Ars Technica is reporting on Mad World, an in-development title for the Wii that is being shown in behind-closed-doors media briefings at E3.

From Ars writer Ben Kuchera's report:

Splashes of color hit the screen when you disembowel your enemies with any number of weapons, and we're told the chainsaw is going to be in the character's standard loadout. The character is competing on a game show where you have to murder as many people as you can in an urban environment to win...

 

Everything about the game is a celebration of violence, a wicked dance of gore. The Wiimote controls look to be very functional, with movements giving you both environmental and weapon-specific finishing moves...

GP: Thanks to comment mod E. Zachary Knight for the heads-up...

Following last week's disturbing news that the highly-anticipated Fallout 3 would be banned in Australia, website Australian Gamer has remarks attributed to the man blamed by many for the ban.

Australian Gamer has posted a scan of what appears to be a letter from Michael Atkinson (left), Attorney General of South Australia, to an unnamed constituent. Atkinson's continued opposition to the introduction of an R18+ rating for the Australian games market has meant that games judged unsuitable for 15-year-olds are routinely refused classification. The country's highest rating is currently MA15+.

From the Atkinson letter:

I am aware that statistics show many game players are adults. Indeed, a whole generation has now grown up with computer games. It is not surprising that those who enjoyed gaming as children... play electronic games with their own children... 62% of Australians in these gaming households say the classification of a game has no influence on their buying decision...

 

Given this data, I cannot fathom what State-enforced safeguards could exist to prevent R18+ games being bought by households with children and how children can be stopped from using these games, once the games are in the home. If adult gamers are so keen to have R18+ games, I expect children would be just as keen. I have publically argued that because electronic games are interactive, the violence and other adult content in games have a strong impact. I am particularly concerned about the impact these games have on children, who can spend a lot of their unsupervised leisure time gaming.

Last week GamePolitics reported on a peace group's protest that forced changes to the America's Army exhibit at Wisconsin's Summerfest.

Huntsville, Alabama's WAFF-48 now reports that a similar protest is planned at an Air Show in Duluth, Minnesota. Michele Naar-Obed of a group called Loaves and Fishes criticized the game, in which players seated in a Humvee shoot at virtual enemy combatants:

I'm very upset over this. I think this is just insane that they would use this kind of venue to train our youth to kill people.

An Army recruiter dismissed the criticism, however. SFC John Haymond told WAFF:

It's kind of curious that some people would object to a virtual army experience game when the central draw to the Duluth Air Show is the Blue Angels who are flying F-18 Super Hornet strike aircraft, which last time I checked, was a military weapon.

Haymond added that no one under 17 is permitted into the exhibit. The air show is setting up a separate area for protesters of the game.
 

As most GamePolitics readers know, Bethesda's highly-anticipated RPG Fallout 3 became the latest victim of Australian censors when it was refused classification (i.e., a rating) this week.

news.com.au now has more info on the Fallout 3 situation. The site is reporting that in-game drug use led to the game's ban Down Under and quotes from a report by Australia's Office of Film & Literature Classification:

In the Board's view these realistic visual representations of drugs and their delivery method bring the 'science-fiction' drugs in line with 'real-world' drugs... The player can also select and use 'Morphine' (a proscribed drug) which has the positive effect of enabling the character to ignore limb pain when the character's extremities are targeted by the enemy.

news.com.au notes that disappounted Aussies have reacted badly to the news about Fallout 3. In an online posting, one gamer asked, "What are the syringes in Bioshock filled with – magic fairy dust?"

Australia's lack of a rating that scales beyond the 15-year-old level is apparently at fault. As GamePolitics has previously reported, South Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson has been a major force opposing the addition of an R18+ rating.

Earlier this week GamePolitics reported on Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal's concerns over upcoming Wii-ware title Beer Pong.

Blumenthal criticized the game for encouraging underage drinking and slammed the ESRB for not assigning Beer Pong (since renamed to Pong Toss) an Adults Only rating.

Shelly Sindland of Connecticut Fox News affiliate WTIC-61 has a video report, including additional comments from the A.G.

According to GameSpot and other sources, the long-awaited Fallout 3 has been refused classification by Australia's Office of Film & Literature Classification.

The decision effectively bans Fallout 3 from being sold by retailers Down Under. From the GameSpot report:

While the OFLC website has no details on why Fallout 3 was banned, a user in GameSpot's PC forum last week suggested it could be due to the use of the drug morphine within the game.

 

Australia's game classification rules state that titles that "depict, express or otherwise deal with matters of sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults" will be refused classification.

Fallout 3 thus joins Shellshock 2 and Dark Sector as games which have run afoul of Austrialian censors in 2008. Fallout 3, however, is surely one of the most high-profile games ever to face such action.

As GamePolitics reported earlier this year, Dark Sector, developed by Digital Extremes and published by D3Publisher, was refused classification by Australian censors over violence concerns.

PALGN is now reporting that edits made to the game have toned down its level of blood and gore enough to earn an MA-15+ rating. From the PALGN story:

The game was originally considered by the OFLC to be too strong for our shores, as a "violent and sometimes gruesome game with a sinister storyline and ominous outcome. The violence and aggression inflicted upon the protagonist is of a high level, naturalistic and not stylised at all."

 

...It appears that this version... features no decapitation...

GP: Thanks to several GamePolitics readers who pointed this news out...

 Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (D) charged today that the ESRB is "under the influence" when it comes to depictions of alcohol use in video games.

His comments were prompted by Beer Pong, from JV Games. As reported by GamePolitics, the title has previously come under fire from education and substance abuse organizations. In response to those concerns, the game has recently been renamed as Pong Toss (although JV's website still lists it under the original title).

Blumenthal, mentioned as a potential gubernatorial candidate, issued a press release calling on the ESRB to change the rating of Beer Pong from T (13+) to what the AG refers to as "adult" (presumably the ESRB's Adults Only rating). The A.G. is quoted in the press release: 

The rating T 13+ -- suitable for teens 13 and older -- is absolutely inappropriate. The video game rating board is under the influence -- rating frat party video drinking games suitable for minors. Even as JV Games agrees to alter its Beer Pong video game, both it and the rating board stubbornly deny the damaging influence of alcohol depiction in video games.

 

The ESRB astonishingly downplays and dismisses alcohol depiction in rating the suitability of video games for minors. Parents have the first and last say over their children’s games -- but they deserve to know all of the facts. The ESRB, claiming to consider age suitability in its ratings, has a moral and ethical responsibility to consider all potentially damaging material in the products it rates.

 

This issue is urgent because the 'Frat Party Ganes' promoted by JV Games may soon offer others in this planned series.

ESRB spokesman Eliot Mizrachi responded to Blumenthal's criticism of the video game industry rating board in a statement:

Although we respect Attorney General Blumenthal’s right to disagree, the fact is that ESRB’s role is not that of censor.  Our job is to impartially and consistently label content about which there may be a diversity of views so consumers can make informed choices for themselves and their families. 

 

‘Pong Toss’ involves nothing more than players tossing virtual ping-pong balls into plastic cups, which hardly qualifies it for our most restrictive rating of AO (Adults Only 18+)... 

In addition, GamePolitics has obtained a copy of a June 12th letter from ESRB President Patricia Vance to Attorney General Blumenthal on the Beer Pong issue. It reads in part:

While the assignment of ratings does require that judgments be made about the age-appropriateness of different types of content, it would be improper to assign ratings solely based on the depiction of behavior which may be understandably discouraged by society at large. To illustrate, many car racing games require players to barrel down city streets at high speeds – illegal behavior that certainly should not be encouraged... Still, none of this changes the fact that racing games... tend to be rated E... That actions in a game might, in the real world, be associated with minimum age requirements or be generally discouraged does not, in and of itself, relegate that game to the most restrictive ESRB rating category, Adults Only. Such contextual elements are weighed in the ratings process, however...

 

This title is being made available solely as WiiWare, which means it will not be available at retail, but may be downloaded, for a fee, directly through the Wii console. WiiWare games, available by the hundreds, rarely have marketing or advertising associated with them, and typically draw scant attention. Given this, our concern is that a greater number of consumers (including the age group about which you are most concerned) will be made aware of this game and resolve to play it as a result of publicized statements of advocacy groups and others. Ironically, this is likely to result in more rather than less consumers being drawn to this game, particularly those very minors all of us seek to protect.

GameSpot is reporting that hugely-anticipated role playing title Fallout 3 may be subjected to the Australian government's notorious ban hammer.

While GameSpot is careful to add that the Fallout 3 ban is still a rumor at this point, it points to a seemingly well-informed post in its PC Games Forum:

I have a friend that works for the government body here in Australia that reviews movies, books, music, magazines and...computer games... I was told by my friend that Fallout 3 has just very recently gone through the initial review process by the board of the OFLC and has been refused classification...

 

Apparently the game includes the use of Morphine by your character. (I assume as some sort of "healthpack" or "stimpack"). By all accounts this did not sit well with the Board as the portrayal of the unregulated use of proscribed substances is a bit of a no no and will damage the fragile minds of Australia's game-playing populace.

 

The key issue here is that, unlike movies, our computer game classification ratings only go as far as MA 15+... But due to our archaic and conservative laws, we don't have a computer game R 18+ rating and thus Fallout 3 and games like it will continue to be Refused Classification.
 

GP: This rumor is entirely possible. Readers may recall that Australia banned Marc Ecko's Getting Up over its grafitti theme. 

The U.S. Army has removed a combat simulator from its display tent at Wisconsin's Summerfest music festival following complaints that the exhibit glorified war.

As reported by Milwaukee's Fox-6, the original display, which allowed players to sit in a HumVee and fire simulated weapons at realistic human combatants, has been replaced by one in which players shoot at inanimate targets.

Protests over the Army display began with a pair of groups, Veterans for Peace and Peace Action Wisconsin. Julie Enslow, a spokesperson for Peace Action Wisconsin, told Fox-6: 

[War] is not a game... and it should not be presented as such. Especially at Summerfest.

 The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has more:

Under the combat scenario initially presented in the game, fest-goers as young as 13 could hop into a Humvee simulator and fire machine guns at near life-size human likenesses on a computer screen.

 

According to a description of the game on the Army’s Web site, an Army ground task force attempts to rescue trapped aid workers and refugees in the imaginary city of “Nradreg” from a “well-armed genocidal faction.”

When violent video game controveries flare, it's often said that critics are unintentionally increasing traffic to the game in question.

Such appears to be the case with The Torture Game 2.

The amateur, online game has been attracting no small amout of attention lately, including a parental alert from watchdog group the Parents Television Council.

The free game is available at online gaming portals Newgrounds and Kongregate.

But a message posted by Newgrounds guru Tom Fulp documents that the controversy is actually bringing many new players to the game:

The latest controversy has been surrounding The Torture Game 2, a fun little ragdoll physics engine that lets you do all sorts of horrible things to a lifeless dummy. Sensible Erection put together a gallery of all the fancy artwork you can create with TG2... at which point Derek Yu made a post about it on TIGSource and a whole debate erupted.

 

MSNBC picked up on the TIGSource debate and posted their own article about the game, but the real fun came when FOX News weighed in with a Fair & Balanced video, expressing their disgust while showing real-time footage of the person being tortured. Hey! At least we slapped a MATURE rating on the game and made you click a link to view it... Fox just dumped it into every living room in America!

 

As a result of their efforts, many more people are now enjoying The Torture Game 2.

 The Fox News video mentioned by Fulp appears at left.

Forever pushing the envelope, Rockstar's P.R. department has apparently shipped out a Grand Theft Auto IV bat to selected media types. The bat features a GTA IV logo smeared with faux blood.

It's apparently by way of kicking off their holiday season sales push. Glenn Derene of Popular Mechanics writes:

Because they couldn’t legally send us an Uzi thorough the mail, [Rockstar] sent us the 14th most deadly weapon in the blockbuster game’s new arsenal: a metal bat... It just arrived with a press release informing us “‘Tis the Season To Swing Big and Go GRAND,” promoting GTA IV as a perfect stocking-stuffer for the Christmas season.

 

But who needs the game when you’ve got the bat? In the spirit of giving, we can now give a GTA-style beat-down to random strangers on the street, just like our favorite Eastern European criminal thug, Niko Bellic. And when the cops catch us, we can say that we never would have done it were it not for the influence of violent video games. And for the first time, we’d be right!

It's kind of ironic when one considers the Nassau Six, a dirty half-dozen juvenile delinquents busted last week for going on what police claim is a GTA IV-inspired crime spree armed with a crowbar and a baseball bat. While the cops haven't said exactly why they're pointing the long arm of the law at Rockstar's controversial game, wouldn't the mainstream media go bonkers if it turned out that the bat used by the Nassau Six was this bat? 

Last week GamePolitics reported on the controversy surrounding The Torture Game 2, an amateur online offering in which players inflict injury upon a defenseless human-like figure.

One News Now reports that media watchdog group the Parents Television Council has issued an alert to parents about the game. The site quotes PTC exec Gavin McKiernan:

The Internet can be a great resource for kids...  [But] parents need to be aware that there's [sic] so many negative things they can be doing – from chat rooms, where they expose themselves to sexual predators, to violent and depraved games and so-called entertainment like this.

 

 ...any kid who's sitting around playing the Torture Game or whose parents are allowing him to play Grand Theft Auto at home, is opening themselves up to a lot of potential negative repercussions that they may not realize for years.

Scott Miller, head of 3D Realms, told Next Generation that he views the upcoming E3 Expo as "irrelevant".

3D Realms, of course, owns perhaps the most vapory vaporware game property of all time, Duke Nukem Forever. Of the long-awaited DNF, Miller commented:

Development is swimming along nicely. Seriously nicely.
 

But E3 show-goers won't be seeing Duke. Miller told Next Gen:

It's just that we view E3 as irrelevant nowadays.  In fact, I wasn't even aware it was coming up.

GP: It's a safe bet that Miller is not a favorite of the video game industry establishment these days. Readers may recall that in 2007 the 3D Realms boss got into a bit of a nasty exchange with ESRB president Patricia Vance.

Last week, GamePolitics was the first game-oriented site to report on a New Haven Advocate story detailing Connecticut State Senator Gayle Slossberg's controversial remarks about Grand Theft Auto IV.

The newspaper reported that Sen. Slossberg, a Democrat, was concerned about a possible rape scene in the game and was considering introducing game-oriented legislation in the upcoming session.

The following day, however, Slossberg issued a statement to the effect that her comments were "misrepresented" by the Advocate. 

Despite the Senator's protestations, the paper is standing by its story. Following an inquiry by GamePolitics, we received the Advocate's statement a short time ago:

The Advocate defends its reporting on this story. Sen. Slossberg was clearly speaking about stricter video game labeling in her capacity as a lawmaker, rather than as a mother or a private citizen. Also, our story said nothing about the senator wanting to restrict video game content, only video game labeling.

 

While we are sympathetic to the senator's concerns, there is no privacy protection for public speech. It is misguided to assume a conversation between an influential state senator and a reporter, or reporters, occurring in a public place, is off-the-record. The Advocate is happy to talk on background, if it's requested. In this case, it was not.

GameSpot reports that the upcoming Shellshock 2: Blood Trails has been refused classification by Australia's Office of Film and Literature classification over concerns about violent content:

Shellshock 2 is an Eidos game slated for the PS3, Xbox 360, and PC platforms, and was due for release in 2009. The game places players in Vietnam War-era Cambodia, where a mysterious chemical dropped into the jungle has had some strange effects on people. An [Australian distributor] Atari spokesperson said there were currently no plans to appeal the banning decision.

The last game to be RC'd by the OFLC was D3's Dark Sector.

Uh, hold the surf  & turf...

Animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has protested a Colorado sports bar's arcade-like claw game in which diners attempt to snag a live lobster. As reported by Denver Daily:

[PETA] says it is cruel and unusual to keep the lobsters in the Lobster Zone tank only to be boiled alive.

 

“JD’s Lobster Zone machine turns torture and death into a game, pure and simple,” said PETA Vice President Tracy Reiman.

 

In case you’re wondering, Lobster Zone works just like any other claw game. For $2, patrons have a chance to move the remote-controlled metal claw inside the tank, place it over a live lobster, and as the machine says, “You catch ‘em, we cook ‘em.”

Bar owner Dennis McCann told the newspaper that he will remove the game, but didn't understand the uproar:

I don’t know what the difference is between my place and a King Soopers that has a lobster tank other than the way the lobsters are harvested out of the tank... Life’s too short to put my energy toward this. On the one side, I hate that someone is doing this to me. But on the other side, I’ll take the high road to make sure my customers are happy.

Meanwhile, Cosmo's Weird, Wacky, Wonderful World reports that Lobster Zone machines, made by Florida-based Apopka, are in more than 300 locations in the United States.

On Wedneday GamePolitics reported on comments attributed to Connecticut State Senator Gayle Slossberg (D) regarding an alleged rape scene in Grand Theft Auto IV.

No such sequence exists, however.

PSXextreme now has Sen. Slossberg's response to the furor created by the earlier report, which appeared in the New Haven Advocate. Slossberg's statement reads:

The article in the New Haven Advocate misrepresented my off-the-record-comments during an informal conversation about parenting. I was in no way announcing a legislative proposal, announcing intent to introduce legislation or taking a public position on restricting the content of video games.

GP: It's unclear what Sen. Slossberg means when she says that the Advocate "misrepresented" her remarks. Her insistence that her comments were "off-the-record" would seem to indicate that she may have indeed made the remarks, but did not anticipate that they would be reported. We can't help but notice that the Senator has not issued a denial of what the Advocate reported.

GamePolitics has requested comment on the issue from the Advocate. We will report that when it is received.

In 2006 it was Danny Ledonne's thoughtful, yet highly controversial Super Columbine Massacre RPG which sparked outrage among politicians and pundits.

Last year it was the appalling V-Tech Rampage.

Will The Torture Game 2 be this year's controversial amateur game?

MSNBC's Winda Benedetti writes about The Torture Game 2 this week. The online-only affair is available for free on Newgrounds and other sites:

...it’s a computer game in which you, the player, are asked to do horrible, unspeakable, and totally sick, sick, sick things to a defenseless man-like person tied up in some dark room from which he has absolutely no hope of escape.

 

...this dangling ragdoll offers you a canvas to do with what you will — stab him with spikes, flay the skin from his body with a razor, pull his limbs off with your bare hands, paint him every color of the rainbow. 

Benedetti admits to being troubled by the game, and sought out its creator, 19-year-old Carl Havemann of South Africa, who told her:

I never thought of it as a stress reliever. The only thing I meant it to be was something simple and pointless meant only for entertainment... You're supposed to make anything you want out of it... I don't mind people disliking my game, but some of them are too serious about something so simple and basically meaningless.

Likely to add to any eventual controversy is a feature which allows players to customize the face of the torture victim.

GP: Just as they have with SCMRPG and V-Tech Rampage, it seems inevitable that political figures will point to The Torture Game 2 as a justification for legislating games. However, non-commercial products like these are beyond typical legislative attempts, which focus on ratings and point-of-sale.

UPDATE: Fox News did a piece on the Torture Game...

Is Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots designer Hideo Kojima's treatise on the war in Iraq? America's Neo-cons? Stateless combatants? Nuclear war?

All of the above?

Reporter David Itzkoff probes the issue for the New York Times:

Is [MGS4]... a critique of America’s domination of the global stage? A metaphor for the struggle between determinism and free will? ...The original Metal Gear Solid... called attention to the scourge of nuclear proliferation...

 

[MGS2]... introduced a shadowy supernational group called the Patriots, so powerful that even the president of the United States answers to it. (A commentary on the disputed 2000 election? The cabal theories of post-9/11 politics?) And [MGS3]... explored the cold war origins of its characters... intertwined with the rise of the military-industrial complex...

 

[In MGS4]... the forces [Solid Snake] battles are... the mercenaries on the payroll of private military companies... an allegory of war in the era of Blackwater Worldwide and stateless enemy combatants?...