I recall the example from SP: Stick of Truth where the alien probing sequence was removed and replaced with a crying koala. I can list more titles that are not available from that region: Hotline Miami, Manhunt, Sludge Life & etc. but there are games that faced censorship: Saints Row IV, Fallout 3, Postal 2, Outlast 2. I notice that it tends to happen with games depicting content involving violence, drugs or even sex (but let that fly in movies and TV).
Simple solution: DO NOT use an AU account on Steam, instead consider a region change or an alt account set overseas where you can access “banned” games that aren’t not sold in Australia (as their ratings board has no jurisdiction over foreign copies). Even if you have a foreign physical release: those are classified in their country of origin, isn’t that enough? A Japanese (CERO) D 17+ rating is similar to a MA15+ - R18+ classification.
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Every time I see somebody talk about Postal 2, I misread it as Portal 2 and get very confused.
Because we were a British colony that kept a lot of conservative approaches to everything. We didn’t have a R18+ rating for the longest time because one state leader was an old dick and would always reject the proposal to align video games with film classifications because he believed that video games caused “indecent” behaviour when many, many, many studies showed him wrong.
Only once the dick retired did we get the 18 rating but very few games have gone back on the classification board to get their games reclassified.
When we want to play games that have been censored or downgraded we just pirated them.
Michael Atkinson was and still is a complete dick.
I’ve heard that games are expensive in AU (both physical and digital) on top of censored versions. There are price discrepancies for the same product, like a game is 110 AUD on Steam but in my country it’s 25000 KZT (72 AUD).
Australia was historically a smaller market that is physically far away from America and ( and had fewer trade links with Japan). Australian TVs were PAL while America and Japan used NTSC, which added a whole other layer of complexity. This meant that PAL production lines were geared towards the European market, with Australia getting the excess. Those copies then had to be shipped across the Pacific Ocean, which is expensive. Combine a smaller, lower-priority market with longer, more complex shipping, and manufacturers charged more to make a profit. This set a standard price for Australia which persists even today.
Regional pricing will always be complex and never fair for one group or another. Consumers in one region with high purchasing power will be charged more so that consumers in other regions with less purchasing power can be charged less.
Otherwise vendors would completely price themselves out of certain markets, denying a potential revenue stream and potentially opening avenues for local competitors to crop up.
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It is hard to do direct conversions because cost of living is complex and some store fronts don’t include all taxes where in Australia you must show the final buy price. Valve has always had gripe with Australia because we kept fining Valve for not following our consumer laws and forcing us to buy everything in US$ but that has now changed.
Our country is incredibly lazy and slow to change, and Christians hold a lot of power.
Likewise the median age of politician is 50, so they’re not really a generation who value gaming.
But mostly it’s Christian’s and their forced morals on the rest of us.
[T]he median age of politician is 50 [in Australia], so they’re not really a generation who value gaming.
Someone who just turned 50 would have been born in 1976, and thus, would have been 9 or 10 when the NES came out.
Generation X is the first generation to grow up with video games, from Pong (which was its own machine) and the Atari 2600; later the NES and Super NES.
I’m almost 50 myself, and I value gaming, as do/did most of the people I grew up with.
They may have grown up with video games, but video games were not the cultural force they are today. For my entire childhood they were for nerdy boys, now everyone growing up plays them and they are mass cultural events such as fortnite concerts and streamers.
I don’t know what fortnight concerts are (you go to a concert every two weeks?) and while I do like a couple streamers of old games from my childhood, I don’t much care about video game streamers. I also don’t give two dry shits about online multiplayer games. Doesn’t mean I’m any less a gamer. I’m speaking for myself because I’m in that age group and generation you’re generalising. I’m not saying you’re wrong about all of us, but you’re wrong about me and the people who are about my age I know.
They were cultural enough. I remember commercials for video games shown on TV. I specifically remember the one for Super Mario Bros. 3 where a whole stadium is chanting “Mario! Mario!” over and over. Hell, I remember Final Fantasy VIII (8) advertised in theaters. I mean, now, you have car commercials and other TV-type commercials in theaters, it’s obscene, but back when you only had Coca-Cola ads and movie trailers, seeing a trailer for a video game on the big screen was insane. Then there was all the hype around a possible Super Mario Bros. movie. That movie came out in 1993, so I mean in the 1980s, early 90s we were anticipating it, Nintendo Power was talking about movie ideas, then at one point (not sure if before or after) there was the cartoon series… then the movie came out and we were all disappointed. Oh, and trading NES cartridges on the school yard. It was technically against the rules to bring video games to school. It was a big grey disk and you couldn’t do anything with it at school other than admire the artwork on the sticker. But there was a rule. But on recess, we’d trade games we’d beaten for new ones we hadn’t, and we’d swap secrets we’d found.
It was a different culture (streaming and online multiplayer games didn’t exist), but then The Wizard came out. It was a movie about us, about Nintendo gamers, and this autistic kid who could master any game within seconds of playing it for the first time. So his older brother “kidnaps” him, takes him to Los Angeles (I think), and enters him into a contest where Super Mario Bros. 3 is revealed to the public for the first time, so the kid’s never seen it, and he either beats it right then and there, or he gets further than anyone and figures out a couple secrets; either way, he wins by a landslide. That was the video game culture we grew up with. Oh, and we didn’t have GameFAQs, YouTube, or Google, so what we did was, we’d call this 1-900 number, and it was like phone sex, except for games. You’d ask about a game and they’d get you talking about games and other games to keep you on the line because the charges were ridiculous. So Nintendo had these people who basically groomed kids over the phone getting them talking about the games they play to rip their parents off on the phone bill. What they wouldn’t do was just simply answer your question and then take the next caller. Nah, they milked that shit. I never called but I knew guys who did, and they paid more for one tip than they did for the entire game. Imagine you paid $50 for a game, and then you got stuck and called the help line, they help you with the problem and you chat about games for a while, and you get a $60 bill. Make it make sense. Of course, it did make sense — to Nintendo’s shareholders. But, anyway…
I’m talking about political and societal attitudes; We’re outliers. Simply being on the Fediverse makes us outliers with a strong bias towards more tech and gaming based interests.
It will be another 10-20 years before politics catches up to us in normalising video games and understanding they’re important cultural elements not simply kids entertainment. Until that point in time, their importance is going to be neglected by politicians and Christian lobbyists will be able to exert their influence over moral policing them.
You’re definitely right, although I grew up in Sweden and not Australia. But the same general cultural and societal trends applied. Growing up in the 90s/early 00s video games were still absolutely stigmatised and associated with nerds and social pariahs. It’s not that there weren’t games or gamers, but they were not really socially acceptable outside of the nerd subcultures and subgroups.
It wasn’t anything at all like how it is today, where everyone and their aunt is playing games and every kid from every social strata is playing some kind of video game.
To gently usher the children towards piracy and then hopefully hacking and IT jobs.
When did hotline Miami get banned? I own it on steam and I’m Aus.
If I recall the second one is the one that was banned and the devs said go ahead and pirate it.
Had to go through a whole process at the time to get Jacket in Payday 2 because of it.
When the promo contract ended they just made him free thankfully.
I was a big fan of both games, Jacket’s the best. Talking with the tape recorder is a nice touch because I can just imagine the inner monologue
“Ah geez, I’ve got to tell them. Let’s see which tape was it again… I think it was Learning German for International Businessmen? Oh wait, it was my Spanish tape. Ah shit, rewind rewind… wait, maybe I want the B-side… Ah, here we go!”
“Ayuda!”
Pretty sure they also gave out a tone of keys for jacket at paydaycon
Hotline Miami 2 was banned
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It’d kind of funny to me that as an American, Australia is our sister. We both have the same parents. That’s how that works right?
We are estranged siblings mate
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