Jesus face-palm
I know I use the term “facepalm” a lot, but there’s really no other way succinct way to sum up the ongoing debate over R18+ games in Australia.
The newest meeting of hand and forehead comes courtesy of a story published today over at news.com.au, which revealed that everybody’s favourite state attorney Michael Atkinson has donated large sums of money to the Australian Council on Children and the Media.
The Australian Council on Children and the Media, also known as Young Media Australia, are the fun-loving sorts who claimed earlier in the week that video games are more closely linked to youth crime than smoking is to lung cancer. Even though their own written submission states the connection is tenuous, unlikely to cause harm in any case and is based on a study that examined all media, not just games.
For what it’s worth though, this same group also believes that Bananas in Pyjamas is too violent for small children to watch because slapstick comedy is bad, m’kay? Atkinson has made donations (reportedly in excess of $30,000) to the council’s “Know Before You Go” campaign, which seeks to inform parents of the dangers of letting their children watch G-rated movies like Finding Nemo*, Alvin and the Chipmunks** and The Tale of Desperaux.
What’s a little odd about all this is it’s usually groups like the Council giving money to politicians, not the other way around. I don’t think it’s anything we need to be too concerned about, it’s just interesting that the two stupidest things ever said in this debate are linked by a five-figure donation.
* They also warn against letting small chilren watch the G-rated Ponyo. I’m smelling a bias against cute animated fish here…
** The Council and I are actually in agreement on this one, though likely not for the same reasons.
Every copy of Imagine Horsez is doing a completely different kind of damage
Just when you thought this debate couldn’t get any fucking sillier…
First it was gamers being more dangerous than outlaw bikie gangs. That was pretty hard to believe, right? Well steel yourselves, because (a drumroll please) apparently the link between gaming and youth crime is even stronger than the link between smoking and lung cancer.
The abovementioned claim is made by Dr Wayne Warburton of the Council on Children and the Media in this news story aired on Channel 10 last night after he addressed a parliamentary inquiry on street violence. He quotes a study claiming that “the average child in their childhood sees 16,000 murders and 200,000 acts of violence”. From this, we’re apparently meant to make the leap that games are more strongly linked to youth crime than smoking is to lung cancer.
If you go digging for a bit and pull out the Council on Children and the Media’s actual submission to the inquiry, however, you’ll find that the “gaming is worse than smoking claim” comes from one study done by an Amercian researcher that refers to violence in all media (TV, movies and music), not just games. In fact pretty much every source Council references in their submission talks about television or the media as a whole, not games.
We also find that the claim about children “seeing 16,000 simulated murders and 200,000 acts of violence” is from another American study which refers specifically to television, not games.
The original Worms: was geometry ever more fun than this?
You read it right – Team 17 wants to give you worms. Steamed worms. It’s OK, even I’m facepalming at how unfunny that was and I’m going to abandon that train of thought right … now.
There’s not a lot to go on at this stage but Martyn Brown from Team 17 (the company that brought us the original Worms titles dating back to 1994, as well as a bunch of other stuff I never played) has tweeted that there will be a new 2D Worms title being released on Steam in the near future. All we’ve been given at this stage is a title, Worms Reloaded, and a promise of more details to come soon. Unless you can find some secret code in his tweet that I can’t.
If memory serves me right this should lead to a great deal of mouse-sharing, obscenity-hurling fun. More news (hopefully involving exploding sheep) as it comes to hand.
Commander Keen, no doubt rushing to the 2010 GDC award ceremony
The organisers of the 2010 Game Developer’s Conference announced yesterday that John Carmack will be presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2010 Game Developers Choice Awards.
Carmack was the co-founder of iD Software and if you’re anything like me you’ll have been playing his games since you first sat in front of a PC. His first big title was the Commander Keen series but it was Wolfenstein 3D and the Doom series that shot him and iD to prominence.
Carmack and former partner-in-crime John Romero are generally acknowledged as the fathers of the first person shooter genre, a title they confirmed when they knocked out a little game called Quake that wasn’t the least bit revolutionary or anything but people seemed to like it regardless.
The award will be presented in San Fransisco on March 11. Previous recipients include the guy behind Civilization, the guy behind Mario, Donkey Kong and Zelda and the guy behind Sim City and The Sims. So, y’know, a bunch of lightweights that nobody’s ever heard of. Winners are chosen by a panel of gaming industry experts including representatives from EA, Bioware and Ubisoft.
Click here for the official release.
OMG: Civ V is moving to a hex-grid!
Exciting news for strategy buffs and insomniacs – Civilization V is in development!
The fifth installation in Sid Meier’s legendary franchise is being developed by Firaxis Games. This comes as no real surprise, given the company was founded by Meier and has worked on nothing other than Sid Meier games since it was formed in 1997. But the press release made a big deal about it so I figure it’s important to someone.
Anywho, this installment is promising “more realistic gameplay and stunning organic landscapes”, leaders that will speak in their own language and “more exciting and intense” combat. Community, modding and multiplayer elements will also be featured. Here’s what the man himself has to say about the title:
Thankfully, ideas on how to bring new and fun experiences to Civ players never seem to stop flowing. From fully animated leaders and realistic landscapes, new combat tactics, expanded diplomacy and shared mods, we’re excited for players to see the new vision our team at Firaxis has brought to the series.
-Sid “I Was Your Childhood Hero” Meier
A Civilization game for Facebook is also in the works. On principle I won’t play it, but I’m eagerly looking forward to clicking “ignore app” on the inevitable updates on other people’s progress. Civilization V is scheduled for a spring (southern hemisphere) release, click here for the official site or here for the 2K Games press release.
Ben thinks this whole issue is a little silly.
Good Game returned to ABC TV in Australia this week featuring an interview with everybody’s favourite state Attorney General Michael Atkinson.
Mostly he recycled the same tired material he’s been using all along – that you actually “do” things when you’re playing games, and because of this he “thinks” they have a greater effect on people than movies or other forms of passive entertainment. I’ll leave you all to reconcile that with his claim that the current discussion paper on the R18+ rating issue would have been “fairer and more accessible” if it had’ve contained still images from objectionable games.
But far and away the biggest bombshell was his response to a threatening note that was slipped under his door recently by, one assumes, a disgruntled gamer. I’ll give the quote in full, just so there’s no mistakes:
I feel that my family and I are more at risk from gamers than we are from the outlaw motorcycle gangs who also hate me and are running a candidate against me. The outlaw motorcycle gangs haven’t been hanging around my doorstep at 2am. A gamer has.
-The Right pWnable Michael Atkinson
First of all, whoever left him that note, however threatening it may or may not have been, was an idiot. They’ve done something illegal and they’ve achieved the exact opposite of what they wanted to. Seriously, people need to grow up if they’re going to participate in this debate because (and I know this will come as a surprise to some people) Michael Atkinson is not stupid. He’s been doing this for a long time and he’s got better media access than anyone else in the debate. Someone thinks they’ve done something funny or clever and then BAM, gamers are an even bigger menace to society than biker gangs.
Hopefully the general public sees the statement to be just as ludicrous as we know it to be – note that Atkinson is talking about “a gamer” (singular) as compared to “motorcycle gangs” (plural) and has ignored the fact that he’ll be perfectly safe as long as he keeps a medkit handy, sticks to hallways so that evil gamers can’t circle-strafe around to his vulnerable side and leaves any respawn point immediately to avoid campers.
Here’s a link to the Good Game episode, here’s a link to the R18+ discussion paper (which you’re encouraged to submit your mature and helpful responses to by February 28) and because I’m feeling generous with my links today here’s a link to Gamers4Croydon who are running against Atkinson in the next state election.
If you’re one of our Australian readers, you may have seen people today muttering: “Oh gawd, he didn’t just say… he did? Really?“. And if you’re one of the poor unfortunates who didn’t get where the random resentment was aimed at, well by all means let me fill you in.
Our fearless Federal Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Stephen Conroy, has asked Google to censor any content on YouTube that would fall into the Australian “Refused Classification” category. In the process, he’s compared Australian internet policy to that of China and Thailand … as though that were a good thing.
Seriously:
Google at the moment filters an enormous amount of material on behalf of the Chinese government; they filter an enormous amount of material on behalf of the Thai government. What we’re saying is, well in Australia, these are our laws and we’d like you to apply our laws.
-Stephen “I did it for the lulz” Conroy
If your friends or co-workers struck this pose today, it's likely they read this story...
To put this in context, China is one of the 13 countries that the Paris-based NGO Reporters Sans Frontières lists as an “enemy of the internet”, putting them in the same category as Iran and North Korea.
Way to put us in the same room as the enemies of the internet, Senator Conroy!
Google has (thankfully) told the minister that they won’t comply voluntarily, citing among other things the fact that YouTube already has stringent content guidelines, the fact that the request was way too broad and the fact that they’re threatening to leave the Chinese market to get away from increasingly stringent censorship demands.
Plus there’s small stuff like the Australian government probably doesn’t have any jurisdiction over foreign-hosted websites like YouTube anyway.
You can see the whole interview with the minister on the Hungry Beast website (be patient, they’re getting spiked traffic at the moment), which is where this particular Conroy failboat set sail. You can also read the full article over at the Sydney Morning Herald for more info and be sure to use a full strength palm moisturiser to avoid face chafing.
I thought I was being original - foiled again!
So in my review of Mass Effect 2 I mentioned I thought I’d managed to make my male Shepard look like Bruce Willis.
What I didn’t know about when I wrote that was the existence of Mass Effect 2 Faces, a site where anyone and everyone can post their very own reconstructed Shepard face. All you have to do is create a character, take a screenshot of their face (or an awful digital photo of your television screen if you’re playing it on 360) and upload it. Each new Shepard is also accompanied by it’s unique facial code, meaning if you see anything you like you can immediately create it on your own copy.
And it seems I unwittingly joined a trend with my Bruce Willis Shepard – clicking the “celebrities” filter will bring up all sorts of amusement. A few personal favourites of mine so far include Bruce Campbell Shepard, Abe Lincoln Shepard and, of course, Michael Jackson Shepard. Still no Ron Jeremy Shepard though, which I find disappointing. I might feel some time in the character creation suite coming on…
Take a look at the site to post your own mugshot, rate those that have already been uploaded or just have some laughs.
- No it’s NOT the new Manowar album cover
Roadrunner Records (who depending on how old you are you’ll know for launching the careers of Sepultura, Obituary and Deicide or for perpetuating nu-metal long past its use-by date and bringing us Nickelback) has announced it will release a digital EP in March to coincide with the release of God of War III on the PS3.
The EP will feature tracks from Killswitch Engage, Dream Theater*, Trivium, Opeth and Taking Dawn**. Gamers who purchase God of War III Ultimate Edition will receive a voucher to download the tracks along with other fun bits and pieces.
Music has always been an important part of videogames and can help bring titles to life. Our goal is to make God of War III a special release in all areas and this just another way to offer fans and newcomers a worthwhile experience”, says game director Stig Asmussen.
For more info, including some entertaining quotes from musicians trying to justify their involvement in a project like this (thank you Mikael Akerfeldt for remaining silent) click here.
* I’m going to start a rumor right now that they’re either broke or about to break up. Hell, they’re doing this and they’ve toured Australia, what more evidence do we need?
** Nope, I’d never heard of them either.
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