Australia is also the same place where they had to switch the word “drugs” out with “chems” in Fallout, and video games have to have green blood. That whole place is ass backwards and upside down, as one would expect given its geographical location.
As an Australian this is accurate, remember it is illegal here to share nude photos or porn if the woman has small breasts! Because protect the children
There was a time before the R18+ classification for video games existed that some violent games were refused classification (Left 4 Dead 2 being one of the most prominent examples; the gore and dismemberment were cut out, but the blood was still red and it was trivial to restore the gore), but that stopped being an issue about 15 years ago.
Morphine was switched to Med-X (worldwide) due to refusal for classification in Australia for Fallout 3 in 2008. Fallout has used the word “chems” in every country since the start I thought.
Are you claiming that all video games have to have green blood to be sold in Australia?
No, they went too far in the opposite direction. “Okay we all got sent here for murder, whoring, and illicit trafficking, so let’s switch to punishing those with person and fines.”
If prisoner colonists put you in prison is it double prison?
The US is filled with gun crazy bigoted nut bags who love to go around bathrooms for genital inspections while crying at the sight of any rainbow flag.
See how unhelpful it is to make shitty generalisations?
I think this was a ratings issue. I think you can make video games with real life drugs in them but if you don’t want an +18 rating you’ll have to compromise. I think Bethesda got told they could only sell the game to adults and so they changed the names to make more money. I mean I was playing GTA selling real drugs and playing fallout 4 and doping on fake drugs on the same PS4 at 15, I just couldn’t walk into eb’s and buy a copy of GTA without my dad there lol.
I’m all for creative freedoms but when it comes to selling games to kids that show real life drugs as giving sweet buffs, maybe a little subtlety is warranted.
Anyway obligatory ragebait dum American can’t comprehend nuance comment
Kinda correct, it was a ratings issue. The problem was that we didn’t have an 18+ rating for video games - if your game was deemed 18+ then you couldn’t sell it here. Sex, depictions of drug use, and a couple of other things I can’t remember right now are reasons for an instant 18+ rating.
Bethesda got told they couldn’t sell it to anyone in Australia, so they compromised to drugs that didn’t actually exist.
Left 4 Dead had something similar with the gore; if I remember correctly, L4D rating submission referred to the zombies as “monsters” (or something) and passed while L4D2 referred to the zombies as “infected people”… because they were now people, our ratings board shit the bed protected the children and gave it 18+ until they removed the bodies and gore. It was patched back in by Valve when we got an 18+ rating.
South Park: The Stick of Truth has/had some good censored scenes about this, graphically describing Randy being probed by an alien while the graphic of a koala sits in the background. These were patched out too I think (or I downloaded a mod).
We still have people like these lobbying against porn on Steam, but the overall situation got a lot better when we got an 18+ rating.
The name changes go back to Fallout 3 (at least, I can’t recall if FO1 & FO2 had the same drama).
By the time of Fallout 4, names like Med-X (morphine), Rad-Away (iodine), Brawno (amphetamine? I can’t remember) were well and truly bedded in, and suited the aesthetic. Why change it at that point? They’ve created names that suit the aesthetic better than the actual drug names.
I was in my mid/late 20s when this was all going down. I grey imported the MK reboot so I could play, had a copy of Manhunt, and others. The Fallout drug names were a result of the lack of 18+ rating and trying to comply with MA15.
Australia is also the same place where they had to switch the word “drugs” out with “chems” in Fallout, and video games have to have green blood. That whole place is ass backwards and upside down, as one would expect given its geographical location.
As an Australian this is accurate, remember it is illegal here to share nude photos or porn if the woman has small breasts! Because protect the children
What in the world is the litmus test for that
If they don’t think “BAZONGAS!” when they see them, then they’re too small.
Has anyone been convicted of this?
it’s dumb that that’s the reason for the change…but i honestly associate that kind of fantasy language with fallout in general.
makes it feel more like a parallel world, close but not quite like our own, and helps suspension of disbelief!
overall a good change, imho, for a very dumb reason…silver linings, i guess…
This is completely untrue.
They might be referring to the 90s, post Mortal Kombat.
A lot of games got blood censorship in a lot of countries.
Even before that I know some games like Contra they replaced the infected “humans” with robots.
I am really fucking old, to be fair, but every time I hear about violent video games being censored it’s Australia.
There was a time before the R18+ classification for video games existed that some violent games were refused classification (Left 4 Dead 2 being one of the most prominent examples; the gore and dismemberment were cut out, but the blood was still red and it was trivial to restore the gore), but that stopped being an issue about 15 years ago.
That’s way after the SNES and NES era
True, but I was a child and was not old enough to remember how strict the Australian classification rules for video games were back then.
Morphine was switched to Med-X (worldwide) due to refusal for classification in Australia for Fallout 3 in 2008. Fallout has used the word “chems” in every country since the start I thought.
Are you claiming that all video games have to have green blood to be sold in Australia?
The country started life as a prison with prison rules, seems they forgot to get rid of those rules when they became a real country
No, they went too far in the opposite direction. “Okay we all got sent here for murder, whoring, and illicit trafficking, so let’s switch to punishing those with person and fines.”
If prisoner colonists put you in prison is it double prison?
The US is filled with gun crazy bigoted nut bags who love to go around bathrooms for genital inspections while crying at the sight of any rainbow flag.
See how unhelpful it is to make shitty generalisations?
Isn’t that the case though?
Not really - seems like a pretty accurate description
I think this was a ratings issue. I think you can make video games with real life drugs in them but if you don’t want an +18 rating you’ll have to compromise. I think Bethesda got told they could only sell the game to adults and so they changed the names to make more money. I mean I was playing GTA selling real drugs and playing fallout 4 and doping on fake drugs on the same PS4 at 15, I just couldn’t walk into eb’s and buy a copy of GTA without my dad there lol.
I’m all for creative freedoms but when it comes to selling games to kids that show real life drugs as giving sweet buffs, maybe a little subtlety is warranted.
Anyway obligatory ragebait dum American can’t comprehend nuance comment
Kinda correct, it was a ratings issue. The problem was that we didn’t have an 18+ rating for video games - if your game was deemed 18+ then you couldn’t sell it here. Sex, depictions of drug use, and a couple of other things I can’t remember right now are reasons for an instant 18+ rating.
Bethesda got told they couldn’t sell it to anyone in Australia, so they compromised to drugs that didn’t actually exist.
Left 4 Dead had something similar with the gore; if I remember correctly, L4D rating submission referred to the zombies as “monsters” (or something) and passed while L4D2 referred to the zombies as “infected people”… because they were now people, our ratings board
shit the bedprotected the children and gave it 18+ until they removed the bodies and gore. It was patched back in by Valve when we got an 18+ rating.South Park: The Stick of Truth has/had some good censored scenes about this, graphically describing Randy being probed by an alien while the graphic of a koala sits in the background. These were patched out too I think (or I downloaded a mod).
We still have people like these lobbying against porn on Steam, but the overall situation got a lot better when we got an 18+ rating.
The first Australian +18 video game was released in January 2013, GTA 5 came out in December 2013 and fallout 4 was released in November… 2015
From what I can tell from the timeline of events it absolutely was a move by Bethesda to market the game to kids.
The name changes go back to Fallout 3 (at least, I can’t recall if FO1 & FO2 had the same drama).
By the time of Fallout 4, names like Med-X (morphine), Rad-Away (iodine), Brawno (amphetamine? I can’t remember) were well and truly bedded in, and suited the aesthetic. Why change it at that point? They’ve created names that suit the aesthetic better than the actual drug names.
I was in my mid/late 20s when this was all going down. I grey imported the MK reboot so I could play, had a copy of Manhunt, and others. The Fallout drug names were a result of the lack of 18+ rating and trying to comply with MA15.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2008/07/fallout-3-cant-get-a-rating-in-australia/
https://www.smh.com.au/technology/fallout-continues-from-ban-on-game-20080715-gdsma8.html
https://www.gameshub.com/news/features/australian-classification-law-video-games-2646457/
Ah yeah true dat