Fallout 3 Ban in AU Due To Drugs
The Fallout games were always renowned for their real-world approach to the post-apocalyptic scifi adventure. Need some quick cash for better armor? Pimp yourself out or maybe sell a comrade into slavery because you definitely need that shiny new combat armor. Need that extra edge in combat? A cocktail of Jet, Buffout and Psycho makes you an unstoppable combat juggernaut. As responsible game developers though they were always careful to include the dangers of drug use: addiction and withdrawal. Either that or they just didn’t want to unbalance the game.
Drug use and the associated benefits/drawbacks is of course going to still be included in Bethesda’s update of the series and is the cause of the ban in Australia. IGN obtained a copy of the report outlining their reasons for banning the game and to their credit it seems that the only issue is a line drawn between real world drugs and the fictional ‘chems’ of the Fallout world. Like most things in the game, drug use is built into the PipBoy on the character’s arm. To dose yourself with something you pull up the ‘Chem’ menu and scroll through the various drugs you’ve collected til you decide which one you want to use.
Here’s where the real problem comes in. Each particular chem has its own picture, many of which would be instantly recognized by Fallout fans. The OFLC raised complaints that the visual representation of pills, syringes and pill bottles bring the fictional drugs in line with real world drugs. The issue at hand is that the legislation states that any games that depict drug use as having any positive effects (regardless of a game balancing it with negative effects) is illegal. They also make the assumption that the ‘chems’ are an essential part of the game instead of simply being an option, one I myself was always loath to turn to in the original two games.
Given that most of the complaint hinges upon a portrayal of real-world drugs as beneficial, getting the game through the board might be as simple as changing the pictures to something less objectionable, say for example generic liquid bottles or even a cartoonish representation of the effect of the drug. For those of you saying “yes but then they’ll ban the game for the violence”, it seems that they’d already taken the violence into account, but felt that a MA15+ rating was suitable along with a warning of extremely violent content.