A member of Singapore's Parliament has questioned why Grand Theft Auto IV is permitted to be sold there.

As reported by The Electric New Paper, Christopher de Souza (left) suggested that underage players would get their hands on the game and questioned how the life of crime portrayed in the game fit in with government efforts to discourage drug use, crime and gangs:

The question ought really to be if this game should enter the market in the first place.

By way of response, Minister for Information Communications and the Arts Dr Lee Boon Yang pointed out that GTA IV's rating was consistent with that found in the United States, U.K., Australia and Japan:

When rating the game, the MDA [Media Development Authority] took careful consideration of the content, themes and storyline found in the game, recognising that adults are better equipped to discern fact from fiction.

Singapore's The Straits Times reports on an in-development game in which players use the "cheery pink power of bubblegum" to fight government oppression.

Gumbeat is a Flash game being developed as part of a cooperative effort between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and digital media students in Singapore. So how does Gumbeat play? From the report:

...the heroine chews on candy and blows them into big pink bubbles beside unhappy citizens in the unnamed country in which the candy is banned. This cheers them up enough to entice them to join the protagonist in a revolution, mustering enough angry citizenry to overthrow the oppressive government.

 

This is the aim of the game, said National University of Singapore undergraduate Sharon Chu, who presented her team's game to reporters earlier on Tuesday... The game was made to show that games with serious-themes like say, 'political oppression', can be fun, said Ms Chu.

Chu left the issue of whether the repressive country in question was Singapore up to the "player's interpretation." GamePolitics readers may recall that Singapore's government banned Mass Effect for a time last year over a brief lesbian love scene.

Singapore may have banned Mass Effect last year (and later un-banned it), but gamers there do not want to see a Grand Theft Auto ban.

As reported by the Electric New Paper, gamers in Singapore are concerned that last week's cabdriver murder in Thailand may prompt a video game backlash:

'It's a game, it's just for fun,' said student Julius Wong, 20, who completed [GTA IV]... 'What makes the game popular is that you get to do things you don't normally get to do in real life.' Playing the game was 'stress relief'.

 

Student Poh Koon Kiat, 23, was also against a ban, saying it would be a knee-jerk reaction. 'I don't think games affect how I act in real life,' he said.

ENP reports that GTA IV was a huge seller in Singapore, with 20,000 copies sold during its first week at retail. Local distributor IAHGames said it was unaware of any move to ban the game.

Attention from investigators has driven video game pirates away from Singapore's town center, according to the Electric New Paper:

[Some] shops appeared more suspicious of potential buyers. To convince them, you'll have to strike up a conversation - or even buy a few original games - before they'll show you the pirated ones. Only one of the four shops... that we visited was willing to let us examine the cart before we bought them. Others insisted that we buy them.

The ESA, which represents the interests of video game publishers in the United States, maintains a presence in Singapore. From the report:

Mr Cyril Chua, counsel for the [ESA], said that checking on shops in heartland estates is more difficult than investigating stores in central locations.

 

'They often sell pirated wares only to regular customers,' he said.

 

Another problem is that pirated games can now be downloaded from the Internet, then installed on ame consoles by the users themselves.

 

'Piracy over the Internet is more difficult to track than retail piracy,' Mr Chua noted.