Games News

MeiQ: Labyrinth of Death is a Japanese dungeon based role playing console game.

The Australian Classification Board has just banned the game citing a game feature allowing gamers to caress the breasts of the characters. The Australian censors decided that one of the characters depicts a child and so the game was banned.

Perhaps something the US game rating board missed as they gave the game a Teen (13) rating.

The censors explained:

The game features a variety of female characters dressed in provocative clothing with their cleavage emphasised by their clothing revealing the sides or underside of their breasts. The five main characters in the game are Machina Mages , females who pair with robot-like guardians in order to do battle. Four of the five,  Estra, Flare, Maki and Setia, although of indeterminate age, are all adult-like, with voluptuous bosoms and large cleavage that are flaunted with a variety of skimpy outfits.

The fifth main character, Connie, is depicted as child-like in comparison. She is flat-chested, under-developed physically (such as the hips), is significantly shorter than the other characters and wears her hair in pigtails. She also has a child-like voice, wears colourful child-like clothing and appears naive in her outlook on life. She is also referred to as a girl by the other main characters. In the Board's opinion, the character of Connie depicts a person who is, or appears to be, a child under 18.

The game features use of the Playstation Vita's touchscreen feature, that allows the player to touch or run their finger across the touchscreen in order to make any female character's breasts move in response. The chest area of Connie is viewed moving slightly when this occurs, which is significantly different from the greater movement viewed when one of the four adult-like female characters is touched.

Criminal Girls 2: The Party's Over is a 2016 Japan RPG adventure game.

The distributors, NIS America, have announced that the game will be censored for release in Europe and North America.

NIS America senior product marketing manager Jordan Vincent said in a blog post:

Some of you might be asking, Why change anything in the first place?'.The answer to that question is pretty complicated overall, but here's the short version: While we do our best to make all our fans happy, we also need to make sure that our games can be released on the platform they're made for, and released in the various territories in which we sell them.

NIS America explained the changes made prior to submission to the Entertainment Software Ratings Board,.

1. 1) Some artwork, especially during the motivation scenes, were altered over their explicit nature. It seems NIS America worried the ESRB would take issue with women tied up against the their will.
2. Swapping the term punishment for motivation. In the Japanese version of the game, the motivation scenes are actually punishment.
3. There won't be any English voice overs. All of the text will be displayed in English, but the voice tracks are staying Japanese.
4. All dialogue has been removed from the motivation scenes.
5. The stated ages of some the girls have been changed

Vincent finally reiterated the commercial necessity to censor the games to avoid a US AO (adults only rating) which simply not be allowed by console makers and retailers:

Though the debate about precedent and what should qualify as AO vs. M is ongoing, the only opinion that really matters is that of the ratings boards. We can (and often do, trust me) argue our position, but at the end of the day, we have to conform with the guidance the ratings boards give us. If they inform us that a title is going to be rated a certain way, we cannot persuade them otherwise by bringing up. They've made their decision, and we have to respect that and work with it rather than against it.

 

Last week's news that the Indonesian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology was ready to ban 15 games deemed too dangerous for children by the Ministry of Education and Culture upset plenty of people, especially Indonesian gamers.

At least one hacker was apparently so pissed off by the news that he defaced the website of the Child Protection Commission (KPAI) for supporting the video game ban plan.

The list of 15 games targeted by the proposed ban rather suggested that the government wasn't really up to speed about the games they were planning to ban:

1.World of Warcraft
2. Call of Duty
3.Point Blank
4.Cross Fire
5.War Rock
6.Counter Strike
7.Mortal Kombat
8.Future Cop
9.Carmageddon
10.Shelshock
11.Raising Force
12.Atlantica
13.Conflict Vietnam
14.Bully
15.Grand Theft Auto.

However it looks like those gamers can heave a sigh of relief as it appears that the protests did the trick. Education Minister Anies Baswedan now says that he does not think a ban is necessary. He said:

No, no, no (to the ban). We want [parents to use] the ratings.

Fortunately Minister Anies has common sense and pulled the plug on this controversy before it leveled up into something much more embarrassing for his ministry.