[beastrn]

Yep... forget urinating, apparently drug use and prostitution are the cause for Australian's not being able to buy Risen on their shores.

Australia's videogame classification system has claimed its third victim for 2009 with Piranha Bytes developed role playing game, Risen, turned back at the border. The game joins the banned club alongside titles Sexy Poker and Necrovision, both of which were later passed fit for sale after resubmission with changes to their respective offending content. The Classification Board’s refusal to grant the game green light status at the maximum MA15+ rating due to its inappropriate sexual material and drug use now makes Risen illegal to, sell, rent, or promote down under.

http://au.gamespot.com/news/6215052....dlines;title;1

GTAIV, The Witcher... 15+ no worries. Risen? Ban it!

[Forenperser]

Australia has the worst classification in the world....
Poor australians

[cfnz]

Shame. If that has any spin on effect in NZ I'll have to source it from overseas.

[Maladiq]

This comitee realises that... they encourage pirating of games?

[emperorzorn]

Its just typical.
Everyone is blaming China for being a malevolent dictatorship that is banning media,
the next thing you know they are doing it too.

I dont get why everyone is so stuck up and acts as if
blood and urine are fictional things invented to scare little children.

[TheDoctor]

Ridiculous in every way.

When is Australia going to learn?

[Dykunas]

Kind of ironic when you think about it, Australia - a country that started of as a colony for prisoners, has turned into a practitioner of idiotic, religiously "appropriate" laws to defend the pure and the innocent from completely normal, basic reality and free will..... Kind of reminiscnet to the soviet regime, except the religious part

P.S “The game contains ‘quests’ which a player may choose to complete by acquiring the sexual service of prostitutes." - Now that's what i'm talking about :thumbsup:, though i really hope that if changes are made for the Australian "version" to fit the cracks of the committee of assholes, that it won't have any effect on other "versions" of Risen....

[4ltair]

Will of the people or will of the politicians?
I feel kind of sorry for the australians.

[scarlak]

Look being an Aussie i'm the most disapointed person here i bet but prostitution does not need to be in a game especially considering the publisher should know of how strict Australian laws are. Resubmit the game without it and everything will be good, call weed grass and the problem concerning drugs is fixed as well.
It hurts because I assure you Risen was a first day purchase, as a fan of everything PB has done I fear I may still play the game no matter how the game gets to my HDD.

Of course we're not the only stupid country banning games...
I'll use this opportunity to say sorry to the Germans for not being able to play wolfenstein the way it should be played, whats with you guys? scared of the swastika or something?
Note to Germany: The Nazis existed and its part of your history, it happened so don't act like it didn't.

[logout]

Note to Germany: The Nazis existed and its part of your history, it happened so don't act like it didn't.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP82immbOFY

[foobar]

Look being an Aussie i'm the most disapointed person here i bet but prostitution does not need to be in a game especially

Question: What needs to be in a game? With that argument, we can also remove beer or whatever you want.

The prostitution is not there to please some spotty, pubescent teenager. You don't even get to see the sexual action. I mean, what is this mysterious "implied sexuality" anyway? If humans run around in a world, that's "implied sexuality", too. They must have had parents who had sex. Right?

The prostitution, like the weed, is an atmospheric detail, another part in the images of a rough and grim world that shows you: "You're not in Disneyland here."

Therefore, I cannot support your argument of such things being unneccessary. They enhance the atmosphere. And really now, what is the problem with it? The fact that two adults do the most natural thing in the world?

considering the publisher should know of how strict Australian laws are. Resubmit the game without it and everything will be good, call weed grass and the problem concerning drugs is fixed as well.

That is an economical decision which Deep Silver and probably Madman (australian distributor) have to make. It will cost money to change the game. They must decide if the australian market is worth that. And many gamers do not want a censored games.

What I do not want is that games are already "pre-censored" by the developer to fit into every market they want to address. No drugs and prostitution for the U.S. and Australia. No violence for Germany. No ideals of freedom or democracy for China. No strong women for many arabic countries. What remains there?

So I prefer it if developers make the games like they think they have to do it to give you a good gaming experience. And if some censorship laws prevent sales in a specific country, think about removing the problematic content for that country. But do not make everyone else suffer because of that (like the Britains and DS did with the peeing).

I'll use this opportunity to say sorry to the Germans for not being able to play wolfenstein the way it should be played, whats with you guys? scared of the swastika or something?

Oh, don't get me started on that. At least, everyone else got to play a correct version.

[scarlak]

Therefore, I cannot support your argument of such things being unneccessary

The game won't change if you take it out is what i was getting at, the only thing I have against it is the fact it will top me playing the game unless I break the law.

I was simply alluding to the fact the publisher should have known what is acceptable and catered to that. Keep in mind Gothic was allowed here and it has me wondering whether the game is banned purely on speech/text grounds.

[TheDoctor]

And really now, what is the problem with it? The fact that two adults do the most natural thing in the world?

Naturality does not count as an argument. It's natural to be naked, yet we wear clothes.

EDIT: We are civilized people, and from that modern way of thinking, we make our restrictions in games. I can understand that type of logic - Australia is simply acting out of that premise - but, like I said, I disagree with it. On the other hand I wouldn't like Risen to have explicit sex scenes and overly mature content. I wouldn't want guts spilling out from the dead bodies of enemies or whores getting raped in the middle of the streets (medieval style). What I mean is that there are necessary compromizes to be made, although Australia stretches a bit too far above that line. No need for us to stretch a bit too far on the opposite line.

[foobar]

Naturality does not count as an argument. It's natural to be naked, yet we wear clothes.

Because at some point in our evolution, we lost most of our furs. But did not loose our sexuality. At least no one told me that we did.

But nonetheless, what I really wanted to say is that you cannot just remove every possibly problematic content because it is not required for the gameplay. Doing that changes the atmosphere, if not more. Imagine removing the swamp weed from Gothic 1. It would cause logical problems because this drug is the economical foundation of the swamp camp. Without it, they have nothing to trade with the other camps and players will ask: "How do the get what they need?"

I want to play games in the way that the developers meant them to be played. If something was really unnecessary, they would not have bothered implementing it in the first place.

[emperorzorn]

Question: What needs to be in a game? With that argument, we can also remove beer or whatever you want.

The prostitution is not there to please some spotty, pubescent teenager. You don't even get to see the sexual action. I mean, what is this mysterious "implied sexuality" anyway? If humans run around in a world, that's "implied sexuality", too. They must have had parents who had sex. Right?

The prostitution, like the weed, is an atmospheric detail, another part in the images of a rough and grim world that shows you: "You're not in Disneyland here."

Therefore, I cannot support your argument of such things being unneccessary. They enhance the atmosphere. And really now, what is the problem with it? The fact that two adults do the most natural thing in the world?

I completely agree with the penguin (for once).

We see these love scenes in movies,
on tv and read them in books.

But in games they are considered offensive ?

[Maladiq]

We see these love scenes in movies,
on tv and read them in books.

Don't forget about real life.

[emperorzorn]

Don't forget about real life.

Thats a given, isnt it ?

Seeing how videogames are a form of media I wanted to compare it
to other media.

But yeah, you are right.

[TheDoctor]

Because at some point in our evolution, we lost most of our furs. But did not loose our sexuality. At least no one told me that we did.

But nonetheless, what I really wanted to say is that you cannot just remove every possibly problematic content because it is not required for the gameplay. Doing that changes the atmosphere, if not more. Imagine removing the swamp weed from Gothic 1. It would cause logical problems because this drug is the economical foundation of the swamp camp. Without it, they have nothing to trade with the other camps and players will ask: "How do the get what they need?"

I want to play games in the way that the developers meant them to be played. If something was really unnecessary, they would not have bothered implementing it in the first place.

I agree - but you're too smart not to see how others can see problems in such content.

Sex being natural and part of life does not mean we should have explicit sex scenes in games (as contrary to the scene in G2).
Drugs being used by people irl does not mean we should have narcoholics sitting around in games (as contrary to the laidback swamp hippies).
People being sick in real life does not mean we should see sick people in games (what we get instead are Po1zon sp311s).

You work around all those issues because we're talking about a game. You ever saw boobs or vaginas in G2? You ever saw weed-addicts so wasted they literally affect you with pity? Ever saw a soldier with a leg chopped of, screaming in pain in G3? You get my point. We've already had several discussions on realism in games, and I think this one would not end with any other conclusion than before.

And like I said, I still agree with you, but don't take it too far just because Australia's got sh*t classifications.

[foobar]

I agree - but you're too smart not to see how others can see problems in such content.

No, but that was not my point. Maybe I was not clear enough about that. If some country A has a problem with content X and another country B with content Y, then the publisher should either ignore these markets or make a version without X for country A and a version without Y for country B. I can accept that some people are strange.

But what I do not want is if in preemptive obedience, every content that could be possibly offending in some countries is removed entirely from all versions of a game. It would be much cheaper to develop a game without any such content right from the start than later remove it and create individual versions. But if you do that, almost nothing remains. If you cut every branch from a tree, only the trunk remain.

So as much as I feel for the australian gamers, I am hoping that DS will not exclude "drugs" and "prostitution" from the international version to cheapen production costs. In this game or any successor that might follow. Even if it means that they decide not to release the game in Australia at all. Because that argument "We do not really need it anyway" leads to a slippery slope where you end up with a tasteless, gray mash and every bowl is the same.

BTW: I would not want other gamers outside Germany to suffer from our censorship laws, too. They also deserve to play games in the way they were meant to be played and our censorship laws are our problems. Not theirs.

[Maladiq]

BTW: I would not want other gamers outside Germany to suffer from our censorship laws, too. They also deserve to play games in the way they were meant to be played and our censorship laws are our problems. Not theirs.

Amen, bro, amen. I think DS should release a statement as soon as possible on this matter.