Adult version of car theft game gets nod

People who have a problem with these games need to get a life, seriously. The sorts of people who try and ban video games are the sorts who won't be happy until fun and colours are outlawed. Go form your own uber-Communist micro nation where these can be illegal if you have such serious social issues.

Reply to #3.

Do your homework and 'relax'. Would you like to ban movies with much more explicit sex scenes that currently carry R18 ratings? Have you ever seen violence on TV? Typical moron 'sheeple' behaviour - fear the new media.

Checkmate.

gangsta shizzle my nizzle

Post 5 is a good example of slippery slope argumentation. Bad Thing Y is not as bad as Bad Thing X, and everyone seems OK with Bad Thing X, therefore don't worry about Bad Thing Y. Then when Even Badder Thing Z comes out, well, it's not much worse than Bad Thing Y, so don't worry about it. It's like the old story of the frog getting slowly boiled, just not rapidly enough to realise he needs to jump out of the pot. Only in this case it's not that we're boiling, it's that we're slowly drowning in a sewer that - you know what? - doesn't taste so bad after all, does it, especially compared with all that other stuff floating around us. The Porn Boys sitting in the dark being "entertained" by GTA IV aren't isolated units independent from the rest of the world - they are people that the rest of us, and our children, may have to interact with. Accepting this stuff just makes society that much less virtuous, which is the problem with "if you don't like it, don't watch it". Sure, I can not watch it. But my kids might go to school with your kids. That's the thing about living in a community - the fact that there are actually people who think this stuff is not so bad just proves the two points that (a) they've lost touch with a genuine understanding of the good, the true and the beautiful, and (b) lowering the standards of decency in a society tends to reinforce itself as things keep pushing the ever-expanding envelope of "edginess".

Sure if they can stop parents/older siblings buying it for their younger children/brothers. because it is very well to have a rating But I know a child who is 12 years old and said that his parents brought it.

There going to be a point where graphics and detail in GTA games becomes so realistic that children who own a copy will find it hard to tell the difference between virtual reality and the real world.

It's crazy how we're so bitchy about censoring humanity's best thing: sex, while we don't really care about showing violence; humanity's worst thing.

When will the government and Gordon Copeland realise that this game is not meant for kids?

Even if the game depicted hard core pornography it should not be banned. You get the exact same thing at any adult video store. R18 is fine, banned or edited versions are not.

The entire kerfuffle is ridiculous and misled. Most 12yr old boys know exactly where to find as much free porn on the internet as they like.

Furthermore anyone can create a Second Life account where you can freely watch avatars (which actually have real people behind them) having all manner of weird and kinky sex.

It's completely typical that politicians driven by their own egotistical desire for power and popularity rant and rave about this sort of stuff. The whole party pill fiasco is another example of misled puritanism. A controlled and managed substance was banned only to expose stupid kids to another bunch of largely uncontrolled substances much worse than the original ones.

Antisocial? Delinquency?

I think it is very social to engage in Commerce, and not at all delinquent to pay for service. After all, you could be truly Antisocial by complaining about people and society while hiding behind a computer screen in a small dark room.

At 'SomeOne' Quote "I think it is wrong for the New Zealand Government to censor a game that is made for adults."

New Zealand did not censor GTA IV, Rockstar censored their game for the Australia public so GTA iv would not be banned. We just got the wrong end of the straw (it's cheaper to mass produce, half of asia also gets this same version)

"Now why would you want to buy the cut version when the uncut version is available to buy overseas and cheaper?"

Thats a smart thing if you own a PS3 (A PS3 does not have region codes (NTSC/ PAL). But if you own a Xbox 360 (region code PAL-1) your in the "gurgler" (lol John Maxwell you need to grow up and stop watching Fox News. I'll address you issues soon)

"Christos" for you I have nothing to say, I agree with you 100% at this point in time.

Now for you "John Maxwell" (Google your self is amazing how much porn their is on the internet isn't it). Now have you played any of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, if you haven't please play (as in play through the game story wise, not just steal a car and kill people) this one (GTA IV).

"And we wonder why society is going down the gurgler!"

Society has been going down the "gurgler" since there have been murders it's a trend. We've just got pretend that it's not going down, dismiss the poor, old, sick, unemployed, and stereotypes and pretend that the world is cleaner (less deaths), be afraid of your fellow neighbor. Watch the right wing news at 6pm, read the left wing news at 9am the next day, which one would you rather go to sleep with? (The Right Wing side right? Where a Bee is named Killer and the great honorable of this country is a woman in a suit... look at the people pulling the strings not the poster)

"delinquency of society" how many delinquents (youth) do you know own a PS3/ Xbox360 and that is able to their hand on a R18 game, Remember it cost over $800 for a PS3 and most games are $120 and where stores get fined thousands of $ if they sell a R18 media to a minor. Don't blame our media the parents our role models, our politicians that get over $200'000 a year for what exactly making parents having less rights, making our youth more restrained, what did you get up to when you were our age, how were your parties (how many doors did you break down), when X was legal in New Zealand for over 6 months.

These games, GTA IV, have less adult content than some shows on free to air television as "Christos" said before. GTA IV does not contain nudity.

John Maxwell please read "Grand theft childhood" or at least visit their website.