldn’t be finished as a result, and, more annoying, you had to use a very long work around to enter one of the main cities of the game (which was a mandatory passage) because a little girl was normally involved in the scenario at this point. Without her, you needed to pick some unobvious item in some random other city that you would normally have found only later in the game.

Of course a non-official patch was created, restoring children in the European version.

And indeed, a lot of games (including wargames) have swastikas replaced by WWI syle crosses as a result of German censorship.

I heard that about the UK edition, but that might be Anglocentricism. Also, there is that one town with the pickpocket kids. The invisible kids rob you and you can’t do anything about it, unless you know ahead of time (either go into combat mode and run past, or drop everything except one lit dynamite :)). Besides, the game shows serious consequences for being evil/a childkiller. And the lack of childkilling means no cool music.

I have also seen swastika flags which are pretty much a red flag with a white circle in the middle.

[clairobscur]

@thelurkinghorror

I heard that about the UK edition, but that might be Anglocentricism. Also, there is that one town with the pickpocket kids. The invisible kids rob you and you can’t do anything about it, unless you know ahead of time (either go into combat mode and run past, or drop everything except one lit dynamite :)). Besides, the game shows serious consequences for being evil/a childkiller. And the lack of childkilling means no cool music.
.

AFAIK, the UK edition indeed had the same problem (and yes, not appearing on the screen didn’t prevent children from acting). Even though the issue originated in Germany, children were removed from all European editions (I suppose there was a single distributor for all of Europe).

I didn’t know there was a childkiller music.

[BigNik]

@Grumman

There is in W.A.:

Yeah, but Western Australia is weird.

That’s not an offence in NSW.

[BigNik]

For the record, it looks like GTA5 is kosher.

The Board rated it into the R category for “strong impact” drug use, but as Kotaku notes it’s probably not giving actual drugs as an award for something. The impact level of the drug use was the only thing that pushed it beyond a MA.