This week’s episode features a Gaming Flashback about… nothing. The week before the PC Gaming Show and PlayStation 5 show is kinda slow, but there was some chatter in the industry.
The news topics feature:
Let us know what you think.
The longest title recorded on the books, let’s hope it fits! 🙂 This week we covered the gaming history for Adventures of Lolo and a bit about HAL Labratory all in honor of a new game we recently purchased to play with our kids: Kirby’s Epic Yarn. So far so good, our son is enjoying 2-player mode with us. This week we did an on-the-spot mini-review breakdown of Kirby’s Epic Yarn while hitting up some gaming news including:
Of course, a special thanks for Herr Alien and all his news posts this week, we got a bunch of them into the show. This week’s question o’ the week, what musician/group would you like to see featured in a video game and what genre would fit them?
A new draft of the R18+ classification has been released by home minister Brendan O’Connor through the Australian Federal Government. The new guidelines closely match those in place for Australia’s film industry. The new R18+ rating removes restrictions on bad language, drug use and nudity; in contrast, the current guidelines forbade the classification of any adult-themed games.
O’Connor’s draft claims that the R18+ rating will allow “virtually no restrictions on the treatment of themes”, and violence in games “except where it offends against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults to the extent that it should not be classified.” As far as sex, the draft says, “Sexual activity may be realistically simulated. The general rule is ‘simulation, yes – the real thing, no'”.
Of course, “standards of morality, decency and propriety” is still troublesomely subjective, while “simulation, yes, the real thing, no” is comicly inept for videogames, where everything is simulation. You may be able to tell when live actors are actually performing sexual acts, but when can you tell a videogame character is actually having sex?
O’Connor stated:
“The Gillard government wants to provide better guidance for parents and remove unsuitable material from children and teenagers. The introduction of an R18+ classification will help achieve that and will also bring Australia into line with comparable nations. This issue has been on the table for many years, without the necessary progress to make a change. We’ve recently seen several states publicly express their support for an adult only rating for games and I’m keen to reach a unanimous decision at the July meeting.”
Rather than banning games, why not punish stores for selling mature games to underage children? Or put the onus of raising children on the parents?
For the second week in a row, the podcast has had some technical issues. This time the problem was less, but there are still present. Part of the reason is that the mic is subpar, the other is that the PC it’s being recorded on has a damaged fan. That said, this week’s episode (and the unreleased episode) were really good. The unpublished one will be issued at some future date when we all need a break (maybe over the Christmas week.)
This week’s episode includes:
Let us know what your favorite 2016 game has been.
