Australia's first R18+ game is...

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Hailinel

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#1  Edited By Hailinel
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ImmortalSaiyan

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#2  Edited By ImmortalSaiyan

About time that happened. Nonsense games got censored there for so long.

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Slab64

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#3  Edited By Slab64

YAY

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Undeadpool

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#4  Edited By Undeadpool

@Slab64 said:

YAY

High school...flashbacks....NYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!

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NegativeCero

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#5  Edited By NegativeCero

Good for the Aussies. Looking at Wikipedia, the list of banned games is really weird. I mean, Marc Ecko's Getting Up was actually banned.

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musubi

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#6  Edited By musubi

Ha. Seems pretty damn appropriate for it to be that considering how insanely gory it is.

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Vamino

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#7  Edited By Vamino
@NegativeCero said:

Good for the Aussies. Looking at Wikipedia, the list of banned games is really weird. I mean, Marc Ecko's Getting Up was actually banned.

It would still be banned under our R18+ rating, from what I understand. It "promotes illegal activities", or however they want to put it, with it's graffiti stuff I guess.
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Snail

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#8  Edited By Snail

First R18+ game to be released is a Nintendo exclusive. What a remarkable event.

On topic: Razor's Edge seems to be a pretty good game. Significantly better than the other versions of Ninja Gaiden 3. So good on you, Australians.

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dungbootle

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#9  Edited By dungbootle

That's great, hopefully they can actually get more games now. Heard prices are still crazy, though.

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smokeyd123

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#10  Edited By smokeyd123

@Slab64 said:

YAY

Not again... NOT AGAIN! ANNNNNOOOOOO!!!!

...

But yeah, congrats.

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Vamino

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#11  Edited By Vamino
@dungbootle said:

That's great, hopefully they can actually get more games now. Heard prices are still crazy, though.

We didn't really end up with that much stuff actually banned. 
 
And yes, prices still suck. They're getting better, but frankly I kind of feel like you deserve it if you're still buying games at retail here. A little patience for it to ship from the US or UK and you can save a tidy sum.
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FlarePhoenix

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#12  Edited By FlarePhoenix

@dungbootle said:

That's great, hopefully they can actually get more games now. Heard prices are still crazy, though.

It depends how you look at it really. Games cost ~$100 to America's ~$60, but our minimum wage is ~$15 to America's ~$6 so it kind of balances out.

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envane

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#13  Edited By envane

omedetoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

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probablytuna

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#14  Edited By probablytuna

Finally!

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TheUnsavedHero

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#15  Edited By TheUnsavedHero

Congrats Aussies! Finally some blood, boobs, and drugs! Maybe you guys will finally get Marc Ecko's Getting Up.

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Vamino

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#16  Edited By Vamino
@TheUnsavedHero said:

Congrats Aussies! Finally some blood, boobs, and drugs! Maybe you guys will finally get Marc Ecko's Getting Up.

Not unless whoever owns it wants to pay the fees for it to get reclassified. Then there's the fact that it would still get refused based on it promoting crime/criminal activity, which is still 100% in the refused classification category. I assume real drug use would be exactly the same.
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musubi

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#17  Edited By musubi

@Vamino said:

@TheUnsavedHero said:

Congrats Aussies! Finally some blood, boobs, and drugs! Maybe you guys will finally get Marc Ecko's Getting Up.

Not unless whoever owns it wants to pay the fees for it to get reclassified. Then there's the fact that it would still get refused based on it promoting crime/criminal activity, which is still 100% in the refused classification category. I assume real drug use would be exactly the same.

That seems real dumb I mean... murder is a criminal activity, no? I just... I don't understand the logic on that one.

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Video_Game_King

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#18  Edited By Video_Game_King

Why are people freaking out at Neon Genesis Evangelion? Yea, it had dumb moments, but come on, you guys.

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Vamino

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#19  Edited By Vamino
@Demoskinos said:

@Vamino said:

@TheUnsavedHero said:

Congrats Aussies! Finally some blood, boobs, and drugs! Maybe you guys will finally get Marc Ecko's Getting Up.

Not unless whoever owns it wants to pay the fees for it to get reclassified. Then there's the fact that it would still get refused based on it promoting crime/criminal activity, which is still 100% in the refused classification category. I assume real drug use would be exactly the same.

That seems real dumb I mean... murder is a criminal activity, no? I just... I don't understand the logic on that one.

Oh, it's incredibly dumb. The logic doesn't really exist. I guess the key in the language is "Detailed instruction or promotion in matters of crime or violence." Even then it's totally stupid and there's a massive double standard between movies/tv and games. I can see someone do some tagging on a TV program here and it's not exactly hard to "learn" that just from seeing.
 
The unfortunate reality of the R18+ rating is that essentially games that they already stuffed into the MA15+ category will now be R18+, and most of the stuff that was previously banned will still be banned in the future. Only two examples really come to my mind of things that might get in where they previously hadn't: Mortal Kombat and the uncensored Left 4 Dead 2.
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coilcloudvaper

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#20  Edited By coilcloudvaper

congrats, I remember Left 4 dead 2 was TOO INTENSE for the AU. Now you can taste blood

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Vamino

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#21  Edited By Vamino
@ChinaDontCare said:

congrats, I remember Left 4 dead 2 was TOO INTENSE for the AU. Now you can taste blood

Valve would have to pay fees to get the game reclassified, which I can't see them doing (and wouldn't blame them for). 
 
That said, it's only ever taken a friend in another country to gift it to you to get the proper version.
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ArbitraryWater

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#22  Edited By ArbitraryWater

@Slab64 said:

YAY

So what you're really saying is that Australia has run out of money and is now trying to screw with our heads?

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#23  Edited By Phr4nk0

@Vamino said:

@NegativeCero said:

Good for the Aussies. Looking at Wikipedia, the list of banned games is really weird. I mean, Marc Ecko's Getting Up was actually banned.

It would still be banned under our R18+ rating, from what I understand. It "promotes illegal activities", or however they want to put it, with it's graffiti stuff I guess.

From what I remember it was just really unfortunate timing. At the time graffiti was the hot topic of debate and A Current Affair had just done a story the week before on people train surfing and tagging with all sorts of CCTV footage and their usual totally unbiased reporting. Councils were blaming their overspending on having to clean up graffiti, and then someone died train surfing. Someone found out there was a game with graffiti in it coming out in the next couple of weeks and they turned to blaming video games for all their problems for a while. Parent and church groups put pressure on the Classification Board which reacted by banning it.

The first I ever heard of the game was when it was being blamed for that poor kids death by some member of council trying to drum up support. Sometimes I roll my eyes and change the channel, other times I find myself getting really pissed and wondering if all these people really are that stupid and how did it get to the stage that the country is run by idiots that don't even realise they're idiots or if everyone in those positions are straight sociopaths.

Our classification board was a joke for the longest time as they let most stuff in with MA ratings (quite a few that were worse that the games the banned) and only really banned a game when the geese got their feathers ruffled and people started sending in letters. What does it say that guidelines can be over-written because some do-gooders get on TV and make some noise.

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Vamino

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#24  Edited By Vamino
@Phr4nk0 said:

@Vamino said:

@NegativeCero said:

Good for the Aussies. Looking at Wikipedia, the list of banned games is really weird. I mean, Marc Ecko's Getting Up was actually banned.

It would still be banned under our R18+ rating, from what I understand. It "promotes illegal activities", or however they want to put it, with it's graffiti stuff I guess.

From what I remember it was just really unfortunate timing. At the time graffiti was the hot topic of debate and A Current Affair had just done a story the week before on people train surfing and tagging with all sorts of CCTV footage and their usual totally unbiased reporting. Councils were blaming their overspending on having to clean up graffiti, and then someone died train surfing. Someone found out there was a game with graffiti in it coming out in the next couple of weeks and they turned to blaming video games for all their problems for a while. Parent and church groups put pressure on the Classification Board which reacted by banning it.

That does ring a bell actually, now that you mention it. I don't think I was really paying too much attention to the topic back then, and I generally try to limit what I see of ACA/TT to what they show on MediaWatch. The promotion of crime/criminal activity is definitely the scapegoat they used to justify the banning. 
 
I wonder if the classification board would be a different matter if it wasn't a government organisation? Government's do tend to like to bend over backwards to please those loud parent and church groups..
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#25  Edited By Travissty

Come on Telltale. Pay that extra cash and get Walking Dead that R18+ and let me play that game already.

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Great, now hopefully that heatwave stops.

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#27  Edited By colourful_hippie

@ArbitraryWater said:

@Slab64 said:

YAY

So what you're really saying is that Australia has run out of money and is now trying to screw with our heads?

boom

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#28  Edited By NegativeCero
@Phr4nk0 Thanks for the explanation, that puts the context in place to make it a little less crazy. I guess it's more in line of the larger problem of videogames acting as scapegoats when unfortunate things happen; the gun control debate going on now, for example.
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Slab64

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#29  Edited By Slab64

@ArbitraryWater said:

@Slab64 said:

YAY

So what you're really saying is that Australia has run out of money and is now trying to screw with our heads?

Quiet, you! That ending is PURE ARTISTRY

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Sanity

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#30  Edited By Sanity

Glad to hear some of there draconian laws are letting up. I'v always found that stuff kinda disgusting.

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Hailinel

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#31  Edited By Hailinel

@ArbitraryWater said:

@Slab64 said:

YAY

So what you're really saying is that Australia has run out of money and is now trying to screw with our heads?

In all honesty, I kind of prefer the TV ending to the movie ending.

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ArbitraryWater

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#32  Edited By ArbitraryWater

@Hailinel: I can't go down that route, for as much as I might wish. At least End of Evangelion has an ending, for as profoundly disturbing and nightmare-inducing as that ending is. Regardless, I can't wait for the rebuild movies to finish up so people can get angry about however that one turns out.

And to all the aussies out there: Congratulations.

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deactivated-630b11c195a3b

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@Travissty said:

Come on Telltale. Pay that extra cash and get Walking Dead that R18+ and let me play that game already.

You can buy it on steam.

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#34  Edited By damodar

I think there's been a fair bit of misunderstanding about the whole situation anyway. I think a lot of Americans, Brits etc just assumed that if a game got an 18+ rating in their country, we'd never see it in Australia, but 99.9% of the time, we'd get the exact same game just with a 15+ rating (The highest rating we had for game classification before the introduction of 18+). Our rating systems for films and games etc actually seems more lenient than most in a lot of regards, the lack of 18+ was just a weird hole in the system that was held up by one old fart politician. It was rare that we'd actually miss out on a game. In this case, it's fairly plausible that if we didn't have the R18+, NGIII would have come out anyway with a 15+.

But whatever, I'm happy that it's all done and dusted now, if not just so it's in line with our film rating system.

@dudy80 said:

Glad to hear some of there draconian laws are letting up. I'v always found that stuff kinda disgusting.

That's kinda the misunderstanding I'm talking about. I think Australians were way less fussed by all of this than anyone else :P

@Travissty said:

Come on Telltale. Pay that extra cash and get Walking Dead that R18+ and let me play that game already.

It's been on our Steam store from the start, so it must have passed classification as an MA15+.

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#35  Edited By Rebel_Scum

Still this isn't gonna give us The Walking Dead...sigh

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#36  Edited By eskimo

@Damodar: Nah, you don't have to submit a game for classification if you dont want to sell it in brick and mortar stores. They never submitted The Walking Dead so it was never refused classification and is fine for Steam.

Funny shit, you actually have to pay to have your game banned.

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#37  Edited By L44

It's never been a big deal for me, I've just bought what I couldn't get on Amazon. Besides without those dumb laws we wouldn't have things like stimpacks.

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#38  Edited By gamer_152  Moderator

That seems pretty appropriate. Congratulations to the Australian gamers out there, it's insane that it's taken this long for you to get an 18+ rating.

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Mars_Cleric

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#40  Edited By Mars_Cleric

Gimme Mortal Kombat already

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#41  Edited By mandude

And now for the inevitable series of grizzly murders.

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FlarePhoenix

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#42  Edited By FlarePhoenix

@troll93 said:

@FlarePhoenix said:

@dungbootle said:

That's great, hopefully they can actually get more games now. Heard prices are still crazy, though.

It depends how you look at it really. Games cost ~$100 to America's ~$60, but our minimum wage is ~$15 to America's ~$6 so it kind of balances out.

I don't know about you, but I buy all my games from JBhifi and you can get most new releases for $75-80 bucks.

Well yeah, there are cheaper options for sure (which is why I said around $100). My point was that the more expensive price for games down here makes a bit more sense when you factor in our minimum wage compared to Americas.

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audioBusting

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#43  Edited By audioBusting

Yay! Too bad this doesn't work retroactively. Still no Mortal Kombat and Syndicate =[

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Ravenlight

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#44  Edited By Ravenlight

Welcome to the future, Australia!

Hopefully the next thing on the agenda will be to curb the insane prices you guys pay for games.