• 29Sep 08

  Silent Hill: Homecoming banned

  The assiduous censorship of Australia's interactive entertainment industry continued last week when another high profile game title was turned back at the border. The denial of being granted the maximum videogame MA15+ rating due to its violence means Konami's Silent Hill: Homecoming is now illegal to sell, rent, or advertise in Australia. It also marks the fourth game to be refused classification this year by the Classification Board (formerly the OFLC) alongside Dark Sector, Shellshock 2: Blood Trails, and Fallout 3. While many gamers will bay for blood and shout cries extolling the impingement of civil liberties and our perceived steady decline into a nanny state, it's worth reminding the vocal (but uninformed) masses not to aim their hatred towards the Classification Board. Yes, they are the public face of classification, but ultimately they're as hamstrung as the average Aussie gamer in the face of antiquated policy set out by a myopic government.

  Australia is now marred with quite a reputation on the international stage when it comes time to decide if products are fit for sale in our country, and it's an issue being picked up on foreign shores. GU Comics has put together a great strip (I guess it's still a strip if there's only one cell?) with their take on how backwards our current system is.

  

  • Posted Sep 29, 2008 6:52 pm PT
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• 20Feb 08

  Hilary objects!

  I'm sorry. This post is not politically charged in any way, shape, or form, but I simply couldn't go past this photo without making a small change...

  

  • Posted Feb 20, 2008 12:09 am PT
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• 10Feb 08

  Study finds video games turn men on

  Science was never really my forte at school. I mean, I did a couple of years of biology and some of it stuck, but I was always more of an English kind of guy--kind of how I ended up writing for a living. That said, one of my fascinations has always been the human mind, and at one time I flirted with the idea of studying criminal psychology. Despite our rapid intellectual and cultural evolution and the subsequent creation of labour-saving inventions like pop-tarts and the iPhone, who we are, and what causes us to do the things we do largely remains a mystery.

  When pondering the mind doesn't keep me up at night and I'm left to my own devices, I've been known to play games. My arguable World of Warcraft addiction, in addition to eating several hundred of hours of my time, has actually opened my eyes to some of the more subtle game mechanics which keep people coming back for more. Every player has their own reason for questing that one bubble closer to the constantly moving player level cap, completing their tier six armour set, or grinding Enraged Earth Spirits until they have enough primal earth to finish whatever the hell it is they're crafting. Thottbot, Allakhazam and other sites have become bibles to players trying to calculate exactly how many of monster X they're going to have to kill, and by association the amount of time they'll have to invest to get that all-important payoff.

  There's an interesting read over at Eurekalert at the moment looking at men and women and their brain functions while gaming, particularly the direct correlation between territoriality and reward/addiction portions of the brain. No surprise then that guys got a little more into it than the ladies, and it goes a long way to explaining why men love the King of the Hill game types so much.

  • Posted Feb 10, 2008 9:30 pm PT
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