Video Game Nasties

Grand Theft Auto series

An unsurprising entry into the any list of banned games; it’s no shock to learn the GTA series has carried a rich heritage of censorship violations throughout its history…

The series began just over 10 years ago and, together with its sequel, it largely passed the media’s eyes by for a game that basically glorifies car crime. Come the release of the third instalment however, and the games anonymity was no more – things had started to go a bit mental.

When Grand Theft Auto III was released for the Playstation 2, the world sat up and took notice. Still just as controversial to this day, it quickly became infamous for its gratuitous violence and game-play that encouraged reckless sociopathic behaviour. TV channels and newspapers the world over reported on this latest phenomenon, concerned that it would corrupt our youth and encourage real-life crime.

In a way, they were proved right, as there are many cases of teen gun crime – particularly in America – that cite playing GTA as a factor and motivation for their actions. How much of this is true, and how much is a convenient excuse used as a way of explanation, we’ll probably never know.

The game was banned in Australia until a censored version took its place, which cut out the gore and stopped the player from being able to kill prostitutes. However PC users found a way around this by setting their computers clock to a different time zone, thus fooling the game into thinking it was being played outside of Australia. Playstation users had no such luck, and were stuck with the toned down version.

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, picked up from where its predecessor left off, and if anything created even more of a media storm. Along with the violence, the games developers were accused of stirring up racial hatred with their depictions of Cubans and Haitians. Again, it was forced to be modified before it could go on sale in Australia, whilst the rest of the world gave it an adults-only rating.

Then came its follow up, San Andreas, again showered with concern from conservatives and pressure groups across the globe. PC users could install a patch in the game, dubbed the “Hot Coffee Mod”, and control their character as he has sex with his in-game girlfriend. In the unmodified version, you never see anything explicit, rather the camera stays outside whilst you hear plenty of moaning noises for a few seconds. At least, I assume he is having sex – either that or he is suffering from terrible constipation. With the patch installed, the camera follows your character into the house and you play a mini-game of sorts, allowing you to take part in actual sexual intercourse. Cripes.

Rest assured, everything boiled over, politicians got involved, and the game was pulled from the shelves the world over until it was rereleased minus the aforementioned sex game.

This brings us to Grand Theft Auto IV, Rockstar’s tour de force of guns, drugs and dodgy Russian music. Even on the day of its release, the game made headlines after a man was stabbed whilst queuing up for the game outside a shop. That pretty much set the tone for what was to follow…

Copies of GTA IV were pulled from the shelves in Thailand after a student stabbed a cab driver to death when he tried to copy a scene from the game. He was arrested trying to steer the cab backwards out of a street with the driver laying in the back seat dying from his wounds. A Bangkok Police source was quoted as saying “He wanted to find out if it was as easy in real life to rob a taxi as it was in the game.”