
Dropping dismemberment and toning down the gore has apparently saved
Soldier of Fortune: Payback's place in the Australian video game market.
MyGen reports that the revised game,
originally banned in October, has earned an MA15+ rating from Australia's Office Film and Literature Classification (
OFLC). MyGen's Mahmoud Afiouni writes:
If you’re wondering what’s missing from the Australian release of Soldier of Fortune: Payback, I have spoken to Activision and I can confirm that dismemberment will skip this release along with scaled down blood effects and rag doll physics.
Comments
anyone remembers german Soldier of Fortune: Double Helix?
They thought it would be funny to shoot robots instead of humans, with all kinds of stuff falling instead of blood.
fail.
bible thumping
fascist pigs
valueless and worthless industry
moronic moralists
rapes itself and its customers
Dude, only a "1 Bible Thumping Day"? Certainly you can do better than that.
Can I get an "Amen?"
I can see the other side of that issue
Making the violence less realistic makes it easier to differentiate it from fiction, also kids might be desensitized more if the violence was very realistic.
Not that I agree with that I'm just parroting what I think is their arguments.
That's the kind of thinking that got SoF banned in the first place. If a game is a dismemberment sim above anything else, it kind of scares people.
That would solve the game problems in that little prison colony... Just curios but are they actually trying to not let children of former criminals near violent games becuase they are afraid the kids would revert to their anscestors ways or something????
oh and yes I know australia hasn't been a prison colony for a long time but its still funny to refer to it as such...
Gotta love the way this valueless and worthless industry buckles under the weight of moronic moralists. Who needs censorship when the industry rapes itself and its customers of content?
Has anyone played this game? I have, and it really doesn't hold a candle to Halo, Halo2, Halo3, Call of Duty 1, 2, 3, or 4, BioShock, etc... It is just a bad game, and would have died a quick death if not for the hype.
Benn a way for a while, when I come back pandarish is not only acting like jack, he's starting to sounds exactly like him what with lacing every third word with hatred and hyperbole
your missing the point the industry is far to willing to cave in for alil profit, hell look at Google and Yahoo in china.
I see it more as sucking up to those governments now, and trying to inch further and further to what google/yahoo wants later.
Besides, when it's "my way or you have no way of reaching our billions of people highway," you do what you can.
@ pandralisk
You're officially retarded, coming from a "fellow" non-christian.
@GP
is hate speech a bannable offense?
*rolls eyes*
his rhetoric is no worse than others.
Besides bible thumbing is bad its a book now a club *dodge*
:P
Just for fun, do you think you could possibly do one post without using the terms "bible-thumping" or "rape"? Just curious.
Where is the love?
Internet uncensor patch ftw?
Right now, I like Hillary Clinton better than you.
"Who needs censorship when the industry rapes itself and its customers of content? "
What does that even mean? How do you "rape" something of content?
Could you try to find a different analogy - rape has a specific meaning that I don't like to see belittled.
Besides being off-topic, that's also bollocks.
http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2007/11/15/ho-ho.html
I'm not saying the game was specifically about dismemberment, but I do believe the ability to shoot off arms and legs "realistically" (from what I saw it was quite over the top and unbelievable dismemberment) was something that drew people to the franchise.
Raping oneself of content implies lowering a logical unit of content [in this case anatomically correct violence and good physics] that a developer wishes to express. Such an act is typically committed when a developer or publisher witnesses outside forces [a retailer refuses to stock the game; ESRB threatens economic censorship with AO rating] that might hurt the sale of a game and changes their origional design plan to meet "demands" of contemporary moral norms or insane critics of the industry.
Like a sexual deviant taking away the physical autonomy of a human during rape, paticular game developers "rape themselves" when they "rape" certain elements of the game that are purportedly bad for buisness.
We rarely are confronted with true censorship because the industry already censors itself so well.
Rape involves the removal of physical autonomy, true, and censorship involves the removal of artistic autonomy, but it's still a somewhat crude and inappropiate analogy in my view. I know a lot of people throw around the word rape like it means nothing, but I and others generally find it distasteful.
Somehow, though, I don't think you will stop using that analogy because Ed asked you to.
Good luck with that. Both the Liberal and Labor party has stated they are not looking to review the games rating system any time soon. On the other hand,there are a couple of pollies who have given a bit of attention to the games industry:
http://gamepolitics.com/2007/07/07/aussie-govt-called-on-to-get-behind-g...
@Pandralisk:
Church does not play such an important part in politics over here. The vast majority of Australians are atheist. I don't think I've ever heard Howard or Rudd state they were doing something driven by their religious views. Please leave your personal agenda elsewhere.
@aspeaker:
Thanks for the stereotype. In betwen bouts of violent anger and murdering innocent people like the descendant of a criminal that I am, I like to also have my freedom of choice removed over the games I play. /sarcasm I could make stereotypes about America just being a redneck British Colony, but this is not the forum for offensive stereotypes. Pandralisk has that base covered.
:)
That plus Australia should have an AO rating means that the changes to this game are
The game is junk anyway. No weapon recoil, standard FPS crap from 8 years ago with updated graphics and more blood. It was probably better it got banned over here in the first place.. =)
When I got home and read a few reviews, I thought...at least I can have a bit of fun with the gore. In the Oz release, even that's gone. Blimey...next we'll have some judge telling us what we can or can't watch on TV. If they ban online poker here too, I'm moving to the Uk.
This is one of the worst shooters I have ever purchased. It's kindergartenised piffle with a horrible storyline, bad physics, and nil redeeming features.