Rubénerd!

In a shocking move of common sense, the Australian Senate has made the trivially easy process of importing R18 games into Australia unnecessary. Right?

ABC News carried this at the end of their report:

Provided the states pass complementary legislation, the changes are due to come into effect on January 1.

I've been told on Twitter it's a shoe-in, but I wouldn't get my hopes up yet. Let's just say... past experience with trusting all our different layers of government ;).

I don't play R18 games, but I blogged about it in 2010, complete with a Haruhi/SHUFFLE image. Because I could!

I wanted to add my voice to the chorus of discontented Mac users over the state of Steam for our platform with my own criticism:

You have none of the games I want.

Hey wait, even the Windows version doesn't. Never mind.

Up until recently, the worst crimes South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson committed were against common sense, civil liberties, free speech and defamation of law abiding computer gamers. Now it's personal.

Dear Michael Atkinson,

Regarding the spending of public funds on questionable research

A couple of years ago I lost my mum and best friend to cancer after she lost her 12 year struggle with the debilitating disease -- a struggle I can't begin to relate to -- and now we all discover you willingly supplied funds to an organisation that places such a disease in the same league as... computer gaming?

I would like to print (nay, spit) the string of four letter words spinning in my head and express in detail how you've further crushed my faith in humanity, but Debra (my late mum) used to tell me people like you aren't worth it. She was right.

Peace, health and happiness,
Ruben Schade

I'm over politicians.

@HawkGeminus has just put the finishing touches on the main page for GrowUpAustralia.com.

What comes as a shock to many is that Australia is the only developed country without an R18+ rating for video games. Films, which fall under the same classification system, can be granted an R18+ or even X18+ rating but this is not the case for computer and video games. If a game exceeds the MA15+ rating, it is either refused classification or modified to fit within the rating guidelines.

The new site, if anything, proves conclusively I'm incapable of competing with professional designers and journalists. Wait, I mean that it proves the Aussie Government plan for a comprehensive filter on websites they arbitrarily deem inappropriate and their refusal to release R18+ games because they don't think Australian adults are capable of deciding for themselves what's appropriate, is a complete scam.

As a matter of disclosure (and it's sad public discourse on the subject renders this necessary at all) I do not play R18+ games, but that doesn't mean other responsible adults who choose to shouldn't be allowed. Good heavens, is this a western democracy or a... wait, I think I'll end that thought there.

I could argue the case here (and believe me it could fill several books), but GrowUpAustralia.com does a better job.

Here's another Rubénerd Fun Fact for all you rabid Official Rubénerd Fun Fact fans. I know you're out there, I can hear you furrowing your brows and sighing.

R18+ games are designated as such for the pirate sound one makes when pronouncing it.

This is my own personal contribution to the debate started by NotGamers.net. Don't let the name fool you, despite claiming they lied, they're not gamers. Unless they are.

Thank you.

Sometimes it's just so simple for people like Michael Atkinson to pass the legislation he wants. Other times though this dang thing called democracy gets in the way and ruins everything. What's the point of being able to pass laws if the people the law will effect want to debate? Sheesh!

South Australia Attorney General Michael Atkinson says the upcoming public consultation on videogames will likely show "overwhelming" support for an R18+ rating because the only people who care enough to get involved in the debate are gamers.

Clearly the fact this issue is even an... issue, suggests this debate is not just limited to the discourse of a bunch of computer gamers high on Mountain Dew and virtual AK-47s. But I digress from the primary point.

Since when do I have a point?

If you're not aware of what's going on in Australia, there's debate as to whether mature games should be legally purchased and sold instead of people downloading them off the internet for free or importing them from overseas in parcels with customs labels that read "steam ironed doilies". Currently it's illegal to buy them, so people simply get them from elsewhere and continue to live their lives as mature adults able to decide for themselves what's appropriate and what isn't.

Unfortunately -- as has been pointed out to me in various online realms of discussion -- politicians tend to not understand logic or sarcasm, both of which are the preferred tools of the computer nerd in getting points across, as I have just illustrated. In fact, it's as if they're immune to both of them, like a Mountain Dew-powered AK-47 wrapped in doilies. Bummer.

James Blunt pencils

To be blunt, as an Aussie who spends most of his life overseas, this mature gaming category farce is just another embarrassment for Australia on the global stage along with the proposed Great Firewall of Australia and our woefully outdated telecommunications infrastructure that we were promised would be fixed in the last election and, surprise surprise, nothing has come of it. It would be hilarious if it weren't so tragic. Well okay it is a little funny, in a hollow sort of way.

And for the record, I do not play any mature age games, unless Commander Keen had some subtle erotic references of which I wasn't aware. The eyes on those aliens were awfully long.

Reading the always entertaining Slashdot I saw a story claiming the Russian government pulled Modern Warfare 2 (screenshot above... uh, yeah!) from stores, allegedly because they weren't too happy having their citizens being demonised as terrorists. Eldavojon asks "Is cultural sensitivity becoming an overly played card in the gaming world? Not too long ago, Wolfenstein was recalled in Germany for containing Nazi symbols." and I attempt to answer.

If you've read my blog for a while, particularly my posts about the Great Australian Firewall proposal you'd know I'm a supporter of free speech; perhaps in a more European sense that it's as important as other rights but not more so. In this case I couldn't help but think about the other side if only for a moment.

Firstly, a bit of clarification. The reason why Wolfenstein was recalled in Germany was due to the law put in place after World War II that displaying and publishing the Nazi Swastika was illegal. Even in a world where free speech is hailed as the one of the most important human rights you can see why they would have wanted this. The game had the symbol, and it was revoked. Case closed, moving on.

The case of Modern Warfare 2 in Russia is more complex in that the game didn't break any laws (as far as I know) and therefore I condemn the removal on legal grounds, but it's perhaps another situation where a bit of empathy for their side may help to understand motives. You've got to think that two decades after the Cold War ended Russians would be starting to get fed up with being cast as the evil guys in movies, television shows and games, particularly when the American government has been waging questionable military action in countries like Iraq. It certainly doesn't help to break old stereotypes.

I wouldn't have revoked the game, but then again I wouldn't have played it either. Perhaps this is a case where market forces would have solved the problem without government intervention, as opposed to the Wolfenstein where a clear law was violated. The Russian governments actions do seem heavy handed, and it's not as if there aren't any illegal avenues for people to turn to.

I have an exam tomorrow and I'm nervous beyond belief, so I'm writing blog posts like this. They're a good distraction.

Update

According to the UK Telegraph, Activision are claiming the game hasn't been banned. You mean to say Slashdot jumped the gun on a story? No, never ;).

Activision, the publisher behind Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, says that reports of the Russian government banning the game are 'erroneous'.

The controversy surrounding Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has taken a surreal turn, with the game's publisher releasing a [statement] saying the multi-million unit selling game hasn't received a ban in Russia.

Sometimes a short train trip late at night through the Marias Pass train route in northern Montana with the 2001 era DirectX graphics and sky is just what I need to relax just before going to sleep.

I first got Train Simulator in 2002, it was the first game I tried on my desktop at the time, the first game I tried running with Boot Camp with my then-new MacBook Pro in early 2006 (Windows gaming on a MacBook Pro), and is still one of the reasons I keep a copy of Windows XP lying around for the 3D acceleration in software like VMware Fusion.

For someone who moved around so much as a kid and could never have huge trainsets, this was the closest I ever got, and I still find it fun :).

I wasn't born when the DEC PDP-8 computer came out and was only a few months old when the Commodore 128D did with it's Zilog Z80 awesomeness, so the earliest nostalgic computer memories I have are of our old DOS machine from the early 90s. As I've said here many times before we ran DOS with PowerMenu and originally Windows 3.0 with Multimedia Extensions, then Windows 3.1.

In my spare time for the last couple of years I've been collecting legitimate copies of some of the software we used to have on that 486SX tower so I could recreate it in some form of virtual machine on my MacBook Pro or FreeBSD machines for silly, irrelevant, nostalgic purposes. So far I've found DOSBox has been the easiest, lightest and most portable solution to use, even if it is a little slower. I consider slower a feature though, makes it feel more authentic :).

In the same manner as our original DOS machine we dubbed the "Melbourne Computer" because my dad's job had us living there at the time we bought it, I have DOSBox set up to load PowerMenu upon booting, with our DOS apps available from the menus and Windows configured to launch if we want it. At the time this meant we didn't have too much of our precious 4.0MiB of RAM being used by Windows when we only wanted to run DOS apps like XTreeGold or WordPerfect, and games like Commander Keen, Lemmings and SimCity Classic! I was born in the 1980s, but I grew up in the 90s :).

Anyway I had a point for this post, but I long since lost sight of it and rambled on for a few paragraphs about silly nostalgia. Perhaps I'll get back to what I was supposed to be posting about some other time.

So I was talking to somebody online about Taekwondo and wasn't sure about the spelling, so I looked up the Sports section on the South Korea Wikipedia article. In hindsight I may as well have just looked up the Taekwondo page itself. You do silly things when you're half asleep.

According to Wikipedia, as it turns out StarCraft is South Korea's national sport. If it's on Wikipedia, it has to be true! A WikiAnswers page corroborates this.

I learn something new every day; and forget two other things. Komapsumnida.