It's time for another round of Lance getting irrationally
mad over stupid things! Yaaaaaaaaaaaay.
Game censorship has been a hot button issue for many years,
since the 1992 release of Mortal Kombat in arcades, and later to many major
consoles. Mortal Kombat was the first game to depict blood, gore, and death in
a realistic and incredibly violent way. Prior to this, game violence was more
or less on the level of cartoons, but Mortal Kombat used a system of animated
sprites based on images of real actors to achieve a realistic (if limited)
graphical appearance. Controversies about whether or not the content was
appropriate for children spread like wildfire, and the resulting publicity led to the creation
of the ESRB, and equivalent institutions around the world. The game's
popularity also led to the appeal and success of games like Doom and Grand
Theft Auto a few years later.
Different regions of the world have different laws regarding
video game censorship, and censorship in general. The PAL regions especially have
been known for some very stupid laws regarding gaming. Australia has been
banning games for years
Nintendo of Europe has implemented a policy where, on the
Wii U shop, users can only view M rated content, or purchase M rated games between 11pm and 3am. YUP. Apparently, the reason for this restriction is due to
Nintendo of Europe being based in Germany, and therefore subject to Germany's
censorship laws, and "Under German law, content rated 18+ must be made available only at night."
What kind of ridiculous censorship law is that!? Even the
exact wording is hilariously unspecific:
(3) Der Anbieter kann seiner Pflicht aus Absatz 1 dadurch
entsprechen, dass er
1. durch technische oder sonstige Mittel die Wahrnehmung des Angebots durch
Kinder oder Jugendliche der betroffenen Altersstufe unmöglich macht oder
wesentlich erschwert oder.
2. die Zeit, in der die Angebote verbreitet oder zugänglich gemacht werden, so
wählt, dass Kinder oder Jugendliche der betroffenen Altersstufe üblicherweise
die Angebote nicht wahrnehmen.
Which literally translates to: "Making it impossible or
at least severely hindering minors from accessing the content in question
through technical or other means" or "Making the
content available at certain times in such a way that children and minors
typically don't have access to it." I've seen more specific and ironclad
wording in the freaking iTunes EULA. What is the point of having such stringent
censorship laws regarding content from nearly every form of media, and then
base it on the fact that minors never stay up late? If you want to look at it
from that point of view, this law will actually make more children into delinquents,
since it will convince them to stay up late, which will in turn cause them to
oversleep or be tired in the morning, which could lead to them not paying attention, or outright missing school, which could lead to DELINQUENCY. This is
still the 1950's right? Leave it to Beaver is still the model by which we all
live?
All this system will do is cost companies money, it does
nothing to actually solve any sort of perceived "morality issue".
Think about it, if a person is buying, say, ZombiU through the Wii U eShop
using a credit card, they have to be one of two things:
(1) A person who has a credit card and is therefore over 18, or
has the permission of someone to use their credit card.
Or
(2) Kids buying this content using a credit card they do
not have permission to use.
If your kids are stealing money from you in order to play
games that you don't approve of, you have bigger problems than that content
only being available at night.
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