UK Tax Breaks For "Culturally British" Games 267
An anonymous reader writes with news of a proposal in the recent Digital Britain report to set up tax breaks for developing video games that are "culturally British." Quoting the report (PDF): "In film a system of cultural tax credits has long helped to sustain a wide range of films that speak to a British narrative, rather than the cultural perspectives of Hollywood or multinational collaborations. Other countries such as Canada, for similar reasons, extend the model of cultural tax relief beyond the film industry to the interactive and online worlds. CGI, electronic games and simulation also have a significant role in Britain's digital content ecology and in our international competitiveness. Each of these has the same capability as the more traditional sectors, such as film, to engage us and reflect our cultural particularism. They may in future have a cultural relevance to rival that of film." Conservative Shadow Arts and Culture Minister Ed Vaizey said the government has ignored the games industry, and he seeks to set up a government council to promote it. The report also outlined a number of changes to how games are rated.
New requirement: (Score:5, Funny)
To qualify, games must be written in Python.
Re:New requirement: (Score:5, Funny)
By a guy named Monty.
Re:New requirement: ... Monty (Score:2)
Can this guy help?
http://www.reuben.org/ncs/members/biogs/meddick.asp [reuben.org]
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To qualify, games must be written in Python.
Yup a language invented by Dutch guy living in the US, can't get much more British than that can we? ;) Yes, yes I know, Monty and all that, but I would still prefer the games should to be written in BCPL
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To qualify, games must be written in Python.
Yup a language invented by Dutch guy living in the US, can't get much more British than that can we? ;)
ARM assembler should be OK though :-)
Re:New requirement: (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup a language invented by Dutch guy living in the US, can't get much more British than that can we?
Being British is about driving in a German car to an Irish pub for A Belgian beer, then traveling home, grabbing an Indian curry or a Turkish kebab on the way, to sit on Swedish furniture and watch American shows on a Japanese TV.
And the most British thing of all? Suspicion of anything foreign.
Re:New requirement: (Score:4, Funny)
New for Ninteno Wii (Score:4, Funny)
Tea & Crumpets: The Game!
Coming soon: Dodging Dentists 2
Re:New for Ninteno Wii (Score:5, Funny)
Call of Duty: Dad's Army
World of Needlecraft
Personal Space Invaders
Need For Tweed: Underground
Super Mario Milk Float
Battersea Nintendogs Home
Tom Clancy's Toast and Tea Recon
Re:New for Ninteno Wii (Score:4, Funny)
Private Joe Walker with his pockets full, Frank Pike with his scarf of death and a hidden level with Mrs. Mavis Pike
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LOL, I'd buy it!
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Lets not forget the upcoming "hot tea mod" for GTA IV
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GTA: Chavs vs. Wankers
Spot o' tea, guvnah? (Score:3, Insightful)
I dunno, it could be done by others (Score:2)
I dunno, I can see how it could be done. Say, have the next The Sims expansion pack have tea and crumpets as a food, and have the sim run for the House Of Commons at the end of the politics career track :p
Re:Spot o' tea, guvnah? (Score:4, Interesting)
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a) Shout incessantly, arguing about whether coconuts migrate.
b) Discuss the physical limitations as to why a Swallow wouldn't be able to carry a coconut.
c) Discuss whether it is an African or European Swallow carrying the coconut.
d) Theorise whether it could be two Swallows carrying the coconut?
e) All of the above?
Hmm...I definitely shouldn't be making games, quizes, maybe, but games? Nope.
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Because it's about promoting the British culture, not about helping out British industry.
The games are to be tools of education/propaganda (depending on your viewpoint), promote the british values/(brainwash) and the fact the game was made in GB by the British, means nothing if it doesn't do what the government would like to see it do.
Coming soon for the Wii... (Score:5, Funny)
Pub Brawl
Use you Wii-remote as either a beer glass or chair and attack as many fellow pub drinkers, as possible...
Or
Soccer riots:
The worlds first multiplayer FPR (First person rioting) game....
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Soccer riots ???
I think you'll find you meant to say "Football"
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Or a game like this: Games like this? [b3tards.com]
Re:Coming soon for the Wii... (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course we have Soccer in Britain. It's a British word FFS.
When I was a kid, all the comics wrote about Soccer, not Football, and that was before most of America knew what it was.
Now just because the yanks have adopted the word it's considered unbritish. Crazy.
Hmmmm.... (Score:3, Interesting)
So making a map for a FPS where you trash the London subways instead of some other town's might qualify? Just curious...
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On the bad side it could mean people duplicate games like Hellgate:london
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When I heard "Hellgate:London" I thought "Huh? They're making a game about connecting in Heathrow now?"
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The Jubilee Line area of Westminster Underground Station already looks like a Quake map:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Westminster_tube_station_large.jpg [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Westminster_escalators1.jpg [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Westminster_underground.JPG [wikipedia.org]
http://www.uksteel.org.uk/ar98/images/arqapic2.jpg [uksteel.org.uk]
Re:Hmmmm.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think that's far from the truth.
What people seem to be missing is that so many games out there right now are full of American culture, to the point they perhaps don't even realise it.
A culturally British game may simply be a game like any other where you drive on the left hand side of the road and road signs are British, where accents are British, where things are spelt in a British way, where food is British (fish and chips!), where vehicles are those commonly driven in Britain, where you get chased by the met, SO19 or SOCA rather than the cops, SWAT or the FBI.
This would differ from many current games where vehicles are often American, accents are American, food is American, laws are American and so on.
People seem to be spinning this as some kind of racist point of view but quite the opposite, what they seem to be trying to do is bring more diversity to gaming and I don't think it's just the British that should do this. I actually like the idea of playing a game that's themed in a different way than the most common American style. In games where they have been themed in a different part of the world I have actually learnt something about those cultures in the process of playing through - even if it's just learning the name of a new type of food that's used as a health pickup in said game.
Adding a bit of cultural diversity might actually allow kids playing these games to learn that there are other cultures out there than just the ones defined by game developers as the FBI chasing, burger eating games we have now that are often used by game developers to portray the American setting we're commonly handed.
I can't help but think it might be quite fun to race round the streets of downtown bombay or whatever with a completely different style of everything from clothing to accents rather than driving round Manhattan etc. all the time. There is nothing wrong with your usual American stylised games, they in themselves are good - but a bit of a change wouldn't hurt now and again.
Goodthink (Score:2)
Oh good! I am glad that Ingsoc is finally instituting rewards for goodthink. How else are we going to protect our precious culture from such harmful influences as freedom of expression, creativity, and uncensored foreign broadcasts?
Xenophobia (Score:2, Insightful)
I may well get modded to hell for this, but...
With xenophobic/nationalist ways of looking at society like this - that $YOUR_NATIONAL_IDENTITY is under attack, threatened of being diluted into oblivion - being mainstream, it's a lot easier to understand how the rhetoric of the fascist British National Party - and its analogues elsewhere in Europe - could have appealed to so many voters in recent elections.
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Having your own national identity is racist? Around the world, many people would find that comment insulting. Only in Britain could you expect such a comment to go unchallenged. Many people are proud of their cultural background.
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Having your own national identity is racist?
Actually, you could make a case that nationalism is inseparable from racism... but that's not at all what I said.
Only in Britain could you expect such a comment to go unchallenged.
Which comment? Mine? I'm not British (though I'm ethnically British enough to join the BNP!) or in Britain.
Many people are proud of their cultural background.
Which is perfectly fine. When that extends to contempt for other cultures, or a desire to preserve the holy purity of your own, is when it becomes a problem.
Of course, the real question is not *what* (culture), but *who* (are you trying to put down)?
Re:Xenophobia (Score:5, Interesting)
Your original post strongly implied that support for "British culture" was closely related to support for the BNP, which is incorrect.
The case, "nationalism = racism" has come up before, and in England it is official policy, something which many English people find insulting. The Welsh and Scottish cultural history is celebrated and preserved, as are the cultures of recent immigrants, but the English are mischaracterised as racists if they show any national pride. For example, if you display the traditional St George flag (red cross on white background), people will tend to assume you are a BNP supporter. Display the Scottish flag and you're regarded as a proud Scotsman. It frustrates me that supposed "intellectuals" regard this as right and proper, never questioning the groupthink. Hence I try to challenge that attitude wherever I see it.
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Hm... just because you say "I may well get modded to hell" doesn't mean you don't deserve it.
Overreaction much? It's just a tax break to promote local art. Happens all the time in fields other than games, and it's done so that you don't have all your local talent chasing the international (biggest) market and genericising their content so that it's not interesting any more. This is xenaphobic how?
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Hm... just because you say "I may well get modded to hell" doesn't mean you don't deserve it.
It was making a sincere point. My goal wasn't to incite anger, even if I knew I was risking it.
Overreaction much? It's just a tax break to promote local art. ... This is xenaphobic how?
It isn't necessarily, in the abstract. And perhaps I was implying that conclusion a bit too strongly with the subject line ("Xenophobia") I used. But, as I said in my other replies above, this has to be taken in context. In this case, you've got people in Britain advocating a narrative where their society is under attack by foreigners and, in particular, the non-British culture they bring with them. To quote mysel
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The protesters, who are trying to outlaw the BNP, and their political ways, should be judged as fascists. Tell me that outlawing political parties, who recieved 2% of the vote, is not a starting step towards fascism.
I can't stand the Labour government, but I would want being a member of the party to be a criminal offence.
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I wish you hadn't used the word 'fascist'.
It's a whites-only party that grew out of the British neo-Nazi movement. It's fascist, period. Not being a resident of Britain, I have no opinion on whether the BNP should be outlawed or not, but my bias is against such an action.
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Unfortunately, some organisations already ban BNP membership (police, teachers etc). I hope that now they have another elected representative the other parties will deal with the issues they raise -- perhaps by explaining the benefits of EU membership and immigration.
After the EU election the main politicians just said "oh, people voted BNP as a protest vote, they don't understand their policies". I know someone who voted BNP, and she won't be winning any awards for political awareness any time soon, but sh
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I've just read TFS again and yes, I was right, it does indeed say "culture". It makes no mention of national identity.
I admire a whole lot of cultures, so why shouldn't I admire the good features of my own?
But then someone has to come along don't they and judge it to be an insult against Britons with other cultural backgrounds (cultures, incidentally, that I admire just as much as mine, have no problem acknowledging, and which I don't demand merge with my own!).
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Well, Mr. O'Hitler, I believe I answered your question once or twice above, already. You're welcome to respond to that.
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My response is I completely fail to see anything xenophobic about this particular subject, and I'm as vehemently anti-xenophobe as anyone you're likely to meet.
But yes, I can see how newspapers like the Daily Mail might get hold of it and twist it into a xeno issue.
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Saying "there can be no national identity and we all have to adapt to one culture" is equally xenophobe.
Well, no, it's not. You should look up that word in the dictionary. ;)
But, of course, I know what you meant, and it's not untrue, but it is a strawman argument. I didn't say anything that advocated the suppression of any culture, including $YOUR_NATIONAL_IDENTITY. But this idea of your (dominant) culture being under attack, in need of protection, cannot be judged out of context, purely in the abstract.
Also, I think the same proposition, if made by a US senator, would be applauded here.
By many, certainly. It's just as bad here (which is only hidden because our system won't allowed non-mainst
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Apparently the reason the BNP managed to get seats in the recent elections was not because the number of votes for them had increased
As "91degrees" pointed out, they got close to a million votes, which is frighteningly large, whatever the ratio.
it was due to disillusioned Labour supporters not turning out to vote at all
Which is hardly a separate issue. That Labour has ceased to represent any sort of left alternative is inseparable from the growing appeal of the BNP's right alternative.
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That Labour has ceased to represent any sort of left alternative is inseparable from the growing appeal of the BNP's right alternative.
You should clarify what you mean by "left" and "right".
The BNP have left-wing economic policies. They are similar to those of the Green Party, except the BNP add "if you're white" to everything. (So, free university (if you're white), and better public transport, and an emphasis on local manufacturing/consumption, social welfare, NHS, etc).
The BNP has right-wing social policies (freedoms, etc), pretty much the opposite of the Green Party.
You might find this interesting: http://politicalcompass.org/ [politicalcompass.org]
Corruption! (Score:5, Funny)
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How's that typically british? That's pretty much a global game.
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Anyone from a country without one raise your hand please...
Just because the papers don't make a huge stink about it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It's just like a murder in New York, it's not news. It's become so common that people simply don't care anymore.
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the game
Crap, I lost.
British (Score:5, Funny)
The Sims - Football Hooligans
EA Sports Cricket 09
Age Of Former Empires
Tom Clancy's Surveillance Society
Re:British (Score:5, Informative)
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EA Sports Cricket is very real. [computeran...ogames.com]
And you know, football hooligans might even get me to play a Sims game.
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And just what the hell is Cricket? A marvelous game, really. You see, the bowler hurls the ball toward the batter who tries to play away a fine leg. He endeavors to score by dashing between the creases, provided the wicket keeper hasn't whipped his bails off, of course.
Some ideas (Score:5, Funny)
Bertie & Wooster: The Game. Go on a policeman helmet stealing rampage, do whatever your servant tells you to do while avoiding getting married.
Battlefield: British Colonies. Take control of Africa and East Asia before France does! Beware of the native warriors, some throw very sharp slices of mango!
Okay that's all I've got, help me out guys!
Re:Some ideas (Score:4, Funny)
Bertie & Wooster: The Game.
The names are Jeeves and Wooster, you cultural philistine ;-)
Bertie Wooster, or Bertram Wilberforce Wooster to give him his full name, was a single character.
Having said that, what a great game that could be. As well as stealing the policeman's helmet you could have drive-by hat pinching, Bread Roll Cricket at the Drones Club , Aunt Avoidance, Cow Creamer stealing, Escape the Engagement, Gussie's Newt game, Glossop Hide-and-Seek, and so on...
top-ho, wot! wot!
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The names are Jeeves and Wooster
Oh yeah crap lol... My cloudy mind be damned!
Digital Britain to push "culturally British" games (Score:3, Informative)
As well as attempting to give the major record companies whatever they want until the end of time [today.com], Lord Carter's Digital Britain report includes tax breaks for "culturally British" computer game development.
Planned games include Couch Warrior ("the goal is to sit playing a game. The graphics are truly horrifying and needed us to go to 3.5-dimensional to fit the player's avatar on the screen"), CCTV Panopticon ("take pictures of the CCTV cameras in your high street until arrested under the Terrorism Act for having your own camera in public"), Bottled Tan Snorter ("get into celebrity magazines and shag footballers, lose points for any sign of intelligence or words of two syllables") and Cynical Apathist ("write outraged blog comments with amusing satires of events of the day while working a job directly keeping the hideous machinery alive and running"). A committee will also form a group to do a study concerning a team to write a ZX Spectrum emulator for the iPhone.
The games industry has warned in the past that developers are being lured away to other countries by the prospect of being paid more than shit. Conservative Shadow Arts Minister, Ed Vaizey, has leapt upon the opportunity, with promises of incentives for talented developers to stay in Britain and not be lured away by better pay in America. "We'll keep their passports from them until they reach 'Achievement Unlocked.'"
Having finally released Digital Britain, Lord Carter has resigned from the government and is returning to private industry. "Of course, Digital Britain remains a completely objective assessment of the way forward for the nation in the twenty-first century, and should in no way be thought of as my CV for a series of lucrative consultancies with the large media companies I've just given everything they've ever asked for. And a pony."
Can't ... resist ... (Score:3, Funny)
Coming this year:
* Asbo of the Colossus
* Big Brain City Academy
* Turning Point: Fall of (civil) Liberties
* Nintendogs (poodle edition)
* Mario & Sonic in "Olympic overspend"
* House Of The Red (-handed)
(that's enough British games- ed)
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Wii binge drinking? (Score:3, Funny)
Wii binge drinking? Wii pint lifting?
Bagpipe Hero?
Or was the plan to play Wii Cricket (probably already exists?)?
Also cool with new motion sensors: Ministry of Funny Walks - the game.
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The idea of bagpipe hero makes me giggle. Do I really want to imagine the controller?
with all the cameras on british streets (Score:2)
Pokemon snap is the most British game of all.
Cool (Score:3)
Now the world can experience sitting around sipping tea, losing cricket and whining about the shitty weather.
Mornington Crescent! (Score:2, Informative)
This is a good thing (Score:4, Funny)
I'm sure it'll only lead to only completely accurate portrays of true English culture, just like how America's Army does similar for the US army.
So expect:
- Restaurant Simulator - using entirely British food and cooking techniques; build a world-beating restaurant that makes Italians cry.
- British Football 3D - play entirely respectful games of football winning with skill, but also good manners and complimenting the opponents to victory.
- Railways on-line - improve an already perfect railway to be even more "perfecter". The more you make the French jealous, the more points you get.
I can't wait!
Ultima (Score:3, Interesting)
Dear Richard Garriot,
Since there is a tax break for games that are culturally British, now is the time for you to quit screwing around on space stations, brow beat the rights to Ultima back, and Get Lord British and the Avatar kicking ass and taking names once again in Sorsia. RESSURECT ORIGIN PLEASE! I need a good Wing Commander game KTHX!
We now return you to your regularlly scheduled M$ vs Linux /. flame war...
This has to involve coconuts... (Score:3, Funny)
I'm sorry, but I can't think of "Culturally British Games" without expecting Monty Python cast members to be involved somewhere.
How about Llamatron?
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Nah, too obscure. Not so many people know history these days and they'd mistake it for the ongoing policy of the US. It has to be something genuinely British.
Like, say, Cooking Mama: British Edition. The worse it tastes the higher your score.
Re:what's defined as culturally british? (Score:5, Insightful)
what's culturally british?
Binge drinking.
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I thought that was culturally Irish? :P
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what's culturally british?
Binge drinking.
With vandalizing a bus shelter mini-game.
Re:what's defined as culturally british? (Score:4, Funny)
I don't know but that game sounds pretty freaking sweet.
Re:what's defined as culturally british? (Score:5, Insightful)
what's culturally british? ruling at the barrel of a gun for a century, poaching wildlife to extinction, or collapsing stable democracies so that you can rape a country of its natural resources?
Don't forget that the ethnic cleansing, the genocide, the slavery, the wars started solely to gain political favour at home, the systematic disregard for human life (not just abroad, either), and the levels of bigotry that make the KKK look liberal. We also have the dubious distinction of being the inventors of the concentration camp. The British Empire was not a nice place and the world is better without it. (Not that the other colonial powers were any better, of course.)
I don't think people like the BNP who keep going on about the erosion of British values actually know what those values are.
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Given there pretty obvious white supremacy attitudes, I rather think they do know what those old values are.
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I think the people at the BNP know exactly what those values were.
Yes --- depressingly, you are quite right... I'll amend my statement to: I don't think people who vote BNP know what the values are.
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Hey, we wiped entire races [wikipedia.org] off the map and built our entire economic base on the backs of slave laborers. Among many other things. Don't start a how-deplorable-is-our-history match you can't win.
The world will be a better place without the American empire too, but don't tell that to Obama supporters who consider repairing our reputation to be the solution Bushism, rather than ending the imperialism that defined it.
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Culturally British these days is saying there's no such thing as British Culture; it's all multicultural, and if there's anything displayed to state a liking of classical British Culture then the meta-game is to see how quickly you can take offense and claim damages against someone with deep pockets (yes I was one of the people who got yelled at for having an English flag for St. George's day a few years ago because it was 'insensitive' to other cultures. They were, however, strangely quiet when I asked ho
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Not distinctive enough. That could be American, or Spanish, or Roman or...
No, culturally British means "badly done cockney accents, in rubbish games that only see the light of day due to my tax money being used to subsidise them."
You heard it here first.
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British, Irish, Welsh, Scottish, Islamic... (Score:2)
It's a very good question. Britain has been involved in the affairs of just about every country on Earth at one time or another, both influencing it, and being influenced by it. Even ignoring that fact, a strong case could be made that anything in Europe or the Commonwealth has to do with british culture, since britain founded one and jointly founded and subscribed to the other. More importantly, closer to home, there are lots of issues with government promoting one culture over others, since it's suppos
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Ohhhh, I could see a Hitman sequel against that backdrop!
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How about a game where you get to go around the streets of Britain shooting video cameras and avoiding the... police?
Make it a third-person shooter where that view originates from those very same cameras. (Or would that be a second-person shooter?) You get first-person view only when you've destroyed all the cameras that could see you. When you walk into another's view, you're suddenly third-person again. Except for the hidden cameras, of which you see their perspective only when you're looking straight at them (as your sight glances over them you get a blink of the other perspective as a hint).
Also, you don't get to star
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It's a bit difficult to make an entertaining game based on bad porn, worse teeth and warm beer.
Really? I'm already entertained by the mere thought of such a game. :)
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And since 2002 the pron is great (at least the actors have not had their genitals mutilated like in the USA).
What happened in 2002?
(And, at least the general male population hasn't had their genitals mutilated like in the USA.)
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I think there are more frequent articles concerning the UK, which means there are more opportunities, but I think the anti-British comments were worse a couple of years ago.
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Great idea, here are some more:
"Holocaust", a culturally German game where you play the administrator of the Auschwitz prison camp. Implement the final solution or face the Fuhrer's displeasure!
"Tobacco Tycoon", a culturally American game where you run a series of farms in the South. Save costs by buying cheap labour from Africa! Quell uprisings by dressing in a white sheet!
"Bolsheviks", a culturally Russian game in which you are the Commissar of the NKVD. Can you eliminate the enemies of the revolution. Ca
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Holocaust Tycoon [wikia.com] from Uncyclopedia!
They wrote that article and then found the real [wikipedia.org] games [wikipedia.org] ...
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"Flamebait? This? No, this is response. The original is flamebait. One person's "cultural" is another's "racist". The "British" aspect just happens to make it very easy to flip that conceptual card."
Well no, not at all.
You're picking the worst possible bits of British history and claiming that's British culture.
Culture consists of more than just the things a country has done wrong over the years. It consists of the architectural style of certain cities, it consists of traditional foods, it consists of accen
Re:British Drivers (Score:4, Informative)
Funny thing is, Grand Theft Auto is a British game. Made in Scotland, from girders. It's just set in America - or rather, in the distorted image of America we get from gangster movies and crime TV shows.
But apparently, instead of encouraging British developers to produce games that sell bazillions worldwide, they'd prefer to encourage... well, I'm not sure. The most culturally British game I've played lately was Professor Layton on the DS, an entirely Japanese production. Other than that, culturally British... well, there was Bully, Rockstar again, set in America but in a school which was a bizarre hybrid of an expensive boarding school and the worst ever borstal, and in which the hero fights with weapons taken straight from the pages of the Beano. And there was Civ IV: Beyond the Sword, which had a much improved model of imperialism where you just forced people into vassalage rather than outright annexation.
Was Planescape: Torment culturally British? I mean, nearly everyone in it spoke eighteenth-century Cockney thieves' slang... How about World of Warcraft? - I mean, not that they're blatantly ripping off any well-known British roleplaying and wargaming setting or anything.