There will be no difference between the UK, US and Australian versions of Fallout 3, according to Bethesda VP of PR and Marketing Pete Hines.

Hines, in an interview with overseas industry website Edge Online, stated the idea of Australia getting its own special version of Fallout 3 is a "misconception". He said,

We want to make sure folks understand that the Australian version of Fallout 3 is identical to both the UK and North American versions in every way, on every platform. An issue was raised concerning references to real world, proscribed drugs in the game, and we subsequently removed those references and replaced them with fictional names. To avoid confusion among people in different territories, we decided to make those substitutions in all versions of the game, in all territories.

He went on to clarify, "There are no references to real world drugs in any version of Fallout 3." This follows on from an earlier interview where Mr. Hines referred to worldwide variations for classifications as frustrating.

We contacted Red Ant, the Australian distributors of Fallout 3, on what they thought of Pete Hines' comments - we'll update you with their comment when it becomes available. How do you think this news will affect the game worldwide?

Hi, and welcome to another mailbag.

The hot topic this week is game classification, and you'll find my answers below, but don't be afraid to hit me up for any topic related to games and politics. Where should we be going on digital rights management? What's the future for net neutrality? Who came up with the term "cybercrime", and for exactly which week in 1992 was it cool? What do gambling laws have to do with MMO real-money transactions, and how do search-and-seizure provisions in other countries affect the privacy of your financial data?

Come on - you're not even beginning to challenge me yet.

- Greg Tannahill

In a recent interview with overseas site CVG, Pete Hines - product manager for Fallout 3 - stated different censorship requirements across different regions can cause issues for developers.

In the interview he goes on to explain that he understands that across different regions there are different 'hot buttons' which set each classification board off - some don't mind violence but won't allow nudity, others are fine with nudity but abhor drugs.

The separate requirements from each region are a product of the world, where certain things affect cultures in different ways, but it doesn't affect a development team's original design - Hines said, ""We have our eyes wide open, mindful of the things that could be flagged up and how we're going to resolve them if that becomes a problem".

With the internet creating a global community the barriers between cultures are coming down at an alarming rate. Do you think a worldwide censorship organisation could work? If one were to exist, how do you think it would work?

Games are politics.

It's laughable in a way, because no one expects to change their worldview based on Katamari Damacy, and no one expects to use Pikmin to determine their vote. But it's still true. Games are politics.

If you spend time around the interwebs, you may have seen recent discussion of Guitar Praise, a Guitar Hero knockoff with a Christian rock spin. It's easy to mock, but clearly the publishers think it's going to make money, and I suspect they're probably right. But more importantly, this is the future. This is the exploration of videogames as tool for pushing ideological agendas.

We have already seen casual web-driven games deployed in American electoral campaigns to promote candidates. We've seen simulation-style games whose mechanics support a particular platform or agenda. We've seen games that critique foreign policy, airport security, or fast-food culture. The US Army has used Halo to attract teenagers to recruitment booths; John McCain's campaign ads "borrowed" music from the Medal of Honor franchise. "Advergaming" is big money, and although so far its products have varied in quality it's sure that where money collects talent soon follows.

But you don't have to go trawling websites to find political gaming. We're already playing it. It's not as targeted, heavy-handed, or even intentional, but we're exposed to it every time we fire up a console or start a game on our PC. The management of World of Warcraft's auction houses implicitly pushes certain economic theories. SimCity rewards imposing heavy taxes on the poor. Civilization sets hard numerical values to the relative merits of monarchy and democracy. Probably no one intended to communicate with us in these ways. Probably no one meant to engage us in political debate. But they did. Unintended communication is still communication. Subtly or otherwise, we're being preached to by every game we play.

And that's great. It's fantastic. We're not idiots. We don't subscribe wholeheartedly to everything we're told. We're able to understand the difference between fiction and non-fiction, and realise that what's appropriate in one context isn't apropriate in another. That people are offering us these ideas is one of the best things about gaming. I like being exposed to new systems, to new concepts, and continually evaluating new sets of cost/benefit equations or risk/reward tradeoffs. I like taking strategies from one ruleset to another and learning what's specific and what's universal. That's what learning's all about.

But the nature of communication is that once one voice is raised, the rest soon follow. Statements beg rebuttals, and proclamation engenders debate. Gaming is a blank sheet of paper, and people around the world of all political creeds and agendas are picking up their pens. What they write is yet to be decided, but the course of society will only, can only, be decided by those who have written.

The question for gamers is this: do you want to be the writer, or the reader? Do you want to be speaking, or being spoken to? The worldwide gaming audience is growing faster today than it ever has before. There's a great untapped nation of gamers who are listening, who are watching, who are waiting.

This is your chance. If games are politics, what politics do you want your games to be talking?

For the first of these we thought we might kick things off with a question of our own - we noticed the Federal Trade Commission in the States had given the thumbs up to the will they, won't they Take Two deal and we wondered if the Australian equivalent would do the same thing. If you think of a cool question you'd like to see Greg answer, ask! He told me he thought this one was a bit easy, so let's see if we can stump him!

Question - Joaby: I don't know if you saw that news, but the federal trade commission has publicly stated they are ok with the EA Take-Two merger. We'd like to know what you think from a political standpoint this means for the merger - could this be seen as government support for the merger, or are we simply reading too far into the announcement? Do you think Austrade or the ACCC would make a statement like this?

Answer - Greg Tanahill: The issue with any proposed EA / Take-Two merger is that it will bring the majority of the licensed sports genre under the control of a single publisher. Licensed sport video games are big money, and a monopoly in this area is something EA would find very profitable. The US Federal Trade Commision is charged with, among other things, upholding the US anti-trust laws, which are designed to prevent the establishment of such monopolies on the ground that they are anti-competitive. On 18 August the FTC issued letters to lawyers for EA and Take-Two indicating that after a non-public investigation they are of the view that the proposed merger does not offend United States anti-trust law.

That's not an endorsement or encouragement of the merger; that's not the FTC's job. It's merely a statement that the FTC doesn't think the merger's illegal. That's not binding on anyone; legal action can still be taken later if the need arises. Ultimately the final decision of legality can only be made by the courts.

It's helpful advice, though. It's the FTC saying to EA and Take-Two, "We don't intend to go to court to stop you merging." It lets the companies know they can proceed with a merger without the obvious threat of litigation hanging over their heads.

As far as Australia goes, the issue of competition is handled not by Austrade but by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) who in respect of this area occupies a role similar to that of the FTC. Clear and open communication between government and industry benefits everyone and provides certainty to the marketplace, so I would I hope that the ACCC would be able to provide a similar sort of advice to companies in a similar position in Australia.

In any event EA's latest offer has lapsed and there's no public news of a new one so it's all a bit hypothetical. What an EA-published BioShock or Grand Theft Auto might look like will have to remain in the realm of speculation, at least for now.

- Greg

Ed - The first addition to our Gaming Liberty site comes from Greg Tanahill, the Australian Democrats candidate for Molonglo in the ACT. Greg's a serious gamer twice over - he loves his gaming, and he's passionate about how games fit into the Australian culture. Every fortnight we'll feature an article from Greg on the political environment for gaming in Australia - but better than that, every other week Greg will answer your questions on things to do with politics and gaming.

We forget how relevant we are.

It's easy to do. We're told that we're "gamers" - it's a label. We're told that gaming is a niche, that gaming is a hobby, that gaming is a special interest. It's implied that gaming is an eccentricity, and politics is serious business, and that the two shall remain forever separate.

It's not true. Gaming went mainstream while no one was looking. We have become the mass media. We are the average person on the street.

Today there is one current-generation gaming console between every four Australians. That's roughly one console per Australian household. That's not including the personal computers found in one in seven households or the gaming-capable mobile phones owned by one in six adults. We're buying consoles faster than we're making babies, and those numbers are only going up.

Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight is currently stalking the title of the most successful film of all time. Since its release a month ago it's notched up around $640 million in ticket sales. That's a lot of money, but it pales in comparison to the games industry. Only a few months previously, Grand Theft Auto IV took $310 million in a single day and crossed the half-a-billion mark inside a week. Its total sales to date hover around the $1 billion mark. With GTA's budget estimated at roughly half that of The Dark Knight, it's not hard to understand the meteoric rise of the videogaming industry.

So why should we be marginalised? Why is there this "us versus them" mentality? Nobody perceives a division between "filmgoers" and "the general public". No one thinks in terms of "music lovers" and "regular people". Gaming is a leisure activity like any other, and it's one that Australians of all walks of life are turning to in ever increasing numbers.

This isn't a gaming minority. This is a gaming Australia.

It's surprising, then, that the debate on gaming in Australia is led by ultra-conservatives like Senator Barnaby Joyce and South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson. They're Australia's loudest voices on videogames, and they're talking nothing but fear. Gaming politics is dominated by stereotypes and ignorance, while evidence, logic and common sense are being left by the wayside.

Games breed passion. To love games is to want to talk about them, to debate them, and to share them with others. That's what we as a community excel at, and it's time that we took those skills out of the internet forums and into the political forums. We need to be bringing what we know and what we believe to the world at large and making it clear that an Australian life is a gaming life. We need to be saying that games matter to us, and we want that recognised.

We want an R18+ classification for games. We want support for a home-grown industry. We want politicians who understand and respect this exciting emergent media and all that it has to offer.

We want to be heard.

We're a gaming Australia, and we're finally ready to be vocal.

Here at GameArena we’ve decided to take a deeper look at the issues that arise when politics meets games in Australia.

We're enlisting the help of guest writers to help accurately develop a sense of the direction gaming is taking in Australia – we’re endeavouring to get all sides of the story, and we’ll keep you updated via Gaming Liberty on news that concerns politics and gamers in Australia.

So stay tuned for the Gaming Liberty launch, and start thinking of what topics you'd like to see us cover.