Being an Aussie Gamer Sucks

by Aaron Betts , COMMUNITY WRITER

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Tags: Australia, Ratings, aussie, Australian

I have lived in Australia all my life so far and in recent years I have seriously been considering leaving, permanently. Why? because I am sick and tired of being treated so damn poorly by our government in regards to being part of the modern age.

Let me list off some things that are still pissing me off about living here;

Number 1 - Download Caps

We have absurd internet download caps. Mine is maxed out, yes maxed out at twenty gigabytes during regular hours and forty gigabytes during off peak hours. It is the most expensive plan available at a staggering eighty dollars per month. That's around thirty seven U.S depending on the current exchange rate.

Since I almost never use the off peak for anything but downloading big files as I sleep that essentially leaves me a measly twenty for the times of day during each month that I am actually using the internet proper.

So for all you American folks out there, or hell anyone living in a country with either no caps or vastly larger caps who is all excited about the oncoming age of 'digital distribution' please keep in mind how utterly skrewed people like us Australians are when it comes to downloading content. I watched a couple of series of an Anime I like this month all in low-res streaming video and my download cap was reached within two weeks.

For three months in a row now I have hit my download cap around two weeks before the end of the month due to my relatively average digital lifestyle. When that cap is reached the internet is essentially unusable because they drop your speed to such a low number you might as well not bother. A hundred megabyte podcast for example took me over three hours to download.

If all gaming goes digital only and we're still stuck with these absurd caps I wont be able to play more than two thirds of a typical months releases.

I love the convenience of buying my games via Steam but until our internet system gets improved I am utterly terrified of my future with gaming, especially since games are also getting much bigger. The PSPGo will sell horribly here because of this, it is a guarantee.

Our prime minister did announce a couple of months ago a several billion dollar plan to update our telecommunications infrastructure but we have yet to see or hear any concrete details on when or what exactly this will lead to happening, my guess is it will still be years until we are anywhere near to having the kind of network most other developed nations already have. And even when we get this upgrade if the caps remain in place its wasted money.

Number 2 - Pricing

In America a typical new console title costs sixty dollars, I still get frustrated whenever I hear people complain about this. One hundred and twenty dollars is a standard price for a new console game here. If you are lucky you sometimes find a game for only ninety. Of course games go down in price the older they are, that doesn't change the fact when it comes to most new games I can only buy two a month if that.

Of course gaming is an expensive hobby by nature, its simply much more expensive here.

Then their are the consoles themselves, the Playstation 3 started at one thousand dollars when it launched here and is still selling for around seven hundred. Thank god the slim is finally coming out along with a price cut soon.

Number 3 - We Have No Adult-Only Rating for Games

For films and television we have an R rating here in Australia, this rating means legally you must be eighteen years old to purchase whatever content you wish to view under this rating.

Yet their is not one for games, why? I wish I had an answer, the people in charge of this idiotic system of ours sure don't. We have G for general, T for teen, M for mature and MA for 15+ restricted yet no adult only rating whatsoever.

This can mean two things;

1. Any game deemed 'too intense' for MA is either banned outright or heavily edited and severely delayed. Dark Sector, Silent Hill: Origins are a couple that this happened too.
Fallout 3 was almost banned entirely because of its supposed realistic depictions of drug usage.

2. Any game that should be edited is sometimes for some reason not and is instead labeled MA and thus any younger gamer could end up buying it because almost all moms think that their children are safe to buy and play any MA game as soon as they get close to puberty. The department in charge of rating games in Australia claims that their is no R rating because it would allow games unsuitable for children to enter the country.

You read that right, that's how utterly stupid they are.

Not only do they think most people who play video games are still children (despite the fact it has been proven the average age is closer to mid thirties now) they think that by letting games that should be labaled adult only be released as MA with or without minor edits and subsequently given a higher chance of getting in to the hands of children is some how... better.

Fear 2, Gears of War 2, Condemned 2, GTA4; all recent games that should not be sold to minors yet it is a certainty that because of our ratings system children across the country have bought and played these games.

The major problem isn't just that we dont have the rating in the first place but that most parents aren't even aware of this fact.

Even when several people tried to speak directly with our government about the issue on multiple occassions they practically ignored us. Thousands of Australians were surveyed in one instance and over nintey percent said we needed an R rating but nothing ever came from that. The issue is still 'under discussion' or some such nonsense they claim.

Diablo 3 may very well be the next big title to fall victim to our idiotic and severely out dated ratings system as Blizzard devs have gone on record to say they may need to edit its violence for countries like ours.

Aside from my above gripes, I do love living here in all other facits of my life but with gaming and the internet becoming an increasingly larger part of my day to day activities I wonder if their will come a time where I simply can not function under these conditions.

I get nintey percent of my entertainment from the internet, I run my own website, interact with friends via it more than any other method and even my non gaming related hobbies/past times are directly related to the internet as I am a digital artist and a digital writer.

Between the end of this year and sometime in to next I may very well have made the decision to move to a country(most likely America since I have several friends there) where living the way I do is a vastly easier less irritating experience. I love my gaming and my digital lifestyle that much that I would go to that extreme and I'm willing to bet many Aussie gamers have thought about doing the same.

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Comments (11)

Lance Darnell

August 26, 2009

This is an eye-opening read. In Canada, the only problem we have in common with Australia is game prices. Even when the Canadian and American dollar were the same value, I was still paying an average of $5 to $10 more for a game, and up to $50 more for a system!

This article should be subtitled "Why I Wish I lived in the States."

To avoid edited games, could you not just order American versions online?

Toby Davis

August 26, 2009

Wow I am sorry to hear this and will respect the Aussies more. Now I just need more little critters beer to help with that from Perth. Also PS3 games do not have region locks so if you want to buy american and pay for shipping that may be at a better price. (Just saying)

Jason Wilson

August 26, 2009

What's $120 Aussie in American dollars, Aaron? I see Aussie gamers complaining about prices frequently on sites on the Internet. Is it Australia taxes media at a higher rate than in the U.S., or is it the costs of shipping the product to Australia? What's the price for, say, Dawn of War 2 off of Steam?

Jay Henningsen

August 26, 2009

I know it sucks, but I have a few counterpoints:

It is the most expensive plan available at a staggering eighty dollars per month. That's around thirty seven U.S depending on the current exchange rate.

I pay US $60 per month for my internet access and I have a total cap of 20GB before my speed is limited. Granted, this is because I live in a rural area with no cable, dsl, or fiber optic access, but your plan sounds better and cheaper than mine does.

I watched a couple of series of an Anime I like this month all in low-res streaming video and my download cap was reached within two weeks.

and

For three months in a row now I have hit my download cap around two weeks before the end of the month due to my relatively average digital lifestyle.

Watching several series of anime, even streamed at low resolution is not average. According to Comcast, one of the largest Internet Service Providers in the United States, their average customer uses between 2 and 3 GB per month.

Jay Henningsen

August 26, 2009

What's $120 Aussie in American dollars, Aaron?

The current exchange rate per Google is: 1 Australian dollar = 0.8314 U.S. dollars. So that would be $99.76 USD or so.

David Matos

August 26, 2009

Wait, you guys have Zero Punctuation's Yahtzee! Yahtzee!! :o

But seriously, as Lance said Canadians don't have it as bad, but some things we share in common.

As Yahtzee said, the extra money you pay is for the "we have better beaches tax".

Aaron Betts

August 26, 2009

@Jay

You live in a rural area so your costs match your location, I live in a suburban area with alot of houses with alot of people living in them all of who have the same level of availability to various services as I do. By all accounts we shouldn't be having to pay the amount we are for the service we are being provided.

I only watched those series this month. My point was that someone like me who doesn't watch much tv anymore tends to get more entertainment from the internet and I should be able to get as much as I want when I want it if I am paying money. TV offers the exact same service so why do we have to have such absurd restrictions on the internet, something I am still paying for whether or not the speed is available for me.

We don't get our tv transmissions turned off if we watch more than our usual amount during any given months time, it should be no different for the net.

I hit my caps in the previous months by watching alot of E3 coverage that isn't available via any other source and downloading games that again are not available through any other source. Its quite simple really, the isps and the Australian government don't want us to have unlimited access to content via the internet because they make alot less money from it since they like many governments live in the past and have no real understanding of how to generate more money from the internet. Because of this rather than denying us the ability outright they are using a round about method that essentially has the same effect in order to restrict a service that by all rights we should have limitless access to if we are paying for it.

Just because they aren't making as much money from the service as they want to be(since lets face it most of internet content is free) isn't a good enough reason to disallow customers their rights. Its their fault for being so out of touch with the modern era, not mine yet I and many other customers are the ones being punished.

That's just how I feel about the issue.

Aaron Betts

August 26, 2009

To be honest this article was more a means for me to vent frustration more than anything else.
Truth be told I'm pretty content with my gaming most of the time, it all just turns to crap when the boring months come along and I have nothing to do in my spare time except use the internet. Its been a slow year so far for me, I'm hoping next month things really pick up.

Jay Henningsen

August 26, 2009

There are real, concrete costs associated with providing more bandwidth to an ISP's customers. More often than not, an ISP is just purchasing more bandwidth (lines) from a larger telecommunications company, and those costs have to be allocated somewhere. Either you have to pay more for your increasing bandwidth usage, or you have to restrict your usage to not have your bill go up. I'm not quite sure why you feel you should have limitless access to a service whose cost to maintain is growing almost exponentially.

Television is not quite analogous since the costs for providing service are fixed for the most part and do not increase if you watch more shows. While you may be able to get internet over the same coaxial cable that you also get internet access, broadcasting television signals is a completely different animal than delivering streamed videos.

Just because E3 coverage is only available for you on the internet, does not mean you are entitled to it. Also, the concept that most internet content is free could not be farther from the truth. Everything you see on the internet has a cost associated with it. If the content creator does not charge you to access the content, you can be assured that they are making up for the cost of delivering that content somewhere else, such as advertising sales. In addition to the cost of serving up the content, there is the cost in transporting the content to a local portal where you can retrieve it, and the cost associated with your local portal (ISP) delivering it to you. All of that infrastructure costs money to maintain, and with the explosive growth of digitally delivered content, those costs are growing at an alarming rate.

While you may consider yourself one of the 'punished' customers, the providers have a larger responsibility to provide an adequate level of service to the majority of their customers. The resources they have available to do this are not limitless.

Consider this: your situation could be much worse. There are still billions of people who don't even have the level of access that you do. Just because the world is at your fingertips does not necessarily mean you are entitled to all of it whenever you want it.

Aaron Betts

September 17, 2009

@Jay
Perhaps it is unreasonable for me to expect a better service at the current time, I only recently learned that one private company (Telstra) is largely responsible for the situation Australia's network is currently in.

Luckily just earlier this year our government decided to begin refurbishing and upgrading the physical network itself over the course of the next few years and just yesterday it was announced that Telstra would be losing a large portion of its control over Australia's internet. This will most likely lead to the exact level of service I desire coming to fruition at long last.

So now I'm not as bothered as I was when I wrote this article, I would still prefer to have things the way I want now rather than later but at least I know they are going to change at some point in the future so I guess I'll just have to be patient and deal with what I have. I apologize for writing this article the way I did, it was fueled by ignorant frustration and not reasonable argument.

Jay Henningsen

September 18, 2009

@Aaron - No need to apologize. I do understand the desire for better internet service, as I have had to fight similar battles myself. It is only because I work so closely with the telecommunications industry that I understand the issues from their perspective. This doesn't mean I like what telecom companies do, just that I realize that the situation goes way beyond my desire for better service.

From the social perspective, I also think that people who are participants in this 'digital age' (including myself) are starting to take high-speed internet access for granted. Sometimes we forget it is a luxury item and an optional service, and while it is something that is incredibly useful, it is not something that we are entitled to. As hard as it may be to imagine, less that 25% of the world's population actually has uses the internet. (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm)

Anyway, I was just trying to share some other perspectives. I sincerely hope that my previous statements did not come off as any sort of personal attack against you. If it did, it was certainly not intended.

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