Pete Hines: different censorship standards in different countries “frustrating”

Fallout 3 (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC) has only recently been cleared for release in Australia after the whole drugs debacle, but it looks like Bethesda‘s Pete Hines is still a bit peeved. According to the Fallout 3 product manager, censorship laws that differ from country to country are “frustrating”. More from Hines in the full article.

Getting a game approved by a country’s classification board is hard work, but what makes it even more frustrating is that different countries have different standards when it comes to censorship.

A very violent game may get the go signal in one country and be banned outright in another. The history of the video game industry is riddled with examples of this happening.

“The frustrating thing for us is that the standards and rules can be so varied across territories, that we work with five or six ratings agencies and each one has different ‘hot buttons’,” Fallout 3 product manager Pete Hines told CVG.

“In one place nudity is a big deal but violence is fine, and in another place drugs are a problem but nudity is fine,” Hines added. “You’re not aiming at one target, you’re aiming at six different ones, worrying about how each one will feel about different things.”

Bethesda‘s Fallout 3 (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC) has had its share of brushes with censorship. It almost didn’t make it through Australia‘s Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC) due to the presence of drugs in the game. The game has since been given the green light.

• OFLC: Fallout 3 banned in Australia because of drugs
• MP proposes bill to apply more censorship in video games
• Grand Theft Auto 4 banned in UAE

Via CVG