This one and a three-quarters hour podcast talks about the silly awards show known as The Game Awards (formerly Spike TV’s Game Awards). Let us know what you thought of the Awards show, the nominees and the winners.
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This week’s episode is full of industry news in the wake of The Game Awards. There wasn’t many news items but there was plenty to talk about with the Awards, especially with this week’s Gaming Flashback, Unlimited Adventures.
This week’s news items include:
Let us know what you think.
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?
Dead Rising is being ported to the Nintendo Wii, only two years after the original title. In Japan, they’ve changed the name to Dead Rising: Zombies Sacrifice, perhaps to make it sound like a different game.
The game, in fact, is said to have some difference from the original title. These changes are ‘upgrades’ from the original title based on feedback from consumers. Rather than simply reissuing the same game, “in addition to a revised story structure, the Wii version of Dead Rising will feature new enemies and items, as well as a behind-the-shoulder camera system modeled after Resident Evil 4” (1up)
Fixing the camera and adding some new monsters is enough to give the game the subtitle Zombies Sacrifice. They’ve included full waggle support for the controller allowing you to kill zombies with the greatest of ease, but… it’s still killing zombies…
Does anyone care?
