Week 7 - Games

Gaming has progressed in the recent years. Gaming has moved away from the arcades back in the 80s and 90s to private homes, the internet and smartphones for the whole family to enjoy. For as long as I can remember I have been a ‘gamer’. I grew up with a Commodore 64 and learned to load games when I was only 4 years old. This led to me playing a lot of different games on the C64 and later on PC. A lot of these games have been defined as being “violent” or controversial.

In the text by Raessen he explores the domain of interpretation in video games. According to Jenkins, as citied in Raessen, Computer games have to be defined based on specific combinations of technical, social, cultural and economic characteristics and not on exclusive, essential one. (Raessen, 2005, p. 24).

Throughout the years I have played a lot of video games that would be seen upon as more or less harmless in Denmark, but had controversies in other cultures. An example of this is the latest game in “Saints Row” franchise that has been banned in Australia for the drug use and dildo-weapons (Source: http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/07/saints-row-iv-is-very-banned-in-australia/).

Dildo-weapons and drugs? No go!

Because of the cultural understanding of the game in Australia, the game was banned. This is not the first time a game has been banned in Australia or multiple countries for that matter. The Grand Theft Auto franchise has some of the most well-known controversies in the new age of gaming and has especially been targeted in Australia and USA.

GTA III, Vice City and GTA IV have been released as censored versions in Australia, due to the mature content.

Once again, the cultural opinion of the game as seen upon by the Australian authority has caused a modification of the game compared to the rest of the world. The reasons behind this may be well-argued, but where is the limit? Even after a lot of research has shown us, that videogames are NOT to blame for horrors such as school-shootings, videogames continue to be under attack of censorship.

Maybe this will not be censored?

References:


Raessens, J 2005, ‘Computer games as participatory media culture, Handbook of Computer Game Studies, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, pg 373-388

http://images.lazygamer.net/2013/01/SaintsRowDildo.jpg

http://i1103.photobucket.com/albums/g461/TheTacoDefender/GTAAUS.png