Left 4 Dead 2 may be Nerfed 4 Australians

Posted by Fuzzwobble on Oct 14, 2009 in Action | 3 comments

(First post from fuzzeh!)

Shenanigans must be afoot: Fuzzwobble has a blog. Woe to the world… but in all seriousness, throw out a favourite and keep tabs a bit. It only takes a few clicks!

There’s some interesting news on the grape vine recently: Left 4 Dead 2 may have been remade for Australian Censors. This isn’t exactly a rare occurrence either. If I remember correctly, this sort of submissive behaviour started happening prominently around the time of the vanilla Playstation with the near-release of an old title named Thrill Kill.

For those of the older persuasion, you will remember that Australia was a huge factor in Thrill Kill’s release cancellation: the game was completed in its entirety, but a censorship outcry caused EA to cancel it. Some of the developers leaked Thrill Kill after the cancellation, and the game (which honestly, wasn’t that great to begin with) has a cult following, primarily online through torrents and emulation.

“The goal is to guarantee that something will be available on November 17 in Australia,” Gabe Newell announced in Sydney. “At the same time pushing to get approval for that to be the full version of the game.”

You can’t blame the game companies for taking the safe route. After all, if they make a great game with a new aspect that can possibly be deemed inappropriate, there’s a chance that a more sensitive censor will sling mud at it. This can result in a number of issues with the game’s release:

• The game might not end up released at all
• If released, the game may end up with both a lengthened development time and additional costs (rebuilding aspects of the game for approval)
• The game could receive bad press, and encounter distribution issues
• The time in which the game is put through censor scrutiny might ‘age the engine’ and make the game seem graphically inferior
• Games have a tendancy to develop in competition (like a sub-genre arms race) so a delayed release can cause a competitor to complete their title first and take the market, which can dramatically decrease sales

Who can we blame when we are not innocent ourselves? We need to make our voices heard more effectively. We need the few big names in gaming media to address the issue, rather than pretend it doesn’t exist (they most likely do so out of caution: colleagues in their chosen medium could potentially spark consequences if the issue is mentioned).

Impotence is a sin.

Excuse my sarcastic and overstated insight here, but you see, apparently only children play video games… according to the media, government and entertainment industry. Hah! I guess we all must be young at heart?

Well, while many of us know to take what they say with a grain of salt, this causes an interesting problem: our classification system seems to mean nothing. While all other forms of entertainment (movies, books, etc) can be released with impunity due to the existence of our classification advisory boards, the previously mentioned groups don’t seem to be commonly aware of (or at least, choose to ignore the existance of) the brand of The Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) in regards to gaming. This not only forces video game releases in Australia to fight their way through rather biased scrutiny, but it also causes games beyond an M15+ rating (R18+ for example) to be banned from the country.

Remember those key words: “through rather biased scrutiny”. Content which would have a lower rating in other countries or forms of entertainment will often be considered a higher rating classification in a video game format. Censorship boards claim this is in relation to the interactivity of games.

So, when a game such as L4D2 is near release and has a new feature which enhances realism to a degree, game companies become nervous. In this case, they are most likely nervous about their new dismemberment feature. Basically, if you’ve occasionally thought “Hey, I shot that zombie in his shoulder with a high-powered rifle! Shouldn’t it have more of an effect than a red sprite or particle effect flashing on my screen for a moment?” then this new mechanic will probably you happy.

Facts from Gaming History: If we glance back into the past, blood in games was often coloured green or blue: censors were uncomfortable with red blood for the longest time. After a few games were released in which the blood was a very dark shade of red, censorship became more tolerant of the concept of naturally red hemoglobin in video games.

There is a distinct level of irony to this issue. One of the most argued points regarding desensitisation to violence is the idea that violence in an abstract representation can warp the perception of the person exposed to it. It sounds complicated, but let me explain it from the point of view of many professionals: if you saw a person suffer a very hard hit on the head, but then you saw the person who was struck simply shrug it off with a small complaint, then it’s probable that after a few times you would consider the act to be less threatening or violent. However, by this same analysis, wouldn’t a more accurate representation of the consequences of violence prove to be less harmful?

It really doesn’t matter I suppose, since I stand by the argument that gaming is actually a great method of relieving stress, and is more of a calmer than a catalyst.

Stressmarket.com Stress Relief Article – A website dedicated to the idea of managing stress. This article contains a rather effective summary of why gaming relieves stress in adults.

About.com Stress Relief Article – About.com is owned by the New York Times Company. Notice that while the linked article isn’t very specific, one of their journalists’ offshoot links points out video games as one of her stress relief methods.

Trailer for Left 4 Dead 2 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSfsMJgypdw

At a later time, I will touch on the idea of gaming immersion and its effect upon those exposed to it, but for now… ttyl!