Kotaku has ran a report which claims that the upcoming MMO-shooter APB will not be released in Australia due to a lack of local servers.

Due to the nature of the game, which requires more robust servers than standard MMOs, servers need to be located close to the game’s region. This results in an Australian server being essential for decent gameplay.

The problem is that developer Realtime Worlds isn’t going to offer servers in the Australian region, meaning that the game can’t be released; something supplier EA has confirmed. So, no APB for Australia.

Kotaku points out that Australian gamers could import a US game, use a US credit card and then connect to a US server, but that isn’t exactly an easy fix and would probably result in seriously laggy gameplay.

So why isn’t Realtime Worlds investing in the servers for Australia? Cost could be a factor, and the income from Oz gamers just might not justify the spending needed to launch the game in the country.

Whatever the reason, it’s a shame for Australian gamers (who haven’t exactly had a good time in getting games), although saying that, there’s been a general air of mediocrity over APB, and there’s that crazy pricing scheme. So they might not be missing that much after all.

After MP Michael Atkinson stepped down as the Attorney-General of South Australia, his replacement has been announced as Labor MP John Rau.

Rau had previously served as a barrister and a backbench minister and is said to be a supporter of the R18+ rating, something which Atkinson was starkly opposed to.

Atkinson was the only member who had opposed the introduction of the rating, meaning that it could not go through due to the fact that every Attorney-General needs to agree in order for it to be enacted. Australian pressure group Gamers 4 Croydon President Chris Proir tweeted that Rau was ‘œa supporter or the R18+ classification for games’ meaning that with his new role as Attorney-General, the rating could become a reality.

Rau is said to be an experienced MP and well qualified for the job, and hopefully he’ll be popular with Australian gamers too.

Michael Atkinson, one of the key figures in the blocking of an R18+ videogame rating in Australia has decided to step down from his position as South Australian Attorney-General.

Atkinson, who has in the past been subject of many posts on Negative Gamer, has decided that ‘œthere should be a renewal’ in political talent and that him not being able to watch his son play football due to his hectic schedule was a factor in his decision.

Atkinson has been a stark opponent of the R18+ rating, which has left many games either unsold, or edited in order to allow sale in Australia. The introduction of an R18+ rating would require an agreement between all Attorney-Generals across Australia, so with him removed there stands a better chance of it being approved. Atkinson will remain in parliament as a backbencher until 2014, but will hand over the Attorney-General title immediately.

Hopefully this will be the foundations of the R18+ rating in Australia, meaning that Australian gamers won’t have to play censored videogames and can enjoy titles as they were meant to be played.

The Interactive Games & Entertainment Association (iGEA) has submitted its thoughts on the introduction of an R18+ rating in Australia. The document, which you can read here, features arguments for the introduction of an adult rating as well as background information about the issue.

The report was submitted to the attorney-general’s office for the R18+ debate and features many of the arguments already introduced by gamers and critics. The document describes Australia as ‘œout of touch with the rest of the world’ in videogame classification, stating that the R18+ rating is needed to ensure the Australian videogames industry can respond to changes in ‘œconsumer usage and demand’, as well be able to ‘œcater to the rising age of… videogame players [and] allowing adult gamers to be treated as such’.

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Australia has always been known for its strict censorship of games. While the game censorship issue is huge, the Australian government managed to incite an even bigger uproar with its latest attempt at expanding its “protective gaze.” Last month South Australia passed a law that required anyone discussing political issues to provide their name and address, or face a fine of up to AUS $1,250. If NG had a “Doing it Wrong” leaderboard, Australia would have achieved the rank of “Pissing in a Gunshot Wound” with this stunt.

After an absolutely enormous outcry not just from the Australian people but from almost every western media outlet, the Australian government decided yesterday to retract the law.

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With nothing better to do in Playstation’s virtual play-world, many have turned to walking up to people, squatting or dancing near them and then proclaiming, likely in a pre-pubescent voice, that they are having sex with the victim. One woman who logged in this Christmas became one of these many victims. Her tale made it past the original forum complaint and into the print edition of the Australian Daily Telegraph who reported on the “online sex assaults”.

The NeoGaf forum helpfully have a scan of the article which, as you may have guessed, seems to have been written by somebody who has very little clue what they’re talking about. They gloss over the fact this stuff is common in games or that there are reporting functions which can lead to those morons upsetting people being banned. They also seem to completely ignore the fact that at any moment, anybody can just turn off the game.

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GamePolitics is reporting that the Australian Government has released a paper to enable the  public to discuss the introduction of an R18+ rating for videogames. The questionnaire enables citizens to add their opinion on a range of arguments surrounding the issue.

They include: ‘œAdults should not be prevented from playing R18+ level computer games simply because they are unsuitable for minors’, with ‘œStrongly Agree’ up to ‘œStrongly Disagree’ for the reader to fill in. It also features the opposing argument, such as ‘œComputer games should be treated differently from films given the specific, negative effects of interactivity on players, particularly their participation in violent and aggressive content.’

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Speaking with Australia’s ABC News the Attorney-General Michael Atkinson has once again spoken out against the calls for an R18+ rating in Australia. The report which can be found here, features industry figures arguing that gamers should be ‘œtreated like adults’ and allowed to play violent games. Atkinson countered by suggesting that a ‘œsmall number of very zealous gamers’ are trying to push for an R18+ rating, which would be ‘œagainst public interest’.

Atkinson has been very vocal on not allowing the certificate, which would enable titles such as Left 4 Dead 2 and Modern Warfare 2 to be released in the region without edits. The video also focuses on Aliens vs. Predator which has been denied sale in Australia, resulting in the publisher not editing the game for Australian release, instead choosing to simply not sell it.

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Talking to the radio show National Interest, the Attorney-general of South-Australia, Michael Atkinson has stated that he will be appealing the Office of Film and Literature Classification’s (OFLC) decision to allow Modern Warfare 2 to be sold under the 15+ rating in Australia.

The game has caused controversy already due to a scene which enables players to take part in ‘œterrorist’ activities. These actions according to Atkinson ‘œallow players to be virtual terrorists and gain points by massacring civilians’.

If he succeeds in his appeal the game could be pulled from the shelves all together, something which has happened before. Atkinson also attacked the OFLC for letting games through the system which may be unsuitable for the 15+ rating, despite the numerous changes that are made to titles, including the recently launched Left 4 Dead 2 which was heavily edited for Australian release.

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After the Attorney-General Michael Atkinson’s personal reply to a disgruntled gamer, Australia’s quest for a R18+ classification is continuing. A former game designer has taken it upon himself and set up a blog, fittingly entitled: Treat Us Like Adults.

Ethan Watson has created the site in order to ‘œeducate anyone who reads this site about what the current ratings system means for everyone and what its limitations and exploitations are’. Ethan is organising a protest in King George’s Square, Brisbane to put pressure on the Government, so if there’s any Australians in the area, head along!

Australia has suffered dramatically without an adult classification for games, which means titles such as Left 4 Dead 2 have to be edited in order to be sold in Australia. IGN recently gave the Australian version of the game 5/10 and stated that it is a ‘œhollow shell of a game’ when compared to the US version.

We hope Ethan is successful in his campaign and suggest that all you Australians who want to play the proper version of games, head down to Brisbane on the 5^th of December to express your annoyance. If not then just head over to Ethan’s site TreatUsLikeAdults.Wordpress.com and spread the word!

Via: GamerLimit.com

As well as being the home of some of the world’s deadliest creatures, Australia also happens to be home to one of the world’s most pompous and hysterical anti-videogame judges. Attorney General Michael Atkinson, as part of his ongoing crusade to deny Australia an 18+ or equivalent ‘adult’ rating for videogames, has acknowledged the existence of his opposition. I can already hear you asking, in the plaintive tone of someone unfamiliar with a slow news day, why is this newsworthy? Well, it’s because the acknowledgment was accompanied by an anti-videogame slur worthy of Keith Vaz himself. In response to the news that he will be challenged in the upcoming local election, Atkinson had this to say,

The voters of Croydon will now be asked directly whether they want interactive games in which gamers score points by raping a mother and daughter, blowing themselves up, torturing human figures . . . killing people and taking drugs to improve their sporting prowess

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Here at Negative Gamer we’re, well negative. We’re pessimistic, gloomy, grumpy, cynical, unenthusiastic and cantankerous, and it appears to be good measure! An Australian study has found that being grumpy is in fact good for you, enabling you to be better at making decisions and being more attentive.

Professor Joe Forgas at the University of South Wales took a group of volunteers and asked them to think about previous occasions that would make them happy or sad and then asked them to ‘œjudge the truth of urban myths and provided eyewitness accounts of events’. The researcher found that people in bad moods made better judgements and were better at communicating ideas than the happier enthusiastic gits, who were in turn more creative and co-operative.

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Sony’s PSPgo was released in Japan on Sunday, a month later than the European and US launches. Already it’s not off to the best start. Reports are suggesting that Sony’s newest handheld sold just over 28,000 units on its first day, compared with 170,000 units for Nintedo’s DSi. Gamasutra also notes that the PSP-3000 sold 140,000 within four days of launch.

While there’s not many figures on a European-American launch, as of October 20th, just 1000 PSPgo units had been sold in Australia. Sony claim to have seen a 300 percent rise in PSP sales, including crucially, the UMD version. The PSPgo has been hit with much criticism (quite a bit from Negative Gamer too) over the handheld’s hefty price tag, around $250.

Many sites have pointed out that you can buy a PlayStation 3 for a little more than what Sony is asking for the PSPgo and have attacked Sony’s “aspirational pricing” model. Sony have also claimed that it’s quite happy selling you the PSP-3000, something which has to be undermining the PSPgo’s sales. While it’s still early days for the PSPgo in Japan and around the world, it’s not looking promising.

Source: Andriasang.com

The full unedited version Left 4 dead 2 has once again been rejected by the Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC). The board has stated (.pdf of the verdict here) that there is “insufficient delineation between the depiction of general zombie figures and the human figures”, meaning that the  zombies look too much like humans.

Australia bizarrely only has up to an MA 15+ classification, meaning that overseas games that are 18+ have to be censored. In this case the Australian board seem to have a problem with decapitation, wound detail and piles of bodies. This is the second time Valve has failed to get the full version of the game saleable in Australia.

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Evony, a web game blocked from advertising on any self-respecting website, are suing a guy. Bruce Everiss claimed that Evony is a company set up by dodgy Chinese gold farmers and that they’re generally rubbish. Evony, hidden behind a veil of legal laws, are suing him (a UK resident) from Australia. Recently, things got even stranger.

It turns out (as dug up in a fantastic article on Popehat that you should read) Evony LLC incorporated themselves in Delaware 12 days after Bruce made his claims. The situation gets even less clear with the introduction of some other company named Assist Business Solutions, which seems to have no real reason to exist. Popehat sum up what a cynic might say very well.

Now, I’m no cynic, and only a cynic would suggest this, and so I’m not suggesting it: But a cynic might assume that the real owners of Evony, the game that according to Bruce Everiss advertises itself through tasteless breast shots and spam, chose to sue Bruce Everiss in Australia on the advice of Benjamin Gifford, a consultant employed to help the company develop its tasteless marketing and to quash criticism from journalists and bloggers like Bruce Everiss. Of course, I don’t suggest that. And I don’t suggest that Evony, LLC, which formed twelve days after Everiss’s alleged defamation, has nothing to do with Delaware, or Australia, and that the sole purpose of this suit is to bankrupt Everiss by requiring him to fly around the world in order to defend himself from baseless allegations of libel and defamation by Evony’s real owners, who pardon me, may not speak English so well, wherever they may be.

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The newest iteration of Sony’s totally fun and not at all extortionate handheld has endured some rather poor sales in Australia. The managing director for Sony Computer Entertainment told The Age that the number of units sold is “not under 1000 but it’s slightly over 1000″ and considered it a “soft launch”.

It’s not difficult to see what has caused such disappointing sales: the unit retails for $450 in Australia (417 USD). I’d like to remind you dear readers that the very same device retails for 249 USD in America. When the PS3 slim only costs another 50AUD, stretching to another 50 bucks can’t mean much for the sake of a plethora of reasons to get a fully-fledged console over a hand-held.

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Better yet, Valve have said that if the unedited version has a successful appeal, the game can be patched. Nothing like some free gore upgrades to brighten your day. Unless you’re on the Xbox, where Microsoft will probably call it a feature and tack on an extra $5 for fun.

Less than a day after Valve announced they were appealing the banning of Left 4 Dead 2 in forward thinking Australia, the classification page shows the game now has an MA 15+ rating. This isn’t because those in charge realised the error of their ways, instead simply reflecting the fact that a toned down version of the game has been given the green light.

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Backwards. Dumb. Wrong. Annoying. Pointless.

The National Classification Scheme website has a classification listing for Left 4 Dead 2, and it’s not good. It’s not even a classification. It seems Valve stepped over the line (probably because of all the racism) and have been refused classification, essentially banning the game from the country.

As Australia has no rating higher than 15+ for video games (though their film ratings go all the way up to 18+), any game that doesn’t fit into the safe-for-teens category can not be classified. Which sucks.

EA told Kotaku AU that they “are still working through the submission process with [the Office of Film and Literature Classification] and want to explore all opportunities before making any comment.”

Via: Reddit

You may have heard us talking on the latest NGCast about Valve flying out of the heads of the L4D2 Boycott group to play the game and get them to shut their stupid pie-holes. (As a quick aside wasn’t it fantastic to see the boycotters eat their words?) One intrepid modder named Joe emailed Gabe after seeing that Valve were flying out trolls and asked why he hadn’t been flown out so Valve could play his campaign for the original L4D.

Of course this is all in good fun, as Joe is a huge Valve supporter and seems to even be on rather close terms, perhaps even closer than The GHost, with Gabe Newell. As Valve are hilarious and do lots of cool things, Gabe decided he would reply to Joe, stating that they are boycotting his mod.

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Video games are only played by children and hard evidence exists to prove, without a doubt, that any game aimed at people older than 17 will lead players into a life crime, violence, debauchery and ultimately destroy civilisation. If you play a game that is too mature for a 17 year old to cope with, it will kill you. It will use its powers of seduction to sneak into your mind and make you murder your parents and it will make you goose-step around the home, decreeing that only the pure breed should live on.

Oh wait, that’s not true at all. Somebody should tell the Australian government. From the Sydney Morning Herald:

The [Australian] Federal Government has now set its sights on gamers, promising to use its internet censorship regime to block websites hosting and selling video games that are not suitable for 15 year olds.

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If you’ve got a Wii and haven’t yet picked up House of the Dead: Overkill, I suggest you do. After all, who doesn’t like shooting zombies with a friend? Australians, that’s who.

To be more specific, an Australian parents’ organization isn’t happy with the MA15+ rating awarded to the game by the country’s Office of Film and Literature Classification. Angela Conway, Director of Pro Family Perspective told the Melbourne Herald-Sun she was concerned about the level of “sexually aggressive violence” and “aggressively violent language”.

The game recently broke the Guinness World Record for most swearing in a video game with 189 instances of the word “fuck”. Having played the game myself, I’m not surprised that this is a record!

By means of comparison, Wikipedia has a list of films that most frequently use the word “fuck”. HotD: Overkill would sit in the lowly 50′s, were it a movie and not a game. At the top of the list is Fuck, a documentary on the word itself, featuring 824 uses – the equivalent of 8.86 per minute. Unsurprisingly, the Australian ratings board awarded the film with a classification of R18+.

HotD: Overkill could not be awarded with the same rating however, because MA15+ is the highest possible for games. Many games that would be awarded an 18 in the UK are subject to censorship in Australia, in order to keep the rating down.

Conway is calling for a review of the level of violence allowed by the MA15+ classification. I suggest that instead she lobbies for games to take their place alongside films in Australia, with an extension of the ratings system up to R18+. Many games that are not suitable for 15-year-olds are perfectly fine in the hands of law-abiding adults, and the rating should reflect that. HotD: Overkill is an 18 in the UK, so why not in Australia?

Michael Atkinson, Australian Attorney General, has appeared on Australian TV explaining why he has used his veto powers to prevent discussion of an R18+ rating being created in Australia. At the moment, if a game wants to be released in Oz, it must meet the MA15+ rating.

Atkinson argues that by creating an R18+ rating, games will be allowed to be created which are more violent. He continues that because Australia would be allowing more violent or adult themed games to be sold, children will be more likely to turn to violence. Sound logical, apart from the bit where R18+ games, but the fact they are R18+, are clearly not meant to be played by kids.

It seems a real shame that a single man can prevent even discussion of an R18+ rating. One man who refers to other countries which allow R-rated games as “just so many gathering swine going over the cliff”.

I, and I think most other gamers, actually completely agree with him on the point that young kids shouldn’t be allowed to play adult games. In exactly the same way I don’t think young kids should be allowed to see adult films. But I do also think that adults should be allowed to play adult games, or at least have the option too.

It’s also worth mentioning something that often seems forgotten during these debates; that “adult” doesn’t have to mean bloody violence or pornographic sex.

Via: The Escapist & GP