Left 4 Dead 2 Banned In Australia 215
An anonymous reader writes "According to Australia's Office of Film and Literature Classification, Left 4 Dead 2's content exceeds that allowable for an MA15+ rating. Any such game is rated as Refused Classification, effectively banning it. From the report: 'The game contains realistic, frenetic, and unrelenting violence which is inflicted upon "the Infected" who are living humans infected with a rabies-like virus that causes them to act violently. The player can choose from a variety of weapons including pistols, shotguns, machine guns, and sniper rifles. However, it is the use of the "melee" weapons such as the crowbar, axe, chainsaw and Samurai sword which inflict the most damage. These close-in attacks cause copious amounts of blood spray and splatter, decapitations and limb dismemberment as well as locational damage where contact is made to the enemy which may reveal skeletal bits and gore.'"
Good advertising (Score:4, Insightful)
I didn't know valve did such a good job of making a proper gorey zombie game.
And... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not suitable for 15 yr old boys? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is different than the evening news? I'm all for sex over violence and a happy world but honestly the stuff that happens in that description is up nightly on TV.My friend down in AU says he watched 28 days/weeks later, so how is this any different?
Well, don't take this as support of the ban, but there is a difference between totally passively watching violence (and simulated violence) and actively controlling simulated violence. Different bits of the brain get used, and I believe there's some evidence that both can negatively impact social development in children, with the latter having a measurably stronger impact. I'm not aware of any research showing that either adversely affects adult behavior when viewed as an adult.
Re:yarr (Score:5, Insightful)
The silly thing is that when they ban a game, they increase the number of local torrenters, which increases availability to those under 18.
Re:Not suitable for 15 yr old boys? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Heh (Score:3, Insightful)
Considering L4D is primarily a mutliplayer game, I think they do ;-)
Re:yarr (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Guns vs. melee (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Quite right to ban this. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry you had to endure your wartime experience and believe you deserve respect for what you've endured.
It's possibly worth noting that the game in question is not a war game but I don't think that probably changes your core objection, which as I understand it is against making violence against humans (or human-looking things) and personal peril a recreational activity. I should note that, politically, I'm generally in favour of not banning things where reasonably possible. Why? Well, my core reasoning is based on the principle of freedom of speech. I prefer for the state to minimise its use of control over its citizens, even if well-intentioned, as this minimises the temptation / opportunity to increase their own power at the expense of the citizenry.
I'd just like to explain what violent games have done to me, psychologically. Before I started playing them, I was squeamish about even swatting flies. I avoided pretty much any game with remotely realistic representations of gore or death, not because I was morally opposed to their *existence* or to people who play them but because I personally felt uncomfortable with them. Since then I've been persuaded into playing them and now enjoy them regularly, although I must admit that the most graphics / violent games make me uncomfortable and I still prefer to avoid those. The psychological change that's resulted? The violence in the game doesn't feel as real to me. But this is not, as some opponents of video games feels, because I've become more accepting of violence in general or because I've lost empathy for images of injured humans. Rather I've dehumanised the computer-generated pixels on the screen - I don't see video game violence as realistic anymore since it is simply a bunch of bits and computations inside a computer chip and some flickering lights on a screen. So for that reason it doesn't bother me as much. Real world violence remains an entirely different matter - I still hate killing insects and avoid doing so wherever possible, I abhor violence against humans and I hate to see suffering. This is because I know that real world violence is *real*, actual suffering is happening, and it pains me to think of that.
This is obviously merely anecdote. Also, as I understand it psychologists do not rate a personal evaluation of one's own thought processes as a very convincing way of determining what's really going on. But I think it's worth noting that, whilst changes can occur as a result of playing violent games, they're not necessarily going to be the immediately obvious and clearly detrimental ones that some people expect. This is, I think, a major reason why there's a fairly acrimonious split between people who (quite understandably) think that violent games present images of unacceptable acts and the people who cannot see the problem with them at all. I think they're both right - they are sometimes images of unacceptable acts but that does not *necessarily* make the images themselves unacceptable. My personal position, as you've no doubt inferred, is that real violence is usually morally unacceptable (avoiding thorny philosophical questions about how it's sometimes justified) but that images do no direct harm and are therefore acceptable to me even though I find some of them disturbing and would personally prefer not to see them.