Video Games

Larry Laffer, the star of ‘80s “adult” video game Leisure Suit Larry, is on the come back trail. Pun really not intended.

It’s been 16 years since the last game was released. Game designer Al Lowe has successfully raised the money to reincarnate the sleazy protagonist thanks to online donations.

How about that. Did you ever play the game? It’s Wednesday. What’s happening in your world, Leisure Suit Puncher?

Welcome to this week’s I Call Bullshit, a column that looks at all kinds of myths and mistruths, at falsehoods, fiction and fabrications. This week we look at whether gamers are breaching international conventions when they loot, pillage, or kill.

I’m no war criminal. Not even a virtual one. That’s because I’ve never played a violent video game – or indeed any video game since Donkey Kong. The original version.

But if the Red Cross has their way, it raises the question of whether I could be up on some kind of charge for (ahem) enjoying The Human Centipede.

Continue reading "ICB: Are there 600 million virtual war criminals?" »

People often say that kids these days are “digital savvy”. Those people are wrong.

Kids today are definitely “digital” – some Gen Zers (see above) are even confused why printed magazines don’t interact with them like iPads – but that doesn’t mean they’re “savvy”.

They might know how to use technology. But just like drugs, alcohol, sex and relationships, that doesn’t mean kids know how to use it in a way that’s safe and appropriate.

Continue reading "Kids are digital, but that doesn’t mean they’re savvy" »

It’s a real shame that so many people out there still see computer games as child’s play; something that people naturally ought to grow out of in due course.

Indeed the idea that only kids, or those (mostly guys) in a state of arrested development, should care for interactive entertainment is a very common one.

It’s a mindset that has dominated a great deal of resistance to the (now almost inevitable) introduction of an R18+ ratings category for games in this country. Basically, many people just assume that games are for juveniles, and there should be no reason to expose the young-ens to any more graphic violence and nudity than they alread receive.

Continue reading "Playing games in an uncharted Golden Age" »

Many Norwegian stores have removed violent video games from their shelves after Christian Fundamentalist terrorist Anders Breivik claimed he prepared for his attack by playing them. Yet there’s been no word from bookstores on when they’ll remove the Bible from their shelves.

What a load of bollocks. After all, Breivik claimed he played video games to prepare, but the only reason he had anything to prepare for was due to a truly twisted ideology that certainly didn’t come from game play.

Every time we suffer an atrocity like this, people immediately look for somewhere to place blame, while ignoring the fundamental causes. More often than not it’s heavy metal music or violent video games that cop the accusations, which is nothing more than lazy scapegoating.

Continue reading "Thrash metal and video games don’t make you a killer" »

It’s become something of a social minefield to admit you’re a Christian.

We tiptoe around the issue at gatherings, lest our peers assume we’ve secretly been judging them, or are about to kickstart a lecture on contraception.

There’s awkwardness around that Catholic priest joke they just told, and people excuse themselves before they hear the question “So have you found Jesus?”

Continue reading "Australian Christian Lobby ... I disown thee" »

Over the past 20 years there’s been a revolution in how people use technology in their spare time. I grew up in a time where most people had a TV and a stereo in their house and from the 1980s, VCRs. That was pretty much it.

Fast forward to 2010, and many households have flat screen TVs, iPods, PlayStations and a plethora of other computing devices. In fact, 88% of Australian households now have a gaming console.  Kids and adults alike wile away the hours pretending to play for St Kilda, playing guitar like Ray Toro or fighting guerrilla wars.

It’s our job as a society, and my job as the Minister responsible for classification in the Australian Government, to work out which games should be allowed to be played by anyone; which games should be restricted to adults; and which are so extreme and offensive, that we wouldn’t want them here at all.

Continue reading "Why the government backs an R18+ games rating" »

I was reading Stuart McDowell’s fun-loving article about murder and I found myself feeling a strange a sense of deja-vu.

About two years ago, when I first started at studying at Art School, there were two causes that I believed in with particularly more fervour than others. One was that heavy metal was roughly equivalent in value to pure Ambrosia, and that anyone who couldn’t be converted was a dullard, a dunce and a malevolent slime. The other was that fighting against the censorship of video games, and in particular the bloodiest, most violent ones, was a cause that any sane person should feel the most passionate zeal for, and if they didn’t, then they should feel the deepest, burning shame.

I suppose that’s fairly indicative of what I was like as an 18 year old. My hair was a silky black mane of heavy metal pride, to perfectly match the sleeveless flannel shirts, camouflage shorts and combat boots in which I was permanently outfitted. And I absolutely loved video games. And looking back, I was a pretty tasteless, and for want of a better word, boring kid.

Continue reading "The coolest video games don’t need to be censored" »

Overnight, the Federal Government issued a review of existing research into whether people who play violent computer games are at greater risk of aggression. Their conclusion? The same as mine. There is no link.

I’m not violent at all. Though I guess I am a murderer.

I’ve ruthlessly ended roughly 500 lives this week. Tall. Short. Loud. Quiet. Hairy. Fast. Slow. I’ve knocked ’em all off. It was mostly in self defence. A few were just for kicks, though. But seriously - you should have seen them. They were asking for it.

Continue reading "Killer by night, mild-mannered toiler by day" »

This Friday the Attorneys General of all our states and territories will decide whether to create an R18+ category for computer and video games.

We’re often told it is indisputable that a child watching the very occasional 30-second McDonalds’ advertisement will have their eating habits irrevocably changed. They are headed for a life of junk food. The games industry has of course lobbied hard, but if the attorneys decide in favour of R18+ games they will owe Ronald McDonald a huge apology.

Because amazingly the attorneys might decide this week that hours and hours of playing computer games with highly simulated and even interactive violence and sex won’t affect children in any way.

Continue reading "Feeding kids on a diet of video game junk" »