Sex and Violence - Never The Twain

Okay, I originally wasn't going to touch this, but Leigh Alexander (who I recently discovered to be awesome) has posted on it twice in a week and I think it's probably something that deserves a wider discussion.

If you are reading The Dust Forms Words, the chances are you already have an opinion about violence in games. Probably you think that violence is a legitimate element to include in videogames, it can be fun, and it would be a sadder world if every videogame was non-violent. Certainly violence does not automatically enrich a game, and occasionally it subtracts from the fun. On some occasions violence can be completely tasteless and worthy of condemnation - but we express that condemnation by not buying the product, not through censorship.

For some reason people feel differently when it comes to sex. We're all excited about Madworld, where you can skewer someone with a streetsign and then push them into a meat grinder, but games about sex are in a different realm. Perhaps the debate is murky here because of the domination of the market by Japanese hentai titles, which cheerfully confuse consensual with non-consensual and have no particular bar against including incestuous or underage scenarios at the drop of a hat.

Does it matter, though? These games neither victimise real people nor encourage the consumer to do so; they have no more real-world impact than Wile E. Coyote getting hit by a falling anvil. We make a judgement as to whether we're amused, and if we're not, we simply choose not to reward the creators with money and attention.

But sex in games is not limited merely to the overtly erotic. Indie game Dangerous High School Girls In Trouble, a mature and clever title currently winning all sorts of praise for both its gameplay and writing, has been de-listed from Big Fish Games over complaints about a scene where the player prevents the rape of a friend. Is this worse than saving a friend from being eaten by zombies? Is it worse than any of the various murders that happen in something like Grand Theft Auto?

And then there's a rank further again; Leigh reports on the delisting of RapeLay from Amazon.com. This is a game where the gameplay is, effectively, the violent rape of fictional women. People who would defend Madworld to the death are surprisingly ready to erase RapeLay from society.

What's the line? Isn't fiction fiction? If Madworld doesn't encourage or condone real-life murder, how does RapeLay advocate rape? Can we not agree that fiction can be tasteless without also saying it should be forbidden?

Loose Morals And Go Fish

In case you're not yet sold on the videogames-and-violence controversy being largely a case of selective reporting, boardgaming blog Purple Pawn has taken the effort to round up no less than nine stories in the last week linking violence to traditional family boardgaming. Go check it out.

These probably came about because people bought playing cards whose contents were not adequately classified. The inherent difficulty in keeping unclassified boardgames out of the hands of children is a real and ongoing issue in our modern society.

Excerpts:

State College, PA: Man plays board games with a few guys, and then one of them later breaks into his apartment and wakes him up by molesting him.

Winona, MI: Sex offender charged with molesting a 6 year old girl during a game of Go Fish.

Chicago, IL: Four women beat and stab a man to death after he breaks one of their cigarettes at a card game.

Alameda, CA: Man stabs to death his friend over a game of chess.

Michael Atkinson to Gamespot

South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson, foremost Australian proponent of videogame censorship, has delivered an exclusive statement to Gamespot, which you can read here.

Before we get into ripping it to shreds, it should be acknowledged that this is progress. Atkinson has provided, for the first time, a detailed, reasoned statement on his position on censorship. He is still, of course, deeply wrong, but the first step in creating change is bringing the relevant parties to the debate.

Atkinson's position is founded on four fundamental misapprehensions, none of which are supported by research. The first is that there exist such a thing as "damaging images and messages". The second is that these images and messages are found in videogames to a greater extent than they are in government public service announcements and the nightly news. The third is that the interactive nature of video games makes content more inherently mature or threatening. And the fourth is that parents are unable or dangerously unwilling to monitor the media use of their children, to a greater extent than is true for DVD content.

It's also a bit worrying that the South Australian Attorney-General, in a statement presumably parsed by his advisors, is unable to get the name of our classification authority right. He refers to the Office of Film and Literature Classification, which has been officially known as the Classification Board for close to a year now.

Also, Atkinson's reference to his children suggests that this is his only direct experience of videogames. Surely we deserve better than a stance dictated largely by the man's relationship with his sons?

It's telling that Atkinson delivers a statement rather than an interview; it's suggestive that the fine detail comes not from Atkinson but from his advisors. It reveals that, even briefed in advance, the South Australian Attorney-General would not be able to intelligently discuss the key issues in the area he's legislating.

Anyway - check out the statement for yourself.

Wikimedia Funding Rebuttal

In quick response to yesterday's post:

Regardless of exactly how it gets spent, Wikipedia runs on less than six million dollars. The remake of the The Day The Earth Stood Still was shot on a budget of eighty million. Which would we rather have in the world?

Wikipedia could probably be done for a lot cheaper, and as a not-for-profit organisation it does deserve a hefty chunk of public scrutiny, but in the bigger scheme of things we're getting an absolute bargain.

Wikimedia Funding

If you visit Wikipedia today you'll be treated to a "personal appeal" from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. This replaces the donation drive image that's been up at the top of each page for the last few months.

After reading the appeal, you may be left thinking that Wikipedia is struggling for funds. After all, its budget is in the realm of "less than six million dollars a year". That's a lot of cash.

Hang on, though. The Wikimedia Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation which employs a total staff of 23 people. Six million dollars? Is that really what it costs to run servers for the world's fifth-most-popular web service?

Let's check out the Wikimedia 07/08 Annual Report. And we'll be glad we did. It turns out that the Wikimedia budget is less than six million dollars - a lot less. Expenditure in 07/08 was only three and a half million dollars, which includes $140,000 for the Wikimania convention and $309,000 in salaries for Executive Director Sue Gardner and Deputy Director Erik Moller.

That's against income of a little over seven million in the same calendar year; in effect, Wikimedia picked up a year's forward operating costs.

Let's look at that in a historical context. At the start of 2006 Wikimedia's net assets totalled $270,000. I'm not missing a zero there. Over that year they raked in one and a half million and shelled out $790,000. By 2007 their net assets were at $1.7 million.

So they want six million in donations for this financial year. What are they going to do with it? Let's look at the annual report again.

1) They're pruning back Wikimania by about 40K. That's probably to do with reduced costs due to the next convention being in Buenos Aires but it's still a reduction in community expenditure.

2) They're expecting no significant increase in legal costs. I'm not sure that that's realistic - as Wikipedia expands you'd think that risk of legal action would rise exponentially, but whatever.

3) Gardner and Moller are getting a combined total increase in salaries of about $170,000.

4) The Wikimedia Board (including founder Jimmy Wales) are having their funding (including salaries) doubled.

5) Administration and technical costs increase by millions of dollars.

The total anticipated budget for next year sits at a little under six million dollars. Income remains stable at seven and a half million, based on an estimated community contribution of not the asked-for six million dollars, but just three million.

I, honestly, have no idea whether $2.7 million in technical expenses is a reasonable figure in order to provide something like Wikipedia. In the absence of expertise I'm going to assume it is. But this doesn't appear to be an organisation that's in shallow financial waters. It's an organisation that's doubling its executive salaries during a global recession.

This is, mind you, just a casual glance over the most shallow of financial documents. I'd assume that no one would take it as gospel, and I invite both educated lectures about Wikimedia financing and barely literate flames. If you think Wikimedia is in more need of money than I'm making out, feel free to start the debate in the comments below.

Communicating With Government Online: How To

Just a little addendum to my last post. Let's say, for example, that you, like most right-minded Australians, see the idea of a national net filter as not only fundamentally misconceived but also ineffective in achieving the goal it aims for. Let's also say you would like to communicate this in writing - let's say by means of a Federal Government consultative blog. (And I'll note that they haven't asked you for your opinion on that, which may mean they aren't interested in hearing it.)

Here are some things to try and include in your written communication.

- Correct spelling and grammar. These will make it look like your opinion has been thought about for longer than it takes to press the spellcheck button, and will also give the impression that you paid attention in school long enough to learn how to use a dictionary, and therefore possibly learned some other things as well.

- Formal English. Net slang is awesome, and there are a whole bunch of places where you can legitimately use it in a hilarious and attention-grabbing fashion. Formal government consultation is not one of them. It's not a matter of whether they "get it" (they might surprise you) - it's that, much in the same way as you wear your best suit to a job interview, you should wear your best English when you're genuinely trying to persuade someone of something. Avoid jargon and pop-culture references.

- Politeness. Even people who are wrong deserve your politeness. Assume good faith. Assume these are people who would honestly like to improve the lot of Australians. At the very least, assume that they are not particularly interested in reading past your insults in case you mixed some good advice in with your name-calling.

- Reasoned argument. "Net filter = fail" may be a pithy reference to modern forum culture but it is unlikely to cause anyone to have a sudden moment of enlightenment and convert to your point of view. Back up your opinions with reasons and examples, and if possible facts, statistics, and references.

- Constructiveness. For each thing that you say is a bad idea, try and include a good idea that could be tried instead. Also note that good ideas are received better when they are expressed without sarcasm.

- Conciseness. This is my weakness, don't let it be yours. The government does not have time to read everything you have to say, particularly in an online forum. Limit yourself to three key points, make your points in three sentences each, and make these the first three paragraphs of your text (with possibly a one-line summary/introduction at the top and a one line summary at the bottom). Even that's really longer than is ideal in a comment section.

- A forward outlook. Focus on the future. Focus on what can be done now, and done tomorrow, not what was or was not done in the past. The government is looking for ideas for future policy, not ideas for things to apologise about.

I hope this helps. I for one am already sick of reading comments consisting of "GG government better luck next election QQ epic net fail lolz you no can haz digital economy cheezburger", and I'm pretty sure the government is too.

Lindsay Tanner is Blogging

The Australian Federal Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy has set up a "consultation blog" over at the Department website. You can read the welcome by the Honourable Lindsay Tanner MP, Federal Minister for Finance and Deregulation, or jump straight to the first substantive post, being on online access to public service information.

It's a little dry so far, but in the spirit of blogging it's a lot more conversational than your average government call for feedback, and I'd recommend everyone put their goodwill behind it by heading on over and checking it out.

In case it's not clear, this is a particularly welcome move because it's taking the conversation about digital culture into a medium where those most informed about it are most likely to respond. It's not only a form of honest and genuine consultation, but it's one that's likely to receive useful and representative responses.

Speaking of which, good to see strangedave among the commentors - also congratulations to anyone else buried in the fairly lengthy response thread. Thanks also to Julia for drawing my attention to the blog in the first place.

Obama's Victory Speech In Full

Barack Obama's Chicago victory speech from yesterday, in full. A cleaner, tighter, but sadly non-embeddable version is also available from the BBC.

There's a certain feeling in Australia almost of guilt. Of guilt because we care. This is America's election; this is an election happening to other people in another nation, across international seas. It's an election we don't vote in. We don't pick the candidates, we don't run the campaign, and ours is not the privilege to turn up to the voting booths on the big day. But still, we care.

Obama's victory yesterday was hugely emotional for any number of people. I am sure it is very welcome for a great many people in America, but it is also possessed of a powerful significance here in Australia. This matters to us, possibly more than our own Federal elections of last year. We care

The reason we care is that, for better or for worse, our wagon is hitched to America. At the close of the 19th century we may have been bannermen to the British Empire but by the dawn of the 21st we were all but the unacknowledged fifty-first United State.

And it felt bad. It felt bad to go to war for America. It felt bad to be apologists for America. It felt bad to be the henchmen to America's foreign-policy mad scientist. It felt like we were on the wrong side. Nobody wants to be Mussolini to somebody else's Hitler. Nobody wants to be the sidekick to someone who is inescapably wrong.

Strife may come and war may come but if they do let us at least know that we are engaged because of what we believe in. Let us believe in our own rightness. Let us do it on our own feet because we believe it is the necessary thing.

I think this is why Obama's victory matters. It's a thing America can be proud of. They can be proud that they have voted for the possibility of something better. There are hard times ahead, and they may have successes and they may have failures, but they will be able to say that they tried.

And it matters for us, for Australians, because once again we can feel that we're on the right side. It's been a long time since we were the proud battlers, since we were the lucky country, and that's been a loss I think we've all felt, but if Australia is to remember its own excellence it starts with the quiet assurance among ourselves that we are the good guys. And I think that, finally, that has begun.

--
This is a victory for all of Obama's campaign team, but I'd like to especially mention Obama's speechwriter, Jon Favreau (no relation to the Iron Man director). Working in concert with Obama, who I understand is a pretty decent speechwriter himself, Favreau's speechwork has been some of the most continually electrifying political rhetoric I have ever heard and I'd like to congratulate him for bringing a return to this consummate height of political address. The "ark of history" speech above is but one example; I think the speeches of this campaign are going to remembered and quoted and drawn from for a very long time to come, and that is an excellent thing.

Thanks, Jon.

Important Presidential Fact #1

In honour of the large number of Americans getting out today to vote in what seems to be a promisingly one-sided election, I'd like to bring your attention to this compelling presidential fact that I just learned right now:

You would think that 27th President of the United States William Howard Taft would have been happy to have an entire town named after him, and indeed that's what happened during the 1920s when a California municipality declared itself to be called Taft in his honour. He may have been less pleased, however, to discover that the town was formerly named Moron. Moron is today known for its annual "Oildorado" oil festival, which features the election of an "Oildorado Queen" and contests of skill at such pursuits as backhoe operation and beard-growing. Other town achievements include a nation-leading consumption of methampthetamines.

Also, here's a bonus "fact": legend has it that the corpulent President Taft once became wedged in the White House bathtub, requiring six attendants and a tub of butter to get free. Hilarious if real. Wikipedia lists this as God's honest truth but fails to provide a citation, much to my annoyance.

Anyone else out there got any Important Presidential Facts that need sharing? This sort of thing is of vital interest to the voting public.

Interactive Australia 2009 Report

Bad game journalists! Bad!

Apparently Dr Jeffery Brand, Ms Jill Borchard and Ms Kym Holmes of the Bond University yesterday published a little something called the "Interactive Australia 2009 Report" which contains a whole bunch of statistics that are very favourable to our gaming Australia. Kotaku's quoting the thing like mad; that's okay, as they're fairly credibly claiming to have an actual copy of the report in front of them. The Herald-Sun have done some reporting and they also appear to actually have the document.

The bad sets in because every man and his dog is on-quoting them without reading the report for themselves. How do I know? Because if they had read the report they would have linked to it. I've had to go and find the thing through my own researches instead of just trusting in the magic of the hypertext markup language. Thanks to the Interactive Entertainment Association of Australia for, as I understand it, commissioning the report and providing the linkage above.

So - the statistics! And be aware that while this summary is nicely sound-bitey, you should go and read the source material for yourself before you start deriving conclusions and possibly looking like an idiot.

(1) Average age of an Australian gamer is 30. That's up two years from 2007, when it was 28, which means not just that the existing population is ageing but that we're picking up new gamers from older demographics.

(2) 88% of Australian households have at least one gaming device (meaning, conversely, that only 12% are going without). 61% have more than one gaming device. "Game device" is defined here to include PCs, consoles and handhelds. Mobile phones and PDAs are specifically excluded.

(3) Male/female player ratio is 54% male, 46% female, up from 59/41 in 2007.

(4) Only 3% of gamers report never playing games socially; 97% report gaming at least occasionally with others in the same location or via the internet.

(5) 63% of Australians are unaware Australia has no R18+ classification for games; 91% of Australians, whether gamers or not, support the introduction of an R18+ rating.

(6) 17% of Australian households report being in possession of pirated games. 24% of those in possession of an illegal game report that they "often" or "usually" go on to purchase legitimate copies of those games.

There's also some analysis of games in parenting, and a bunch of fuzzy-wuzzy quotes and anecdotal stuff which doesn't exactly provide hard fact but does help non-gamers understand where some of the results are coming from.

By and large it seems like excellent research. It is commissioned research; it's not study for the love of study, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. Do check out the methodology at the end of the report; it seems pretty reasonable to a non-statistician like myself. Sample size was 1614; a portion of the sample was surveyed online, which may mean a bias towards the tech literate.

Anyone who's got a criticism of the methodology or an analysis of the results please comment, or link me to your post elsewhere. And if you're quoting the survey please remember the different between what people report when surveyed and the actual fact.

Real-Time Censorship

Disturbing news, everybody!

Microsoft have patented a technology for real-time audio censorship. The technology analyses recorded or live transmitted speech to look for "undesirable" words or phrases and render them inaudible. Which means you can swear all you want, and the person on the other end of the line will just wonder why you've suddenly gone quiet.

Microsoft obviously intends to turn the thing loose on XBox Live, so that young babies and suchlike will be protected from the ravages of the 14-year-old vocabulary, and as a togglable option that's probably something that everyone on that community can benefit from.

It's one of those technologies, though, that could have a lot of horrible, horrible applications in the wrong hands. Can you picture the thing being applied wholesale to our phone system? To our television networks? Ars Technica have already seen the problem in their article, and they draw our attention to the love that regimes like that in China would have for this process. Picture a world where the word "election" simply can't be communicated over a telephone line.

YouTube already uses something similar for automatically detecting copyrighted material in uploaded videos, whereby videos that the algorithm thinks contains visual or audio information belonging to another party are flagged, and the onus is on the video uploader to prove that their work is original. The algorithm is, of course, secret, so the precise method by which it brands you a criminal is neither known nor open to criticism.

Naturally, you can't put the genie back in the box, and the development of something like this was more or less a cultural inevitability. Ultimately the only way that we, as a society, can see that this benefits us more than it harms us is by strong privacy laws, a free and intelligent ongoing political debate on the issue, and through the vigilance of each individual citizen.

ACT Election Result

The ACT Election is over and unfortunately I was not successful in winning a seat in the Assembly. However, Canberra got, on the whole, a good result. The count is not yet final but it seems fairly certain that the Assembly will be 7 Labor, 7 Liberal and 3 Greens, which is a major swing against the older parties and a fantastic and unprecedented result for the Greens. Most of the successful candidates across all parties were intelligent, competent people and with a little luck the ACT will be well served by their new parliament.

Just because the election's over doesn't mean I've stopped campaigning! Relevantly to this blog, I'm still fighting for an R18+ rating in games so stay tuned for more developments on that front.

And I now return you to your regularly scheduled game blogging.

Silent Hill Homecoming Refused Classification

The title speaks for itself. Silent Hill Homecoming (aka Silent Hill 5) has been refused classification by Australia's Classification Board, which has the effect under state and territory law of banning it. Which is to say that it would likely have fit into an R18+ classification if one existed, but it's been shafted by the lack of such a classification for videogames.

Canberra residents who are outraged by videogame censorship are strongly encouraged to vote for me in the ungrouped column at the October 18 ACT election.

For those elsewhere in Australia, the path is to get the attention of your state Attorney-General, preferably in person or by phone, but in the alternative by snail-mail or polite, literate email.

R18+ Rating For Videogames: Facebook Group

Just a quick post to let those of you who are Facebooky know about this group, which I mentioned to group founder Mike Bryce that I'd blog. It's of the "we need an R18+ classification for videogames" persuasion and you can really never belong to too many of those.

Facebook Group: We **NEED** an R Rating!

Gaming Liberty - New Mailbag

By the way, while we're totally not on the topic of "things written by me", there's a new "Ask Greg" mailbag up at GameArena's Gaming Liberty mini-site that you should go check out.

Once you've read it, like I know you will, post a question. If I don't get questions, the GameArena guys will come around to my house and beat me in the kidneys using phonebooks. True story.

Fallout 3: Australia Censors The World

It turns out that the rest of the world will get to "enjoy" the work of Australia's Classification Board. Rather than create different versions of Fallout 3 for different territories, developer Bethesda has decided to just release the single edition, that edition being the one which was edited to keep Australian censors happy.

Doubleplusgood.

Full story at Kotaku.

WA Greens AGAINST An R18+ Classification For Games

Probably too late to catch you Western Australians before you head to the polls, but Kotaku (of all places) has just drawn my attention to the fact that the WA Greens are vocally against the introduction of an R18+ classification for videogames.

Sitting Greens member Giz Watson appears to be responsible for the policy, and to be fair to her it looks as though she's just a bit underinformed rather than totally rabid, but it's still a bit disappointing from a party that's traditionally done better on civil liberties than this. WA Greens policy would continue to see games unsuitable for those under the age of 18 outright banned.

Check out the coverage at the amusingly named somebodythinkofthechildren.com

The Blank Page

There's a new article by me up on BigPond GameArena's "Gaming Liberty" section, entitled The Blank Page. It's on the subject of games as communication, and particularly games as political communication.

Gaming is a blank sheet of paper, and people around the world of all political creeds and agendas are picking up their pens. What they write is yet to be decided, but the course of society will only, can only, be decided by those who have written.

You all should wander over and check it out. Better still, support the article and the site by leaving some comments over there. (I've disabled comments on this post.)

Gamespot Interview Former Censor

Gamespot are currently featuring an excellent interview with former Australian Office of Film and Literature Classification Deputy Director Paul Hunt. In the past it's been notoriously difficult to get straight answers from our censors on exactly how they do their job; here we see a pretty good selection of the most sought-after answers.

It's a great piece and it deserves your attention. It turns out Mr Hunt has been thinking what we've all been saying, or vice versa:

I think we need an R18+ classification, and I always have thought this. Not having this classification is dangerous, naïve and stupid. It's a policy based on misinformation that treats one area of entertainment differently to the others.
- Paul Hunt

Read the full interview: Inside the Classification Board: Q&A with a former depty director (Gamespot)

Updates! Oh Such Updates!

Okay, so I've moved house. I'm in Hackett now. The new house is awesome as it has carpet, which is a definite evolutionary step up from walking on naked dead trees. Plus it's not across the road from a bar, which means that there's no particular reason why I can't get to sleep before midnight on a Sunday night. It also has bay windows and a dedicated library, and costs about $100 a week less than where I was living. Definite win. So that's why the blogging has been short and infrequent.

Those who like to see what I have to say about games will note that I've been featured in the following places:

PALGN's podcast 40 features an interview with me, which is great and needs listening to regardless of how little I like hearing my voice recorded.

BigPond GameArena also has an article by me entitled A Gaming Australia. Give it a read.

Also the SimCity 4 challenge has been and gone, which was a huge success and thanks to everyone involved.

There's also an interview with me coming in an upcoming issue of Hyper Magazine.

The campaign rolls on; Canberrans can hear me on the Mike Jeffreys show at 7.10 am this coming Thursday morning.
UPDATE: Change of plans; this Thursday you'll be able to hear party president Darren Churchill. I'll be featured on a later date.

Gaming-wise things have been interrupted by the house move but I owe you reviews of Braid, Phoenix Wright 3 and SoulCalibur IV. Can I save you some waiting by saying SWEET JEEBERS YOU MUST PLAY BRAID.

That is all.